``The capacity could have been there for a very long time before language was in fact invented.'' Carrol
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Yes the physical capacity and its behavioral expression are two different questions. But intuitatively, I just don't accept the idea of much of a separation. It's hard to believe you can walk around with potential you don't use. My underlaying assumption is that life is always pushing the envelop so to speak.
I got the impression from the article that Ramachandran thought lanugage might have developed its full form not in the 200,000 to 150,000 bce period, but as late as 50,000, or during the so-called big bang, hence the title of the article.
But looking around the web to check timelines, that puts language at the height of the ice ages, within the rise of well developed paleolithic cultures, and the immigration and colonization of the Americas. That just seems very late, too late to me.
I guess I think along the lines of a dialectic between culture and language, so that, the timeline of physical evidence of culture is more directly related to language development. In other words the appearance of systematic toolmaking, even of not very sophistocated varieties, is evidence of a show and tell and pass it along culture, i.e. language and culture together.
The real problem here is that it seems to me, there is not enough collaboration between all the different approaches to this question. The older fields like physical and cultural anthropology, linguistics, and the newer fields like neuro and cognitive sciences don't seem to talk to one another. Instead they seem to compete with each other over discoverying the `key' to unlock the question.
On the other hand, you can see a variety of Gould's ideas appear here and there in Ramachandran's article. Obviously the punctuated equilibrium idea fits nicely with the so-called big bang or explosion of palolithic cultures...
Anyway what appealed to me most was the concept of imitation as key, mainly because imitation is such an integral part of learning, monkey see, monkey do.
CG