Eubulides wrote:
>
>
> And of course, they became active without any substantive transformation
of
> their attitudes or values; they are either born that way or they fall like
manna
> on their neurons.
I've been reading Ian Tattersall, The Monkey in the Mirror. Apparently, on the basis of present anthropological knowledge, anatomically _and_ neurologically modern humans, that is humans like us in their _capacity_ for symbolic processes (language, etc), existed for 10s of thousands of years _before_ (in some way of which we have no knowledge) they suddenly began to speak, paint, decorate their bodies, etc. That is, the capacity for language was an _exaptation_, NOT an adaptation. It came into existence 'accidentally' as it were but was not utilized for perhaps as long as 100,000 years. Now sure as hell, no human ever sat down one day and said to himself: Hey, I'm going to invent language. They _must_ have begun speaking for some time before they realized they were speaking. Tattersall, emphasizing it is pure speculation, suggests that perhaps language was invented first by children and then picked up by adults.
Culture, of course, goes back deep into pre-human history, a couple million years or so.
Carrol
^^^^^
CB;
I largely agree, however, language and culture are not as separate as you make them. They are both essentially the same thing, symbolling, and probably start together. You didn't have some beings going around "culturing-symbolling" but not "languaging". Language and culture suddenly, unconsciously, in a dialectical leap started together. Of course, a "leap" here can be many generations which is still short in the overall time context.
Language and culture are extrasomatic adaptations. They are not organic. They are Lamarckian-like.
Exaptation means something like a latent trait or capacity that becomes an adaptation when it becomes "active". On the other hand, even the rudimentary monkey symbolling capacity probably had some active adaptive advantage in its rudimentary or proto-human forms, i.e. gave one group of primates (monkey-like) adaptive advantage ten million years ago.