evolutionary psychology

[The Grand Nudger]

Have any of the examples in that video caused you to revisit your position?

[evolcon]

I meant those posts to show the limits of non-human communications. To labor a point, the post about ape "language" demonstrates just what a sham that whole project was, Rimbaugh was either incredibly naive or just a con artist. There are still many otherwise intelligent people that believe apes can be taught a language
Human complex language has given us a giant leap in learning; we no longer have to see, hear or smell something to believe it to be true. We can now be informed by words. Languages gave humans an incredible acceleration in the learning process. All the wisdom of all those who came before us can now be passed on orally, and, at least in the last few millennium, by the written word.

[The Grand Nudger]

So, no. Imagining that any research that disagrees with you must be a con. Sure..that must be it. You couldn't possibly be wrong.

At any rate, I agree that language is awesome, especially the written word. We obviously love it around here. Then again, the written word was also the vehicle of persistent misinformation..that's what we were learning for quite some time. An additional complication is that we were already building civilizations when we started writing. Already an apex species when we began to speak.

The question almost asks itself. If human language is as great as you think it is, does what you think it does, how did you come to hold the positions expressed in this thread?

[evolcon]

By most theories in anthropology, language probably developed some time during the Pleistocene. Anthropologists seem to have settled on a period of about 120,000 years ago, long before any type of what we would call civilization. I can't imagine any complex project without complex communication.

What research disagrees with me, and to which aspect.

[The Grand Nudger]

Yeah, somewhere between 50k and 120k. Ants do good work. Their mounds and tunnels are complex as all get out. OFC, like so many other animals, they communicate with each other...but they don't appear to have the need that we appear to have for supervisors or orders. We're probably not the best builders in the animal kingdom by any metric that isn't wholly self serving. A subject touched upon in the video you offered with regards to intelligence, too.

You seem to believe that primate researchers are running a con, I have every expectation that you'd resort to the same with any number of other examples that could be brought up. None of the examples in the video you posted caused you to revisit your position, after all.

I'm still wondering about proto languages, btw. If you insist that no other animal does what we do, would you call what they do proto language, such as what we must have been doing before we started doing whatever you think counts as language? I'd repeat my previous question as well. If language and the written word does what you think it does, how did you come to hold the positions you've espoused in the thread? Are you simply unaware, or have you been actively misinformed?

[Angrboda]

[evolcon]

Yeah, somewhere between 50k and 120k.  Ants do good work.  Their mounds and tunnels are complex as all get out.  OFC, like so many other animals, they communicate with each other...but they don't appear to have the need that we appear to have for supervisors or orders.  We're probably not the best builders in the animal kingdom by any metric that isn't wholly self serving.  A subject touched upon in the video you offered with regards to intelligence, too.

You seem to believe that primate researchers are running a con, I have every expectation that you'd resort to the same with any number of other examples that could be brought up.  None of the examples in the video you posted caused you to revisit your position, after all.

I'm still wondering about proto languages, btw.  If you insist that no other animal does what we do, would you call what they do proto language, such as what we must have been doing before we started doing whatever you think counts as language?  I'd repeat my previous question as well.  If language and the written word does what you think it does, how did you come to hold the positions you've espoused in the thread?  Are you simply unaware, or have you been actively misinformed?

[The Grand Nudger]

Did the awesomeness of language lead to you fucking quote tags up?

[evolcon]

Animal grunts, moans, clicks and whistles are not proto-languages, they have existed for millennium and they have not evolved. Human language is unique, in a few tens of thousands of years it has become a part of the human "social DNA". Children are driven to learn language if left largely alone, twins have been known to develop their own form of language.
Colonies, hive and nest building has been shown to be instinctive, there are bird nests of incredible complexity, built without a bit of communication. The theory as far as I know is mine alone, developed after years of studying human behavior.

As a aside, I do sometime copy and paste, but only from a book (unpublished) that I wrote years ago.

[The Grand Nudger]

At least you recognize that this theory is yours alone. It's certainly not representative of..well..absolutely anything in the body of scientific literature about human beings or other animals.

If you wanted to study some humans that might provide you with clarity, try feral children. That's what "largely left alone" looks like. They have significant difficulty with alot of human social interaction, specifically human language.