[_ Old Earth _] how did the species homo sapien develop language?

[jasoncran]

what is the current hypothesis on this. where did the early men get language from? and how did natural selection come into play and mutations?

 

[Evointrinsic]

Language is actually a byproduct of a mutation to any organisms brain. The Broca's area of your brain is what we know gives us the ability of speech. However, given the growth of a tumor in the relative area can leave the ability of speech relatively in tact which can mean that "Speech function" can shift to another area of the brain. although this would leave it less available and speech will become a bit more difficult. Things like this can happen to many functions that the brain can offer. In fact there was one incident not too long ago where a girl was born with only one half of her brain. Something happened during the growth of the fetus that caused this, I believe the fetus had a stroke or something along those lines. But the girl seems to function (nearly) perfectly fine.

We know that the Broca's area is what allows us to the ability of speech, However there are several models that show how that area of the brain evolved.

Several models have been proposed to explain the origin of human language. Human language is thought to have evolved as the “evolutionary refinement of an implicit communication system already present in lower primates, based on a set of hand/mouth goal-directed action representations.†The recent finding that Broca’s area is involved during meaningful action observation supports this idea. It was hypothesized that Broca’s area precursor was involved in generating action meanings by interpreting motor sequences in terms of goal. It was further argued that this ability might have been generalized during the evolution that gave this area the capability to deal with meanings. The activated frontal language areas when observing meaningful hand shadows resembling moving animals provides evidence that the human language may have evolved from neural substrates already involved in gestural recognition. Therefore, the study has demonstrated human Broca’s area as the motor center for speech, assembling and decoding communicative gestures. Consistent with this idea is that the neural substrate that regulated motor control in the common ancestor of apes and humans was most likely modified to enhance cognitive and linguistic ability.

Another recent finding has showed significant areas of activation in subcortical and neocortical areas during the production of communicative manual gestures and vocal signals in chimpanzees. Further, the data indicating that chimpanzees intentionally produce manual gestures as well as vocal signals to communicate with humans suggests that the precursors to human language are present at both the behavioral and neuronanatomical levels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broca's_area#Evolution_of_language


There's a very interesting person that has studied gophers and discovered their own language, which consists of squeeks and beeps in certain pitches that allow the whole colony to know where a food source is or where a threat is and even what it is and in a humans case, what it's holding (such as a gun).

Don't forget that the brains of many animals can decipher what Humans can say or command, such as dogs, cats, many birds, bears, Dolphins and whales, and so on! Which means the brains of these animals also possess the same general performance as Humans do, just a more simplistic version.

Also don't forget that Displays such as an Octopus that flares it's colors to warn an rival off, or mating calls of any sort or a similar version of communication. Some animals are able to do this better than others, and what we can find is that the area of communication is more evolved than that of an organism that doesnt have that strong of a communication ability.

Does that help? :D

 

[jasoncran]

yup. i will look at these, the brocha divide. havent heard that in a while.

of course, that only seems to explain capacity and not the knowledge. i hope you understand that.
when we look at the brain we can chemically see the emotion, in the mri scans and what regions it's in. but that doenst explain the thoughts, as i'm sure that your are aware of synergy. the concept of the sum of parts is greater then the whole. or something close.

meds work by the concept of synergy.

 

[Evointrinsic]

I know a little about it, but I am no expert, try this article though and it may help you out a bit more But in order to accept the information, you'd have to accept that things evolve (but not in the current theory of evolution per say) and the planet is over a few thousand years old.

The origin of language, known in linguistics as glottogony refers to the acquisition of the human ability to use language at some point during the Paleolithic.

The main difficulty of the question stems from the fact that it concerns a development in deep prehistory which left no direct fossil traces and for which no comparable processes can be observed today.

The time range under discussion in this context extends from the phylogenetic separation of Homo and Pan some 5 million years ago to the emergence of full behavioral modernity some 50,000 years ago. The evolution of fully modern human language requires the development of the vocal tract used for speech production and the cognitive abilities required to produce linguistic utterances. The debate surrounds the timeline, sequence and order of developments associated with this. It is mostly undisputed that pre-human australopithecines did not have communication systems significantly different from those found in great apes in general, but scholarly opinions vary as to the developments since the appearance of Homo some 2.5 million years ago. Some scholars assume the development of primitive language-like systems (proto-language) as early as Homo habilis, while others place the development of primitive symbolic communication only with Homo erectus (1.8 million years ago) or Homo heidelbergensis (0.6 million years ago) and the development of language proper with Homo sapiens sapiens less than 100,000 years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_language

 

[jasoncran]

here's the problem, in order for a language to develop by chance,one or more must at the same TIME get the info, and be able to articulate to another generation all by unguided chance and if they survive the next mutations.
and add to that, and then thiers the culture that forms behind that.

hard to accept that we went from possible groans and grunts to this mutiltple langages by now all by chance mutations surving mutations

that to me is saying that one is born with knowledge.

this is a problem i think is described in that book what darwin didnt know.

 

[Evointrinsic]

Fortunately Evolution isn't based strictly on chance or being random. It has those forces integrated into mutations, however, Evolution is predictable. Here's a quick article that may help you out with this issue. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13698-evolution-myths-evolution-is-random.html

this is a very brief summary:

Evolution by natural selection is a two-step process, and only the first step is random: mutations are chance events, but their survival is often anything but. Natural selection favours mutations that provide some advantage (see Evolution promotes the survival of species), and the physical world imposes very strict limits on what works and what doesn't. The result is that organisms evolve in particular directions.

Humans are intensely social creatures. And we have social cultures too, regardless of where anyone is from, there are tribes and social structures we have created. We work in groups to succeed. Complex language didn't arise all of a sudden. I suggest you fully read the first article i posted (in my first post).

The greatest step[dubious – discuss] in language evolution would have been the progression from primitive, pidgin-like communication to a creole-like language with all the grammar and syntax of modern languages. Many scholars believe that this step could only have been accomplished with some biological change to the brain, such as a mutation. It has been suggested that a gene such as FOXP2 may have undergone a mutation allowing humans to communicate.[dubious – discuss] Evidence suggests that this change took place somewhere in East Africa around 100,000 to 50,000 years ago, which rapidly brought about significant changes that are apparent in the fossil record. There is still some debate as to whether language developed gradually over thousands of years or whether it appeared suddenly.

The Broca's and Wernicke's areas of the primate brain also appear in the human brain, the first area being involved in many cognitive and perceptual tasks, the latter lending to language skills. The same circuits discussed in the primates brain stem and limbic system control non-verbal sounds in humans (laughing, crying, etc.), which suggests that the human language center is a modification of neural circuits common to all primates. This modification and its skill for linguistic communication seem to be unique only to humans, which implies that the language organ derived after the human lineage split from the primate (chimps and bonobos) lineage. Plainly stated, spoken language is a modification of the larynx that is unique to humans.

All primates are good at imitating, and most animals are good at figuring out simple things, such as Fire=hot and Scream=fear/danger. The very first communication skills probably were a simple grunt to indicate prey that the tribal hunters were stalking for the day. And over time as early humans began to become more anatomically suitable for speech and communication as well as language all together, those grunts gradually became something more specific.

Your way of thinking seems to be that of "instantaneous", in which case you would have been correct by saying "language couldn't have just suddenly happened". But this isn't the case. I really hope you read more about the basics of evolution though, if you start to understand it more-so, you should be able to grasp this information easily. You dont have to believe in it, But you can still understand it

As for this part:

hard to accept that we went from possible groans and grunts to this mutiltple langages by now all by chance mutations surving mutations

that to me is saying that one is born with knowledge.

It's not so much that we were born with knowledge, just born with the capabilities. Take present day humans for example. We arent born with the knowledge of language, but we are very anatomically capable at creating, understanding and speaking in languages. 100,000 years ago we were less capable, there for the language would be much less complex. If we go back further we are even less capable, there for the language would be even less complex. Go back further yet and we are back to communication in other ways vs actual speech, back here the organisms in this time were simply unfit to talk.

Now, I doubt you've read the entire Wikipedia article, but if you really are interested in finding this all out, then I highly suggest you read the whole thing.

Here is the link again http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_ ... man_speech

 

[jasoncran]

i said that, re read that i said random mutations that are selected by natural selection.

now then is this natural selection have an intellegence?
no. then its blind.

unless you think humans that lived by the so called beneficial mutation were selected by smart malaria to live.

 

[Evointrinsic]

What exactly was the intent for this topic? I gave you all you wanted to know and more. we're not here to mingle with The evolutionary theory or discuss natural selection and I'm not going to be driven off topic just to teach you about either or. If you want to know, make another topic and I will reply to it.

 

[jasoncran]

just to see what he toe had to say on that, it was never discussed.

i will look at this more when i had the chance. that is why i dont buy the toe, as the bird that selects the moth to live must be intellegent, but it aint its just hungry. its(natural selection) guided if you want to say that those things such as language are caused by blind natural selection

a bird just simply sees a meal, when the human is learning a language its a bit more then that he or she mus communicate well and live and then somehow the data must be passed on to the next person and if they die by by animals and disease, that has not intellegence. how does that sufficienlty explain the fact that we have morality and enjoy something and beauty. this is getting into the culture that must also sooner or later arise from languages.
and with culture comes morees.

rather hard to go from grunt to this if given the lengthy time frame.

 

[Evointrinsic]

Jason, you have a very misinterpreted view of natural selection. There for you can't debate whether or not natural selection is credible or not. These are the facts:

Natural selection has nothing to do with intelligence, you are 100% correct, and that is the only thing you actually know about natural selection that is correct. Natural selection is driven by environmental factors such as temperature, the environments physical change (flood, volcanic eruption), disease, famine, newly introduced predators (let's make this one easy and just say Cats and Dogs), as well as many other things. Natural selection generally sifts out the organisms that are not suited to their environment (example, a fish in sulfuric acid will not survive as well as some bacteria that has adapted over a LONG length of time that can survive and thrive in sulfuric acid). Traits are selected for by their positive ability to allow an organism to adapt to it's environment. Take blind snakes for example, They USED to have eyes, but their environment changed because they started digging more often through generations, and their eyes are now being diminished, however, they have other senses that are forming because of this environmental change that allows them to find prey and all their necessities. This is predictable. And if it is predictable, then it is not blind. If an environment changes, organisms change. And these organisms adapt to their environment. This happens continuously. everything is constantly adapting to subtle or drastic changes at different speeds. The ones that fail to adapt properly will be weeded out and most likely killed off because they now do not suit their environment (or they migrate, whichever). These things all generally happen over thousands upon thousands upon millions of years. However, some of these changes happen rather quickly (there is a well documented case where a fresh water fished developed "fatty" lips over the span of 100 years, in other words lets say humans developed a 6th finger in 100 years, it's quite a big change considering the short time frame. although the finger thing is not going to happen because we have no need for a 6th finger and since evolution is predictable, we can confirm that).

So what do we have so far?

~Natural selection isn't blind
~Evolution is predictable
~It generally takes a long time for these changes to happen

What are we missing? Ah yes, this...

Primates, and our earlier ancestors have more primitive brains than we currently have. However, the early primates and our ancestors (remember these are different things) have already developed the part of the brain that allows for "top-notch" communication skills. And as our earlier ancestors continued to develop more structures anatomically we are then able to do more things. And when you are anatomically able to do specific things, you tend to do those specific things. So once our brains and bodies have developed the ability to communicate through speech (remember this is a lengthy process) then we began to use speech. It wasn't spontaneous! If you wiped out an entire tribe, that language would probably be lost. Fortunately there wasn't one single tribe or community. There were many, hence the reason why we have so many different languages. However, because they had the body to talk and the brain to talk, language was inevitable. The only thing that would have been able to stop language would be a mutation that took away the part of the brain that allowed for speech, or a mutation that took away the tongues muscles that allowed for speech.

So we can add to our list that our ancestors would eventually be able to speak, it was inevitable. and predictable after a certain point.

As for this:

how does that sufficienlty explain the fact that we have morality and enjoy something and beauty.

This has nothing to do with language at all. This deals with separate parts of the brain. however, the same incidences would occur in the development of those parts of the brain. But, that would be a different topic now wouldn't it.

Now please, read about evolution, read about natural selection, and read about all of biology before you attempt to make silly claims like you have.

Make questions all you'd like, that is perfectly fine. But you cannot debate something you know very little about.

 

[jasoncran]

i have googled natural selection, and the book i have will go into detail on ns. and i stand corrected, it called what darwin got wrong.

they dont believe that ns drives evolution .

i will post or pm you more.

 

[jasoncran]

and please dont insult me again.

free hates that, three of those little strikes and no one gets to post in the science thread anymore. and i know that you love science.

have a nice day. sir.

 

[Evointrinsic]

Ah I have heard of that book! I'd like to take a read at that as well.

And I didn't mean to insult you, But honestly, I'm not going to argue with a mathematician about the next number in Pi, I don't know anything about it.

I know a lot of people around these forums think the same thing about evolution as you do. However, that doesn't make them correct. feel free to ask any biology teacher about evolution and they will tell you what I have.

In this topic you've stated (some may not be directly stated):

~ Evolution is driven by Chance 2 times
~ Large mutations happen quickly (this one isnt directly stated)
~ Evolution is not predictable (this one isnt directly stated)

This would indicate you don't know about evolution all that well. But dont take that as an insult. In fact I enjoy not knowing something, just another thing to learn ;)

 

[jasoncran]

i had a bad day at work and that added insult to injury, and maybe i over reacted. no need to hold a grudge.

yes i have plans to learn more so that i wont make weak arguments.

that book is one step. i already started reading their opinion on ns and they cover a lot on evoluntary psychology and also the biology side of it and they surely arent creationists, but secular humanist who want to know how we can be to be via the scientific method, they see flaws in the theory of ns.

 

[Evointrinsic]

eh, we all have those :D Yeah i've read a book similar to that as well that goes against a few theories on how humans spread throughout the world and all that too. They are very interesting. I'm not too surprised though. A lot of people here may think otherwise, but science really is up for judgment, in fact the more the better. There are often times where some scientists just go with the flow, which is completely wrong to do scientifically. We need other scientists to help show what things are wrong with what theories or discoveries.

 

[jasoncran]

yes, but the vocal athiests and some thiests that seem to be closed minded about other theories that may not include a diety arent so open minded.

all i hear is the vocal athiests that have made up thier mind on evolution and to them its fact. and unfalsifable. though they wont come out and say that.

fyi the attempts of men to look at the nature and study it isnt evil nor disaggreable to me, just some of the conclusions of the men like dawkins who hate christianity first then other faiths that bother me most.

though i am very much a yecer.

science isnt progressed by closed minded person but rather person's who will look at the evidence and make conclusions without bias if possible. but that which seems to be push for all scientist to be believers in the toe will be discussed later as i have a headache from my back injury. :bigfrown

 

[Evointrinsic]

all i hear is the vocal athiests that have made up thier mind on evolution and to them its fact. and unfalsifable. though they wont come out and say that.

Lol, You hear them say it but they wont come out and say that? hahaha, i think you need to reword that.

Take a look at it this way though. We have atomic theory, which is the theory that all matter is made up of little units called atoms. However, we know for a fact that there are atoms. It's only the theory that isnt fact, but these atoms still exist. Same goes for Germ theory. Germ theory is how we explain the phenomenon that microorganisms can invade the body and cause certain diseases. The actual theory, germ theory, isn't a fact, but we do know for a fact that germs do do this. We can relate this to any other scientific theory. Science is merely the attempt to explain a phenomenon.

As for evolution, we know 100% that organisms evolve, and we have a theory to try and explain that. take this for example

Fish in a remote crater lake in Nicaragua are splitting into separate species at breakneck speed.

It has taken the lake cichlids just 100 generations and as many years to evolve an entirely new physical feature: very fat lips. Most estimates of how fast species evolve new features are based on models, which generally indicate that it could take up to 10,000 generations. Some models suggest just tens of generations are enough, but such rapid change has never been documented before.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18912-fat-lips-evolve-at-record-speed.html

This is a very clear example of a mutation. one that's been observed. Most christians i've talked to agree to this, however they doubt "macro" evolution, which i'm sure you know about. But i wont go into it any further unless you'd like me to

now take a Tylenol darn you!

 

[jasoncran]

all i hear is the vocal athiests that have made up thier mind on evolution and to them its fact. and unfalsifable. though they wont come out and say that.

Lol, You hear them say it but they wont come out and say that? hahaha, i think you need to reword that.
in full admission that is, they say its fact yet claim its only a theory, and i beleive and i know that is happening and its done. with the attitude to accompany.
Take a look at it this way though. We have atomic theory, which is the theory that all matter is made up of little units called atoms. However, we know for a fact that there are atoms. It's only the theory that isnt fact, but these atoms still exist. Same goes for Germ theory. Germ theory is how we explain the phenomenon that microorganisms can invade the body and cause certain diseases. The actual theory, germ theory, isn't a fact, but we do know for a fact that germs do do this. We can relate this to any other scientific theory. Science is merely the attempt to explain a phenomenon.
this i can agree but the evidence isn that solid for the toe on the macro scale. imho.
As for evolution, we know 100% that organisms evolve, and we have a theory to try and explain that. take this for example

Fish in a remote crater lake in Nicaragua are splitting into separate species at breakneck speed.

It has taken the lake cichlids just 100 generations and as many years to evolve an entirely new physical feature: very fat lips. Most estimates of how fast species evolve new features are based on models, which generally indicate that it could take up to 10,000 generations. Some models suggest just tens of generations are enough, but such rapid change has never been documented before.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18912-fat-lips-evolve-at-record-speed.html

This is a very clear example of a mutation. one that's been observed. Most christians i've talked to agree to this, however they doubt "macro" evolution, which i'm sure you know about. But i wont go into it any further unless you'd like me to

now take a Tylenol darn you!

point less the the root cause is the lack if curviture is the cause for this(my neck has no curve)