evolutionary psychology

[evolcon]

I like that theory, I have heard it before.  It has the same possibility as the hunting hypothesis. Thanks for posting science.
  What I like about the hunting hypothesis is that hunting large game like hippopotamus or elephant  requires a large number of hunters, if we were living in large groups we had many to feed.  We could not take the hippo to the camp site, we had to go back to the camp site and inform the tribe.
I'm well aware that is a just so theory, but it's not really mine. It was first proposed by Derek Bickerton. I think maybe I like because it make us (mankind) seem badass.

I’d say hunting had more to do with the domestication of dogs than people- but….taking that hypothesis, the idea that language is what explains the human state,civilization, etc- becomes unworkable.  Now we were chatting away for 290k years before we started building.  Now we were neither anatomically -or- fully modern, but still talking.  Which is to say that we were physically not ourselves and didn’t act like ourselves, either.

The further back we place human language in its contemporary state the less we can then claim that it was some crucial and instigating piece of recent phenomena.

As far as hunting and talking…specifically?  Do you hunt?  How much nattering away goes on in your average hunt?  The rule I learned was simple.  Absolutely no talking.  Ambush.  I learned the rule on the job, without any language cue.  I saw my first buck, got excited, made noise….and received the evil eye and shush fingers.  My grandfather pointed at the deer, pointed at his own ears, and gravely shook his head.  Later, if we were in separate stands, we’d use bird calls for attention and more physical gestures for focus.  Don’t get me wrong, sometimes one of us would startle an animal to get the other a shot- but any loud noise works for that.  We’d whoop.  If the deer ever heard anything but a gunshot, it wasn’t in English.  Considering that erectus ate megafauna….hominids have been sharing habitat for 2mil years with them…we’ve probably always done it that way.  The most important human innovation there is the spear lever or dart thrower.  Atlatl.  We know talking doesn’t account for those because people who may have never spoken and certainly never spoke to each other all arrived at it individually across time and space.

What we have going for us with regards to killing, is an understanding of leverage, ballistics, tool manufacture, future tense behavior….all of this, we’re absolutely certain, predates not only human language…but the human species.  It’s great to be able to talk, too, but that isnt what made us the most successful predators on earth.

But the hunting must have been done by large groups, the game was large and formidable, there were only stone tool weapons, one or two strikes were probably not sufficient to bring down the game, cooperation was necessary. I'm thinking of ants taking down a grasshopper.  language certainly would make cooperation and coordination more successful.  Maybe that is why homo out competed Neanderthals.