cultureless humans

[Maureen Anderson]

>>Nothing, ever, begins with an individual. Thought independent and 
>>prior to language exists (and is the basis for thought in 
>>language), but social thought can only come into being in language, 
>>and language occurs only within social relations (Milton to the 
>>contrary).
>>
>>  Carrol
>=========
>Where/when does thought leave off and language begin? Just what is 
>thought prior to and independent of language?
>

Besides Damasio, and besides stuff by scientists like Terrence 
Deacon, whom I brought up here before, Clifford Geertz long ago wrote 
a couple of lucid articles that address these questions of language, 
thought, wolf-children and other feral fantasies.

Though a bit dated (including early-seventies patriarchal language, 
preserved below), both pieces eloquently explain the basic points, on 
the significance of the brain's co-evolution with 
language/symbol/society, echoed by others more recently.  (Both 
pieces are in his 1973 volume, _The Interpretation of Cultures_.)

Geertz:

"Men without culture would not be the clever savages of Golding's 
_Lord of the Flies_ thrown back upon the cruel wisdom of their animal 
instincts; nor would they be the nature's noblemen of Enlightenment 
primitivism or even, as classical anthropological theory would imply, 
intrinsically talented apes who had somehow failed to find 
themselves.  They would be unworkable monstrosities with very few 
useful instincts, fewer recognizable sentiments, and no intellect: 
mental basket cases.  As our central nervous system -- and most 
particularly its crowning curse and glory, the neocortex -- grew up 
in great part in interaction with culture, it is incapable of 
directing our behavior or organizing our experience without the 
guidance provided by systems of significant symbols.  What happened 
to us in the Ice Age is that we were obliged to abandon the 
regularity and precision of detailed genetic control over our conduct 
for the flexibility and adaptability of a more generalized, though of 
course no less real, genetic control over it.  To supply the 
additional information necessary to be able to act, we were forced, 
in turn , to rely more and more heavily of cultural sources -- the 
accumulated fund of significant symbols.  Such symbols are thus not 
mere expressions, instrumentalities, or correlates of our biological, 
psychological, and social existence; they are prerequisites of it. 
Without men, no culture, certainly; but equally, and more 
significantly, without culture, no men."  ["The Impact of the Concept 
of Culture on the Concept of Man"]


"A cultureless human being would probably turn out to be not an 
intrinsically talented though unfulfilled ape, but a wholly mindless 
and consequently unworkable monstrosity.  Like the cabbage it so much 
resembles, the Homo sapiens brain, having arisen within the framework 
of human culture, would not be viable outside of it. [...] The fact 
that the final stages of the biological evolution of man occurred 
after the initial stages of the growth of culture implies that the 
"basic," "pure," or "unconditioned," human nature, in the sense of 
the innate constitution of man, is so functionally incomplete as to 
be unworkable.  Tools,hunting, family organization, and, later, art, 
religion, and science molded man somatically; and they are, 
therefore, necessary not merely to his survival but to his 
existential realization."    ["The Growth of Culture and the 
Evolution of Mind"]


--M