DEBATE ON THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE AND INTELLIGENCE - THE CRO-MAGNONS AND NEANDERTHALS
The African Heritage in World History
Chapter 4: Origin of Language
Section 3: The brain of humans - Language and Intelligence - The beginning of intelligence:- the evolution of the human mind
Brain size, intelligence, origin of behavioral skills - Bi-pedal hominids and humans and use of tools to cave paintings in Africa and Eurasia.
John McCrone, The Ape That Spoke: Language and the Evolution of the Human Mind (William Morrow and Company, Inc: New York), 1991.
John McCrone studied zoology and psychology at Auckland University and then became a journalist, working first on a London newspaper and then with the Australian news agency, Australian Associated Press. McCrone has spent five years researching and writing this book. He lives in London. He studied zoology and psychology at Auckland University and then became a journalist, working first on a London newspaper and then with the Australian news agency, Australian Associated Press. McCrone has spent five years researching and writing this book. He lives in London.
The origin of language in the human species is a widely discussed topic, with little or no mainline consensus by many scholars.
1799
It was reported by George W. Stocking, Jr., that The Société des Observateurs de lHomme, (the first anthropological society) was founded in the eighth year of the first French Republic (November or early December 1799). This was also reported in Carl Sagan, Broca’s Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science (Ballantine Books: New York), 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, Chapter 1: Broca’s Brain,” p. 7.
In 1866 The Linguistic Society of Paris banned dabates on the subject.
John A. Hawkins, University of Southern California and Murray Gell-Mann, California Institute of Technology,
“Preface,. About the Workshop, SFI Studies, “The Sciences of Complexity,” Proceedings Volume X, Editors, J. A. Hawkins and M. Gell-Mann, Addison-Wesley, 1992 in The Evolution of Human Languages, A Proceedings Volume in the SFI Studies in the Sciences of Complexity, of the Workshop on the Evolution of Human Languages held August 1989 in New Mexico,
Editors, John A. Hawkins, Department of Linguistics , University of Southern California and Murray Gell-Mann, California Institute of Technology and Volume XI, Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity (Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, The Advanced Book Program: Redwood City, California; Menlo Park, California; Reading, Massachusetts; New York, Don Mills, Ontario; Wokingham, United Kingdom; Amsterdam, Bonn, Sydney, Singapore, Tokyo, Madrid, San Juan), 1992, xii.
Terrence W. Deacon, in “Brain-language Coevolution,” in The Evolution of Human Languages, 1992, p. 64 had already indicated the possibility that the preadaptive basis for the voluntary control of speech, the initial stages of hominid language, probably had started with the australopithecines and homo habilis, with homo erectus creating and using words and talking, though at reduced levels of intelligibility and speed.
Bill Bryson, form editorial staff member of the Book of the Month Club, Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way (Avon Books, A Division of The Hearst Corporation: New York) 1990, Chapter 2: “The Dawn of Language,” stated:
“The race of people who arose in Africa 100,000 years ago: Despite his distinctly dim-witted appearance, (Neanderthal man) possessed a larger brain than modern man (though not necessarily a more efficient one). Neanderthal man was unique. So far as can be told no one like him existed before or since. He wore clothes, shaped tools, engaged in communal activities. He buried his dead and marked the graves with stones, which suggests that he may have dealt in some form of religious ritual, ande he looked after infirm members of his tribe or family. He also very probably engaged in small wars. All of this would suggest the power of speech.
About 30,000 years ago Neanderthal man disappeared, displaced by Homo sapiens sapiens, a taller, slimmer, altogether more agile and handsomeat least to our eyesrace of people who arose in Africa 100,000 years ago, spread to the Near East, and then were drawn to Europe by the retreating ice sheets of the last great ice age.
African Cro-Magnons:
“These are the Cro-Magnon (Cro-Magnon Cave, France) people who were responsible for the famous cave paintings at Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain the earliest signs of civilization in Europe, the work of the world’s first artists. Although this was an immensely long time ago, some 20,000 years before the domestication of animals and the rise of farming, these Cro-Magnon people were identical to us. They had the same physique, the same brain, the same looks.