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Homo habilis used tools but recent evidence suggests that they were not very 'homo':-Who Was Homo habilisâAnd Was It Really Homo?
Ann Gibbons 
In the past decade, Homo habilis's status as the first member of our genus has been undermined. Newer analytical methods suggested that H. habilis matured and moved less like a human and more like an australopithecine, such as the famous partial skeleton of Lucy. Now, a report in press in the Journal of Human Evolution finds that H. habilis's dietary range was also more like Lucy's than that of H. erectus, which many consider the first fully human species to walk the earth. That suggests the handyman had yet to make the key adaptations associated with our genus, such as the ability to exploit a variety of foods in many environments, the authors say.-Full story at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/332/6036/1370?sa_campaign=Email/sntw/17-June...

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Another view of human evolution proposing that fishing and shoreline hunting was a major factor in human development, especially of the brain:-http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/332828/description/Water%E2%80%99s_edge_ancestors

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Several genes have been identified that apppeared and drove the development of the prefrontal lobe as hominids broke off from the chimp line (human prefrontal lobe became six times that of the chimp). Why these genes appeared is not determined, just that they appeared at the right time:

http://the-scientist.com/2011/10/19/new-genes-new-brain/

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An interesting new approach by studying Neanderthal DNA and Denovean DNA

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2011/11/14/neanderthal-neuroscience/ Does your great-great-grandpa look like Alley Oop.

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Neanderthals make stone tools; they are more advanced than previously thought:-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120124092742.htm

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Latest study. They are a different species based on surveying skulls and differing shape of face, especially nose and lower jaw:-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141118141606.htm-"Dr. Laitman states that this article is a significant contribution to the question of Neanderthal cold adaptation in the nasal region, especially in its identification of a different mosaic of features than those of cold-adapted modern humans. Dr. Laitman's body of work has shown that there are clear differences in the vocal tract proportions of these fossil humans when compared to modern humans. This current contribution has now identified potentially species-level differences in nasal structure and function.-"Dr. Laitman said, "The strength of this new research lies in its taking the totality of the Neanderthal nasal complex into account, rather than looking at a single feature. By looking at the complete morphological pattern, we can conclude that Neanderthals are our close relatives, but they are not us."-"Ian Tattersall, PhD, emeritus curator of the Division of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History, an expert on Neanderthal anatomy and functional morphology who did not participate in this study, stated, "Márquez and colleagues have carried out a most provocative and intriguing investigation of a very significant complex in the Neanderthal skull that has all too frequently been overlooked.'"

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Sharp-edged stone flakes which can be used by humans to butcher, are made as a byproduct of their activity by Capuchin monkeys, confusing archeologists:

https://cosmosmagazine.com/palaeontology/stone-tools-may-not-have-been-made-by-human-an...

"Recent research published in Nature by a team led by Tomos Proffitt at the University of Oxford shows that capuchin monkeys regularly produce sharp-edged flakes indistinguishable from those made by early hominins.

"Could these South American simians be taking the same first steps that eventually delivered the spanner, wheel and smartphone? As it turns out, no. The flakes are produced by accident when the monkeys smash rocks together. Nonetheless, the capuchins have thrown a spanner in the works for archaeologists.

"Since the flakes they make are not tools at all, we can no longer assume the flakes found in the archaeological record are tools either.

"We know that monkeys can make tools of other kinds, of course. Ever since British primatologist Jane Goodall’s pioneering work in the 1960s, we have known our chimpanzee cousins use tools to shell nuts and to fish for termites.

"Nor is tool use confined to primates. Other mammals, birds, snails, octopuses and even insects all turn out to be tool wielders. In fact, back in the 19th century an American husband and wife team, Elizabeth and George Peckham, first documented tool use outside human beings. They observed wasps hammering dirt with pebbles to build their burrows.

***

"Now it seems that flakes per se may not represent what we thought they did. Capuchins pound rocks together to crack them open and lick the powdered quartz, probably to access dietary minerals. The process sends flakes flying in every direction. But the monkeys don’t use the flakes as tools; they just leave them lying about.

"So what these clever monkeys show us is that, if we find ancient flakes, we can no longer assume they were a tool made by a human ancestor.

"The discovery of flakes at the Lomekwi archeological site in Kenya, which dates to 3.3 million years ago, led researchers to propose in 2015 that early humans appeared about 700,000 years earlier than previously thought. Now, however, without other evidence, such as cut marks on bones, we can no longer assume the flakes are evidence of a human presence.

"One thing is clear: the capuchins have forced us to set the bar higher. A flake alone is not enough. The hunt now begins to find a new kind of artefact that is quintessentially human in its style of manufacture and use as a tool. Perhaps something like the hand axe that we see with Homo erectus much later, 1.6 million years ago."

Comment: Artifacts alone will not suffice. Signs of activity like butchering marks on bones, signs of controlled fire, etc. are the best guides.

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A review of early human tool making:

http://nautil.us/issue/56/perspective/the-stick-is-an-unsung-hero-of-human-evolution?ut...

"It’s a story that begins around 3 million years ago at a place called Olduvai Gorge. Here skeletal remains of Australopithecus, an early apelike hominid, were recovered, alongside associated assemblages of worked stone. These early tools are usually labeled pebble or cobble tools because they appear to have been struck only enough times to create a single sharp edge. So these early tools were really very basic. Yet for Australopithecus, whose diet comprised scavenged meat, they were undoubtedly a step up from pulling apart a carcass with their bare hands, and allowed for the scoring of the hide, severing flesh, and the breaking and crushing of bones to release marrow.

"Then, around 1.9 million years ago, Homo habilis arrives on the archaeological scene, shortly followed, at around 1.2 million years ago, by Homo erectus. We now start to talk of hominins—members of the human clade—defined against the wider classification of hominid, which contained more apelike members of the genus, such as Australopithecus africanus. We tend to call the worked flints from this period Acheulean. In some ways, it was at this point that the Stone Age was born, as the incontrovertible evidence of stones that had been altered by human endeavor, associated with geological deposits of known age, forced a reconsideration of the traditional biblical narrative of how we were created.

***

"These beautifully worked flints show obvious signs of repeated striking to work a core down to a finished axe that has sharp edges on two sides converging on a tip, but with a “hold” at its base or distal end. What is so mesmerizing about them is that, written into their fracture lines, one can see the consciously made decisions and the cognitive processes of design as the lower Palaeolithic knapper conceived the desired shape and form. Here was something truly “human.”

***

"The end of the Acheulean industry broadly overlaps with the emergence of Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens between 100,000 and 125,000 years ago. While artistic and symbolic representations were perhaps beyond their consciousness, their burial practices and other rituals are evidence of a capacity for abstract thought and a degree of self-awareness.

"Hand axes continued to be standard fare, but the period is also characterized by what we call “scrapers”—small hand-held flints around the blunt side of which the index finger is wrapped to create an effective cutting tool. These scrapers were almost certainly used in the preparation of hides, and the remarkable resilience of both neanderthalensis and sapiens in the face of climatic variation suggests that more sophisticated protective clothing was being produced.

" Homo neanderthalensis is thought to have died out at around 40,000 B.C., at the beginning of what was an extremely cold period for Europe. From here on, from the upper Palaeolithic into the Mesolithic, stone tool manufacture is characterized by much variation, innovation, and rapid development. Not only were the stone tools more sophisticated but they were also used to create bone tools such as awls and needles. Both suggest further developments in clothing and the likelihood that composite garments were stitched together for a tighter and more ergonomic fit. Without those needles and custom-fit lines we might never as a species have survived that cold snap.

***

"The key technological development in this period is the evidence for hafting—the fixing of a spearhead or arrowhead onto the end of a stick. The evidence comes not from the excavation of complete weapons—wooden shafts with blades attached—but from the shape of the worked flints and the presence of side and corner notches at their base. These indentations cut into the flints would provide purchase for a length of cord used to bind the blade to the stick. There has been a long-standing debate as to whether, as early as the Mousterian industry, projectile points were hafted, but recently excavations at Kathu Pan in South Africa have recovered a number of stone points whose tips exhibit fracture types that indicate impact rather than scraping and sawing. Furthermore, modifications near the base of these points were consistent with hafting. The scientific dating from the site proposes a date range centering around 500,000 years ago. This is an incredible 200,000 years earlier than conventionally thought and forces us to rethink man as hunter rather than hunted at a much earlier period in our evolutionary models.

***

" I would love to be able to tell the parallel evolutionary story of stick development since the lower Palaeolithic, for it’s almost inconceivable that Australopithecus, Homo habilis, erectus, neanderthalensis and sapiens did not develop this technology to the same degree of sophistication as they had stone-tool technology. But because of wood’s inability to survive in the archaeological record, it will forever be a story that remains untold and one merely hypothesized by the daydreaming of experimental archaeologists such as myself."

Comment: Whole article is worth reviewing to see the development of our thinking species.

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Thank you for this fascinating article. For some reason it appeared three times, so I have deleted two of the posts. The article clearly shows the complex advances which would have coincided with the expansion of the brain: Australopithecus approx. 450 cc, habilis approx. 600 cc, erectus approx. 1100 cc, Neanderthal approx. 1400 cc, slightly larger than sapiens approx. 1300 cc. Just a quick reminder of the hypotheses offered so far to explain the expansion: random mutations, bipedalism, use of fire, cooked foods (and better diet), the need for extra capacity to implement new concepts (mine), God’s 3.8 billion-year-old computer programme or personal dabbling in advance of new concepts (David’s).

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dhw: Thank you for this fascinating article. For some reason it appeared three times, so I have deleted two of the posts. The article clearly shows the complex advances which would have coincided with the expansion of the brain: Australopithecus approx. 450 cc, habilis approx. 600 cc, erectus approx. 1100 cc, Neanderthal approx. 1400 cc, slightly larger than sapiens approx. 1300 cc. Just a quick reminder of the hypotheses offered so far to explain the expansion: random mutations, bipedalism, use of fire, cooked foods (and better diet), the need for extra capacity to implement new concepts (mine), God’s 3.8 billion-year-old computer programme or personal dabbling in advance of new concepts (David’s).

I don't know why the website published it three times. Perhaps impressed by it? You skipped over the argument between us: push or pull? I prefer pull. Bigger to allow for concepts to develop, as shown by artifacts that appear after growth in size.

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dhw: Thank you for this fascinating article. For some reason it appeared three times, so I have deleted two of the posts. The article clearly shows the complex advances which would have coincided with the expansion of the brain: Australopithecus approx. 450 cc, habilis approx. 600 cc, erectus approx. 1100 cc, Neanderthal approx. 1400 cc, slightly larger than sapiens approx. 1300 cc. Just a quick reminder of the hypotheses offered so far to explain the expansion: random mutations, bipedalism, use of fire, cooked foods (and better diet), the need for extra capacity to implement new concepts (mine), God’s 3.8 billion-year-old computer programme or personal dabbling in advance of new concepts (David’s).

DAVID: I don't know why the website published it three times. Perhaps impressed by it? You skipped over the argument between us: push or pull? I prefer pull. Bigger to allow for concepts to develop, as shown by artifacts that appear after growth in size.

I don’t know how you can say I skipped the argument. I have listed ALL the arguments! However, as I keep repeating, the artefacts could not appear until the brain had expanded sufficiently to produce them. “Allow…to develop” is another of your obfuscations. According to your dualistic beliefs (see “Consciousness and brain damage”) the “soul” produces the concepts, and the brain implements them.

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DAVID: I don't know why the website published it three times. Perhaps impressed by it? You skipped over the argument between us: push or pull? I prefer pull. Bigger to allow for concepts to develop, as shown by artifacts that appear after growth in size.

dhw: I don’t know how you can say I skipped the argument. I have listed ALL the arguments! However, as I keep repeating, the artefacts could not appear until the brain had expanded sufficiently to produce them. “Allow…to develop” is another of your obfuscations. According to your dualistic beliefs (see “Consciousness and brain damage”) the “soul” produces the concepts, and the brain implements them.

Of course the brain in an expanded form then produced more complex artifacts. That is my point in push pull which you just wiggled around. You want the desire to have new ideas push the brain to grow larger. I view it as a very wishful theory supported by no evidence. I prefer to start with evidence. It is an obvious time table that more advanced artifacts are the result of a larger brain. We had a larger brain 300,000 years ago, but the advanced artifacts only started to appear in the past 30,000 years in cave art. Your desire/push theory should have logically seen the brain produce when it appeared. Why the gap? And don't admonish me about using the word brain only. We have sorted out the brain/soul relationship in my theory of dualism.

As for obfuscations,' allow to develop' is exactly what my pull concept means. A soul can only go so far creating concepts operating in a much less complex, smaller, brain. Habilis could not have possibly conceived of what erectus developed, but erectus appeared because habilis desired it, is your aeryfairy idea.

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That is the claim of a new paper:

https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/complex-speech-in-humans-is-a-recent-development

"In a paper that awaits peer-review on pre-print repository bioRxiv, an international team of researchers reveals that the structure of the human vocal tract and related parts of the face, which together deliver optimum conditions for speech production, is unique to modern humans.

***

"They contend that older human species such as Neanderthal and Denisovans would not have enjoyed the full capacity for speech that we do. In fact, the authors state “the evolution of vocalisation apparatus of modern humans is unique among hominins and great apes.”

"Interestingly, the team make this claim not based on genetics, but on ‘epigenetics’ – the study of the way that factors outside of genes can control and effect heredity.

"The paper examines the epigenetic expression known as DNA methylation. This looks at ‘methyl groups’, which are molecules derived from methane, containing one carbon atom bonded to three hydrogen atoms.

"The groups originate in the environment, and bond to DNA. While long considered deleterious, scientists now realise that methylation significantly contributes to both the activation and repression of gene function.

"Patterns of methylation can be mapped. Comparing the maps of modern and archaic humans, as well as great apes, led Gokhman and colleagues to conclude that complex speech is a recent development. The scientists state “the molecular mechanisms that underlie the modern human face and voice … arose after the split from Neanderthals and Denisovans”.

"The epigenetic nature of the mechanisms might well demonstrate that significant evolutionary change can happen without corresponding change in genes.

"Many are still inclined to agree with the sentiment Darwin expressed in The Descent of Man that “language owes its origin to the imitation and modification of various natural sounds, the voices of other animals, and man's own instinctive cries.” This is because it seems sensible that some capacity for speech would arise first, and the full complexity of symbolic logic and language would follow.

"But Darwin’s suggestion is long out of date. Modern research has given rise to multiple competing theories based on more recent aspects of evolutionary theory. Widely accepted, however, is the notion that words are cheap. Literally.

"Words don’t require substantial energy investment from an organism, so there is little at stake in using them. This means that it’s just as cheap to lie as to tell the truth, and scientists think this might have been a barrier to the evolution of spoken language.

"Researchers now believe that for spoken language to become a successful and stable evolutionary strategy, humans must first have developed both full symbolic culture and extremely high levels of interpersonal trust.

"While the last condition may strike us as unlikely in the current era, the paper’s claim that the physical architecture needed for speech is a relatively recent adaptation seems to support this theory. "

Comment: Sapiens vocal anatomy is better to produce complex speech than Neanderthals fossils show. We have no Denisovan skulls to compare. That anatomy was present 300,000 years ago. It took us quite a while to learn to use it. Like our large brains which we also received so long ago, they were gifts to learn to use. Structure first, use second.

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A new paper reveals this new level of similarity:

https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/not-just-genes-identical-twins-exhibit-supersimilarity

"The sometimes-preternatural similarity of identical twins is more profound than previously thought. Identical twins, known to science as “monozygotic”, may share more than identical looks and genes, according to new research in the field of epigenetics.

"Monozygotic twins form when a single embryo, derived from a single fertilised egg, called a zygote, splits in the womb to form two separate individuals with identical genomes. As such, they have long been a source of fascination for geneticists, as they offer insight into the relative contribution of nature and nurture.

"Epigeneticists are now similarly fascinated. Epigenetics is the study of the way in which various molecular mechanisms affect the way genes are expressed. The most common of these is DNA methylation, in which “methyl groups” – molecules derived from methane, containing one carbon atom bonded to three hydrogen atoms – come from the environment and attach to DNA, affecting the way genes function.

***

"Now, however, an international team of researchers led by geneticist Robert Waterland of the US Department of Agriculture Children's Nutrition Research Centre and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, US, has published findings that paint a very different picture.

"The team zeroed in on a class of epigenetic markers that are stable and exist in all cell types, called “metastable epialleles” (MEs). The epigenetic variation at MEs is determined randomly and is influenced by many environmental factors, ranging from the nutritional breakdown of the mother’s diet to the season. Consequently, it was expected that levels of epigenetic similarities and differences for MEs would be similar for both identical and fraternal, or non-identical, twins.

"What they found was something of a shock.

"Their research, published in Genome Biology, shows that monozygotic twins have identical epigenetics at MEs. “We found that the methylation patterns matched almost perfectly in identical twins, a degree of similarity that could not be explained by the twins sharing the same DNA,” says Waterland. “We call this phenomenon 'epigenetic supersimilarity.'”

"The striking finding had a simple explanation: “If, in this group of genes, the epigenetic markers are established before the embryo splits into two, then the markers will be the same in both twins,” says Waterland.

“'In essence, both twins inherit an intimate molecular memory of their shared developmental legacy as a single individual. On the other hand, genes at which epigenetic markers are set after the embryo splits can have greater epigenetic differences between the two twins.”
Further study into epigenetic supersimilarity may hold yet more surprises: by teaming up with cancer epidemiologists from the Cancer Council Victoria's Melbourne Collaborative Cohort Study in Melbourne, Australia, the scientists have also detected a link between methylated MEs and the risk of developing certain types of cancer.

"These results agree with Waterland’s earlier research, and suggest that the field of epigenetics may well be crucial to the future of medicine."

Comment: This discovery is not at all surprising, since identical twins are one split egg.

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DAVID: You skipped over the argument between us: push or pull? I prefer pull. Bigger to allow for concepts to develop, as shown by artifacts that appear after growth in size.
dhw: I don’t know how you can say I skipped the argument. I have listed ALL the arguments! However, as I keep repeating, the artefacts could not appear until the brain had expanded sufficiently to produce them. “Allow…to develop” is another of your obfuscations. According to your dualistic beliefs (see “Consciousness and brain damage”) the “soul” produces the concepts, and the brain implements them.

DAVID: Of course the brain in an expanded form then produced more complex artifacts. That is my point in push pull which you just wiggled around. You want the desire to have new ideas push the brain to grow larger.

No, no, no! It is not the desire to have new ideas! It is the desire to IMPLEMENT new ideas offered (dualist version) by the "soul". You summarized the process yourself, though you desperately try to forget what you wrote under “new tasks”, 2 December at 15.07: “If habilis has an idea for spears, the idea is immaterial. No brain change. Once he learns to knapp flint, attach the stone point to a wooden rod, and then practices throwing it with accuracy, there is no question his brain has enlarged with all the muscle movement and visual coordination involved.” I could not have expressed it better myself.

DAVID: I view it as a very wishful theory supported by no evidence. I prefer to start with evidence. It is an obvious time table that more advanced artifacts are the result of a larger brain. We had a larger brain 300,000 years ago, but the advanced artifacts only started to appear in the past 30,000 years in cave art. Your desire/push theory should have logically seen the brain produce when it appeared. Why the gap?

Yet again: when the brain reached its optimum size (maybe 300,000 years ago - the figure varies), NEW concepts were – and still are – implemented by complexification, not expansion. I don’t know enough about the history of 300,000 – 270,000 years ago to assume that sapiens made no progress at all (discoveries are being made all the time, but you seem to know it all already). Erectus could boast of a few advances with his enlarged brain, but went on for at least a million years, and possibly even two, without any mega-changes, so 270,000 years is hardly a problem timewise. New concepts come from individuals, so it took a while for the sapiens geniuses to come along. What does that prove?

DAVID: As for obfuscations,' allow to develop' is exactly what my pull concept means. A soul can only go so far creating concepts operating in a much less complex, smaller, brain.

Still staying with your dualist approach (I will have to tackle the materialist approach in due course), souls will learn from other souls. Once a concept has been implemented, it will lead other souls to other concepts. A primitive spear, once it exists, will lead other souls to conceptualize more sophisticated weapons. In every case, the concept arises from the soul (dualistic approach), but the brain has to implement it, i.e. give it material form. The soul’s ability to conceptualize is therefore not limited by the size of the brain. The limitations arise out of what the soul already knows (humans are vastly more efficient than their fellow animals at passing on knowledge and building on what is already known) and of what can be materially implemented, and that is when the process you have described so perfectly comes into play: first through expansion, but now through complexification.

DAVID: Habilis could not have possibly conceived of what erectus developed, but erectus appeared because habilis desired it, is your aeryfairy idea.

I don’t know precisely how each individual species of hominid/hominin came into being any more than you know precisely why a God whose goal was to produce sapiens found it necessary to produce all these different species first, not to mention the weaverbird, duckbilled platypus and skull-shrinking shrew. We only know that brains expanded. Your hypothesis is that an unknown power named God preprogrammed each expansion or popped down to Earth to engineer them all. My hypothesis is that each expansion was the result of new ideas requiring new abilities. Another hypothesis is that each expansion resulted from random mutations. I don’t know why you consider the first of these to be any less airy-fairy than the second and third.

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[/i]
DAVID: Of course the brain in an expanded form then produced more complex artifacts. That is my point in push pull which you just wiggled around. You want the desire to have new ideas push the brain to grow larger.

dhw: No, no, no! It is not the desire to have new ideas! It is the desire to IMPLEMENT new ideas offered (dualist version) by the "soul". You summarized the process yourself, though you desperately try to forget what you wrote under “new tasks”, 2 December at 15.07: “If habilis has an idea for spears, the idea is immaterial. No brain change. Once he learns to knapp flint, attach the stone point to a wooden rod, and then practices throwing it with accuracy, there is no question his brain has enlarged with all the muscle movement and visual coordination involved.” I could not have expressed it better myself.

No,no,no! There is an implied thought consistent with my unchanging thinking I left out in sloppy writing a quick response: "There is no question his brain [has been previously] enlarged with all the muscle movement, etc.... [Only a larger brain could permit all this new activity]." I should spend more time mapping out responses.

DAVID: I view it as a very wishful theory supported by no evidence. I prefer to start with evidence. It is an obvious time table that more advanced artifacts are the result of a larger brain. We had a larger brain 300,000 years ago, but the advanced artifacts only started to appear in the past 30,000 years in cave art. Your desire/push theory should have logically seen the brain produce when it appeared. Why the gap?

dhw: Yet again: when the brain reached its optimum size (maybe 300,000 years ago - the figure varies), NEW concepts were – and still are – implemented by complexification, not expansion. I don’t know enough about the history of 300,000 – 270,000 years ago to assume that sapiens made no progress at all (discoveries are being made all the time, but you seem to know it all already). Erectus could boast of a few advances with his enlarged brain, but went on for at least a million years, and possibly even two, without any mega-changes, so 270,000 years is hardly a problem timewise. New concepts come from individuals, so it took a while for the sapiens geniuses to come along. What does that prove?

What it proves is the new size is not used in any useful way for a gap in time. I think that happened with habilis and erectus also, Evolution builds on repeated patterns.

DAVID: As for obfuscations,' allow to develop' is exactly what my pull concept means. A soul can only go so far creating concepts operating in a much less complex, smaller, brain.

dhw: Still staying with your dualist approach (I will have to tackle the materialist approach in due course), souls will learn from other souls. Once a concept has been implemented, it will lead other souls to other concepts. A primitive spear, once it exists, will lead other souls to conceptualize more sophisticated weapons. In every case, the concept arises from the soul (dualistic approach), but the brain has to implement it, i.e. give it material form. The soul’s ability to conceptualize is therefore not limited by the size of the brain. The limitations arise out of what the soul already knows (humans are vastly more efficient than their fellow animals at passing on knowledge and building on what is already known) and of what can be materially implemented, and that is when the process you have described so perfectly comes into play: first through expansion, but now through complexification.

DAVID: Habilis could not have possibly conceived of what erectus developed, but erectus appeared because habilis desired it, is your aeryfairy idea.

dhw: I don’t know precisely how each individual species of hominid/hominin came into being any more than you know precisely why a God whose goal was to produce sapiens found it necessary to produce all these different species first, not to mention the weaverbird, duckbilled platypus and skull-shrinking shrew. We only know that brains expanded. Your hypothesis is that an unknown power named God preprogrammed each expansion or popped down to Earth to engineer them all. My hypothesis is that each expansion was the result of new ideas requiring new abilities. Another hypothesis is that each expansion resulted from random mutations. I don’t know why you consider the first of these to be any less airy-fairy than the second and third.

I am stuck with larger brains producing improved artifacts. You want push and I see pull with God's action.

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dhw: You summarized the process yourself, though you desperately try to forget what you wrote under “new tasks”, 2 December at 15.07: “If habilis has an idea for spears, the idea is immaterial. No brain change. Once he learns to knapp flint, attach the stone point to a wooden rod, and then practices throwing it with accuracy, there is no question his brain has enlarged with all the muscle movement and visual coordination involved.” I could not have expressed it better myself.

DAVID: No,no,no! There is an implied thought consistent with my unchanging thinking I left out in sloppy writing a quick response: "There is no question his brain [has been previously] enlarged with all the muscle movement, etc.... [Only a larger brain could permit all this new activity]." I should spend more time mapping out responses.

You said there was no brain change when our hominid had the idea. So what happened? In between his having the idea and his implementing the idea, God nipped in to enlarge the brain (or preprogrammed the first cells to pass on instructions that the brain should expand itself as soon as the soul came up with the idea). And only after the expansion did the hominid learn how to knapp flint, attach point to rod, throw etc. His brain therefore didn’t enlarge WITH the muscle movement, coordination etc., it had already enlarged BEFORE the muscle movement etc. Ah well, at least you have the concept (no brain change) preceding the enlargement, which has also been a bone of contention between us. You just reject the possibility that all these new actions might have CAUSED the enlargement.

DAVID: We had a larger brain 300,000 years ago, but the advanced artifacts only started to appear in the past 30,000 years in cave art. Your desire/push theory should have logically seen the brain produce when it appeared. Why the gap?

dhw: […] Erectus could boast of a few advances with his enlarged brain, but went on for at least a million years, and possibly even two, without any mega-changes, so 270,000 years is hardly a problem timewise. New concepts come from individuals, so it took a while for the sapiens geniuses to come along. What does that prove?

DAVID: What it proves is the new size is not used in any useful way for a gap in time. I think that happened with habilis and erectus also, Evolution builds on repeated patterns.

So the statement that the new size is not used usefully for a gap in time proves that the new size is not used usefully for a gap in time. When I tell you that pre-sapiens also had “gaps”, you tell me there are repeated patterns in evolution. Yes indeed. Species arrive, hang around for yonks without much progress, and in most cases disappear. According to you, however, it's part of the pattern for ALL species of hominid, hominin, homo to have a "gap", but "logically" sapiens should NOT have had a gap! Confusion reigns supreme.

dhw: Your hypothesis is that an unknown power named God preprogrammed each expansion or popped down to Earth to engineer them all. My hypothesis is that each expansion was the result of new ideas requiring new abilities. Another hypothesis is that each expansion resulted from random mutations. I don’t know why you consider the first of these to be any less airy-fairy than the second and third.

DAVID: I am stuck with larger brains producing improved artifacts. You want push and I see pull with God's action.

We are both “stuck” with the fact that larger brains coincided with improved artefacts. You now say (above) the soul had the idea and then God enlarged the brain so it could learn to implement the idea. This apparently is less airy-fairy than my proposal (dualistic version, but eventually I will formulate a materialistic version) that the soul had the idea, and the effort to implement the idea caused the brain to expand, as in the process you originally described with such perfect logic.

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DAVID: No,no,no! There is an implied thought consistent with my unchanging thinking I left out in sloppy writing a quick response: "There is no question his brain [has been previously] enlarged with all the muscle movement, etc.... [Only a larger brain could permit all this new activity]." I should spend more time mapping out responses.

dhw: You said there was no brain change when our hominid had the idea. So what happened? In between his having the idea and his implementing the idea, God nipped in to enlarge the brain (or preprogrammed the first cells to pass on instructions that the brain should expand itself as soon as the soul came up with the idea). And only after the expansion did the hominid learn how to knapp flint, attach point to rod, throw etc. His brain therefore didn’t enlarge WITH the muscle movement, coordination etc., it had already enlarged BEFORE the muscle movement etc. Ah well, at least you have the concept (no brain change) preceding the enlargement, which has also been a bone of contention between us. You just reject the possibility that all these new actions might have CAUSED the enlargement.

That has been my point all along. Enlargement precedes new concepts and implementations.

DAVID: What it proves is the new size is not used in any useful way for a gap in time. I think that happened with habilis and erectus also, Evolution builds on repeated patterns.

dhw: So the statement that the new size is not used usefully for a gap in time proves that the new size is not used usefully for a gap in time. When I tell you that pre-sapiens also had “gaps”, you tell me there are repeated patterns in evolution. Yes indeed. Species arrive, hang around for yonks without much progress, and in most cases disappear. According to you, however, it's part of the pattern for ALL species of hominid, hominin, homo to have a "gap", but "logically" sapiens should NOT have had a gap! Confusion reigns supreme.

I don't understand your confusion. Of course sapiens had a gap of 270,000=/- years before massive use of the brain.

dhw: Your hypothesis is that an unknown power named God preprogrammed each expansion or popped down to Earth to engineer them all. My hypothesis is that each expansion was the result of new ideas requiring new abilities. Another hypothesis is that each expansion resulted from random mutations. I don’t know why you consider the first of these to be any less airy-fairy than the second and third.

DAVID: I am stuck with larger brains producing improved artifacts. You want push and I see pull with God's action.

dhw: We are both “stuck” with the fact that larger brains coincided with improved artefacts. You now say (above) the soul had the idea and then God enlarged the brain so it could learn to implement the idea.

I said nothing of the sort. The soul can only create more complex ideas by working with a more complex brain. The larger more complex brain appears and only then can the soul develop and implement complex ideas. A soul does not come with a preconceived agenda of ideas and concepts. Size first, use second as shown by the artifacts.

dhw: This apparently is less airy-fairy than my proposal (dualistic version, but eventually I will formulate a materialistic version) that the soul had the idea, and the effort to implement the idea caused the brain to expand, as in the process you originally described with such perfect logic.

Size first, use second is supported by the timing of artifacts appearance. You want push and I see pull.

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DAVID: That has been my point all along. Enlargement precedes new concepts and implementations.

In the passage you have tried so hard to re-interpret you wrote: “If habilis has an idea for spears, the idea is immaterial. No brain change. Once he learns to knapp flint etc. there is no question his brain has enlarged with all the muscle movement and coordination involved.” You have now told us you meant that implementation (flint-knapping etc.) took place AFTER the brain had enlarged. So now we have the immaterial idea not leading to a brain change, but the implementation tells us that there HAS been a brain change. Doesn’t that mean that the idea came to the unchanged small brain, and enlargement only took place with implementation?

DAVID [referring to the sapiens brain]: What it proves is the new size is not used in any useful way for a gap in time. I think that happened with habilis and erectus also, Evolution builds on repeated patterns.

dhw: So the statement that the new size is not used usefully for a gap in time proves that the new size is not used usefully for a gap in time. When I tell you that pre-sapiens also had “gaps”, you tell me there are repeated patterns in evolution. Yes indeed. Species arrive, hang around for yonks without much progress, and in most cases disappear. According to you, however, it's part of the pattern for ALL species of hominid, hominin, homo to have a "gap", but "logically" sapiens should NOT have had a gap! Confusion reigns supreme.

DAVID: I don't understand your confusion. Of course sapiens had a gap of 270,000=/- years before massive use of the brain.

You claimed that “logically” sapiens with his new large brain should have come up with his new concepts straight away, and so you asked why there was a gap of 270,000 years. I pointed out that pre-sapiens had “gaps” of hundreds of thousands of years, and you said that proved there was a pattern, i.e. “gaps” are the norm. In that case, the sapiens “gap” is perfectly logical, so why did you ask me to explain it?

DAVID: The soul can only create more complex ideas by working with a more complex brain. The larger more complex brain appears and only then can the soul develop and implement complex ideas. A soul does not come with a preconceived agenda of ideas and concepts. Size first, use second as shown by the artifacts.

Back to square one. You are now reverting to your earlier claims that thought depends on the complexities of the brain, which is the exact opposite of your dualistic beliefs. And you are also saying that it is the soul that implements the ideas, whereas four days ago it was the brain that implemented the ideas. I have no idea what you are referring to with your “preconceived agenda”. Individual souls (dualistic approach) come up with new ideas – there is no preconceived agenda! Your dualistic theory, as you agreed on Saturday 13 January, was that the immaterial soul produced the ideas, and the material brain implemented them. On Tuesday 16 January, is this what you believe or not?

DAVID: Size first, use second is supported by the timing of artifacts appearance. You want push and I see pull.

My proposal is that the implementation of the idea expands the brain, and yours is that your God expanded the brain before it implemented the idea. In both cases, the artefacts can only appear once the brain has finished implementing the idea, and so the timing fits in with both hypotheses.

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DAVID: That has been my point all along. Enlargement precedes new concepts and implementations.

dhw:So now we have the immaterial idea not leading to a brain change, but the implementation tells us that there HAS been a brain change. Doesn’t that mean that the idea came to the unchanged small brain, and enlargement only took place with implementation?

Twist and turn all you want. We see jumps in hominin size and then subsequent advanced artifacts. The small brain cannot know what it hasn't learned to know. The advanced ideas come only with an enlarged more complex brain (cortex) available for the s/s/c to work with.

dhw: According to you, however, it's part of the pattern for ALL species of hominid, hominin, homo to have a "gap", but "logically" sapiens should NOT have had a gap! Confusion reigns supreme.[/i]

DAVID: I don't understand your confusion. Of course sapiens had a gap of 270,000+/- years before massive use of the brain.

dhw: You claimed that “logically” sapiens with his new large brain should have come up with his new concepts straight away, and so you asked why there was a gap of 270,000 years. I pointed out that pre-sapiens had “gaps” of hundreds of thousands of years, and you said that proved there was a pattern, i.e. “gaps” are the norm. In that case, the sapiens “gap” is perfectly logical, so why did you ask me to explain it?

I made the obvious point over and over, that it took time for the sapiens to learn how to use their new larger sized brain/cortex. If previous ideas from smaller less complex brain/cortex forced the enlargement then 'logically' the new brain should have had the ideas right away. But the gaps disprove your 'push' idea about brain size.

DAVID: The soul can only create more complex ideas by working with a more complex brain. The larger more complex brain appears and only then can the soul develop and implement complex ideas. A soul does not come with a preconceived agenda of ideas and concepts. Size first, use second as shown by the artifacts.

dhw: Back to square one. You are now reverting to your earlier claims that thought depends on the complexities of the brain, which is the exact opposite of your dualistic beliefs. And you are also saying that it is the soul that implements the ideas, whereas four days ago it was the brain that implemented the ideas. I have no idea what you are referring to with your “preconceived agenda”. Individual souls (dualistic approach) come up with new ideas – there is no preconceived agenda! Your dualistic theory, as you agreed on Saturday 13 January, was that the immaterial soul produced the ideas, and the material brain implemented them. On Tuesday 16 January, is this what you believe or not?

You sure like square one. A more complex cortex allows the soul to use it to come up with more advanced cocepts and implementations. I've not changed my computer brain/s/s/c approach. Preconceived agenda is from your pull theory to make brains grow their cortex. See comment above.

DAVID: Size first, use second is supported by the timing of artifacts appearance. You want push and I see pull.

dhw: My proposal is that the implementation of the idea expands the brain, and yours is that your God expanded the brain before it implemented the idea. In both cases, the artefacts can only appear once the brain has finished implementing the idea, and so the timing fits in with both hypotheses.

No. With existing comments in a smaller brain there should be no timing gaps in usage of the larger brain.

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Findings of advanced stone tools in India are suggestive of 385,000 years ago:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stone-tools-from-india-fan-debate-over-origi...

"Sometime around 400,000 years ago human ancestors went on an innovation bender. No longer content to make do with only the large hand axes and other hefty cutting tools that they and their predecessors had manufactured for more than a million years, they began fashioning sophisticated new kinds of stone tools. The novel tool types made more efficient use of raw material and were smaller, more portable, among other desirable traits. The shift was, by most accounts, a major technological advance, one that may have helped its makers push into previously impenetrable lands.

"For decades experts have debated which human species invented this new tool-making tradition—during what is called the Middle Stone Age in Africa and the Middle Paleolithic in Eurasia—and how it came to replace the preceding Acheulean tradition at locales across the globe. One theory holds that our own species, Homo sapiens, masterminded this technological revolution in its birthplace, Africa. From there, our forebears carried this new culture into the rest of the Old World when they began dispersing out of Africa, introducing it to the archaic species they encountered in Eurasia, including the Neandertals. A second theory posits the last common ancestor of Neandertals and H. sapiens came up with the technology and passed the know-how down to its descendant species. Or maybe, some scholars have argued, different human groups independently developed this novel way of making stone tools.

"New findings from India add an intriguing data point to the picture. In a paper published in the February 1 Nature, Kumar Akhilesh and Shanti Pappu of the Sharma Center for Heritage Education, India, and their colleagues report on the recovery of stone tools from Attirampakkam, a site on India’s southeast coast, that span the time between around 385,000 and 172,000 years ago. According to the team, the artifact assemblages show signature elements of the Middle Paleolithic, including tools manufactured using the so-called Levallois strategy for obtaining thin, broad flakes from a stone core. The researchers determined the age of the tools using a technique known as luminescence dating. If they are correct in their assessment, the Attirampakkam tools are by far the oldest Middle Paleolithic tools in India, besting the previous record holders by more than 200,000 years.

"According to the discovery team, the Middle Paleolithic tools at Attirampakkam are markedly different from the older Acheulean technology at the site. Previously some researchers have argued the emergence of Middle Paleolithic technology in India was linked to dispersals of H. sapiens from Africa after around 125,000 years ago. But if people were making Middle Paleolithic stone tools as early as 385,000 years ago in India and other sites in Eurasia, and somewhat earlier in Africa, then the possibility of a far earlier dispersal of technologically advanced humans—perhaps H. sapiens—into India warrants consideration."

Comment: H. sapiens are only as old as the oldest fossil we can find, and those fossils are few and far between. We still don't know when we appeared in our earliest form. The article concentrates on the arguments about the significance of the tools. But it raises the issue of how long we had a big complex brain and didn't use it much. Under the dhw theory that concepts had to be implemented and that necessity 'pushed' the appearance of a larger, more complex brain, one must wonder why it took so long to really use it. What happened to the 'push'.

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DAVID’s comment: H. sapiens are only as old as the oldest fossil we can find, and those fossils are few and far between. We still don't know when we appeared in our earliest form. The article concentrates on the arguments about the significance of the tools. But it raises the issue of how long we had a big complex brain and didn't use it much. Under the dhw theory that concepts had to be implemented and that necessity 'pushed' the appearance of a larger, more complex brain, one must wonder why it took so long to really use it. What happened to the 'push'.

“Necessity” is a misleading term. My hypothesis is that at different stages of evolution, new concepts exceeded the implemental capacity of existing brains, and so the process of implementation resulted in expansion (greater capacity), until the brain reached optimum size in sapiens. There is no mystery about why larger-brained erectus hung around for one or two million years not making many (if any) advances, just as there is no mystery about why even-larger brained sapiens hung around for 270,000 or possibly even 370,000 years without much progress – although the article suggests you are wrong in your assumption that there were no advances at all. They survived perfectly well without major new concepts, but when eventually the “geniuses” came up with new ideas, these IMPROVED their survivability/living conditions. In sapiens, the intelligence involved in creating these improvements eventually led to other “geniuses” thinking in terms that went beyond the driving forces of survivability and material improvement.

It is you who have created a mystery because of your insistence that your God is in control and his sole purpose was to produce the brain of sapiens. So why all these other pre-sapiens brains and the millions and millions of years before he came up with the one he wanted? But you prefer to ignore this “gap”. Once you take off your anthroblinkers and accept the (theistic) alternative that your God set up the initial mechanism whereby organisms autonomously made their own evolutionary way, you have a clear explanation for the ever changing bush and all the “gaps”. Because like every other species, hominids, hominins and homos simply went on surviving until the next phase, which in most cases was extinction but in our case was and is further improvement. How long we homos will survive is, of course, another issue, since we have now reached a stage at which the ramifications of some of these improvements have become life-threatening!

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DAVID’s comment: H. sapiens are only as old as the oldest fossil we can find, and those fossils are few and far between. We still don't know when we appeared in our earliest form. The article concentrates on the arguments about the significance of the tools. But it raises the issue of how long we had a big complex brain and didn't use it much. Under the dhw theory that concepts had to be implemented and that necessity 'pushed' the appearance of a larger, more complex brain, one must wonder why it took so long to really use it. What happened to the 'push'.

dhw: “Necessity” is a misleading term. My hypothesis is that at different stages of evolution, new concepts exceeded the implemental capacity of existing brains, and so the process of implementation resulted in expansion (greater capacity), until the brain reached optimum size in sapiens. There is no mystery about why larger-brained erectus hung around for one or two million years not making many (if any) advances,

My point is the erectus brain was incapable of any further advances than the artifacts produced and living in caves, hunting and picking fruit and nuts. dhw implies just the same: without implementation from a larger brain, nothing further could happen.
>

dhw:It is you who have created a mystery because of your insistence that your God is in control and his sole purpose was to produce the brain of sapiens. So why all these other pre-sapiens brains and the millions and millions of years before he came up with the one he wanted?

Because it is obvious from history God preferred to evolve progress in evolution.

dhw: Once you take off your anthroblinkers and accept the (theistic) alternative that your God set up the initial mechanism whereby organisms autonomously made their own evolutionary way, you have a clear explanation for the ever changing bush and all the “gaps”.

The complexity of the biochemistry of living organisms is well beyond that approach. Intense design is required to create the emergence of life from lifeless organic molecules, from which, when their function is coordinated properly, actual life emerges. It is this concept that separates your thinking from mine, which comes from my training in biochemistry.

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DAVID: My point is the erectus brain was incapable of any further advances than the artifacts produced and living in caves, hunting and picking fruit and nuts. dhw implies just the same: without implementation from a larger brain, nothing further could happen.

No disagreement here. No advance can be made without implementation of new concepts. And since you are a dualist who believes that concepts come from the soul, not the brain, it makes perfect sense that eventually the erectus soul came up with new concepts that required additional brain capacity (expansion) for their implementation. It makes no sense for a dualist to claim that expansion/complexification of the brain had to take place BEFORE the thinking soul could come up with its new concept. See “big brain evolution” for the latest blatant contradiction in your hypothesis.

dhw:It is you who have created a mystery because of your insistence that your God is in control and his sole purpose was to produce the brain of sapiens. So why all these other pre-sapiens brains and the millions and millions of years before he came up with the one he wanted?

DAVID: Because it is obvious from history God preferred to evolve progress in evolution.

You asked why it took sapiens 270,000 years to come up with new concepts, and I gave you a clear explanation. In return I asked why it took your God millions of years to produce the only brain he wanted to produce. He “preferred” to do it that way is on a par with “God has his reasons”, or “God’s reasoning is different from ours”. If you can’t give me a reason, it’s because the “gap” doesn’t make sense to you. Well maybe God DID have a reason that we can understand, as follows:

dhw: Once you take off your anthroblinkers and accept the (theistic) alternative that your God set up the initial mechanism whereby organisms autonomously made their own evolutionary way, you have a clear explanation for the ever changing bush and all the “gaps”.

DAVID: The complexity of the biochemistry of living organisms is well beyond that approach. Intense design is required to create the emergence of life from lifeless organic molecules, from which, when their function is coordinated properly, actual life emerges. It is this concept that separates your thinking from mine, which comes from my training in biochemistry.

I have NEVER disputed the argument that “actual life” and the mechanisms of evolution are too complex to have originated by chance. It is a major reason why I cannot embrace atheism. Your comment is your usual escape route when I challenge your hypotheses about the purpose and method of the evolutionary process. Look at what I wrote: “….accept the (theistic) alternative that your God set up the initial mechanism” etc. Your training in biochemistry will not have given you one iota of support for your firm belief that your God designed every life form, lifestyle and natural wonder for the sole purpose of producing the sapiens brain.

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DAVID: The complexity of the biochemistry of living organisms is well beyond that approach. Intense design is required to create the emergence of life from lifeless organic molecules, from which, when their function is coordinated properly, actual life emerges. It is this concept that separates your thinking from mine, which comes from my training in biochemistry.

dhw: I have NEVER disputed the argument that “actual life” and the mechanisms of evolution are too complex to have originated by chance. It is a major reason why I cannot embrace atheism. Your comment is your usual escape route when I challenge your hypotheses about the purpose and method of the evolutionary process. Look at what I wrote: “….accept the (theistic) alternative that your God set up the initial mechanism” etc. Your training in biochemistry will not have given you one iota of support for your firm belief that your God designed every life form, lifestyle and natural wonder for the sole purpose of producing the sapiens brain.

I agree that my interpretation of the human brain as a goal of God's is not based on my background in biochemistry and biology, but it is the basis ofmy firm belief that God had to be the designer of life and the major changes in its various complex forms from the beginning. Please do not misjudge my depth of training and how it leads to my belief in intelligent design..

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dhw: I have NEVER disputed the argument that “actual life” and the mechanisms of evolution are too complex to have originated by chance. It is a major reason why I cannot embrace atheism. Your comment is your usual escape route when I challenge your hypotheses about the purpose and method of the evolutionary process. Look at what I wrote: “….accept the (theistic) alternative that your God set up the initial mechanism” etc. Your training in biochemistry will not have given you one iota of support for your firm belief that your God designed every life form, lifestyle and natural wonder for the sole purpose of producing the sapiens brain.

DAVID: I agree that my interpretation of the human brain as a goal of God's is not based on my background in biochemistry and biology, but it is the basis ofmy firm belief that God had to be the designer of life and the major changes in its various complex forms from the beginning. Please do not misjudge my depth of training and how it leads to my belief in intelligent design.

I have never rejected your argument for intelligent design, as emphasized above, and I have the utmost admiration for the manner in which you have presented it in your two books as well as on this website. It is your interpretation of your God’s intentions and methods that I find so unconvincing, and I'm glad to see you acknowledging that your scientific background is irrelevant in discussing these issues.

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Most probably they had some rudimentary language:

https://aeon.co/essays/tools-and-voyages-suggest-that-homo-erectus-invented-language?ut...

"Evidence that erectus had language comes from their settlements, their art, their symbols, their sailing ability and their tools. Erectus settlements are found throughout most of the old world. And, most importantly for the idea that erectus had language, open oceans were not barriers to their travel.

***

"Erectus settlements show evidence of culture – values, knowledge structures and social structure. This evidence is important because all these elements enhance each other. Evidence from the erectus settlement studied at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov in Israel, for example, suggests not only that erectus controlled fire but that their settlements were planned. One area was used for plant-food processing, another for animal-material processing, and yet another for communal life. Erectus, incredibly, also made sea craft. Sea travel is the only way to explain the island settlements of Wallacea (Indonesia), Crete and, in the Arabian Sea, Socotra. None of these were accessible to erectus except by crossing open ocean, then and now. These island cultural sites demonstrate that erectus was capable of constructing seaworthy crafts capable of carrying 20 people or more. According to most archaeologists, 20 individuals would have been the minimum required to found the settlements discovered.

***

T
"To build and operate boats, erectus needed to talk about what material to collect, where to collect it, how to put the material together and so on – just what we ourselves would need to talk about in order to build a raft. In addition to the assembly of a raft, the planning for the trip as a whole, the reasoning for the undertaking, would have all required language.
We can therefore conclude that erectus required language. But how difficult would it have been for them to invent language, even with their massive Homo brains? Well, this depends on what is meant by language. There are two fundamental components to language that all linguists agree upon – grammar and symbols. Although some linguists take grammar to be the most important component of human language, others take symbols to be more important. As seen below, though, once symbols appear in language, grammar comes along nearly for free. To understand the nature of the erectus invention of language, it is first important to recognise the distinction between communication and language:

***

"In my book How Language Began (2017), I make the case that erectus symbols began with their tools. In addition to the quartzite hand-axe ‘Excalibur’ used in a burial rite some 350,000 years ago in modern-day Atapuerca in Spain, all erectus tools, like all sapiens tools, became symbols of labour, community and culture. The creation, care, transport and skilled use of tools all demonstrate that these tools meant something more than simply the task they were designed to perform. Just as a shovel represents not only the task of digging, but also evokes memories of killing snakes, preparing a camp site and so on, the tools of erectus had many functions and would have elicited memories of cultural values and activities when they were not present.

***

"Erectus had relative shortcomings of course, beyond possibly lacking the range of sounds of modern humans. It also lacked the modern form of the important FOXP2 gene that sapiens have. Do the shortcomings of vocal apparatus and primitive genes pose a problem for the idea that erectus had language? Not at all. For example, the evolution of speech was triggered by language – as we developed languages, the modes of expressing them improved over time. Yes, sapiens speech is likely better than erectus speech. But this doesn’t mean that erectus lacked speech. Any mammal could have speech with the sounds they are capable of producing today. They just need the right kind of brain. The sapiens version of FOXP2 helps us to articulate sounds more easily and to think more quickly and efficiently than erectus. But it is not a ‘language gene’. And though erectus might have had, as it were, the ‘Model T’ version of this gene while we possess the ‘Tesla version’, their ‘primitive’ FOXP2 would not have deprived them of language. FOXP2 and other genes adapted partially due to evolutionary pressure from language and culture."

Comment: McCrone's book, The Ape that Spoke, agrees that Erectus could have had a slow speech, a few words a minute. And I would assume they used lots of sign language. A very long fascinating essay.

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Unusual, Usually from stone:

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-homo-erectus-ax-east-africa.html

"In the past, scientists working in Africa have found hand axes made by members of Homo erectus, a possible direct ancestor of humans. In all such cases, the hand axes were made by chipping bits off of stones until the edge became sharp. In this new effort, the researchers have found a similar hand ax, except this time, it was made from bone.

"The hand ax was unearthed at a dig site in Ethiopia called Konso-Gardula, a site where previous researchers have found Homo erectus-made hand axes, all of which were made of stone. The location of the hand ax suggested it was approximately 1.4 million years old. It represents just the second bone-based Homo erectus-made hand ax ever found.

"The hand ax was unearthed at a dig site in Ethiopia called Konso-Gardula, a site where previous researchers have found Homo erectus-made hand axes, all of which were made of stone. The location of the hand ax suggested it was approximately 1.4 million years old. It represents just the second bone-based Homo erectus-made hand ax ever found.

"Study of the hand ax showed it to have been made from the thigh bone of a hippopotamus. It was roughly 13 centimeters long with an oval shape, and one of its edges had been sharpened using another tool—likely a hard rock. The researchers found that its design was similar to that of hand axes made of stone. Prior research has shown that such hand axes were made by a toolmaker using a single sharp blow to knock off a major part of the new tool edge. The edge would then be honed by repeated chipping with a bone or stone hammer.

"The researchers also found evidence that the hand ax had been used—there were quasi-continuous flake scars, polish due to wear, rounding of edges and striae patches. They suggest the hand ax was likely used to butcher animals to make them easier to eat. They also suggest its construction shows that members of Homo erectus were quite skilled in tool making, a sign that they were reasonably intelligent. The researchers were not, however, able to explain why the toolmaker had chosen to use bone instead of the much harder stone, despite the presence of stones to choose from in the area."

Comment: Note at this stage of human development, they had not realized an ax with a handle would be a more useful tool. At first new concepts grew incrementally in small steps

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Most probably they had some rudimentary language:

https://aeon.co/essays/tools-and-voyages-suggest-that-homo-erectus-invented-language?ut...

"Evidence that erectus had language comes from their settlements, their art, their symbols, their sailing ability and their tools. Erectus settlements are found throughout most of the old world. And, most importantly for the idea that erectus had language, open oceans were not barriers to their travel.

"Erectus had relative shortcomings of course, beyond possibly lacking the range of sounds of modern humans. It also lacked the modern form of the important FOXP2 gene that sapiens have. Do the shortcomings of vocal apparatus and primitive genes pose a problem for the idea that erectus had language? Not at all. For example, the evolution of speech was triggered by language – as we developed languages, the modes of expressing them improved over time. Yes, sapiens speech is likely better than erectus speech. But this doesn’t mean that erectus lacked speech. Any mammal could have speech with the sounds they are capable of producing today. They just need the right kind of brain. The sapiens version of FOXP2 helps us to articulate sounds more easily and to think more quickly and efficiently than erectus. But it is not a ‘language gene’. And though erectus might have had, as it were, the ‘Model T’ version of this gene while we possess the ‘Tesla version’, their ‘primitive’ FOXP2 would not have deprived them of language. FOXP2 and other genes adapted partially due to evolutionary pressure from language and culture."

Comment: McCrone's book, The Ape that Spoke, agrees that Erectus could have had a slow speech, a few words a minute. And I would assume they used lots of sign language. A very long fascinating essay.

More from the essay:

"Modern English has sentences as simple as ‘You drink. You drive. You go to jail.’ Yet in spite of such grammatical simplicity, we understand these examples just fine. In fact, one can construct similar sentences in any language that will be intelligible to all native speakers of the language. Interpretation requires cultural context, not complex grammar – but this facilitates it, explaining why so many languages have complex grammars, as I explain in Language: The Cultural Tool (2012).

"But what about the many modern paleoanthropologists, linguists and others who do not believe that erectus was capable of modern language because their tools were so primitive? Bollocks. This attribution of inability to erectus is based on a number of errors in reasoning: (i) it focuses almost exclusively on stone tools for erectus, ignoring evidence for bone and wooden tools; (ii) it errs in either assuming that settlements on multiple islands were the result of land bridges or accidents due to wind; (iii) it appears not to consider the significance of erectus village organisation; (iv) no study of erectus speech appears to recognise that speech came later than language and that the human vocal apparatus needs to be able to produce only a small number of sounds to have speech (but see the recent research on macaques led by the evolutionary biologist W Tecumseh Fitch at the University of Vienna); (v) it fails to understand that tools become symbols; (vi) it tends to overestimate the difficulty of having language and fails to realise how slot-filler grammars follow from symbols based on duality-of-patterning.

"The conclusion that erectus invented language through their higher intelligence and cultural development is strong, as evidenced by the archaeological record. But if language is merely a technology based on symbols and grammar, other creatures could have also discovered it. If they didn’t, it would be because they lack culture. There are some claims that other animals have language as it is defined here – information-transfer via symbols. It is well-known, after all, that many animals can learn symbols. Some examples are horses, great apes and dogs. What is unclear is whether nonhumans invent symbols in the wild. They would need culture to do so. No strong evidence for this exists.

"The available evidence then strongly suggests that erectus invented language more than a million years ago. In so doing, Homo erectus changed the world more than any creature since, including their grandchild, Homo sapiens."

Comment: so we inherited a simple form of language and our bigger forebrain fully developed it theoretically70,000 years ago. This essay reappeared so I added to the entry things I had no room for before. In past entries here I presented Everett fighting with Chomsky about language theory. McCrone pays more attention to the vocal anatomy differences than Everett. It is not clear why Everett sloughs it off.

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Actual start still unknown:

https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/when-did-early-hominins-first-discover-fi...

"The ability to use fire forever changed the fate of the human race: For starters, it allowed our ancestors to cook foods, which made us much more efficient eaters. Instead of gnawing on nuts and berries all day, we could now cook animal meat, which packs much more of a caloric punch. We also used fire to make more effective weapons and tools. But there’s a lot we don’t know about when humans first encountered fire and its transition into effective, everyday use.

"Still, we do know that our evolutionary kin were exposed to fire — or at least aware of it — about two million years ago, well before the arrival of modern humans, says John Gowlett, an archeologist who specializes in human fire at the University of Liverpool. This was around the time of Homo erectus, the first hominin with modern human proportions.

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"In a 2016 review article Gowlett published in the Royal Society of Biological Sciences, he contends that the discovery of fire was a long process. “Early hominins would undoubtedly have been aware of fires, as are savanna chimpanzees in the present,” he writes. “Rather than as an event, the discovery of fire use may be seen as a set of processes happening over the long term.”

"The next step after fire foraging would have been extending fires that were already in existence. This means that these early humans were not only aware of fire, they also learned to use it to their benefit. They may have used it to light a stick or branch, for example, and then ignite their own fire. “They also might have been using charred animal dung as fuel for fires,” says Gowlett.

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"The evidence for humans making fires themselves (and cooking more regularly with them) suggests it first started around 800,000 years ago, with some researchers speculating it began as early as 1.5 million years ago. It’s around this time that humans begin to cook and gather around fires.

"Once humans started cooking regularly, our gut and teeth morphology began to change to be better suited for cooked foods, according to Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham. Wrangham argues that once humans were living out on the African Savannah instead of in the trees, they learned to eat and cook the foods that were available — tubers underground and meat from animals, both of which are easier to digest when cooked. (my bold)

"Modern humans, says Gowlett, largely can’t live without cooked foods for any length of time; that’s likely an adaptation that only came after we learned to cook effectively with fire.

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"...archaeologists have found evidence from that era of sophisticated tools made using fire. About 400,000 years ago, modern humans and Neanderthals alike were using fire to produce blades. By this time, they had also learned to control the temperature of the fire so that the tools they were making wouldn’t explode in the direct heat of the flame. “Once humans moved from Africa to the Levant, they were hunting smaller animals that required blades to remove all the meat,” says Natalio.

Comment: note my bold. Cooking changed our teeth and guts.

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