[lbo-talk] Timeline? Re: Kenneally, some notes and background

[Carrol Cox]

I would assume that the "origin" of language, in so far as it could be a
study at all, would be pursued by anthropology, not linguistics. [Note:
the language of the Paraha, whatever its features, is a MODERN language,
not a primitive one. After all, homo x. had had quite a logn history
when its members first joureyed to the western hemisphere. There are no
"primitive" peoples except in the mythology of eurocentrism.) And there
may be _some_evidence in anthropology that the biological  evolution of
homo s. culminated long before the appearance of language. Biological
evolution then, might, explain the appearance of the _capacity_ for
language, but not of language itself.

Of course my information goes back 5 or 6 years, and these timelines get
changed all the time. But here is mu current understanding and I welcom
corrections.

Biologically modern humans go back 100-150K. For the first 50-100K,
however, that development left little evidence in the archaeological
recored (tools, etc.) Human culture remained pretty much in the
continuum of the preceding million years or so. Then about 40K ago
radical changes in the record appear - including, above all, the first
evidence of consciously symbolic activity. (Sculpture, bodily
decoration, cave painttings, etc.). Something had happened, and whatever
that was, it was a CULTURAL, not a BIOLOGICAL, change. The hypothesis of
Tattersall and others are that this event was the invention and rapid
spreading of language.

But there is _no_ record, and in the nature of things cannot be any
record, of the CAUSES of that origin. That it was a slow piece by piece
development (as in the dogmatic Darwinism of mid-20th century) is really
hard to believe. Neuroscience, linguistics, genetics, etc. may or may no
sometday identify the neurological foundations of language ability.
Whether that knowledge, if ever acquired, would be relevant to the
"origins" or "evolution" of language I do not know.

Carrol