WEBVTT - How did language evolve? 0:00:00.320 --> 0:00:02.960 Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. 0:00:03.200 --> 0:00:07.560 It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know 0:00:08.200 --> 0:00:17.239 from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. 0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:19.919 I'm Josh Clark. With me is always this Charles W. 0:00:20.160 --> 0:00:25.160 Chucker Bryant and uh that makes this stuff you should know? 0:00:25.560 --> 0:00:28.159 Is your seat? Okay, Frank, the chair is letting me 0:00:28.200 --> 0:00:33.480 down again. Yeah, he'll do that. Cher he recently fell 0:00:33.520 --> 0:00:38.159 in with a bad crowd and I do too, from 0:00:38.159 --> 0:00:40.720 the way he's making me said, So I'll just I'll 0:00:40.800 --> 0:00:44.960 lean forward. He's become unreliable. Who is it that messes 0:00:45.000 --> 0:00:48.360 with him? I don't know. Somebody who has no idea 0:00:48.360 --> 0:00:50.199 how to sit in a chair properly. That's how you 0:00:50.240 --> 0:00:52.120 need to get next, not just your own mic cover, 0:00:52.200 --> 0:00:54.800 but your own chair. Yeah. I think it's a strickling 0:00:54.840 --> 0:00:57.560 guy from tech stuff. It would be very cool as 0:00:57.600 --> 0:01:00.120 if you had it lower down from the ceiling like 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:03.320 it was stored up there, and then hang like the 0:01:03.400 --> 0:01:06.640 sort of damocles over everybody else's head while they were recording. 0:01:08.000 --> 0:01:12.640 We'll look into that, Chuck. Have you ever heard of 0:01:12.680 --> 0:01:19.360 a little place called the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Yeah, okay, 0:01:19.840 --> 0:01:25.200 go eggheads. UM. So M I T is like the hotbed, 0:01:25.480 --> 0:01:31.120 the center of the linguistics field, among many other fields 0:01:31.680 --> 0:01:37.640 I didn't know. Yeah. Um Noam Chomsky is there. UM. 0:01:37.720 --> 0:01:40.319 And there's another guy whose name escapes me right now, 0:01:40.360 --> 0:01:44.320 but he recently made some headlines because he, I guess, 0:01:44.319 --> 0:01:47.199 got a grant and had his house wired with fish 0:01:47.240 --> 0:01:52.559 I cameras in every room with really high tech audio 0:01:52.600 --> 0:01:56.880 equipment to and from the moment his newborn son came 0:01:56.920 --> 0:02:00.360 home to the age of five. This guy recorded ninety 0:02:00.520 --> 0:02:06.320 thousand hours the whole five years of this kid's life. UM, 0:02:06.360 --> 0:02:10.600 in an effort to see how language acquisition develops in children. 0:02:10.639 --> 0:02:13.399 That's pretty cool, and this child specifically, it is very cool. 0:02:13.440 --> 0:02:19.240 There's a really clumsily titled UM Fast Company article called 0:02:19.720 --> 0:02:23.239 M I T. Scientists captures ninety thousand hours of video 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:27.760 of his son's first words Comma, grafs it, comma what 0:02:28.120 --> 0:02:33.560 graphs it? He and then he grafts it. Yeah. The 0:02:33.680 --> 0:02:37.120 editor was like, I'm going home, yeah exactly so UM. 0:02:37.160 --> 0:02:39.360 But anyway, there's some video and some audio clips in 0:02:39.360 --> 0:02:41.400 there where you can hear like this condensed like over 0:02:41.400 --> 0:02:43.200 five years or over like a six month period. Or 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:45.520 something like that. That's like the kid going from like 0:02:45.600 --> 0:02:49.600 gaga to water and you can hear it like evolve. Interesting. 0:02:50.280 --> 0:02:52.120 Did they learn anything from that? I don't know if 0:02:52.120 --> 0:02:54.799 they have quite yet. And plus I mean like this 0:02:54.840 --> 0:02:58.480 is one child, but it's at the very least very 0:02:58.560 --> 0:03:03.519 very interesting. Um. But the the idea that you can 0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:07.040 learn something about the evolution of language and human beings 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:13.480 from language acquisition and children is a hotly contested idea. UM, 0:03:13.840 --> 0:03:17.000 you wrote what I think is a very fine article. Thanks. 0:03:17.120 --> 0:03:19.280 You did a good job with this. How did language evolve? 0:03:19.360 --> 0:03:22.320 It was shorty you were talking about, though not how 0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:26.120 we acquire language skills as as um kids, but as 0:03:26.200 --> 0:03:30.880 a species. How did humans acquire language? Because we're the 0:03:30.880 --> 0:03:33.480 only ones that can say things like this, But you 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:35.080 go to great lens to point out that we're not 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:38.600 the only ones that communicate. True, I wouldn't say great 0:03:38.640 --> 0:03:41.320 links that sort of al It was like two or 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:46.440 three sentences, Sure animals communicate. Well, no, it is. It 0:03:46.560 --> 0:03:47.920 is very true, and I think it was a good 0:03:47.920 --> 0:03:50.320 thing to start off with because humans can often be 0:03:50.440 --> 0:03:58.120 very um homocentric. You know, so you say birds chirp, 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:05.400 porpoises go right, Yeah, uh, there are community. We're the 0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:10.040 only ones who converbialize. That's right, right, Yes, we talk words. 0:04:10.200 --> 0:04:16.599 And we don't know exactly how this evolved for sure, because, um, 0:04:16.640 --> 0:04:18.839 there's a problem when it comes to things like evolution. 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:20.920 There's not a ton of evidence. A lot of times 0:04:21.640 --> 0:04:26.360 like hard evidence. Um, I read this one guy's paper. 0:04:26.400 --> 0:04:28.520 There's a lot of papers on this. Yeah, this is 0:04:28.560 --> 0:04:30.840 a really First of all, I want you to just 0:04:30.880 --> 0:04:34.279 be very quiet. Do you hear that off in the 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:38.200 business the explosion? Yes, we're standing in the midst of 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:43.479 a mine field. Linguistics is a mine field, and they 0:04:43.560 --> 0:04:48.719 love like linguistics. People really love language and talking about 0:04:48.760 --> 0:04:51.560 it like and putting down people who disagree with them. 0:04:51.960 --> 0:04:55.680 So we should tread lightly here, we should. Um. But 0:04:55.760 --> 0:04:58.560 one guy's paper that I read today meets some university paper. 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:01.680 He said that ideally, if we're going to study something 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:04.640 like these neurological changes that happened in the brain, we 0:05:04.640 --> 0:05:09.840 would have, um, a large number of petrified whole brains 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:14.560 representing lots of species over lots of time. But we 0:05:14.600 --> 0:05:20.080 don't have that. Unfortunately, they're big gaps. Uh. And even 0:05:20.200 --> 0:05:23.360 even even not taking into account gaps, we don't have 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:27.640 fossilized brains. Yeah, the closest thing we have is a 0:05:27.680 --> 0:05:30.680 fossilized skull, which we can analyze and be like, well, 0:05:30.720 --> 0:05:33.159 there is kind of room for a big enough brain 0:05:33.240 --> 0:05:37.719 maybe for language. Yeah, what's that called cranial indocasting? I 0:05:37.760 --> 0:05:41.080 think so, Um, that's a that's a good term for it. 0:05:41.200 --> 0:05:44.919 And people won't even know if I'm wrong. Um. What 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:47.680 they do have a little bit of evidence on is 0:05:47.800 --> 0:05:53.159 that the shape of our vocal tract um wasn't until 0:05:53.160 --> 0:05:55.640 about a hundred thousand years ago, wasn't able to even 0:05:55.680 --> 0:06:01.239 able to make um, the vocalizations of the modern speech sounds. 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:05.320 So it wasn't even possible, Although that doesn't necessarily mean 0:06:05.320 --> 0:06:07.800 there wasn't language, because it just could have been a 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:12.720 much more primitive version of what evolved of grunts. Yeah, exactly, 0:06:12.920 --> 0:06:15.000 and I did see someone. Even though that's all this 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:17.800 was poo pooed by most people. Uh, some people think 0:06:17.800 --> 0:06:22.320 that spoken language of all from sign language, and that 0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:26.440 our modern gestures are holdover from that, which I thought 0:06:26.480 --> 0:06:29.320 was interesting, but most people go, now that's not true. Um. 0:06:29.360 --> 0:06:31.760 I ran into another one. And what you're talking about, um, 0:06:31.800 --> 0:06:36.680 for everybody listening, is called a proto language, and evidence 0:06:36.680 --> 0:06:39.120 of a proto language supports one theory, which we'll talk 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:41.960 about in a minute. But um, one idea for proto 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:45.360 language is that we started talking using on a monopeia, 0:06:46.200 --> 0:06:49.159 which would make snap crackling pop like the oldest words 0:06:49.440 --> 0:06:53.520 on earth, you know. Um. But well, I guess we 0:06:53.560 --> 0:06:55.760 should probably get into it now, Like what are there 0:06:55.800 --> 0:07:00.800 basically two competing theories for how we whire the language 0:07:00.800 --> 0:07:04.240 as a species? Right? Yeah? And I like both of them. 0:07:04.360 --> 0:07:06.320 I noticed at the end You're like, why can't we 0:07:06.360 --> 0:07:09.560 all just get along as far as linguistics go? Because 0:07:09.560 --> 0:07:11.200 I'm not a linguist, and so I'm not gonna sit 0:07:11.200 --> 0:07:14.080 here and poople and argue um because I'm not smart enough. 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:18.800 I don't know enough about it. But the first Josh 0:07:19.000 --> 0:07:24.600 is um that we adapted to survive, so we learned 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:27.400 how to speak. Then that's kind of the simplest way 0:07:27.440 --> 0:07:29.400 to say it. Um. The example I gave in here 0:07:29.560 --> 0:07:32.880 is uh. And then we'll talk about who you know, 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:38.120 who are the leaders in this whole category that believed this? 0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:41.480 But uh took took's hunting on the range on the 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:46.400 plains in the Savannah, and took took um thunder scares 0:07:46.400 --> 0:07:49.920 away the deer, so Took Took goes hungry. So then 0:07:50.080 --> 0:07:53.560 later on Took took his already maybe learned to grunt 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:56.280 about like the deer being being nearby to his buddy. 0:07:56.560 --> 0:07:58.680 Who's his friend? Did we name every name my friend? 0:07:58.880 --> 0:08:04.360 Oh more Morty. Yeah, so he's already learned how to 0:08:04.400 --> 0:08:08.080 tell Morty that deer nearby, so shut up, right, because 0:08:08.120 --> 0:08:12.440 Morty talks incessantly. Uh So, now all of a sudden, 0:08:12.520 --> 0:08:16.280 he learns that thunder and bad weather might scare deer away, 0:08:16.320 --> 0:08:18.400 so he goes hungry. So he learns now, I've got 0:08:18.400 --> 0:08:21.600 to learn like what bad weather looks like coming in 0:08:21.720 --> 0:08:24.680 and how to tell Morty, hey, pick up the paste, dude, 0:08:24.680 --> 0:08:27.000 because bad weather is coming and we don't want to 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:29.760 go hungry again. So that was just one of the 0:08:29.800 --> 0:08:34.360 stepping stones in evolving speech, right, And it is kind 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:37.880 of like, um, the the idea behind it is that 0:08:38.080 --> 0:08:42.080 the speech evolved out of the combinations of these things, 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:44.440 like you're saying, yeah, so you put them together and 0:08:44.480 --> 0:08:46.840 all of a sudden, huh that makes a lot of sense. 0:08:46.880 --> 0:08:50.880 I'm able to describe some larger portion of the world 0:08:50.920 --> 0:08:54.480 around us. Yeah, And that's got more complex. The language 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:56.800 had to like as they learn more things, right, like 0:08:56.840 --> 0:08:59.600 we settled down and sure culture would have had like 0:08:59.640 --> 0:09:02.520 a you jimpact on something like that. Yeah, and keeping 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:05.960 children alive apparently, like once we settled in villages, A 0:09:05.960 --> 0:09:07.839 lot of people think that language really took a leap 0:09:07.880 --> 0:09:11.280 forward because we had to, you know, keep the species 0:09:11.320 --> 0:09:16.040 alive by protecting the kids. Um. I guess also the 0:09:16.480 --> 0:09:21.160 idea that you could warn somebody about something, right that 0:09:21.520 --> 0:09:25.120 isn't necessarily just something you could point at and be like, 0:09:25.320 --> 0:09:28.560 you know, let's get out of here through gesture, something 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:31.120 maybe further away, something that you couldn't see right then, 0:09:31.559 --> 0:09:35.760 that would that would lead directly to um to a 0:09:35.880 --> 0:09:39.400 trait that was that led to survival, which is the 0:09:39.440 --> 0:09:42.719 whole basis of natural selection, which means that people who 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:45.000 could do that would be able to go reproduce, and 0:09:45.120 --> 0:09:48.040 that trait would survive and be passed along. And I 0:09:48.040 --> 0:09:52.200 imagine reproduction and all needed its own language as well, right, 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:56.079 you know, I'm like, hey, mama, although in Quest for 0:09:56.200 --> 0:09:59.800 Fire it pretty much just happened, didn't I haven't seen 0:09:59.840 --> 0:10:02.520 that so long. I think that was the first movie 0:10:02.520 --> 0:10:04.720 I ever saw in showtime and Yeah, there wasn't a 0:10:04.720 --> 0:10:06.920 lot of words going on. It was like, you know, 0:10:07.040 --> 0:10:10.520 the ladies are down by the river bending over, filling 0:10:10.600 --> 0:10:14.680 up water buckets and or you know, water pods and 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:18.720 man comes along and just you know, takes care of business. Yeah? 0:10:19.120 --> 0:10:21.959 Is that? Is that an ancient phrase? Takes care of business? 0:10:22.360 --> 0:10:29.360 TCB YEA. So I remember Quest for Fire and another movie. Um, 0:10:29.600 --> 0:10:31.640 we're out on showtime at about the same time a 0:10:31.800 --> 0:10:35.120 movie is called Caveman and it started Ringo Star. Is 0:10:35.160 --> 0:10:37.760 that his picture that is in this article? Yeah, don't 0:10:37.760 --> 0:10:40.280 you like my caption? Yeah? That's I couldn't. I couldn't 0:10:40.280 --> 0:10:43.199 tell just by looking at it, but um yeah, the caption, 0:10:43.240 --> 0:10:44.839 I think is what gave it away. These were the 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:46.960 old days where I would like the highlight of my 0:10:46.960 --> 0:10:50.079 week was writing really clever picture captain star articles. I 0:10:50.080 --> 0:10:51.720 would go home and say, look at this one, Emily, 0:10:52.040 --> 0:10:54.320 it's pretty good. Someone might get this joke. So there's 0:10:54.320 --> 0:10:58.120 a production still of from Caveman of Ringo Star standing 0:10:58.120 --> 0:11:01.040 there and the caption is this cave by Caveman gets 0:11:01.040 --> 0:11:04.720 by with a little help from his friends, beautiful Matty 0:11:04.840 --> 0:11:10.280 guest producer Mattie. Yeah, so that's adaptation theory that basically 0:11:10.320 --> 0:11:13.120 we figured out that we could survive better and more 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:17.040 robustly by talking to one another, and language evolved in 0:11:17.200 --> 0:11:19.960 fits and starts through there. Right. Yeah. And who who's 0:11:19.960 --> 0:11:23.800 gradually I should say gradually? Yes? Um? And that's Stephen Pinker, 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:25.960 who's a great dude. Yeah. Pinker and Bloom in their 0:11:26.000 --> 0:11:30.320 paper Natural Language and Natural Selection. Uh. I mean there 0:11:30.320 --> 0:11:31.920 are a lot of people who agree with them and 0:11:31.920 --> 0:11:34.959 have written quote unquote the book on this since then, 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:41.680 or several books. It's very dense subject. Makes my mind 0:11:41.760 --> 0:11:46.800 melt a little bit. Um, and Pinker and Bloom basically say, uh, 0:11:47.920 --> 0:11:51.560 this is the case. It makes sense. This is just 0:11:52.040 --> 0:11:57.640 standard Darwinian natural selection. What's the problem. I don't have 0:11:57.679 --> 0:12:02.160 a problem with it. Why doesn't everybody just get on board? Uh? Well, 0:12:02.200 --> 0:12:04.880 because there's another competing theory, and there are all sorts 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:08.480 of sub theories, but these are the two big big daddies. Um, 0:12:08.520 --> 0:12:12.679 and this is no nom Chomsky and um. Evolutionary biologists 0:12:12.760 --> 0:12:16.719 Stephen Jay Gould, and they think that it was a 0:12:16.760 --> 0:12:21.320 spandrel or an axaptation. So you know what a spandrel 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:26.160 is well in biology or for real in architecture. But 0:12:26.400 --> 0:12:30.840 please explain. Okay, Well, Stephen J. Gould um coined the 0:12:30.920 --> 0:12:33.920 term spandrel, as you point out in the article. Um, 0:12:33.960 --> 0:12:37.400 and it's just perfect actually in this application, because the spandrel, 0:12:37.520 --> 0:12:42.440 architecturally speaking, is um this triangular area that inevitably is 0:12:42.520 --> 0:12:46.000 created when you put two arched domes next to another 0:12:46.080 --> 0:12:49.000 at right angles, and it looks like if you're looking 0:12:49.040 --> 0:12:53.559 at it looks like purposeful design, like ornamentation. But it's 0:12:53.559 --> 0:12:57.320 actually a byproduct you can't get around. And that's what 0:12:57.400 --> 0:13:00.480 a spandrel is. As far as Gould is concerned, the 0:13:00.559 --> 0:13:07.240 product of another evolutionary process right and language supposedly was 0:13:07.800 --> 0:13:10.360 as far as gold and chomp scare concern just kind 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:15.640 of came about as the result of other stuff, specifically toolmaking. Yeah, 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:19.720 Darwin calls it pre adaptation and later became acceptation. And 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:22.520 which one do you like more, pre adaptation or acceptation? 0:13:22.800 --> 0:13:25.000 Acceptation is a little hard to say, so I'm gonna 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:31.160 go predation. It sounds so like important for us, you know. Um. 0:13:31.240 --> 0:13:33.200 But a quick example of that, and this is the 0:13:33.240 --> 0:13:36.320 one most often cited, is that, uh, there's a theory 0:13:36.320 --> 0:13:38.959 out there that bird feathers were originally meant to keep birds, warm, 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:44.360 and flying came about after that as a spandrel makes sense. 0:13:46.040 --> 0:13:51.320 Well's the problem exactly. So you said that our brains 0:13:51.320 --> 0:13:54.480 adapted to where we could they got larger, to where 0:13:54.480 --> 0:13:57.960 we could make tools, and things in language came about 0:13:58.000 --> 0:14:00.400 because of the result of that. And this isn't just 0:14:00.520 --> 0:14:02.560 kind of I mean, it's not like they're like, well, 0:14:02.600 --> 0:14:06.679 we can run, so we can talk. Um. There's specific 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:10.320 areas of the brain that are associated with both toolmaking 0:14:10.679 --> 0:14:16.080 and tool use and language. UM. And there's actually two. 0:14:16.440 --> 0:14:20.320 There's um Broker's area and there's more. Nikki's area and 0:14:20.480 --> 0:14:24.640 Broker's area was named after a French neurosurgeon named Paul Broca, 0:14:25.200 --> 0:14:29.080 and in eighteen sixty one he um described the patient 0:14:29.200 --> 0:14:32.400 named Tan. Tan wasn't the guy's real name. No one 0:14:32.440 --> 0:14:36.680 knew his real name. Um. He was the only thing, 0:14:36.840 --> 0:14:39.920 the only syllable he could pronounce that he could form 0:14:40.280 --> 0:14:43.800 was Tan. So they're like, well, that's your name, pal Um. 0:14:43.880 --> 0:14:46.400 And after he died, Brokea opened up his skull and 0:14:46.440 --> 0:14:49.120 looked at his brain and found a huge lesion on 0:14:49.200 --> 0:14:53.160 the area now named broke A's area, and that's come 0:14:53.240 --> 0:14:56.200 to be associated with speech production. The weird thing about 0:14:56.200 --> 0:15:00.760 Tan is he could understand spoken language. If you're Tan, 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:03.360 you look um, you look kind of Tan. I think 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:05.120 maybe you should stay out of the sun. He could 0:15:05.880 --> 0:15:08.000 notice stay out of the sun. He wasn't There wasn't 0:15:08.040 --> 0:15:12.840 anything wrong with him other than he could not produce speech. Well, 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:15.080 I bet he was really ticked off with his name. 0:15:15.120 --> 0:15:17.560 Then I can say his Tan. They're like, we'll just 0:15:17.600 --> 0:15:20.720 call you Tan, And he said he was probably like Nor, Yeah, 0:15:20.920 --> 0:15:24.280 it's ignacious anything but Tan. Yeah. I mean, I I 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:27.240 imagine the guy probably was like, you know, half mad 0:15:27.280 --> 0:15:29.960 by the time he died, just out of frustration. Well, 0:15:30.240 --> 0:15:32.800 stroke patients. You know, my grandfather had a stroke and 0:15:33.600 --> 0:15:36.000 tried to speak in his head. He was saying words, 0:15:36.040 --> 0:15:37.760 but it would come out as gobbledygook and he would 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:39.960 get really frustrated. It was very sad. So now that 0:15:40.040 --> 0:15:43.280 was your grandfather. So what it sounds like your grandfather 0:15:43.600 --> 0:15:47.160 UM had a problem with was his were Nikki's Area. Yeah, 0:15:47.480 --> 0:15:50.560 and that was named after a German neuro surgeon who 0:15:50.680 --> 0:15:56.240 found that UM his patients who could speak but they 0:15:56.240 --> 0:15:59.680 weren't making any sense, had lesions on the area now 0:15:59.720 --> 0:16:01.280 known it is were Nicky's Area. So if you put 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:03.960 the two together, broke his area which is involved in 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:07.120 speech production, and we're Nikki's area, which is involved with 0:16:07.320 --> 0:16:13.800 UM speech comprehension, language comprehension. You have normally talking people 0:16:13.920 --> 0:16:17.640 like us. Yes, and we first saw we're Nikki's area. 0:16:18.040 --> 0:16:21.960 I think it was Ricky, we're Nikki the guy, we're 0:16:22.040 --> 0:16:27.360 Nikki's area, and broke his area. UM, and the temporal, parietal, 0:16:27.480 --> 0:16:31.400 and UH occipital lobes of the brain physically connected for 0:16:31.440 --> 0:16:36.080 the first time in Homo habilis or habilis. So wait, 0:16:36.120 --> 0:16:38.720 what was it? What's that called where you examine sculls 0:16:38.800 --> 0:16:41.480 to see if there was probably some brain there. UM. 0:16:41.520 --> 0:16:46.400 I believe that it's called cranial indocasting. Nice, I think so. 0:16:46.400 --> 0:16:49.160 So they think that UM that this This would make 0:16:49.200 --> 0:16:51.640 a lot of sense if Homo habilis UM was the 0:16:51.640 --> 0:16:56.680 first one to talk, because they also often associate Homo 0:16:56.720 --> 0:16:59.800 habilis is the first one to use tools. Right, this 0:16:59.880 --> 0:17:03.560 is this isn't question I found recently it's to come 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:07.280 under question that possibly UM the oldest tools, the older 0:17:07.320 --> 0:17:12.600 one tools which are like UM scrapers, hammers, UM I 0:17:12.640 --> 0:17:16.719 think brain crushers, right, basically just stone tools that are 0:17:16.800 --> 0:17:19.840 used to like skin meat off a bone. They're like 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:22.199 two point three million years old. They think that they 0:17:22.280 --> 0:17:25.760 might be slightly older than Homo habilists. Then the other 0:17:25.800 --> 0:17:29.280 problem with linking language and humans and Homo habilis is 0:17:29.320 --> 0:17:34.119 we're not we're not sure we're on habiliss same tree. 0:17:34.640 --> 0:17:39.120 Oh yeah, But nonetheless, Homo habilist does have the cute 0:17:39.200 --> 0:17:42.520 nickname a handyman. I've never heard that because he was 0:17:42.560 --> 0:17:45.560 supposedly the first tool users, and that makes sense. Yeah, 0:17:45.640 --> 0:17:48.840 it's better than Bob the Builder, but there's still that 0:17:48.840 --> 0:17:53.880 that link right there between tool use and um language, right, 0:17:54.119 --> 0:17:57.959 which they think is makes him in her much more 0:17:58.000 --> 0:18:05.359 advanced than the Australia Eopithecus who came before homoobilist. So um, 0:18:05.520 --> 0:18:08.360 the whole reason why this is important is because they're 0:18:08.400 --> 0:18:12.000 trying to nail down where language first came about. And 0:18:13.320 --> 0:18:16.880 if you subscribe to Gold and Chomsky, it just all 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:18.400 of a sudden it was there and people were talking 0:18:18.440 --> 0:18:21.120 to each other. Yeah, it was like one one mutation 0:18:21.280 --> 0:18:23.800 happened and then all of a sudden people were able 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:26.560 to speak and they were like, oh man, I've been 0:18:26.600 --> 0:18:30.760 wanting to get some stuff off my chest for generations. Um, 0:18:30.800 --> 0:18:33.719 if you listen to Pinker and Bloom or you know what, 0:18:33.760 --> 0:18:35.800 I feel bad for Bloom. If you listen to Bloom 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:40.400 and Pinker, Um, I mean we know about that, don't we. Uh. 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:42.680 If you listen to Bloom and Pinker, then it took, 0:18:42.920 --> 0:18:45.280 you know, a very long time for language to evolve, 0:18:45.400 --> 0:18:50.240 and gradually by putting combinations together. The thing is Ghoul 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:53.080 before he died said you know what, there's not nearly 0:18:53.240 --> 0:18:59.160 enough time for language to evolve. And what's more, if 0:18:59.200 --> 0:19:02.480 there was some sort of gradual evolution of language, then 0:19:02.560 --> 0:19:08.840 chimps should show some sort of propensity towards language. They do, 0:19:09.160 --> 0:19:13.040 but apparently not in any way that any linguist who's 0:19:13.200 --> 0:19:18.400 saying would it would call actual language the beginnings of language. Um, 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:21.320 it's communication, but not actual language, right, like you mentioned 0:19:21.320 --> 0:19:24.960 at the beginning of the article. Sure, but um, Bloom 0:19:24.960 --> 0:19:30.000 and Pinker point out, So chimps and humans diverged about 0:19:30.040 --> 0:19:33.560 six million years ago. That's three hundred thousand generations for 0:19:33.640 --> 0:19:37.040 language to evolve. That's plenty of time, they say, and 0:19:37.119 --> 0:19:41.199 Gould from beyond the Grace says, no, it's not as 0:19:41.240 --> 0:19:45.000 he did. Okay, Uh, well you know what Pinker actually 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:48.760 said about that in his defense was look at the 0:19:48.840 --> 0:19:52.040 high racks h y r a X. It is um 0:19:52.080 --> 0:19:54.879 because people say, well, we see in the DNA the 0:19:54.960 --> 0:19:58.960 high Racks shares the DNA with the African elephant. And 0:19:59.080 --> 0:20:00.639 if you look at a higher because it looks like 0:20:00.680 --> 0:20:04.080 a large rat, oh, it looks nothing like an elephant. 0:20:04.160 --> 0:20:06.240 So he's like, just because you share all that DNA 0:20:06.359 --> 0:20:10.800 doesn't mean that you're gonna evolve the exact same way. Yeah, 0:20:11.240 --> 0:20:15.159 so that makes sense. Yeah, and some people pose and 0:20:15.200 --> 0:20:18.399 I sort of agree that they're not mutually exclusive. You 0:20:18.440 --> 0:20:21.240 don't have to have one without the other. Uh. It 0:20:21.560 --> 0:20:25.439 may have been acceptation, and then from that point it 0:20:25.520 --> 0:20:27.960 may have very much been a matter of natural selection 0:20:28.040 --> 0:20:31.760 because the better you were communicating, the better you were surviving. 0:20:33.000 --> 0:20:36.800 I like that idea too. Um. I don't think that though, 0:20:36.840 --> 0:20:40.040 if you put Stephen Pinker in um Chomsky in the 0:20:40.080 --> 0:20:43.639 same room that they would be like, you know this, 0:20:43.640 --> 0:20:47.320 this all this works together. I think like they're tracing 0:20:47.320 --> 0:20:49.919 it back to the origin point, the moment where it 0:20:49.960 --> 0:20:53.520 began either as a either it began to evolve or 0:20:53.640 --> 0:20:57.439 just appeared as a result of a incredibly sophisticated machine 0:20:57.440 --> 0:21:00.760 that just started performing another function as a result of 0:21:00.800 --> 0:21:04.159 its sophistication. And it's all kind of conjecture anyway, But 0:21:04.200 --> 0:21:06.560 there's still I mean, there's still support. There's support for 0:21:06.600 --> 0:21:11.480 different ones like UM, like brain plasticity, neural plasticity. The 0:21:11.520 --> 0:21:14.960 fact that our our brains can be restructured and reorganized 0:21:15.000 --> 0:21:18.000 supports the idea that language evolved gradually, right, and they 0:21:18.080 --> 0:21:20.479 just started to build and building building, Possibly that's how 0:21:20.520 --> 0:21:24.120 our brains became larger, right, chicken and the egg thing. 0:21:24.320 --> 0:21:27.000 But people also say, like, if large brain equals things 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:30.359 like speech, then why don't like whales and things like 0:21:30.400 --> 0:21:33.080 that with much larger brains and things like speech. That's 0:21:33.080 --> 0:21:37.040 another great argument too, uh. And then mirror neurons UM 0:21:37.160 --> 0:21:39.880 kind of lends support to the idea that it's just 0:21:40.520 --> 0:21:45.760 it's just a spandrel of brain function because toolmaking and 0:21:45.880 --> 0:21:50.600 UM and speech both used the same areas, right, and 0:21:50.640 --> 0:21:54.679 then both um and then toolmaking lights up when you 0:21:54.720 --> 0:21:57.280 watch somebody use tools, and when you're using tools yourself 0:21:57.440 --> 0:22:01.120 in the broker's area. Interesting, yeah, or friend, samir neurons 0:22:01.720 --> 0:22:05.919 they're back. Have you got anything else? There's a lot 0:22:05.920 --> 0:22:10.240 of scrippling over there. Oh yeah. So one of Chomsky's 0:22:10.280 --> 0:22:15.480 big points is that, uh, that grammar or the language 0:22:15.480 --> 0:22:20.840 is innate, which makes it biological not cultural. Okay, UM 0:22:21.000 --> 0:22:24.480 is universal grammar, which is that like if he always 0:22:24.480 --> 0:22:27.480 says that if if a Martian anthropologist came down and 0:22:27.560 --> 0:22:31.480 studied all human languages, that they would he would reasonably 0:22:31.520 --> 0:22:36.120 conclude that all of that information is based on an 0:22:36.119 --> 0:22:41.040 internal structure rather than culture. Basically, um and the the 0:22:41.240 --> 0:22:45.000 key to universal grammar supposedly is recursion, which is like 0:22:45.080 --> 0:22:47.280 me saying, like, I'm gonna go to the store, the 0:22:47.320 --> 0:22:49.360 one down the street, you know, the one that has 0:22:49.400 --> 0:22:51.399 the really good hot dogs. I'll be back in a 0:22:51.440 --> 0:22:55.680 little bit. It's taking um. It's adding phrases within phrases. 0:22:56.160 --> 0:23:00.520 There's no other um. There's no other community cation in 0:23:00.560 --> 0:23:04.200 any animal species that would include this, which makes that human. 0:23:04.440 --> 0:23:08.879 And supposedly all human languages contain recursion. Except there's a 0:23:08.960 --> 0:23:14.600 challenger now called Paraha. It's Amazonian. There's like five people 0:23:14.640 --> 0:23:17.760 who speak it, really, five hundred and one, including the 0:23:17.840 --> 0:23:23.560 one um M I T trained linguist who studied it 0:23:23.600 --> 0:23:26.320 for thirty years, is the only one who knows it 0:23:26.560 --> 0:23:30.120 who's now saying this thing. They don't have recursion, so 0:23:30.680 --> 0:23:34.880 universal grammars wrong. Therefore Chomsky's whole thing is wrong. There's 0:23:34.920 --> 0:23:38.560 a pretty cool article on Chronicle of Higher Education that's 0:23:38.560 --> 0:23:43.720 worth reading called Angry Words. You know that's a big 0:23:43.720 --> 0:23:46.400 deal right now, is disappearing languages. And I don't think 0:23:46.440 --> 0:23:48.360 I think these people are As far as I got 0:23:48.400 --> 0:23:52.280 from the article, they seem like they are fine. There's 0:23:52.400 --> 0:23:54.800 not that many of them, but they're not being encroached 0:23:54.880 --> 0:23:57.440 upon any further. I think they're protected. Interesting. They're just 0:23:57.520 --> 0:24:01.159 kind of living out there their existence and doing their thing. Actually, no, 0:24:01.200 --> 0:24:03.800 I'm Chomsky is in the bushes behind them with the blowgun. 0:24:06.080 --> 0:24:09.080 Well that's that's all I got. That's good stuff. This 0:24:09.160 --> 0:24:11.480 could have been like ten hours long. Yeah. Easy for 0:24:11.560 --> 0:24:14.160 linguists out there, they're like, oh, what a broad overview. 0:24:14.240 --> 0:24:18.280 That's exactly what this is like. Um, if you want 0:24:18.320 --> 0:24:20.160 to learn more and you want to see this picture 0:24:20.160 --> 0:24:22.400 of ringo start just as a caveman, you should read 0:24:22.440 --> 0:24:25.680 the article written by one Charles W. Bryant called how 0:24:25.720 --> 0:24:29.520 did Language Evolve? Uh? Type that into the search bar 0:24:29.600 --> 0:24:32.200 at how stuff works dot com and it will bring 0:24:32.240 --> 0:24:34.720