Evolution: a different view (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, May 16, 2015, 00:17 (3479 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: Why do you assume that the very special preparations were made thousands of years before they were used?-Because I have followed the lead of the theories of McCrone and Tattersall. McCrone has descriptions of how H. habilis and H. erectus spoke.-> dhw: How do you know that the variety of sounds did not increase as the anatomy changed? Or that the anatomy was not changed by the need our ancestors had for a wider variety of sounds to communicate their ever increasing knowledge? What record do you have of language that was used 150,000 years ago? 200,000 years ago? 500,000 years ago? -No one has such a record, but McCrone has descriptions of how he thinks H h. and H e. spoke. You are right that monkey hoots and howls gave way to some type of slightly more advanced sounds at some point in the process. Again H. sapiens arrived about 250,000 years ago and current theory says more complex language began about 50,000 years ago becoming what we have today. McCrone says that todays' refined language requires the preparation of the prior anatomic changes we now use. If you accept the gaps in time indicated, it makes perfect sense to me, the anatomy came well before the current result we use.
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> How can you or anyone know that when the vocal structure reached its present state, our ancestors did not use it in precisely the same way that we do, but the sounds they then produced increased in complexity in exactly the same way as the languages we now speak and write have increased in complexity since we were first able to record them?-I know you don't have the time to read McCrone's theoretical descriptions, based on his knowledge of the anatomy as it developed, but I have and he makes it seem very logical to me.
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> DAVID: You must say it looks as if the anatomic changes were planned for in advance of our complex language.
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> dhw: Or the anatomic changes took place because our ancestors needed them to develop an increasingly complex language, just as anatomic changes take place when conditions dictate change or death (= adaptation). That would be how an autonomous inventive mechanism would work: cells cooperating to create improvements, and in this case no doubt improvements upon improvements.-I still point to the theoretical gaps in time, anatomic changes well before current complex use of speech.