Chimps'r' not us: they do not use speech or language (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, August 02, 2019, 12:46 (1735 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Of course they spoke but as McRone describes in his book, slow and halting at first. I've described all this before.

dhw: I’d love to hear his tape recordings. I don’t think even chimps, birds and other organisms communicate slowly and haltingly, but it is safe to assume that the first sapiens did not have the same range of sounds, vocabulary, structures etc. that we have today. Language evolves. My point is that the anatomy would not have remained “fallow” for 100,000 years. All organisms use the relevant existing parts of their anatomy to communicate.

DAVID: It wasn't fallow. They were in process of developing a more complete language!

QUOTE: The archaeological indications are that this new potential lay fallow for upwards of 100,000 years, until it was activated by a cultural stimulus of some kind.(DAVID’s bold)

DAVID: The bold strongly points out my position that the brain appears with established complexity and later it is learned to be used.

Thank you for now agreeing that the new potential did not lie fallow after all.

dhw: I don’t suppose you’d like to give us your theory as to why your God allegedly made the anatomical changes “appear” 100,000 years before they were needed, would you?

DAVID: I have. Provide the instrument and let the organism learn to use it. You can't play a piano unless there is one in your house.

dhw: The proposal I object to here is that the instrument was not used for 100,000 years. How can you learn to play the piano without playing the piano?
[…]
DAVID: Of course they used [it] as they learned to use it more fully!

Thank you for agreeing that it is sheer nonsense to claim that early sapiens did not use his anatomical changes for 100,000 years. We are in complete agreement. He must have used it all the time, and as time when by, he used it more fully, because as we all know, language also evolves with use. Our disagreement – not covered at all by the article you posted – is over the possible cause of the anatomical changes: a divine dabble (your proposal), or the need for expanded means of communication generating the necessary changes (as in pre-whale legs changing into flippers as a result of the effort to meet new requirements).