Homo Erectus a.k.a Homo Garrulus
The dawn of man is perhaps the most
bankrupt and simplified clichés used to envisage where the tipping
point was in the evolution of modern man. Paleoanthropologists have
been locked in debate over how the base and the trunk of the homo
sapien tree should look. That seems to me to be the academic
equivalent to a judicial kangaroo court. In situ remains and
artifacts belie the hard empirical evidence and point to crazy,
spurious and evidentiary anomalies which bemuddle the need for a
relative framework, as baseline, from which we can extrapolate an
overall trend. Of course, classifying and cataloguing the minutiae by
detailing each branch and twig of the hominids is a necessary aspect
of the study of the evolution of modern man; too often it emerges as
pettifogging or scientific megalomania. The branch of the hominid
tree which is truly magical is the emergence of Homo Erectus.
Homo Erectus gives rise to the
philosophical and physiological concepts of what is means to be
divergent from animals. The evidence displays a skilled and
calculated manipulation of the their environment through the use of
fire and tool technologies; primarily Oldowan and Acheulean
technologies. A less tangible but titillating development is that of
cognition and a sense of abstraction through communication
which are intrinsic building blocks for language. The appearance of
Homo Erectus brought with it the physiological evolutionary features
like a brain size in proportion to body mass and a pronounced Broca's
area. Both of these qualities are intractably necessary for language.
The language of the Homo Erectus may have made use of simplistic
vocalizations but was more plausibly transmitted through the use of
gestures. This proto-language quite possibly was the flywheel for
religion and art and symbolic representation. The academic jury is
still deliberating on this point and the fact is that it may never be
conclusively answered. Nonetheless, it appears reasonable that the
manipulation of ideas which are done by an ordering process of giving
a name (labeling) to specific things would lead to a process of
categorizing these things. This learned method of categorizing in
turn promotes the labeling of concepts in an abstract form. Pointing
is as rudimentary as it gets when it comes to communication in a
gesture driving proto-language. The need for complex syntax and
semantics is a priori redundant. The act of pointing makes apparent
that the “thing” of discernment is the object of the contextual
information. When pointing to the object no abstraction is taking
place; it is purely mundane and concrete.
Imagine a hunting party (by the time of
Homo Erectus the classic assemblage of a hunter-gatherer society is
starting to emerge), skulking about on the Savannah stalking animals
all day, they then point to a herd of buffalo. Those in the hunting
party know exactly what is being pointed to and subsequently know
that the buffalo's could soon be dinner. No extra gesturing is
needed. The contextual information is self contained. Suppose again
that the hunters have for the last week been entirely unlucky in
providing protein to the clan for any number of reasons. For
instance, a particularly arid summer has forced animals to stay
congregated around sparsely located watering holes which are further
away than the traditional nomadic range of the clan. Or perhaps a
large pride of lions has converged on the same hunting territory of
the clan making competition futile. Whatever the reason may be, some
senior male member of the clan would certainly advise a different
tactic; choosing a path of least resistance to acquiring a fresh
kill. Remembering that the buffalo's were especially easy the
previous time they set out on a hunt, this senior male member
gestures to the other males that they should hunt buffalo again. How
does he communicate this idea through abstraction? Let's surmise that
the clan have a gesture whereby two hands are made flat with the
thumbs sticking out and the thumbs are touching the temples on either
side of the head. This rudimentary gesture symbolizes buffalo as a
category; as an abstraction; as language. If we can take a another
leap of scientific faith then we could also argue that the gestural
lexicon might include many more types of abstractions.
Indeed, the case can securely be made
that gestures are the linchpin in the origin of language. Oliver
Sacks points out in his book “Seeing Voices”
that “...isolated deaf adults...will invent gestural
systems, with a very simple syntax and morphology, by which they can
communicate basic needs and feelings to their neighbors...”.
As we touched on earlier the cranial capacity of Homo Erectus was
certainly robust enough for proto-language and possessed a defined
Broca's area which is the epicenter for language orchestration in the
brain. However, Sacks asserts, rightly, that without a group to share
these gestures with and have that sharing extended over at least two
generation the gestures wouldn't evolve into a rich and full
language. Although Sacks is spot on with his assessment of a full and
rich grammatically savvy language with vibrant syntax, it does
overstate the fact that not all languages need necessarily be as
robust to be effective in conveying concepts and contextual
abstractions. A pidgin is a contraction of languages and symbols
which is germinated out of a need to communicate basal ideas and
concepts and by that very nature might never achieve a robust
structure as Sacks espouses. Regardless, these fundamental gestures
as conveyers of abstraction gave rise to verbal language much
like the manufacture and use of tools in emerging technologies aided
the development and manipulation of their environment.
If we fast forward to present day where
robust languages are the norm we discover that gestures persist. Not
only have they remained but they are distinct and unique to common
cultures despite the apparent difference in language. Why have
gestures persisted? What is the significance of the gesture? What do
these gestures say about the need to gesticulate them and not
verbalize them? These, I feel are intriguing questions but beyond the
scope of this introduction to the evolution of gestures. Stay tuned.
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