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. Carrol
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I remember. We've been over this before. I argued that language pre-dated homo sapien spiens. Kenneally briefly touches on this in her lecture, and proposed that Neanderthal probably had language. She mentions something about tools. The main source of my argument is a combination of learning, culture and society. Tools fit within this matrix and the uniformity of their design and then followed by development in design reflects a cultural heritage and a change in cultural heritage.
We are all on the same side of the table and quibbling about dates. I want language to co-evolve with social systems, communication, and culture so that all these activities emerge together and become further and further differentiated and sophisticated over time. Your free to punctuate it if you want. I also want to move the whole show back before the arrival modern homo sapien sapiens because from just about every source of evidence, people are not fully functional in either cognative or social capacity without some form of language. This finding leads to the conclusion that language had to procede the evolution of the modern humans, their societies and cultures.
Kenneally mentions the FOXP2 gene, which was what started our discussion sometime ago---well that and the neuron networks linked to that gene. These exist in other primates. According to Kenneally they were found in Neatherthal, via DNA analysis.
Now I want to add a new dimension. Remember a few months ago, I posted a bunch of stuff about epigenetics? Maybe not. Doesn't matter. It's basically a system that can be inherited without changes to DNA. I want to proposed that over persistant periods the epigenome would at least in part lead to alterations to DNA sequence. If a specific set of epigenomic factors are subject to natural selection they would in effect evolve into DNA changes in sequence via the persistance of natural selection for or against these particular phenotyptic phenomena.
The important consequence in this context is that language facility along with its cultural symbolic systems and their evident advantages could be theoretically linked to evolutionary processes through epigenetic factors. This kind of system would go a long way toward explaining the co-evolution of humans, language, society, and culture. Well, that's why it was my fad for the week.
The epigenome is not unique to humans of course. But it provides a whole other dimension to evolution in general. It basically amounts to a feed-back system that can be inherited so that changes in learning, social patterns and behavior form a mode of inheritance ... that over time they become under selective pressure and more concretely genetic based or stable adaptations.
I will concede that something happened some 40k years ago. What I won't concede is the arrival of language. I would concede a change in societies and cultures or perhaps some change in food source and migration patterns ... . The evidence is after all of a techno-artifactual sort. It is a leap of faith that it reflects a linguistic change.
Anyway these back and forth quibbles are typical of palentology and physical anthro ... that's why I prefered the wild and wooly world of cultural anthro where I got to read Marshal McLuen and go to a night lecture by Aldous Huxley.
Here's a panel discussion over the meaning of the 2002 find of a 6 million year old proto-human or hominid skull in Chad (oldest fossil of a human ancester). I found it looking for material on Ian Tattersall:
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/2459
The guests are Bernard Wood, Ian Tattersall, Sharon Begley and Daniel Lieberman. The conclusion is that the fossil record for hominids is starting to look more like a bush than a trunk. Maybe the more important record might be the chimp and other apes which have no fossil record at the moment.
Getting back to other things. Tatterstall opened an exhibit of 800,000 year old material from Spain:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_1_112/ai_97174205/
``Q: You mentioned the Sima de los Huesos, or Pit of the Bones. Why is this site so unusual and intriguing?
Human fossils are not that common and this particular site is the most astonishing concentration of human fossils that has been found anywhere in the world.
Hellish conditions, by the way. Absolutely hellish, horrible, cramped, at the bottom of this shaft in the ground. You have to walk 700 yards into a cave through dark passages in the pitch dark and over a rough floor. And then you have to descend 50 feet vertically down a shaft in the dark 'til you come to a slope that leads down even further into the cavity where these bones collected.''
Well, it seems obvious to me this is a burial site. That there are so many bones of various ages, suggests a long standing social order. The other direction to spectulate is the location which is southern Europe which means early migration.
Just as a side note. The earilest tools date from Ethiopia, 2.5-2.6 mya. Anyway, my preferred hypothesis is to look at the tool record as evidence of language and culture. That's why I resist the idea you need anything as elaborate as sculpture and painting. Of course I agree these are primal symbolic activities. I just see them as extensions of other symbolic activities and capacities like language and custom.
The very fact that you can classify stone tools by period and a temporal sequence of development suggests the concept of tradition, i.e. culture. The mode of transmission of this tradition is the only question. My vote goes to show and tell.
CG