h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I read in the National Geo that some kind of Homo habilis was found in the Caucasus recently dating from over a million years ago. That means that there were probably humans in Euroasia before there Neanderthal even.

As to whether they could talk or not, I wonder how you could tell? Seems like it would be harder than determining the color of a dinosaur.

"I read in the National Geo that some kind of Homo habilis was found in the Caucasus recently dating from over a million years ago. That means that there were probably humans in Euroasia before there Neanderthal even."


That's a contriversial theory!

How old is Lucy?

Here's the Geo link,

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0208/feature1/index.html

What's Lucy got to do with it?

It was a simple question.

3.5 million I think, so again what's Lucy got to do with it?

Lucy aside, it might be possible to deduce an organism's ability to speak (which is, I admit, different from its practice of the ability) from anatomical structure.

I'd be interested to know that too, Alitnil.

The reason I brought up the Georgian find, by the way, was in response to your mentioning Neanderthal's earlier migration. If there were already people in Euroasia when Neanderthal arrived, that might complicate things a bit especially when trying to associate artifacts with species or whatever.

from earlier
as far as i am aware Indo-European languages are a sun-group of languages derivied originally from the middle eastern semitic group of languages(hebrew,arabic) these languages in turn are only one or two sub groups of afroasiatic that derives from africa orignally with some influence it is believed from the far east(via madagascar).

"Lucy aside, it might be possible to deduce an organism's ability to speak (which is, I admit, different from its practice of the ability) from anatomical structure."


That was my point regarding the question of controlled breathing. It is difficult to speak if you cannot control your breathing. We take this control for granted. I believe there is research in a genetic link to the ability to control breathing. Does anyone know more on this subject?

Here's a little story that might illuminate how the way we ask questions might determine the answers a little bit.

This is a mythical story okay? So don't go searching the internet references and comeback here and say, "Analiese, you're full of shit, I mean it."

Once upon a time, a paleontologist discovered this fossilized creature and based on anatomical evidence concluded that the creature could make one tone with its vocal apparatus, specifically an audible glottal stop or click. So he calls it the Onetone and declares confidently that it could not have possibly developed a spoken language.

Well, during the presentation at peer review, a computer expert takes the floor and says, "Very interesting Dr. Find (that's the paleontologist's name of course) very interesting indeed, so what would you say to this?"

And he starts drumming his fingers on the lectern furiously and some former military radio men in the audience recognize the tapping as Morris Code.

"So what?!" yells the visiting linquist from Dubuque. "That in fact represents perhaps millions of years of symbolic evolution. According to Dr. Find's findings the creature only appears in the fossil record for approximately 2.5 million years and I sincerely doubt that would have been enough time, given the size of it's cranium, to have developed such a sophisticated symbolic system let alone attaching it to it's rather rudimentary vocalization apparatus."

Well, as you can probably appreciate, the computer expert is sort of put in his place by THAT, right?

Except, suddenly, out of thin air, or maybe something a little more polluted, Analiese appears on her broomstick having, that very same day, visited the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. She's carrying a bag with something inside, something that's apparently kicking and clicking frantically, and once again the radio men in the audience note it appears to be Morris Code.

"Yes, I'm getting it," one says triumphantly. "OUTLETMEHERE... OUT LET ME HERE? Oh yeah, 'Let me out here!' It's English!"

"What's English?" asks the linquist.

"What's in the bag?" asks the paleontologist.

"Okay, guys, one at a time," replies Analiese.

"First, I happen to have in this very bag a real live Onetone which Seychelle natives discovered washed up on the beach and alive. Second, it's barking right now because it's pissed off because I captured it, after paying 480 US dollars to the local guys for the privilege, and I'm putting it on Dr. Find's Visa Card by the way. And finally, whether or not it's English or even spoken language sort of depends on how you define language doesn't it?"

Well, after Dr. Find et al have a chance to examine Analiese's specimen and conclude that it's an absolutely genuine living fossil, they spend the next 37 years trying to determine if it's really talking or not, during which time press releases are released detailing how this is revolutionizing our views of organic language evolution.

And what do you think they finally concluded?

Just a little note about Homo Neandertalis: they were pretty late in the scheme of things, only a little earlier than Homo Sapiens (us). Homo Erectus got from Africa all the way to the far east long before those two newbies came along. In fact, Neandertals and we are pretty much contemporaries (well, we were for much of our time). Here's a nice link for all this Paleoanthropology stuff: http://www.modernhumanorigins.com/hominids.html

42?

Maybe you're right, Alitnil. It might have something to do with the esoteric numerology relating to Doug Adams' name, but I kind of think you should give it a little more thought, such as given the evidence presented in the story, what would YOU conclude and why?

That's really why I bothered to tell the story in the first place, besides trying to lend something a little fun to a subject that sometimes gets pretty dull.

There are all kinds of questions that might relate to the episode or something like it. Examples?

How do the vocalizations of other animals relate to human speech? Is birdsong speech? Since practically every creature that can utter something from it's vocal apparatus could utilize some sort of symbolic code such as Morris or computer binary for that matter, how do we know when a creature is talking and when it's not?

I'm sure you could think of a gazillion more questions if you wanted to that might relate to this topic in a very fundamental way. So why not give it a try huh?

"Language" of course is a relatively modern concept, as has been discussed above, being probably from the anti-deluvian regions.

But 'communication' is possible on several other levels. At least five, as the five senses. (I'll spare you my theories on the coming fall of civilisation caused by our loss of olfactory dialogs. Suffice to say the world stinks.)

Body language is the most essential. It begins at the primordial level of twitching cells and continues to display itself as coaches shouting at umpires and peacocks strutting their feathers.

Vocalisation is common to all animals and even though we arrogantly and wrongly consider the bird's chirp and the dog's barks and howls as 'wordless' they do communicate emotion and intention.

Visual symbols, which we know mostly as writing and text, were originally pictography and there may be a universal root for these. In recent studies, oriental writing characters have been compared to Central and South American symbols.

A 'symbol-based' language (such as Aztec, Chinese or Egyptian) uses 'vocal' variations on the names of root symbols to convey context and tense.

The modern European written languages, which academia has cut off from the street, are really on a dead end, and the ongoing war between their lost (anti-deluvian proto-Indo) symbolic roots and the vocalisations of teen chatter is heating up as we now invent symbolic web text to represent sounds rather than sounds to communicate signs.
BCNU
~jwf~

"anti-deluvian proto-Indo"?

Was it not you who referred to the sunken Black Sea regions as the source of the modern indo-european languages?

~jwf~

OK Analiese. Sorry for the joke. If I was to have to draw a conclusion from the evidence in your story I would say that:
Yes, the animal was communicating (because if the pattern were so regular and deliberate as to encode a Morse-like meaning it must be something)
No, it isn't English (just a coincidence).

Oh, I get it. That was just one suggested (not mine) region.

Sorry, I probably should have spelled it correctly.
'Antidiluvian' seems to be the proper and most accepted spelling.
Meaning - before the Biblical Flood.

This, now agreeably 'real', historic event really did disperse the citizens of the then known civilised world and kept them scattered and separated.

I believe it was suggested earlier (again sorry, thought it was you) that this event was pivotal in the first or second degree of dispersal of the Indo-European languages. The post had suggested that the loss of any 'written' records at this point in time makes it impossible to acurately trace back to a common 'language'.

My real point however was that the word language itself is misleading as a basis for this discussion, because it is value laden with notions of reason, logic, philosophy, Law and History. I sincerely believe that human vocalisations (and the other senses) are instinctive and probably universally common at a primitive level.

I further believe that most variation and dispersal (babble) did not begin to occur until long after the basic 'signs' and symbolic language were given names. (Sun, moon, stars, fire, lightning, beasts, etc.) This being long before the flood, even before the last ice age, perhaps 25,000 to 100,000 years ago. But it's impossible to date without 'written records'.


~jwf~