That’s common among my friends. The idea is that something to do with vocalization develops later, and babies can express their needs a little sooner with “baby signs”, which leads to everyone being happier.
That theory became popular after my kids were little, so we didn’t explicitly try it. But my son was slow to talk and communicated exclusively with gestures for a few months. (Before he said any words, he gestured “pick me up”, and pointed in the direction he wanted us to go so he could point at the thing he wanted. Like going to the fridge to ask for milk.)
Except that actual humans living in hot tropical environments do wear clothes. Often very few clothes – but they still wear something, even if it’s only penis sheaths and some equivalent for women. The Sentinelese, from what pictures I’ve seen, don’t even wear that – but they’re all wearing belts. That might be purely practical, to give them something to stick tools into; or it might not.
Basically what I’m wondering is whether the invention of physical modesty is essential in some way to humans; or whether it’s the result of some truly ancient historical accident.
– I suspect the language would have both gestural and voiced components. Existing languages often do; though the gestural portions may or may not be explicit; some of them come under those “social cues” that most people seem to learn instinctively or almost so. The children would have to have access to each other for this, of course; but I expect they’d need that to develop any language at all.
I thank @Der_Trihs for getting that out there before I could.
I’ve also seen it commonly in patient families (as @puzzlegal shares, it has been a big thing among parents - “baby signs” - for two to three decades). And my own daughter, adopted from China at 13 months, learned to sign for “more” right away. We never bothered with others as her spoken language then exploded, but she would continue that sign for emphasis for a long time, basically a way to scream it since we obviously were not listening to her command fast enough! Signing is also used as an effective adjunct for spoken language impaired kids, including some with autism. Not sure how informative that is for the current question though.
The question is if development recapitulates cultural growth, so to speak.
The hypothesis goes that watching and mirroring hand use, using and creating tools, primed for otherwise using gestures to communicate, with that circuitry then being piggybacked onto by vocalizations.
Of course the wiring is now primed and experience-expectant. I’d still WAG that gestures are easier for our brains to … ahem … grasp de novo.
I feel like if you can’t be seen in public without it, then it is partly about modesty. Even if the penis sheath or brassiere is designed to accentuate your assets.
(I have heard of at least one group of people who “would feel naked” without their enormous red penis sheath, but have no idea if that’s common.)
Decoration and signaling can be functions of clothes. But just because it is used for decoration or social signaling, doesn’t make it clothing. For example, jewelry isn’t clothing. To me, at any rate.
Sure. Not the major function, though, which has always been protection from the elements.
It could also be about decorum*, which is not the same thing.
which is etymologically related to decoration.
Possibly - I’m a gradualist on behavioural modernity, largely because Southern African archaeology points that way, but AFAIK, the jury is very much still out.
I’ve spun this discussion into a separate thread as I think it is a possibly interesting discussion but not really on point to continue here.
To the point of this thread is @thorny_locust’s point: whether or not protection from the elements is needed, how long until some clothing was created to cover whatever area of the body got designated as not for public viewing, or (and include decoration or markings here) to designate social status within the group? Is that fairly hardwired in some manner, the exact manner being culturally determined.
So the concept of tool use is, you think pretty hardwired, and not culturally learned? And creating more complex tools should be a fairly automatic thing?
Not debating the point. I think I agree with the first part. Not as sure about the second. I think the concept of building new tools using other tools would a while for the Euraka moment.
I think babies grab things, and thwack things with the things that they grabbed. I’m pretty sure that at least the idea of “poke or hit thing with other thing and see what happens” is hardwired; as is the idea of “pick up thing and carry it.”
– and a Tudor codpiece is indeed braggy; maybe what the wearer’s being modest about is that its contents aren’t anything spectacular?
It occurs to me that maybe some of the problem is the word I used, as “modest” does also mean “self-effacing”, but that wasn’t the sense I meant it in. I meant that humans generally have a tabu against allowing their genitals, usually anuses, and depending on the culture often quite a bit of the rest of the body to be visible to others under most circumstances; even though many cultures do allow total nakedness under some specific circumstances. And no other creature that I know of shows any signs of such behavior.
Or the way someone not noble wearing yellow or purple would be in trouble in some previous cultures, or someone wearing morning dress to dinner, or wearing no shoes and shirt…
is it about modesty (shame about exposure), or about decorum (what’s considered “classy” and proper)? Because many penis sheaths (I’m thinking especially Vanuatu) hide nothing.
Many women’s tops also hide nothing, but are nonetheless considered essential for decency.
Someone wearing morning dress to dinner, meanwhile, might be gossiped about, but they won’t be arrested. And the restriction on wearing purple was a financial one, not social: If you could afford purple clothes, you were allowed to wear them.
Huh? I’m not familiar with a rule against purple, but it sure sounds like a sumptuary law, which means it was absolutely not about who could afford it.