Evolution of Language (General)

by David Turell , Tuesday, October 29, 2019, 14:05 (1639 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Sadly we have now digressed from the evolution of language to the evolution of the brain, but I will assume that you now accept the unlikelihood of the claim that language “lay fallow” for 100,000 years, and language evolved, just as physical organs evolved, in response to new demands.

DAVID: Language appeared only in the last stage of brain evolution. Learning to use it took time and simple sounds came first without real grammatical organization which slowly developed. i agree.

dhw: Thank you. If I had to make such a general statement, I would be a little more cautious, and I would certainly not say “learning to use” language took time, as that seems to presuppose its prior existence. Human language as we know it probably appeared only in the last stage of brain evolution, accompanied by other anatomical changes. Its development took time, and it is likely that simple sounds came first without real grammatical organization. It has continued to evolve, and will no doubt do so as long as humans survive.

You seem to be supporting my approach. We had the brain to develop language with grammar rules, and then they developed by usage of word sounds.

dhw: I have suggested that each jump was due to new demands which exceeded the capacity of the existing brains, and I have explained that complexification would have taken over completely when the brain had reached optimum size, and it proved so efficient that the brain has actually shrunk. What is it that you object to?

DAVID: The same opposite point. Bigger brain first, then use of it learned over time.

dhw: There is no “opposite” here. After each expansion (which in my hypothesis was caused by demands that exceeded the existing capacity) of course the owner of the new sized brain would use it to implement new concepts until once more its capacity was exceeded and another expansion became necessary. Eventually there came the final expansion (same cause) and from then on complexification had to take over. So we have small brain to start with, then bigger brain which is used over time until the next bigger brain. The difference between us is that you think your God preprogrammed or dabbled each expansion in anticipation of new demands, whereas I propose a natural sequence of brain responding to new demands - which I see as one logical cause of all evolutionary change, the other being exploitation of new opportunities.

You always use Darwin in your thinking: Nature's demands drive evolution. See below:

https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/moths-ears-developed-millions-of-years-before-bat...

"From ScienceDaily:
"Butterflies and moths rank among the most diverse groups in the animal kingdom, with nearly 160,000 known species, ranging from the iconic blue morpho to the crop-devouring armyworm.
Scientists have long attributed these insects’ rich variety to their close connections with other organisms. Butterflies, they hypothesized, evolved in tandem with the plants they fed on, and moths developed sophisticated defense mechanisms in response to bats, their main predators.
"Now, a new study examines these classic hypotheses by shining a light on the early history of Lepidoptera, the order that includes moths and butterflies. Using the largest-ever data set assembled for the group, an international team of researchers created an evolutionary family tree for Lepidoptera and used fossils to estimate when moths and butterflies evolved key traits.
"Their findings show that flowering plants did drive much of these insects’ diversity. In a surprise twist, however, multiple moth lineages evolved “ears” millions of years before the existence of bats, previously credited with triggering moths’ development of hearing organs.
“Having a fossil-dated family tree gives us our most detailed look yet at the evolutionary history of moths and butterflies,” said the study’s lead author Akito Kawahara, University of Florida associate professor and curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History’s McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity. “We’ve thought for a long time that flowering plants must have contributed to the extraordinary number of moth and butterfly species we see today, but we haven’t been able to test that. This study helps us see if prior hypotheses line up, and what we find is that the plant hypothesis does, but the bat hypothesis does not.”
"The research also suggests lepidopterans are much older than previously thought, with the shared ancestor of today’s butterflies and moths likely appearing about 300 million years ago — roughly 100 years earlier than previous estimates.
"A seminal 1964 paper by Paul Ehrlich and Peter Raven used the tightly interwoven relationships between butterflies and flowering plants as the foundation for the theory of coevolution — the idea that different organism groups evolve in response to one another. "

Comment: Note God's pre-programming moth's ears for the later coming of bats! See paper:

https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/10/15/1907847116 in next entry.