[Xmca-l] Re: Cultural historical

Tue Mar 20 22:38:47 PDT 2018

I think that the thesis that *mime* (to generalise beyond
signing) is a plausible precursor to spoken language, and
there is are substantial anthropological arguments to
support that thesis. It seems to me that stone tools are
precursors of tools more generally, and mime may be a
precursor to spoken language, while the anatomical
prerequisites to speech are evolving. How did speech become
such a necessity that it drove anatomical change, and
when/why did tool=making "take off" after stagnating for
millennia?

But I'm only guessing, as are you David!

This is not a palaeontologists' list, so I guess I was
over-optimistic to think I'd get a decisive answer to this.

Andy

------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
ttp://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
On 21/03/2018 4:24 PM, David Kellogg wrote:
> I meant deaf people. There's a strong argument being made by deaf
> linguists--which I agree with--that holds that spoken languages are an
> offshoot of sign rather than the other way around. This sheds some light on
> Andy's problem: people developed spoken languages when they found they had
> other things to do with their hands, like hold tools. But I also think that
> pre-linguistic children are an important minority that prefers the visual
> channel, at least for taking in information, just as we adults who get most
> of our information through reading do.
>
> There are some scripts that are more visual and others that are more
> auditory--and within the same script we find elements that are more visual
> (Chinese radicals) and others that are more auditory (the phonetic
> components of Chinese characters). Even in English there are some elements
> that are visually salient but not auditorily salient (e.g. punctuation,
> variations in handwriting styles, fonts, etc.) and other elements that are
> more auditory (the International Phonetic Alphabet which is really English
> based and which has sought, for over a century, a perfect match between
> phonemes and graphemes). Phonics is based on the idea that English has
> evolved towards a one phoneme-one grapheme match; in fact, it has evolved
> away from it.
>
> David Kellogg
> Sangmyung University
>
> Recent Article in *Early Years*
>
> The question of questions: Hasan’s critiques, Vygotsky’s crises, and the
> child’s first interrogatives
> <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09575146.2018.1431874>
>
> Free e-print available at:
> https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/6EeWMigjFARavQjDJjcW/full
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 1:11 PM, Helena Worthen <helenaworthen@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> David, what is the important minority that you’re referring to:
>>
>> "... the lowering of the vocal tract was phenomenal to language;
>> it was only an epiphenomenal circumstance which made the majority of humans
>> choose the vocal channel for language while an important minority choose
>> the visual channel” — ?
>>
>> And how can we see what can be seen in the visual channel?
>>
>> Helena Worthen
>> helenaworthen@gmail.com
>> Berkeley, CA 94707 510-828-2745
>> Blog US/ Viet Nam:
>> helenaworthen.wordpress.com
>> skype: helena.worthen1
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> On Mar 21, 2018, at 8:37 AM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Andy has a knack for winkling brilliant insights out of early Vygotsky:
>> he
>>> remarks somewhere that "Ape, Primitive, Child: Studies in the History of
>>> Behavior," a book which I really didn't care much for, taught him that
>>> whenever we decide on some essential distinction between human and
>>> non-human behavior, we necessarily find rudiments of it in non-human
>>> behavior. To which I would only add that the circumstance that the
>>> rudiments of human behavior are linked  to non-human behavior doesn't
>> make
>>> them indistinguishable. On the contrary, it is really only because human
>>> behaviors are distinct that we can speak of them being linked (we don't
>>> talk of air-breathing in humans as being linked to air-breathing in apes,
>>> because the process is really one and the same; we do speak of language
>> in
>>> humans as being linked to ape vocalizations precisely because they are
>>> distinct processes). If this is true of anthropogenetic phenomena like
>> free
>>> will, language and literacy, it's also true of their  symptomatic
>>> epiphenomena, such as migration, culture, and literature. I don't agree
>>> with Andy that the lowering of the vocal tract was phenomenal to
>> language;
>>> it was only an epiphenomenal circumstance which made the majority of
>> humans
>>> choose the vocal channel for language while an important minority choose
>>> the visual channel, to which the majority again reverted once alphabets
>> and
>>> literacy were invented (again, an exercise of some rudimentary form of
>> free
>>> will).
>>>
>>> Compare migration along a seacoast with migration into a mountainous
>>> region. One requires no major change in productive relations, while the
>>> other probably does. Similar with migration along an East-West axis. This
>>> requires relatively little free will, as the climate does not change and
>>> many of the plants and animals which provide food are probably the same.
>> In
>>> contrast, migration along a North-South axis, which involves climate
>> change
>>> and corresponding adaptations, would require relatively more communal
>>> discussion, the process Andy calls collaborative decision making. I think
>>> that wandering out of Africa involved, on the one hand, migration along
>> the
>>> Nile and coastlines and, on the other, migration out of a mountainous
>>> region (the Rift Valley is pretty mountainous). But it also involved
>>> migration along a North-South axis and not an East-West one. Of course,
>>> staying put in Africa probably also involved collaborative decision
>> making
>>> over millenia, but we don't have any record of the decision as we do with
>>> leaving the home continent
>>>
>>> David Kellogg
>>> Sangmyung University
>>>
>>> Recent Article in *Early Years*
>>>
>>> The question of questions: Hasan’s critiques, Vygotsky’s crises, and the
>>> child’s first interrogatives
>>> <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09575146.2018.1431874>
>>>
>>> Free e-print available at:
>>> https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/6EeWMigjFARavQjDJjcW/full
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 9:07 AM, Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net>
>> wrote:
>>>> David, they wouldn't have known they were leaving their home continent,
>>>> would they? Some of them were just lucky enough to wander in the
>> direction
>>>> of a land bridge, instead of into the ocean. Like any species that
>> spreads
>>>> into a new geographical location, no conscious decision required.
>>>>
>>>> Martin, who wandered into South America
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> On Mar 19, 2018, at 7:50 AM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>>> Somewhere in the discussion of Monica and Fernando's article, Fernando
>>>> made
>>>>> the remark that history does not know "ifs". Similarly, Monica implied
>> at
>>>>> one point that large technological changes must be taken as given; they
>>>> are
>>>>> not something over which humans have control. But even if we accept
>>>>> the "Out of Africa" story which this article undermines, we are left
>> with
>>>>> the apparently conscious decision of early hominids to leave the home
>>>>> continent, something none of the other great apes ever determined upon.
>>>>> Vygotsky remarked that rudiments of all four forms of higher
>>>>> behavior--instinct, enculturation, creativity, and free will that is
>> none
>>>>> of these--appear even in infancy. So it appears that free will was
>> always
>>>>> part of anthropogenesis, and consequently that history--including
>> present
>>>>> history--knows nothing but ifs. We just don't see the others because we
>>>> are
>>>>> sitting in one of them.
>>>>>
>>>>> David Kellogg
>>>>> Sangmyung University
>>>>>
>>>>> Recent Article in *Early Years*
>>>>>
>>>>> The question of questions: Hasan’s critiques, Vygotsky’s crises, and
>> the
>>>>> child’s first interrogatives
>>>>> <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09575146.2018.1431874>
>>>>>
>>>>> Free e-print available at:
>>>>> https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/6EeWMigjFARavQjDJjcW/full
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Mon, Mar 19, 2018 at 7:33 AM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> This synoptic story of the current state of research on human origins
>>>> seems
>>>>>> relevant to the cultural-historical folks around.
>>>>>> mike
>>>>>>
>>>>>> https://www.sapiens.org/evolution/human-evolution-
>>>>>> australia-asia/?utm_source=SAPIENS.org+Subscribers&utm_
>>>>>> campaign=1b31c25316-Email+Blast+12.22.2017&utm_medium=
>>>>>> email&utm_term=0_18b7e41cd8-1b31c25316-199570669
>>>>>>
>>>>
>>
>>