How did language originate?

[LogicTech]

Does anyone here have any useful information on how language originated? I browsed wiki, but of course that is just a very general article and not quite reliable as an academic source.

From a glance, it seems to have originated about 50,000 years ago, which coincides around the time when Behavioral modernity emerged. Quite interesting actually, that it seems that it came rather abruptly, rather than gradually.

[froggy]

Why fast adoption? Just as with any new technology, if it works and can be adopted by the mainstream, it goes viral. Ofc I will stipulate that viral 50000yrs ago was a bit different than now.

Which leads to the next obvious question, if there was ludites that said 'Phewy! that speech thing will never last'. Tho upon reflection... how would they have said that (or anything) cuz they had no language to verbalize.

[Buffy]

"Language" 50k years ago? Spoken? Written? HOw many words do you have to have to make it a "language?"

You'd better define what you mean by the term a bit better!

There's no evidence that would really be able to pin this down very well, with evidence of symbols going back 8-10,000 years ago at least but that's written language, something designed to merely make permanent spoken language. It is clear that the areas of the brain that focus on language as well as the physical ability to create "words" goes back at least to early homo species.

There's also the fact that language can be described very broadly to include what most mammals do with their voices at at least a simple level, and even bees have their "dance language" which is inarguably a mechanism for communication!

The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate,
Buffy

[HydrogenBond]

Language is a means to communicate meaning between members of a group. But before language the individual could create an association based on internal visualization. I can see a bird, even if there was no word in my vocabulary for bird. If the bird was standing over there, I could transfer my internal visualization by pointing at it. But if I am thinking about a bird I saw a few hours ago and there is nothing tangible to show, then language becomes useful if I wished to transfer this internal visualization.

If you look at modern languages across the world, there may be hundreds of words for bird. If someone said the word for bird, in a unknown language, it is of little value to transfer meaning to me. This does not mean the other person can't visualize a bird. But if he drew the bird without words everyone in every language would know what this means. There is an internal association more fundamental than language. Children can see details in reality before they have enough language skills to express what they see. They are not limited to seeing only things they know the word for. We would not know they see the "52 Chevy" based on their ability to describe this without words. He can point and say "dar" but he may see this very specific version of a car containing unique details he has no words for. He can pick it out of a line up of cars and call it dar.

The oldest form of communication of internal visualization may have been a form of charades that is used body language and grunts. The person can visualize the elephant standing on the other side of the ridge. He also knows anyone can visualize this but he needs to get that image into their minds. Since there is not language yet he will need to draw it or try to act it out to communicate intent. This approach will work between all languages since it is not based on a specific language. The rest of the members are trying to guess with different images appearing in their minds. If there is a meeting of the minds a noise or sound may become the common audio link. This will speed up the charade the next time.

In modern times, males are more visual and females more verbal. It is very likely the males did the charades trying to express their visualization, while the females added sounds to help narrow down similar charades. The result was the first language.

Here is an example of modern visualization-charades. When small children gets hungry they often get moody. This is a type of unconscious charade using body language. One does not translate this charade based on the most superficial or outward behavior. Rather one needs to read between the lines. Hungry should be using a spoon and pretend to eat, not throwing toys around. The child doesn't even know he is hungry, but his body language is indirectly saying it. The mother would translate he is "hungry" This will be based on an induced visualization that the child will induce in her. It is likely early pre-language males were not good at charades or art. Therefore, swinging the arms may not mean temper tantrum but a bird flying. The other males are ready to fight. The matriarchs needed to read between the lines with maternal instinct or intuition able to know what he was thinking with their natural verbal ability tagging language association. The mother can sort of read her child's mind even when words are not yet useful to the child. She says, you are "tired" take a nap. Later the child, under similar situation understands "tired".

Once the males could combine their visualization with a working vocabulary, the development of language shifted more toward the males. The debate of the day was not an idea, concept, or theory, but a new word. Physical might, power, or standing in the community made them the expert in terms of the final say for a new sound association for a visualization. The noise "bird" is clearly superior to winged thing. The noise is not important but once this noise is a common link to the visualization it speeds conveying the internal visualization.

[LogicTech]

Originally Posted by Buffy

"Language" 50k years ago? Spoken? Written? HOw many words do you have to have to make it a "language?"

You'd better define what you mean by the term a bit better!

There's no evidence that would really be able to pin this down very well, with evidence of symbols going back 8-10,000 years ago at least but that's written language, something designed to merely make permanent spoken language.

I mean spoken language. Sorry if this was ambiguous. I'm not too concerned about how many words are needed, rather I am interested in how or when humans made the intellectual leap in being able to associate and express objects and, more importantly ideas, in abstract sounds and syllables. Oral traditions have lasted a great deal longer than written language, which if I remember corrrectly lasted less than 6000 years. Certainly after the appearance of the very first city-states and regional "kingdoms".

It is clear that the areas of the brain that focus on language as well as the physical ability to create "words" goes back at least to early homo species.

Well, I'm not sure about that. They were certainly present in early homo sapians, but earlier species of the genus "homo" and the Neanderthals did not have the proper anatomical structures (especially within the larynx) to make a wide range of sounds and syllables. As well, early "homo" species had much smaller brains...

There's also the fact that language can be described very broadly to include what most mammals do with their voices at at least a simple level, and even bees have their "dance language" which is inarguably a mechanism for communication!

The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate,
Buffy

Those are not really languages though. Sounds, grunts, hormones, and motions (what we would collectively call "body language") have been used as a means of communication for tens of millions of years, especially among social animals and super organisms. But they rely mostly on instinct, and are rarely used as abstractions. And most of the time they convey very simple information, such as emotional states or basic desires/needs.

Language, by definition, incorporates a well defined syntax, a set of rules on how to manipulate various sounds and grammar and relate them to the outside world. The way we do this is quite arbitrary; it is not necessary for the sounds to have any relation to the objects in question; We can assign any sound or grammar to a given object or idea. It is our ability to do this that have allowed us humans to communicate not just simple emotions needs, but abstract ideas and observations. Also, all language has to be learned, rather than known by instinct.

[Buffy]

Actually you're imposing a *lot* of restrictions on the term "language" that really have nothing to do with language per se.

Originally Posted by LogicTech

... I am interested in how or when humans made the intellectual leap in being able to associate and express objects and, more importantly ideas, in abstract sounds and syllables.

Here you run into trouble because as experiments like those with Koko the gorilla have shown, many if not most primates actually have a pretty good handle on abstractions of objects and ideas *without* a language like ours.

Now obviously what we do is a little bit more sophisticated, but the crux of the problem in answering your question is that many of the distinctions here are of *degree* and not *kind*: that makes it virtually impossible to pick a "day the universe changed."

Things like an "oral tradition" really are a confluence of intellectual, linguistic and social components each of which evolved over a long period of time.

As a result, picking a date like 10,000 years ago is really getting into something akin to arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, because everyone is going to have a different opinion about which combination of things are important and what point that that combination was surpassed in degree when there is absolutely no evidence that we can even conceive of proving this.

Originally Posted by LogicTech

Well, I'm not sure about that. They were certainly present in early homo sapians, but earlier species of the genus "homo" and the Neanderthals did not have the proper anatomical structures (especially within the larynx) to make a wide range of sounds and syllables. As well, early "homo" species had much smaller brains...

I'm unfortunately too lazy to look this up, but there was indeed some stuff published in the last year that showed that Neandertals and other homo species physical characteristics necessary for language, but more importantly that the DNA recovered included elements that are related directly to the development of speech centers in the brain.

Originally Posted by LogicTech

Those are not really languages though. Sounds, grunts, hormones, and motions (what we would collectively call "body language") have been used as a means of communication for tens of millions of years, especially among social animals and super organisms. But they rely mostly on instinct, and are rarely used as abstractions. And most of the time they convey very simple information, such as emotional states or basic desires/needs.

You need to be careful about being overly anthropocentric about this sort of thing. It's the very thing that has held back all sorts of areas of science from anthropology to sociology: many behaviors and traits in "lower" species are in fact very closely tied with our own behaviors, but we like to think that we do these things only because we're "smart", something that unfortunately we all to often prove isn't the case!

In order to justify the stance that "our" language is the only "real" kind of language, many do as you did here:

Originally Posted by LogicTech

Language, by definition, incorporates a well defined syntax, a set of rules on how to manipulate various sounds and grammar and relate them to the outside world.

If I were creating a computer language, I'd agree with you, but actually probably the vast "history" of "human language" probably had no syntax or grammar at all, just nouns and verbs with no necessary structure, and if any, probably localized to tribes. This is one of the reasons why its so easy to trace the lineage of languages and explains the huge differences between Indo-European languages from Oriental and Native American languages which truly bear no resemblance to one another.

Originally Posted by LogicTech

...The way we do this is quite arbitrary; it is not necessary for the sounds to have any relation to the objects in question; We can assign any sound or grammar to a given object or idea. It is our ability to do this that have allowed us humans to communicate not just simple emotions needs, but abstract ideas and observations.

Again: "abstract ideas" is not a linguistic issue, and many lower species have them, so if this is your way to distinguish "true language" it really falls apart.

Originally Posted by LogicTech

Also, all language has to be learned, rather than known by instinct.

There's mounting evidence that this is not the case, as was part of the recent research I mentioned earlier: we've actually identified language processing parts of the brain, and they've been around quite a while....

I believe that justice is instinct and innate, the moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as the threat of feeling, seeing and hearing,
Buffy

[Symbology]

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

Language is a means to communicate meaning between members of a group. But before language the individual could create an association based on internal visualization. I can see a bird, even if there was no word in my vocabulary for bird. If the bird was standing over there, I could transfer my internal visualization by pointing at it. But if I am thinking about a bird I saw a few hours ago and there is nothing tangible to show, then language becomes useful if I wished to transfer this internal visualization.

If you look at modern languages across the world, there may be hundreds of words for bird. If someone said the word for bird, in a unknown language, it is of little value to transfer meaning to me. This does not mean the other person can't visualize a bird. But if he drew the bird without words everyone in every language would know what this means. There is an internal association more fundamental than language. Children can see details in reality before they have enough language skills to express what they see. They are not limited to seeing only things they know the word for. We would not know they see the "52 Chevy" based on their ability to describe this without words. He can point and say "dar" but he may see this very specific version of a car containing unique details he has no words for. He can pick it out of a line up of cars and call it dar.

The oldest form of communication of internal visualization may have been a form of charades that is used body language and grunts. The person can visualize the elephant standing on the other side of the ridge. He also knows anyone can visualize this but he needs to get that image into their minds. Since there is not language yet he will need to draw it or try to act it out to communicate intent. This approach will work between all languages since it is not based on a specific language. The rest of the members are trying to guess with different images appearing in their minds. If there is a meeting of the minds a noise or sound may become the common audio link. This will speed up the charade the next time.

In modern times, males are more visual and females more verbal. It is very likely the males did the charades trying to express their visualization, while the females added sounds to help narrow down similar charades. The result was the first language.

Here is an example of modern visualization-charades. When small children gets hungry they often get moody. This is a type of unconscious charade using body language. One does not translate this charade based on the most superficial or outward behavior. Rather one needs to read between the lines. Hungry should be using a spoon and pretend to eat, not throwing toys around. The child doesn't even know he is hungry, but his body language is indirectly saying it. The mother would translate he is "hungry" This will be based on an induced visualization that the child will induce in her. It is likely early pre-language males were not good at charades or art. Therefore, swinging the arms may not mean temper tantrum but a bird flying. The other males are ready to fight. The matriarchs needed to read between the lines with maternal instinct or intuition able to know what he was thinking with their natural verbal ability tagging language association. The mother can sort of read her child's mind even when words are not yet useful to the child. She says, you are "tired" take a nap. Later the child, under similar situation understands "tired".

Once the males could combine their visualization with a working vocabulary, the development of language shifted more toward the males. The debate of the day was not an idea, concept, or theory, but a new word. Physical might, power, or standing in the community made them the expert in terms of the final say for a new sound association for a visualization. The noise "bird" is clearly superior to winged thing. The noise is not important but once this noise is a common link to the visualization it speeds conveying the internal visualization.

Males are also known to have "Male Pattern Blindness" which can often lead to communication in the form of:
"Honey I've looked everywhere in the pantry and I can't find the Peanut Butter!?"
to which the Female comes and points silently to the Peanut butter on the shelf directly in front of his nose, and the male responds:
"Oh."

Males are also well known for their lack of communication skills as it relates to stopping to ask for directions, and ending up 300 miles from their intended destination.

Both of which, of course, are clear indications of males' superior visual capabilities. ;P

[LogicTech]

Originally Posted by Buffy

Actually you're imposing a *lot* of restrictions on the term "language" that really have nothing to do with language per se.

No, I'm just stating what the traditional definition of language has been. Communication and language don't mean quite the same thing, as we use language as a way to communicate.

Here you run into trouble because as experiments like those with Koko the gorilla have shown, many if not most primates actually have a pretty good handle on abstractions of objects and ideas *without* a language like ours. ......


Now obviously what we do is a little bit more sophisticated, but the crux of the problem in answering your question is that many of the distinctions here are of *degree* and not *kind*: that makes it virtually impossible to pick a "day the universe changed."

......Things like an "oral tradition" really are a confluence of intellectual, linguistic and social components each of which evolved over a long period of time.

The great apes are also known to understand numbers too, and to be able to recognize themselves in the mirror too. But I never said that they couldn't have abstractions, but rather that their ability to express them is rather very limited.

Also, there is quite a bit of evidence that language does indeed effect one's way of thinking, and the way you understand the world. So, language and abstract thought are very related. Since oral traditions does require a very sophisticated way of making abstractions about the world around them, they are certainly tied to the languages in which they are expressed. Social and intellectual components just come as an afterthought.

Now, while animals certainly do and can have abstractions, it's nowhere near the level that humans could do. I'm pretty certain my cat doesn't have a concept of the world beyond my house and backyard...

As a result, picking a date like 10,000 years ago is really getting into something akin to arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, because everyone is going to have a different opinion about which combination of things are important and what point that that combination was surpassed in degree when there is absolutely no evidence that we can even conceive of proving this.

Not at all actually. Angels don't have a meaningful existence beyond our own imagination, and certainly cannot be seen in nature.

However, there is boatloads of evidence that modern ideas of art, culture, language, religion, music, empirical thought, etc. originated some 50k-60k years ago, as that's when they all appeared rather abruptly. This also coincides right around the time when humans began to migrate out of Africa, which is what makes it so intriguing.

Now, there are theories that state that all of that might have arisen gradually throughout modern homo-sapians existence, but there are problems that need to be addressed, such as the fact that very early on their behavior was little different from other species from the "homo" genus.

Read this: Behavioral modernity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


This is all moot anyway, because I don't particularly care when, but how it had arisen, and why seemingly so abruptly? Why not 100,000 years ago, or among other genus...

I'm unfortunately too lazy to look this up, but there was indeed some stuff published in the last year that showed that Neandertals and other homo species physical characteristics necessary for language, but more importantly that the DNA recovered included elements that are related directly to the development of speech centers in the brain.

Well, I would like to see this. Because, as far as I know, that is actually disputed and the argument is far from settled. Besides which, even if their anatomical structures were similar, that doesn't necessarily mean that they were capable, or that they did indeed produce a meaningful language. And this notion that they didn't is strongly supported by archaeological evidence, in the types of tools they built, their behaviors, etc. Neanderthals didn't produce any art, nor did they display any noticeable technological progress (i.e. they never made any watercraft, unlike modern humans). In fact, the only time they did start displaying any of these behaviors was when the Cro-Magnons came along.

As for the 50k years, this article is where I got the figure from: Klein: Behavioral and Biological Origins of Modern Humans 3 of 3

You will notice that modern behaviors and a recognizable culture originated around that time. It is therefore likely that language also appeared on the scene too, as language is very heavily influenced by a given culture.

You need to be careful about being overly anthropocentric about this sort of thing. It's the very thing that has held back all sorts of areas of science from anthropology to sociology: many behaviors and traits in "lower" species are in fact very closely tied with our own behaviors, but we like to think that we do these things only because we're "smart", something that unfortunately we all to often prove isn't the case!

But I'm not disputing that though. The fact that we have many traits in common with animals in very obvious and well known. But our cognition, and the way we think about things, is certainly very different. "Smart" is a very subjective term by the way.

You have to realize that while animals can certainly reason, communicate, make abstractions, use/make tools etc. They don't have a culture (as Michio Kaku put it when trying to recognize sentient life on other planets on a T.V. show I once saw). They don't have a philosophical tradition, or a way of generalizing or understanding relationships in the world around them. And they certainly appear incapable of coming up abstractions to describe things.

Dogs can be trained to respond to certain commands like "sit", but I doubt they actually understand what that actually means, other than the fact that when you hear a certain noise, you must sit down. Apes can learn sign language, and there is a monkey in Japan (I forget the name of it) that was documented to have "discovered" that geysers are a way to keep clean, but only after humans have trained them to do that. And you can certainly program a computer to be human like. BUT, could they have come up with such things independently? It is very, very unlikely....

The phrase "if you have enough monkeys on a keyboard, they will eventually produce Shakespeare" illustrates this well known fact...

In order to justify the stance that "our" language is the only "real" kind of language, many do as you did here:

If I were creating a computer language, I'd agree with you, but actually probably the vast "history" of "human language" probably had no syntax or grammar at all, just nouns and verbs with no necessary structure, and if any, probably localized to tribes. This is one of the reasons why its so easy to trace the lineage of languages and explains the huge differences between Indo-European languages from Oriental and Native American languages which truly bear no resemblance to one another.

Language is well defined though, there is nothing ambiguous about it. And the fact that there is a structure to all languages ever found in all human tribes and societies, even isolated ones, clearly contradicts your statement. It is very clear, from a linguistic point of view, that it was developed independently. But they certainly have a structure and a set of rules that allows us to derive meaning from them. This is a universal trait in all human societies, even the most isolated ones.

Again, every single modern human society ever found has a recognizable language with a syntax, and with that language has a recognizable culture, philosophical/intellectual tradition, oral tradition (or written once they learned how), etc. And can be traced for tens of thousands of years.

So, I don't see how you can conclude that the earliest languages didn't have a syntax, because that's a requirement of language. All this shows is that you underestimate just how intelligent early humans were, as they very clearly recognized the need for a syntax. What I'm wondering is how they derived such principles, and why so abruptly (or was it that abrupt, maybe the rules just kind of fell together very early on before there was a need to formalize them)? Why didn't it happen earlier in time, why did they wait 80,000 years for it to happen...

Again: "abstract ideas" is not a linguistic issue, and many lower species have them, so if this is your way to distinguish "true language" it really falls apart.

Read above, that's not quite what was being argued. This is basically a strawman on your part.

There's mounting evidence that this is not the case, as was part of the recent research I mentioned earlier: we've actually identified language processing parts of the brain, and they've been around quite a while....

You mentioned it, but cited no sources. And when I looked, it is actually an issue that is far from settled. The brain size and anatomy might have been there, but that doesn't mean that the brain structure was. Read the links I provided, this notion is very clear from archaeological evidence. Rather, all the evidence very clearly supports the idea that it came rather abruptly and is a phenomenon specific only to modern humans.

I believe that justice is instinct and innate, the moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as the threat of feeling, seeing and hearing,
Buffy

That's great, but rather irrelevant and off topic on this thread....

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by LogicTech

... And this notion that they didn't is strongly supported by archaeological evidence, in the types of tools they built, their behaviors, etc. Neanderthals didn't produce any art, nor did they display any noticeable technological progress (i.e. they never made any watercraft, unlike modern humans). In fact, the only time they did start displaying any of these behaviors was when the Cro-Magnons came along. ...

No art? Really?

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Neanderthal 'face' found in Loire

Originally Posted by Jonathan Amos

Clive Gamble, an expert from Southampton University on the early occupation of Europe by human species, says science has been reluctant to see Neanderthals as great conceptual thinkers.

"The great problem with all the Neanderthal art is that they are one-offs. What is different about the art of modern humans when it appears 35,000 years ago is that there is repetition - animal sculptures and paintings done over and over again in a recognisable style.

"With Neanderthals, there may have been the odd da Vinci-like genius, but their talents died with them."

Bahn, on the other hand, believes the Roche-Cotard mask should set the record straight on Neanderthals' artistic capabilities.

"There are now a great many Neanderthal art objects. They have been found for decades and always they are dismissed as the exception that proves the rule. ...

More recently: Neanderthal body art hints at ancient language - life - 29 March 2008 - New Scientist

COULD Neanderthals speak? The answer may depend on whether they painted their bodies.

Archaeologist Francesco d'Errico of the University of Bordeaux, France, and colleagues recently recovered hundreds of blocks of black manganese pigment from two Neanderthal sites in France. These come on top of 39 other sites that have yielded evidence of pigment use.

D'Errico says that Neanderthals, who most likely had pale skin, must have used these pigments to mark their skin, as well as animal skins. The pigments had also been fashioned into "crayons" to draw straight lines and maybe abstract designs. Since body art is a form of communication - it represents something - the techniques for making symbols, and their meanings, would have had to be transmitted through language, says d'Errico, who spoke last week at the Language and Evolution Conference in Barcelona, Spain.

Laymen are as laymen do.

[Buffy]

Originally Posted by LogicTech

No, I'm just stating what the traditional definition of language has been. Communication and language don't mean quite the same thing, as we use language as a way to communicate.

"Traditional?" I guess its traditional for Anthropologists and Linguists, but it's also quite parochial. There's been a lot of debate about whether or not animal languages are "true languages," but as I said earlier, its a highly subjective debate.

It's certainly fine to use the more strict definition--that pretty much guarantees an anthropocentric viewpoint--and all I'm saying is that in doing so you may well deprive yourself on insights into the role and meaning of "language" in the development of modern human society!

It will leave you making absolutist statements that will blind you to some of the developmental features you seek, as for example when you say:

Originally Posted by LogicTech

The great apes are also known to understand numbers too, and to be able to recognize themselves in the mirror too. But I never said that they couldn't have abstractions, but rather that their ability to express them is rather very limited.

"Limited" is a very subjective term! Some linguists looking at Koko the gorilla insisted there was no abstraction whatsoever, but many others see exactly the opposite.

They may for example not be able to convey anything more than "one" or "many" but there are some primitive societies that even today do not make use of numbers beyond what they can display on their hands! Most relevantly though, it begs the question: if you have no *need* to express numbers beyond "more than one" why would you develop a mechanism to *express* it, no matter how "smart" you are as a species?

Originally Posted by LogicTech

Also, there is quite a bit of evidence that language does indeed effect one's way of thinking, and the way you understand the world. So, language and abstract thought are very related.

That's fine, but that actually supports what I'm saying: language and abstract thinking are co-factors, and my opinion is that lanugage predated the abstract thinking and cultural factors that led to "modern languages" by a considerable bit.

Think about it: Language does require quite a bit of genetic tinkering to actually work. I'm a fan of Stephen Jay Gould and have no problem with the Punctuations between Equilibria, but really what your OP is saying is that there language came last, as a consequence of those abstract thinking and cultural factors that made it necessary and thus selected for--and uniquely for Homo Sapiens at that!

My opinion is that there's just as strong an argument--bolstered by the existence of "pre-languages" (if you want to insist on that qualification) in more primitive species--that says that language evolved relatively early, and there's increasing evidence (see below) that justifies that opinion.

This is just one example of where anthropocentrism can blind you to the interesting conclusions, and really I'm only warning you of this because you keep saying things that are so Sapiens-chauvenist as:

Originally Posted by LogicTech

Now, while animals certainly do and can have abstractions, it's nowhere near the level that humans could do. I'm pretty certain my cat doesn't have a concept of the world beyond my house and backyard...

What good would that do the cat? Conversely, cats in particular are very sophisticated when it comes to actually psychologically manipulating their human "masters" (and if you have a cat in the house and consider yourself the master then it's simply proof that the cat is in *complete* control!)...

Originally Posted by LogicTech

However, there is boatloads of evidence that modern ideas of art, culture, language, religion, music, empirical thought, etc. originated some 50k-60k years ago, as that's when they all appeared rather abruptly.

But note that these things are abstract thinking and complex societal interactions, not language!

I absolutely agree that evidence of these "modern ideas" did indeed become quite obvious, and probably quite quickly, but there is absolutely no reason to believe that the existence of language for much less sophisticated purposes, but largely with modern attributes of "syntax" and "indirect representation," did not significantly predate this Great Leap Forward.

This development of ideas and society did not require any major genetic changes and could easily have occurred in a span of less than 10,000 years. But this provides no proof that modern language went from zero to 60 in that same time period.

So I'll continue to argue with you when you insist that:

Originally Posted by LogicTech

This is all moot anyway, because I don't particularly care when, but how it had arisen, and why seemingly so abruptly? Why not 100,000 years ago, or among other genus...

Cultural development could have happened at any time. Fans of The Hitchhikers Guide are convinced that Dolphins are already socially and intellectually more sophisticated than Sapiens, but they just don't have the egotistical edifice complexes that we do!

So yes, it's exactly the point, not a moot one: our language did indeed become more sophisticated 50k years ago, but its actually quite likely that it was 80% there at that point in time.

Originally Posted by LogicTech

Well, I would like to see this.

Okay! Here ya go:

Originally Posted by Nicholas Wade, Neanderthals Had Important Speech Gene, DNA Evidence Shows, NY Times, 10/19/07

Neanderthals, an archaic human species that dominated Europe until the arrival of modern humans some 45,000 years ago, possessed a critical gene known to underlie speech, according to DNA evidence retrieved from two individuals excavated from El Sidron, a cave in northern Spain.

The new evidence stems from analysis of a gene called FOXP2 which is associated with language. The human version of the gene differs at two critical points from the chimpanzee version, suggesting that these two changes have something to do with the fact that people can speak and chimps cannot.
...
The human version of the FOXP2 gene apparently swept through the human population before the Neanderthal and modern human lineages split apart some 350,000 years ago.

Yes, you can say that not everyone agrees with the analysis (did everyone agree with Einstein in 1916?), and even the authors say that it does not prove that Neandertals had "human like" speech, but you have to ask yourself: why was it so successfully selected for in the genetic record?

While as I said I'm a Punctuated Equilibrium fan, *exploitation* of such genetic advances are actually quite gradual, and I think it's easily arguable that this data supports the notion that the development of "human language" at least *started* 350,000 years ago.

No problem if you disagree with this, but at least pose some arguments more scientifically supported than "my cat doesn't care!"

Originally Posted by LogicTech

As for the 50k years, this article is where I got the figure from: Klein: Behavioral and Biological Origins of Modern Humans 3 of 3

You will notice that modern behaviors and a recognizable culture originated around that time. It is therefore likely that language also appeared on the scene too, as language is very heavily influenced by a given culture.

"Likely?" Cool! But why do you think so? Even in this article, Richard Klein--who's unquestionably well respected, so kudos for picking the source--says:

Originally Posted by Richard Klein, Three Distinct Human Populations (undated)

I imagine that what happened 50,000 years ago was a highly advantageous mutation that produced a brain in which these things, these different parts were now very much better wired together, something of that sort. And then we have language as we understand it and this rapid spread from Africa and all the cultural innovations that obviously depended upon language and that allowed this spread from Africa. But I cannot show that in terms of the skulls that we have; they do not reveal the internal structure of the brain. Neanderthal skulls are differently shaped but I can't argue from that that they function differently from ours. So in that sense, my idea about a mutation, I think it's the most economic one available to us but it's not a great scientific hypothesis because at the moment it can't be falsified. [emphasis Buffy]

Moreover, As I read what he's saying you overestimate what he means by this mutation: it's not one that creates the language centers mentioned above from whole cloth, but rather a minor change in linkage of *existing* brain centers, which may not have had anything to do with "language" development per se, but rather intellectual and sociological sophistication! If you carefully read his paper again with my hypothesis above, you'll note that what he's said leaves the door wide open to my hypothesis as well, which has simply--until recently with the research referenced above--not been thought about *because* of the anthropocentric chauvinism concerning language being "uniquely human."

Originally Posted by LogicTech

You have to realize that while animals can certainly reason, communicate, make abstractions, use/make tools etc. They don't have a culture (as Michio Kaku put it when trying to recognize sentient life on other planets on a T.V. show I once saw). They don't have a philosophical tradition, or a way of generalizing or understanding relationships in the world around them. And they certainly appear incapable of coming up abstractions to describe things.

And that's exactly what I've been saying, the problem is only that in the OP you've put "language" up as having these things as a prerequisite.

I'm only arguing that that is putting the cart before the horse!

Originally Posted by LogicTech

Language is well defined though, there is nothing ambiguous about it. And the fact that there is a structure to all languages ever found in all human tribes and societies, even isolated ones, clearly contradicts your statement. It is very clear, from a linguistic point of view, that it was developed independently. But they certainly have a structure and a set of rules that allows us to derive meaning from them. This is a universal trait in all human societies, even the most isolated ones.

Bee dances have structure too! As I said in my previous post, structure and syntax human languages did indeed "develop independently." But saying that that is proof that human language is somehow unique is disproved by what little scholarship has been done, and the incuriosity of researchers on this topic that is indeed generated by anthropocentric chavinism is the main reason there's not more!

That's all I'm trying to do here: your question is an interesting one, but if you keep trying to restrain the discussion to "traditional" definitions of "language" you're going to miss the interesting discoveries that are hidden here.

Boy, and I get thrashed for being "traditional" about the Big Bang too!

Originally Posted by LogicTech

So, I don't see how you can conclude that the earliest languages didn't have a syntax, because that's a requirement of language. All this shows is that you underestimate just how intelligent early humans were, as they very clearly recognized the need for a syntax.

That's only because I'm arguing that "early languages" may have predated what you call "language" by some 300k years! I'm not even really insisting that they didn't, because I think that "existence of syntax" is something that is closely related to Information Theory, in that any pattern whatsoever can be evidence of organization (or lack of entropy), and thus is a gradual development (something that is quite frankly easy to see in the family tree of modern languages, and therefore there's no reason not to extrapolate it backward in a hyperbolic manner into the past).

So, I don't see any evidence to support your notion that this increase in complexity was abrupt:

Originally Posted by LogicTech

What I'm wondering is how they derived such principles, and why so abruptly (or was it that abrupt, maybe the rules just kind of fell together very early on before there was a need to formalize them)? Why didn't it happen earlier in time, why did they wait 80,000 years for it to happen...

...and that I argue has everything to do with culture, social interactions, and increasing intellect that drove a demand to take the means of communication--most of which was already there--and use it in a more sophistcated way, not to invent it from whole cloth.

Originally Posted by LogicTech

That's great, but rather irrelevant and off topic on this thread....

Oh but it has everything to do with my point and it's quite on topic, you just have to be less structured and traditional in your thinking to see why....

He's not Herbert! We reach.
Buffy