Anthropology Midterm Part 4 Flashcards
When did language evolve in our species?
The most that we can say is that it happened sometimes between 90,000 and 2 million years ago! Some believe that it evolved with a very early human ancestor, perhaps Homo habilis almost 2 million years ago, while others believe that it is a fairly recent attribute, only coming into existence during what is referred to as “The Human Revolution” about 90,000 years ago, when we start to see forms of symbolic representation in the archaeological record such as art.
how did language evolve in our species?
This is also difficult to answer because spoken language, which well precedes written language, leaves little fossil or archaeological evidence. The only direct evidence comes from writing, which only came into existence about 5,000 years ago.
According to Judeo-Christian-Islamic beliefs…
1) God gave Adam language through the power to name things. This was part of human’s dominion over the rest of nature. The idea of language being a gift from a deity is very common in the world.
2) the diversity of language, as recounted in the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. In this story, God became so angry that the people of Babylon tried to erect a tower to heaven that he caused them to speak different, mutually unintelligible, tongues and scattered them across the face of the earth, ushering in an era of conflict and war.
According to the Egyptians
the creator of speech was the god Thoth. He is often credited at least with the invention of hieroglyphs and, therefore, writing. Some say that Seshat, his wife and the goddess of wisdom and knowledge, actually invented writing and Thoth just taught it to people.
Babylonians believed
that the god Nabu gave humans language.
Hindus believe that
the goddess Vac, or Saraswati, gave us language, truth, and perception.
the Egyptian pharaoh Psammetichus in the 1st century BCE
sought to determine the most primitive language through an early scientific experiment, something that, of course, would not be done today.
what did the Egyptian pharaoh Psammetichus do?
He isolated two infants in a mountain hut to be cared for by a shepherd who was not to speak to them. Psammetichus believed that their first words would be in the original language of humans.
After two years, they said their first repeated word, “becos”, and were immediately brought back to the pharaoh. He learned that “becos” was the Phrygian word for bread, and therefore he declared that Phrygian was the first human language and the Phrygians the oldest humans.
The Bow-Wow Theory
states that language began at some point in human history as we began to imitate natural sounds to represent things in nature such as animal sounds, etc.
onomatopoeia, or echoism.
is very limited because it does not address how we account for most of language which is not imitative.
The Ouch Theory
states that language began with instinctive, emotive cries and moans of fear, surprise and pain such as “oh” and “ouch.” Most of these utterances, however, are produced by sudden intakes of breath and happen unintentionally and therefore hardly a part of language at all.
The Yo-Heave-Ho Theory
which states that language began as rhythmic chants of group work, perhaps from the grunts of heavy work such as the rowing chants of the Volga boatmen – “yo, heave, ho.”
what are the problems with all of these theories?
they are quite speculative and do not really tell us how humans were able to take these sounds and develop them into language.
gestural theory of language origin
language emerged not from vocalization but from manual gestures, and that we switched to the vocal mode at some point during human evolution.
what supports the gestural theory of language origin?
1) One piece of evidence that supports this theory is that other primates, our evolutionary cousins, are highly visual animals and their communication is largely based on meaningful gestures, such as the begging gesture made by a chimpanzee in the image above. Although they also do use some vocalizations, these are fairly limited compared to number of gestures used.
2) Another piece of evidence is that gesturing actually use the same segments of the brain as vocal activities. We see this in MRIs of the brain while doing these activities. Since evolution works by tinkering with what came before, this tells us that gesturing and speaking are closely related to one another.
In the image below, A shows the areas fired while using speech only and B shows the areas fired while using gestures only, demonstrating the areas of overlap.
3) A third piece of evidence is that the first form of communication babies utilize is gestures. This develops long before the ability to speak.
There are certainly plenty of reasons why the ability to speak would have selected for in the process of human evolution. Some of the advantages that speech would have given include the following:
- You could do other things with your hands while you are communicating
- You didn’t have to be focusing on or looking at those with whom you were communicating
- You could be some distance away and your messages would still be understood
- It allowed for more expressive communication – meaning it moved from iconic to abstract
spoken language did not simply replace gesture in the process as gesturing is still such an important part of human communication…
Instead, speech built upon the messaging that was conveyed through gesture.
gossip theory of language origin
The anthropologist Robin Dunbar has developed this theory in an attempt to explain WHY language developed by looking at the importance of gossip for human beings and its evolutionary role.
what does Robin Dunbar argue?
He argues that gossip replaced social grooming (which is what apes and primates do when they pick the bugs and dirt out of each other’s fur) as the main instrument of social order and social cohesion. We know that social grooming is not as much about hygiene as it is about cementing bonds, making friends, and establishing a social hierarchy. Some non-human species spend up to 60% of their day engaged in social grooming!
How would the gossip theory of language origin work?
when you live in fairly small groups of 50 or less. You can establish a bond with every individual through social bonding. But when humans started establishing social groups of 150 or more, it would have been impossible to create a bond with every individual in this manner.
According to Dunbar…
language developed so that humans could talk about others and create bonds much more efficiently than grooming.
the language faculty
humans evolved the ability to communicate much more complex and detailed information than any other animal
larynx
the sound-making organ in the throat; a valve consisting of an opening called the glottis that is bounded by two retractable flaps of flesh, known as the vocal cords.
Speech begins when…
air from the lungs flows through the larynx.
how does the larynx play an important role in humans?
Air passing through partially open vocal cords causes them to open and close rapidly, generating periodic impulses of higher-pressure air that we perceive as sound. The more rapidly the vocal cords open and close, the higher the pitch of the sound. So, by altering the shape of the vocal cords, we can change the pitch of our voice. The sounds then reverberate through the throat and mouth. By changing the shape of the throat and mouth chambers, we can produce a wide array of different sounds. It is also the positioning of our tongue that enables us to produce vowel sounds. Moving the tongue up and down, or back and forth, changes the size of the mouth and throat cavity. A bone, known as the hyoid bone, enables us to move our tongue in this way.
changes in the brain that occurred during human evolution help us to…
enabling us to communicate about things outside of our immediate experience
the language center is localized in certain areas of the brain
primarily located in the left hemisphere of the brain
Human brains, unlike the brains of all other animals, include other primates, are highly lateralized.
there are functions that are controlled by only one side of the brain. Language is one of those functions.
Broca’s area
Broca’s area affects syntax or the proper formation of sentences. People with damage to Broca’s area, or Broca’s Aphasia, can remember words but can’t seem to put them together in any coherent fashion, so they speak in a slow and halting fashion.
Wernicke’s area
Wernicke’s area, on the other hand, affects the understanding of words. People who have damage to Wernicke’s area, or Wernicke’s Aphasia, speak freely but they will inadvertently substitute incorrect sounds or words for correct ones, so they often cannot be understood.
language uses a greater portion of the brain than we originally thought because it involves
hearing, decision-making, movement, and other brain functions.
important aspect of the human brain, however, is its plasticity.
Language is primarily a left- hemisphere function, but it is not completely hardwired at birth. Children, then, can often recover if their language centers are damaged. In these cases, another part of the brain takes over the language functions.
A study of the brain lateralization in babies was done a one week of age
During smiling, the babies had a greater opening of the left side of the mouth (which is controlled by the right hemisphere), whereas during babbling, they had a greater opening of the right side of their mouth (which is controlled by the left hemisphere). This shows that language is genetically encoded to be a left hemisphere function in most people.
aphasia
speech loss;
in cases where children have a left hemispherectomy (removal of their entire left hemisphere), they experience an initial period of aphasia, or speech loss, and then reacquire language that is virtually indistinguishable from that of normal children.
In adults, this would lead to severe language loss because at a certain point the brain does become hardwired to a large degree. This is why you really cannot teach an old dog new tricks!
“language gene,” known as the FOXP2 gene
Discoveries made a number of years back showed that this gene is responsible for at least certain aspects of language such as the ability to vocalize.
apraxia
Individuals with a mutation to the FOXP2 gene have a speech problem known as apraxia, which makes it difficult to produce sequences of
sounds, syllables, and words. This condition results from abnormalities involving parts of the brain that
plan and coordinate movements of the lips, mouth, and tongue. It is, therefore, a regulatory gene that is
involved in partly regulating sequential movements.
variants of the FOXP2 gene are found in almost all species.
The human variant seems to have evolved
around 200,000 years ago, with perhaps a more recent mutation around 120,000 years ago.
What we do know is the following:
- Only humans have evolved what we refer to as language (more on this in the next lecture).
- As social animals, humans needed language to be a successful species.
- Language is a genetic trait, but a complex one that resulted from changes to a number of genes.
- There is a feedback relationship between the evolution of language and the rise of cultural
complexity and technological advancement in our species. The ability to think abstractly enabled
us to transform our world in ways that other animals cannot. - Language most likely did not have a single point of origin but evolved in small steps as our species
evolved. This is the case for most evolved complex traits.
