March 16, 2008

Neanderthals (Probably) had Language Comparable to Modern Humes
posted by Hank Mabuse 16 years ago
  • Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /home/mofi/lib/mofi/release/mp/http.php on line 56
  • Ooh, cheers for that.
  • Hume?
  • I dreamed that tracicle implemented the new MoFi design without warning, and I thought, ooh, I better send her that idea for a favicon. So I will. Slightly, tangentially related to FPP: Bird Brains Suggest How Vocal Learning Evolved
  • So Brit Hume is pretty much a Neaderthal?
  • Only his friends called him "Brit". I didn't realize there was some objection to the idea that language had been around since peopleses. The primary objection raised in discussing this matter with linguists at the conference was the doubt that the presence of one kind of symbolic activity [body pigmentation, ornamentation] necessarily implies the existence of another kind, language. How can you have human interaction without language? Are they defining language differently from "making sounds to get stuff"? Academics, amirite?
  • Oddly enough, I just sat through a lecture detailing how the Neanderthals couldn't have been nearly advanced as humans since they didn't have language or symbolic interaction. The issue of funeral rituals came up, and was significantly poo-pooed by the lecturer. Me thinks I read something somewhere about funeral rituals involving cave bear skulls, eh? 'thals was good folks. Show 'em some R E S P E C T.
  • Every now and then, Jean Auel turns up at anthropology conferences and reinterates points from Clan of the Cave Bear. I kid you not; she was at the national conference in San Francisco when I went in 2000. Admittedly she does insane amounts of research, but she has her preconceptions.
  • Arrrrrg!! I absolutely despise Auel and her stupid books.
  • Has all the research suggesting that Neaderthals were pale-skinned and that Homo Sapien Sapiens were dark changed the museum displays?
  • no
  • whuzza? I demand linkages. And a definition of "language" that a self-referential peoples cannot have had.
  • ehhhh