Anthropology Midterm Part 4

Question 1

When did language evolve in our species?

Answer 1

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.

Question 2

how did language evolve in our species?

Answer 2

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.

Question 3

According to Judeo-Christian-Islamic beliefs…

Answer 3

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.

Question 4

According to the Egyptians

Answer 4

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.

Question 5

Babylonians believed

Answer 5

that the god Nabu gave humans language.

Question 6

Hindus believe that

Answer 6

the goddess Vac, or Saraswati, gave us language, truth, and perception.

Question 7

the Egyptian pharaoh Psammetichus in the 1st century BCE

Answer 7

sought to determine the most primitive language through an early scientific experiment, something that, of course, would not be done today.

Question 8

what did the Egyptian pharaoh Psammetichus do?

Answer 8

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.

Question 9

The Bow-Wow Theory

Answer 9

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.

Question 10

onomatopoeia, or echoism.

Answer 10

is very limited because it does not address how we account for most of language which is not imitative.

Question 11

The Ouch Theory

Answer 11

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.

Question 12

The Yo-Heave-Ho Theory

Answer 12

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.”

Question 13

what are the problems with all of these theories?

Answer 13

they are quite speculative and do not really tell us how humans were able to take these sounds and develop them into language.

Question 14

gestural theory of language origin

Answer 14

language emerged not from vocalization but from manual gestures, and that we switched to the vocal mode at some point during human evolution.

Question 15

what supports the gestural theory of language origin?

Answer 15

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.

Question 16

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:

Answer 16

• 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

Question 17

spoken language did not simply replace gesture in the process as gesturing is still such an important part of human communication…

Answer 17

Instead, speech built upon the messaging that was conveyed through gesture.

Question 18

gossip theory of language origin

Answer 18

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.

Question 19

what does Robin Dunbar argue?

Answer 19

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!

Question 20

How would the gossip theory of language origin work?

Answer 20

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.

Question 21

According to Dunbar…

Answer 21

language developed so that humans could talk about others and create bonds much more efficiently than grooming.

Question 22

the language faculty

Answer 22

humans evolved the ability to communicate much more complex and detailed information than any other animal

Question 23

larynx

Answer 23

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.

Question 24

Speech begins when…

Answer 24

air from the lungs flows through the larynx.

Question 25

how does the larynx play an important role in humans?

Answer 25

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.

Question 26

changes in the brain that occurred during human evolution help us to…

Answer 26

enabling us to communicate about things outside of our immediate experience

Question 27

the language center is localized in certain areas of the brain

Answer 27

primarily located in the left hemisphere of the brain

Question 28

Human brains, unlike the brains of all other animals, include other primates, are highly lateralized.

Answer 28

there are functions that are controlled by only one side of the brain. Language is one of those functions.

Question 29

Broca’s area

Answer 29

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.

Question 30

Wernicke’s area

Answer 30

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.

Question 31

language uses a greater portion of the brain than we originally thought because it involves

Answer 31

hearing, decision-making, movement, and other brain functions.

Question 32

important aspect of the human brain, however, is its plasticity.

Answer 32

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.

Question 33

A study of the brain lateralization in babies was done a one week of age

Answer 33

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.

Question 34

aphasia

Answer 34

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!

Question 35

“language gene,” known as the FOXP2 gene

Answer 35

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.

Question 36

apraxia

Answer 36

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.

Question 37

variants of the FOXP2 gene are found in almost all species.

Answer 37

The human variant seems to have evolved
around 200,000 years ago, with perhaps a more recent mutation around 120,000 years ago.

Question 38

What we do know is the following:

Answer 38

• 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.