One model prevailing over time over another ≠ unviability of the latter, given any alternative.
Anyway since the discussion is now into cooperative group efforts vs more individualistic efforts - there is some interesting work on how the sort of farming needed for an area results in different levels of individualism vs cooperativism and other psychologic traits within its members as cultural norms.
Wheat farming allows for more nuclear household smaller stake models while rice paddy farming has to be more of a group effort.
Human culture evolves and adapts to new circumstances and to how it changes the circumstances (the latter a self-imposed red queen race). Better worse … “choice” … is not the issue … the construct that spreads the most tautologically is the one that is most fit; as another one becomes more fit for that niche, whatever its size, for whatever the reason, it will prevail.
Yup, you got it. I was a little too telegraphic there. I was trying to keep it short, sweet, and sorta poetic for the OP.
Long version:
By “social” what I really mean is cooperative. As you say, language is a key tool of humanity. IMO language exists in support of the urge to cooperate, to be a society, rather than a bunch of independent individuals leading a solitary existence except to occasionally mate, probably forcefully.
When ancient Og figured out he could get tasty clams open more easily by whacking them with a rock, he was tool-using. Later he thought to whack *this *kind of rock on *that *kind of rock to make a sharp edge to pry clams open intact so he didn’t need to pick shell bits out of the tasty innards before eating. That’s tool-making.
But if Og had no interest in sharing this info with anyone else, each human would have to discover this independently for themselves. Very few people would and human progress would be negligible over even geologic time.
It’s the incentive to share information that drives the virtuous circle of learning which lets us “stand on the shoulders of giants” who came before. And which got us from pounding clams to the heights of today’s technical & social / political / economic arrangements. All of which are about cooperating because the total results are greater than the sum of the individual efforts.
Whether that info-sharing is delivered via cave pictograms, grunts & gestures, flowery Victorian prose, or a silent YouTube how-to vid is immaterial.
My argument to your point is that language as communicative facility came *after *the desire / drive to have communication. And so the social desire is the more fundamental feature of human nature.
OTOH …
Agree that there’s “language” as “communicative facility” and “language” as “method for modeling a representation of the world within the mind.” As to the latter definition I see a chicken and egg problem. Why did we have a drive to mentally model the world? How is it that we developed a tool to transfer these models between individuals which in turn molds how the individual mind constructs its models? A fascinating question I know diddly beans about.
Chimps learn to use tools by watching their mothers, and it takes them years to master what could be taught to a human child in a a few weeks, at most, once the child is 3 or 4 years old and has a good command of language.
The other thing that language allows us to do is to extend our “theory of mind” well beyond what a non-language capable species can do. “Theory of mind” is the ability to imagine what another being is thinking, or to know what knowledge another being has or doesn’t have. Chimps are pretty good at that, but nothing beats telling the other guy exactly what you’re thinking. It’s that ability to see inside another person’s mind that really allows us to cooperate in much more complex ways than other species.
It also allows us to just get along better. As the observation goes… fill a cross-country flight with chimps and when it lands, there’s a good chance that only one chimp will still be alive. (That might not work as well for bonobos, but it’s still an interesting observation about the difference between common chimps and us.)
First consider that most knowledge in such early times was transferred by watching and imitating. Thag picked up flint chipping by watching Og do it. There wasn’t anything complex enough that needed advanced language to describe. Language would have developed for other purposes. I don’t know what purposes, but I suppose anything from entertainment to resolving conflicts without combat. Earlier on language developed from the same rudimentary form we can see in other animals.
Speculating now, I don’t think we needed a drive to mentally model the world, other animals have some sense of knowing their environment. As pre-humans became more complex socially and became tool makers and users that better brains evolved and more complex language naturally followed the larger world the mental map had to encompass. Interestingly it is the tool making and use that is what is distinct in humans, other animals cooperate and have complex social structures but didn’t increase their communication ability in the same way.
I’ll make the wild guess that language and conceptual thinking evolved together. This would be necessary in more complex hunts, where the cooperation of a group had to over-rule individual instincts to charge in and get the big one for yourself; or making nets for fishing, or building boats to go fishing, etc. It’s easy to watch Thag chip flint and copy. It’s harder to arrange - “you guys go around the back, upwind of the herd and make lots of noise and chase them. Ogg and I will hide behind these boulders where the canyon narrows and chuck spears at them as they rush by…”
There’s also the theory that language evolved as a form of grooming. For the more advanced (non-verbal) primates grooming is a form of social structure- the higher ups get their fleas picked by the socially lower down, establishing and acknowledging a form of hierarchy. The tribe size is limited by the number of higher-ups who can be “serviced” in a day - typically about 10 according to an article I read.
However, with speech, one person can “service” multiple recipients at once, increasing the cooperative social group and increasing the nuances of the hierarchy. Plus, the major topic of gossip continues to be about interpersonal relationships, and particularly in a species where fertility and so paternity is hidden, the question “who’s boinking whom?”
One form of complex conceptual thinking that is felt to have driven and allowed for language development is the creation of, in particular, compound tools. Short version is that Broca’s area is involved in both language and tool use and the cognitive complexities used to create compound tools, which are assemblages of parts, are the same cognitive processes needed for true language. The hypothesis is that spoken language was an exaptation of the cognitive processes used in tool-making, and in turn facilitated the transmission of those skills.
First, using gesturing was successful, I was ruling out advanced language, not grunting and pointing. Second that study self selects for subjects whose expertise is in learning through the use of advanced language.
The lego snap-together nature of language is akin to the lego snap-together nature of compound tools. And the same part of the brain does both.
Which implies to this non-expert that the fundamental innovation was snap-togetherness. Which any CS major will quickly mention is closely related to abstraction and meta-levels.
Our hardware support runs real deep for this stuff.
Do you believe that the key aspect of language is the nature of the vocalizations? The premise is of course that proto-language was sign more than grunts with vocalizations exapting (or minimally co-evolving with) the fundamental cognitive capacity of making tools and of teaching with gestures, yes in shorthand as LSLGuy put it, “social tool use.”
And if you think that gestures do not qualify as use of language then why do you care that the subjects were college students and therefore presumptively with expertise in learning through the use of advanced language?
Good stuff here and in the subsequent posts by the others.
Ref just this: “Chimps learn to use tools by watching their mothers, …”
Implicitly in most folks’ posts upthread, “communication” means transmitting. People (or chimps) have a social goal to transmit their knowledge, whether of toolmaking techniques, or simply which way to the berry bush.
Inherent in communication is also the desire to receive.
The baby chimp (or human) somehow wants to observe Mom and somehow wants to store those observations. And store them not as a passive memory of Mom putting on an entertaining show, but as an active template for future self behavior abstracted to different, but somehow similar circumstances in somehow essential ways.
Low social animals, e.g. cougars, are essentially indifferent to conspecifics unless they pose a competitive threat or a mating opportunity.
Conversely, in high social animals like us, for some reason we (and chimps) are fascinated with other humans (chimps). That’s the deep driver. The rest is just details floating on the surface.
As you yourself are saying vocalizations don’t make language. If communication in general is language than a lot of other animals are capable of it. A formal language, a high level language, abstract conceptual language, are not needed to make tools.
It is your premise that gestures don’t qualify as language, not mine. I don’t believe early took makers needed to communicate instructions to pass on their skills. And either way, college students are nothing like early tool builders and are not the kind of subjects needed for this kind of experiment. I have experience making things by hand, I’ve worked in restaurant kitchens with people who didn’t speak English, and it was not at all difficult through demonstration, gestures, and non-formal language to exchange skills. The study itself finds similar results through the use of advanced language and gestures so clearly it shows advanced language is not necessary. What it doesn’t show is that the skills cannot be acquired through imitation. The study shows that advanced language was not needed to learn and teach how to make stone tools which is the point I was making. If I was not clear about that then it is my fault but you are drawing your own conclusions about the intent of my statement.
Hard of course to exactly place when proto-language began but “nothing like” is very clearly an overstatement. Most who I’ve read think that the major changes from early proto-language to language were not in brain structure but in how that structure was used. Most think language developed in anatomically modern humans. In that sense college students are not so different than humans a hundred thousand or so years ago.
And the point of the study was not “need to” but using gesture in even an ad hoc primitive proto-language fashion does so much more efficiently than just watching and imitating. A group that could do that would be able to make tools better, more reliably, and more of them, than one that relied on imitating alone. The behavior would be thus strongly selected for. “Advanced language” did not emerge fully formed. The hypothesis suggests that cognitive skills and manual skills needed to execute the “lego snap-together nature of compound tools” were applied as tool to more effectively and efficiently teach the skills to others, and that application to cultural transmission, communication, and teaching each other was also then more broadly applied to communicating about concepts other than tool making and provided the cognitive substrate for more advanced language to develop.
Clearly it is not the only hypothesis out there but it is true that current anatomically modern humans transmit tool making knowledge much more effectively using even just ad hoc gestures than by imitation alone and that the brain areas involved in language have great overlaps with those involved in tool use, and that mirror neurons are involved in both. Those facts seem to me to provide solid support for the hypothesis.
But farming starts with tools… and passing on wisdom.
Another point is - that the tool-making human had to recognize the other wanted to see what they were doing, and needed to understand that they needed to show what the steps were, and needed to conceptual ability to realize that showing a fellow tribe member (offspring?) how to make their own was a good thing and they should do it. Which leads to more abstract knowledge that needs to be passed on, like the best season to plant… How to tell which rocks are good for making knives, etc.
Maybe hunter gatherers associated with places like Gobekli Tepe had to start farming or move away from what were apparently the most advanced construction projects man had yet priduced.
