Language is a culturally-modulated species characteristic, like hair. Humans (like other species) were created as such. Therefore, question of origins = how humans spoke (or wore their hair) at creation. Common view in the ancient world (at least the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans) and mediaeval Europe.
Experiment of Psammeticus. Requires an odd set of ideas about nature and nurture, both in the abstract and the concrete senses.
From the History of Herodotus, Book II:
Now the Egyptians, before the reign of their king Psammetichus, believed themselves to be the most ancient of mankind. Since Psammetichus, however, made an attempt to discover who were actually the primitive race, they have been of opinion that while they surpass all other nations, the Phrygians surpass them in antiquity. This king, finding it impossible to make out by dint of inquiry what men were the most ancient, contrived the following method of discovery:- He took two children of the common sort, and gave them over to a herdsman to bring up at his folds, strictly charging him to let no one utter a word in their presence, but to keep them in a sequestered cottage, and from time to time introduce goats to their apartment, see that they got their fill of milk, and in all other respects look after them. His object herein was to know, after the indistinct babblings of infancy were over, what word they would first articulate. It happened as he had anticipated. The herdsman obeyed his orders for two years, and at the end of that time, on his one day opening the door of their room and going in, the children both ran up to him with outstretched arms, and distinctly said "Becos." When this first happened the herdsman took no notice; but afterwards when he observed, on coming often to see after them, that the word was constantly in their mouths, he informed his lord, and by his command brought the children into his presence. Psammetichus then himself heard them say the word, upon which he proceeded to make inquiry what people there was who called anything "becos," and hereupon he learnt that "becos" was the Phrygian name for bread. In consideration of this circumstance the Egyptians yielded their claims, and admitted the greater antiquity of the Phrygians.
That these were the real facts I learnt at Memphis from the priests of Vulcan. The Greeks, among other foolish tales, relate that Psammetichus had the children brought up by women whose tongues he had previously cut out; but the priests said their bringing up was such as I have stated above. I got much other information also from conversation with these priests while I was at Memphis, and I even went to Heliopolis and to Thebes, expressly to try whether the priests of those places would agree in their accounts with the priests at Memphis. The Heliopolitans have the reputation of being the best skilled in history of all the Egyptian.
Experiment of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen. From the Chronicle of Salimbene, thirteenth-century Italian Franciscan:
Note that Frederick is open to the possibility that culture is genetic -- "perchange the tongue of their parents of whom they had been born".
Language is a cultural invention, like the wheel or pottery. There was a time when humans lived who had not yet invented it. Enlightenment speculations mixed as to cultural/biological characterizations of language.
Naturally (though not necessarily) connected with the view that languages, like societies, are of different grades or types: gold/silver/iron; savage/barbaric/civilized. Historical process of progress or of degeneration.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
("On Language" 1836 op. post.)
"The bringing-forth of language is an inner need of man, not merely an external necessity for maintaining communal intercourse, but a thing lying in his own nature."
"The articulated sound, the foundation and essence of speech, is extorted by man from his physical organs through an impulse of his soul; and the animal would be able to do likewise, if it were animated by the same urge."
"It cannot be described by reference to its constitution, but only by the way it is produced, and this is not due to any incapacity on our part, but is typical of its very nature, since it is nothing else but the soul's intention to utter it, and contains only so much of the physical as external perception cannot do without."
Modern additions: evidence of adaptation of the human vocal organs brain to serve the needs of "the articulated sound".
Evolutionary version of the origins question: what sort of "inner need" is the bringing-forth of language? What selective process did it emerge from? what was the biological substrate and how did it change over time?
Darwin
Descent of Man (1871) -- Chapter XIX - Secondary Sexual Characters of Man
The capacity and love for singing or music, though not a sexual character in man, must not here be passed over. Although the sounds emitted by animals of all kinds serve many purposes, a strong case can be made out, that the vocal organs were primarily used and perfected in relation to the propagation of the species. Insects and some few spiders are the lowest animals which voluntarily produce any sound; and this is generally effected by the aid of beautifully constructed stridulating organs, which are often confined to the males. The sounds thus produced consist, I believe in all cases, of the same note, repeated rhythmically;* and this is sometimes pleasing even to the ears of man. The chief and, in some cases, exclusive purpose appears to be either to call or charm the opposite sex.
The sounds produced by fishes are said in some cases to be made only by the males during the breeding-season. All the air-breathing Vertebrata, necessarily possess an apparatus for inhaling and expelling air, with a pipe capable of being closed at one end. Hence when the primeval members of this class were strongly excited and their muscles violently contracted, purposeless sounds would almost certainly have been produced; and these, if they proved in any way serviceable, might readily have been modified or intensified by the preservation of properly adapted variations. The lowest vertebrates which breathe air are amphibians; and of these, frogs and toads possess vocal organs, which are incessantly used during the breeding-season, and which are often more highly developed in the male than in the female. The male alone of the tortoise utters a noise, and this only during the season of love. Male alligators roar or bellow during the same season. Every one knows how much birds use their vocal organs as a means of courtship; and some species likewise perform what may be called instrumental music.
In the class of mammals, with which we are here more particularly concerned, the males of almost all the species use their voices during the breeding-season much more than at any other time; and some are absolutely mute excepting at this season. With other species both sexes, or only the females, use their voices as a love-call. Considering these facts, and that the vocal organs of some quadrupeds are much more largely developed in the male than in the female, either permanently or temporarily during the breeding-season; and considering that in most of the lower classes the sounds produced by the males, serve not only to call but to excite or allure the female, it is a surprising fact that we have not as yet any good evidence that these organs are used by male mammals to charm the females. The American Mycetes caraya perhaps forms an exception, as does the Hylobates agilis, an ape allied to man. This gibbon has an extremely loud but musical voice. Mr. Waterhouse states,* "It appeared to me that in ascending and descending the scale, the intervals were always exactly half-tones; and I am sure that the highest note was the exact octave to the lowest. The quality of the notes is very musical; and I do not doubt that a good violinist would be able to give a correct idea of the gibbon's composition, excepting as regards its loudness." Mr. Waterhouse then gives the notes. Professor Owen, who is a musician, confirms the foregoing statement, and remarks, though erroneously, that this gibbon "alone of brute mammals may be said to sing." It appears to be much excited after its performance. Unfortunately, its habits have never been closely observed in a state of nature; but from the analogy of other animals, it is probable that it uses its musical powers more especially during the season of courtship.
This gibbon is not the only species in the genus which sings, for my son, Francis Darwin, attentively listened in the Zoological Gardens to H. leuciscus whilst singing a cadence of three notes, in true musical intervals and with a clear musical tone. It is a more surprising fact that certain rodents utter musical sounds. Singing mice have often been mentioned and exhibited, but imposture has commonly been suspected. We have, however, at last a clear account by a well-known observer, the Rev. S. Lockwood,* of the musical powers of an American species, the Hesperomys cognatus, belonging to a genus distinct from that of the English mouse. This little animal was kept in confinement, and the performance was repeatedly heard. In one of the two chief songs, "the last bar would frequently be prolonged to two or three; and she would sometimes change from C sharp and D, to C natural and D, then warble on these two notes awhile, and wind up with a quick chirp on C sharp and D. The distinctness between the semitones was very marked, and easily appreciable to a good ear." Mr. Lockwood gives both songs in musical notation; and adds that though this little mouse "had no ear for time, yet she would keep to the key of B (two flats) and strictly in a major key." ... "Her soft clear voice falls an octave with all the precision possible; then at the wind up, it rises again into a very quick trill on C sharp and D."
A critic has asked how the ears of man, and he ought to have added of other animals, could have been adapted by selection so as to distinguish musical notes. But this question shows some confusion on the subject; a noise is the sensation resulting from the co-existence of several aerial "simple vibrations" of various periods, each of which intermits so frequently that its separate existence cannot be perceived. It is only in the want of continuity of such vibrations, and in their want of harmony inter se, that a noise differs from a musical note. Thus, an ear to be capable of discriminating noises- and the high importance of this power to all animals is admitted by every one- must be sensitive to musical notes. We have evidence of this capacity even low down in the animal scale; thus, crustaceans are provided with auditory hairs of different lengths, which have been seen to vibrate when the proper musical notes are struck.* As stated in a previous chapter, similar observations have been made on the hairs of the antennae of gnats. It has been positively asserted by good observers that spiders are attracted by music. It is also well known that some dogs howl when hearing particular tones.*(2) Seals apparently appreciate music, and their fondness for it "was well known to the ancients, and is often taken advantage of by the hunters at the present day."*(3)
Therefore, as far as the mere perception of musical notes is concerned, there seems no special difficulty in the case of man or of any other animal. Helmholtz has explained on physiological principles why concords are agreeable, and discords disagreeable to the human ear; but we are little concerned with these, as music in harmony is a late invention. We are more concerned with melody, and here again, according to Helmholtz, it is intelligible why the notes of our musical scale are used. The ear analyses all sounds into their component "simple vibrations," although we are not conscious of this analysis. In a musical note the lowest in pitch of these is generally predominant, and the others which are less marked are the octave, the twelfth, the second octave, &c., all harmonies of the fundamental predominant note; any two notes of our scale have many of these harmonic over-tones in common. It seems pretty clear then, that if an animal always wished to sing precisely the same song, he would guide himself by sounding those notes in succession, which possess many overtones in common- that is, he would choose for his song, notes which belong to our musical scale.
But if it be further asked why musical tones in a certain order and rhythm give man and other animals pleasure, we can no more give the reason than for the pleasantness of certain tastes and smells. That they do give pleasure of some kind to animals, we may infer from their being produced during the season of courtship by many insects, spiders, fishes, amphibians, and birds; for unless the females were able to appreciate such sounds and were excited or charmed by them, the persevering efforts of the males, and the complex structures often possessed by them alone, would be useless; and this it is impossible to believe.
Human song is generally admitted to be the basis or origin of instrumental music. As neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least use to man in reference to his daily habits of life, they must be ranked amongst the most mysterious with which he is endowed. They are present, though in a very rude condition, in men of all races, even the most savage; but so different is the taste of the several races, that our music gives no pleasure to savages, and their music is to us in most cases hideous and unmeaning. Dr. Seemann, in some interesting remarks on this subject,* "doubt whether even amongst the nations of western Europe, intimately connected as they are by close and frequent intercourse, the music of the one is interpreted in the same sense by the others. By travelling eastwards we find that there is certainly a different language of music. Songs of joy and dance-accompaniments are no longer, as with us, in the major keys, but always in the minor." Whether or not the half-human progenitors of man possessed, like the singing gibbons, the capacity of producing, and therefore no doubt of appreciating, musical notes, we know that man possessed these faculties at a very remote period. M. Lartet has described two flutes made out of the bones and horns of the reindeer, found in caves together with flint tools and the remains of extinct animals. The arts of singing and of dancing are also very ancient, and are now practised by all or nearly all the lowest races of man. Poetry, which may be considered as the offspring of song, is likewise so ancient, that many persons have felt astonished that it should have arisen during the earliest ages of which we have any record.
We see that the musical faculties, which are not wholly deficient in any race, are capable of prompt and high development, for Hottentots and Negroes have become excellent musicians, although in their native countries they rarely practise anything that we should consider music. Schweinfurth, however, was pleased with some of the simple melodies which he heard in the interior of Africa. But there is nothing anomalous in the musical faculties lying dormant in man: some species of birds which never naturally sing, can without much difficulty be taught to do so; thus a house-sparrow has learnt the song of a linnet. As these two species are closely allied, and belong to the order of Insessores, which includes nearly all the singing-birds in the world, it is possible that a progenitor of the sparrow may have been a songster. It is more remarkable that parrots, belonging to a group distinct from the Insessores, and having differently constructed vocal organs, can be taught not only to speak, but to pipe or whistle tunes invented by man, so that they must have some musical capacity. Nevertheless it would be very rash to assume that parrots are descended from some ancient form which was a songster. Many cases could be advanced of organs and instincts originally adapted for one purpose, having been utilised for some distinct purpose.* Hence the capacity for high musical development which the savage races of man possess, may be due either to the practice by our semi-human progenitors of some rude form of music, or simply to their having acquired the proper vocal organs for a different purpose. But in this latter ease we must assume, as in the above instance of parrots, and as seems to occur with many animals, that they already possessed some sense of melody.
Music arouses in us various emotions, but not the more terrible ones of horror, fear, rage, &c. It awakens the gentler feelings of tenderness and love, which readily pass into devotion. In the Chinese annals it is said, "Music hath the power of making heaven descend upon earth." It likewise stirs up in us the sense of triumph and the glorious ardour for war. These powerful and mingled feelings may well give rise to the sense of sublimity. We can concentrate, as Dr. Seemann observes, greater intensity of feeling in a single musical note than in pages of writing. It is probable that nearly the same emotions, but much weaker and far less complex, are felt by birds when the male pours forth his full volume of song, in rivalry with other males, to captivate the female. Love is still the commonest theme of our songs. As Herbert Spencer remarks, "music arouses dormant sentiments of which we had not conceived the possibility, and do not know the meaning; or, as Richter says, tells us of things we have not seen and shall not see." Conversely, when vivid emotions are felt and expressed by the orator, or even in common speech, musical cadences and rhythm are instinctively used. The negro in Africa when excited often bursts forth in song; "another will reply in song, whilst the company, as if touched by a musical wave, murmur a chorus in perfect unison."* Even monkeys express strong feelings in different tones- anger and impatience by low,- fear and pain by high notes.*(2) The sensations and ideas thus excited in us by music, or expressed by the cadences of oratory, appear from their vagueness, yet depth, like mental reversions to the emotions and thoughts of a long-past age.
All these facts with respect to music and impassioned speech become intelligible to a certain extent, if we may assume that musical tones and rhythm were used by our half-human ancestors, during the season of courtship, when animals of all kinds are excited not only by love, but by the strong passions of jealousy, rivalry, and triumph. From the deeply-laid principle of inherited associations, musical tones in this case would be likely to call up vaguely and indefinitely the strong emotions of a long-past age. As we have every reason to suppose that articulate speech is one of the latest, as it certainly is the highest, of the arts acquired by man, and as the instinctive power of producing musical notes and rhythms is developed low down in the animal series, it would be altogether opposed to the principle of evolution, if we were to admit that man's musical capacity has been developed from the tones used in impassioned speech. We must suppose that the rhythms and cadences of oratory are derived from previously developed musical powers.* We can thus understand how it is that music, dancing, song, and poetry are such very ancient arts. We may go even further than this, and, as remarked in a former chapter, believe that musical sounds afforded one of the bases for the development of language.*(2)
* See the very interesting discussion on the "Origin and Function of Music," by Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his collected Essays, 1858, p. 359. Mr. Spencer comes to an exactly opposite conclusion to that at which I have arrived. He concludes, as did Diderot formerly, that the cadences used in emotional speech afford the foundation from which music has been developed; whilst I conclude that musical notes and rhythm were first acquired by the male or female progenitors of mankind for the sake of charming the opposite sex. Thus musical tones became firmly associated with some of the strongest passions an animal is capable of feeling, and are consequently used instinctively, or through association when strong emotions are expressed in speech. Mr. Spencer does not offer any satisfactory explanation, nor can I, why high or deep notes should be expressive, both with man and the lower animals, of certain emotions. Mr. Spencer gives also an interesting discussion on the relations between poetry, recitative and song.
*(2) I find in Lord Monboddo's Origin of Language, vol. i., 1774, p. 469, that Dr. Blacklock likewise thought "that the first language among men was music, and that before our ideas were expressed by articulate sounds, they were communicated by tones varied according to different degrees of gravity and acuteness."
As the males of several quadrumanous animals have their vocal organs much more developed than in the females, and as a gibbon, one of the anthropomorphous apes, pours forth a whole octave of musical notes and may be said to sing, it appears probable that the progenitors of man, either the males or females or both sexes, before acquiring the power of expressing their mutual love in articulate language, endeavoured to charm each other with musical notes and rhythm. So little is known about the use of the voice by the Quadrumana during the season of love, that we have no means of judging whether the habit of singing was first acquired by our male or female ancestors. Women are generally thought to possess sweeter voices than men, and as far as this serves as any guide, we may infer that they first acquired musical powers in order to attract the other sex.* But if so, this must have occurred long ago, before our ancestors had become sufficiently human to treat and value their women merely as useful slaves. The impassioned orator, bard, or musician, when with his varied tones and cadences he excites the strongest emotions in his hearers, little suspects that he uses the same means by which his half-human ancestors long ago aroused each other's ardent passions, during their courtship and rivalry.
Typical in some ways of subsequent work: heavily footnoted speculation, as a result of which two authorities reach opposite conclusions.
Ban by Societe Linguistique de Paris, 1876.
Darwin's conflict with Max Muller, a leading linguist of his day. Following Descartes' view of the essential difference between humans and animals, Muller declared language to be "the Rubicon that no brute will dare to cross." Darwin responded that one "fully convinced, as I am, that man is descended from some lower animal, is almost forced to believe a priori that articulate language has developed from inarticulate cries." Muller derided Darwin's "bow-wow" and "pooh-pooh" theories of the origin of language, and in 1876 his followers persuaded the Linguistic Society of Paris to ban all presentations on language evolution from its meetings and publications.
Relatively little interest in the next 110 years or so. Reasons:
Some discussion during development of Semiotics: continued to be disparaged as bow-wow, ding-dong, yo-heave-ho theories.
Meanwhile, quite a bit of background science:
Recent developments
Neo-Humboldtian perspective:
Chomskian turn in linguistics and psycholinguistics -- the "language organ" or "language instinct". But, Chomsky is a Cartesian, and deeply suspicious of Darwinism as applied to language.
Psammetichus experiments: Sign language in oral schools; creoles.
Anyhow, origin of language research/speculation flowers over the past decade: dozens of books and hundreds if not thousands of articles.
Issues:
Teleological scenarios are not selectionist stories, in and of themselves. Examples of such scenarios: our ancestors developed language because they "needed" or "wanted":
These are not evolutionary stories, in and of themselves.
For natural selection (or sexual selection) to work, you need a story about:
For example: larger larynx as a secondary sexual characteristic of human males.
Source of variation: in this case, it's easy -- every organ has some size variation in the population.
Selective process: the bullfrog theory, involving one or both of the two forms of sexual selection: males with lower voices can intimidate rivals, and/or are more attractive to females.
Why? because normally voice pitch correlates with larynx size which correlates with body size. If vocal signaling is significant in courtship, then an individual with a larger larynx generally signals a larger size.
Result: many species with vocal signaling and male/male competition in courtship show sexual dimorphism in vocal organs. If the signaling system produces sounds whose pitch is size-correlated, then the dimorphism is in a direction that produces lower pitches in males. In humans, the adult male larynx is about 30-40% larger in linear dimensions than that of the adult female, while other linear dimensions differ only by 8-9% on average.
According to models of such phenomena, even a very small selective advantage, in quantitative terms, may be enough to push the gene pool far in the favored direction. Such models typically assume a gradual change by small steps -- though supposing a case of sudden, enormous, discontinuous trait variation, if one variant is fitter than the other(s), it increases in frequency -- perhaps very rapidly. There is some controversy about whether such discontinuities ever happen.
Note that a story of this general form may or may not be true -- though this one is fairly well supported -- but it has the right form to be a Darwinian story. A teleological story of the form "hominids developed language so as to instruct their young" does not.
We can easily re-express a Darwinian story in teleological terms, by a sort of linguistic projection: "hominid males developed large larynxes so as to seem physically larger and impress their rivals". It's harder to take a teleological story and re-express it in Darwinian terms.
However, there is a way to frame a sort of semi-Darwinian story, by leaving out all the details of the particular traits and selective processes involved, and instead focusing on a discussion of ecological pressures or ecological opportunities. At the boundary between water and land, aquatic creatures who can manage out of the water for a while will plausibly reap some benefits (whether in terms of foraging or safety from predators or simple survival in a tidal region). We don't have to construct detailed stories about particular traits and selection mechanisms to grant that such selectionist stories can in principle be told about a situation of this type.
Nearly all recent speculation about about language origins is of this general type. In some cases, one suspects that the move is a mechanical one, simply disguising a bit of teleological reverse engineering. "We use language for X; therefore X is plausible the evolutionary purpose of language; therefore we will construct a story about the ecology of X and its role as a forcing function in the evolution of language-adaptive traits."
From this perspective, language seems to be over-determined:
As the biological anthropologist Terence Deacon has recently written, it's easy to think of plausible reasons:
From the perspective of hindsight, almost everything looks as though it might be relevant for explaining the language adaptation. Looking for the adaptive benefits of language is like picking only one dessert in your favorite bakery: there are too many compelling options to choose from. What aspect of human social organization and adaptation wouldn't benefit from the evolution of language? From this vantage point, symbolic communication appears "overdetermined." It is as though everything points to it. A plausible story could be woven from almost any of the myriad of advantages that better communication could offer: organizing hunts, sharing food, communicating about distributed food sources, planning warfare and defense, passing on toolmaking skills, sharing important past experiences, establishing social bonds between individuals, manipulating potential sexual competitors or mates, caring for and training young, and on and on.
There is not a great deal of agreement about the relative plausibility of these various stories. In any case, a simple story-telling contest, in the absence of any additional evidence, is unlikely to lead to the right answer, since our judgments will primarily reflect our prejudices and the relative creativity and eloquence of the various storytellers.
Calvin: My powerful brain has come up with a topic for my paper.
Hobbes: Great!
Calvin: I'll write about the debate over tyrannosaurs. Were they fearsome predators
or disgusting scavengers?
Hobbes: Which side will you defend?
Calvin: Oh, I believe they were fearsome predators, definitely.
Hobbes: How come?
Calvin: They're SO much cooler that way.
To some extent, that's the current state of play: different writers tell different stories, and we get to decide which is cooler. Some of the stories are quite interesting and suggestive, so even this much is not a complete waste of time.
However, the most interesting writers frame their arguments in terms of results not obviously connected with language origins, such as cross-primate generalizations and brain size and social group size, or reciprocal altruism. To the extent that these results are both genuine and relevant, the debate is moved to a higher level.
Two recent examples of such theories of language evolution are especially striking. In Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language, Robin Dunbar proposes that our ancestors evolved language so as to use gossip as a more efficient substitute for the grooming behavior that other primates use to establish and maintain social relationships. In The Symbolic Species, Terence Deacon argues that hominid brains and human language have co-evolved over the past two million years, driven by "a reproductive problem that only symbols could solve: the imperative of representing a social contract," which in turn was required to take efficient advantage of the resources available via systematic hunting and scavenging for meat.
In outline, Dunbar's argument is as follows:
Among primates, "encephalization" (brain size normalized for body size) varies in proportion to social group size.
Progression is apparently solitary - monogamous - social.
Apparently, the larger the group a primate lives in, the more brain it needs to keep track of social relationships within the group. This is plausible, given the intricate micro-politics of primate society, as documented by ethologists. If we take the step from correlation to causation, and assume that larger brains evolved in primates in order to permit larger social groups (e.g. for better intra-species competition or better defense against predators), we have what has been called the "Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis."
If we look at human brain size from the perspective of this hypothesis, and extrapolate the relationship between brain size and social group size found in other primates, we predict a "natural" group size for humans of about 150.
In primate societies, grooming (picking nits out of fur) is a major factor in establishing and maintaining social bonds. There are interesting hypotheses about why grooming fulfills this function, but for now, we can just note that the bigger the primate group, the more time on average each member spends in grooming others. If we look at human social relations in this perspective, then with a group size of 150, we should have to spend 40% of the day in grooming. This is far too high to be practical -- the highest actual proportion observed among primates is 20% (Gelada baboons).
Dunbar suggests that our ancestors, facing hard times on the African plains, very badly needed to live in larger groups. "Gossiping" (in whatever form it first arose) made it possible to form and maintain social bonds more efficiently than grooming, both because more than two can do it at once, and also because you can actually do some useful work (like gathering or processing food) at the same time. The development of sense and reference -- and especially of proper names for group members -- enabled political maneuvering at a higher level in larger groups. (This form of reference may also have enabled extended social monitoring of cheaters (beyond the capabilities of individual observation), producing more efficient 'reciprocal altruism.' However, modeling this last aspect is tricky.)
Deacon's argument is a complex one, depending on a number of results from ethology and other allied fields.
He argues that the key point is a shift to a symbolic mode of communication, in which new linguistic tokens (i.e. words) can be created with an arbitrary relation to their meanings. He stresses that the first steps in developing symbolic communication look very difficult for a non-linguistic species, helping us to understand why no non-human species has gone very far down that road:
Even a small, inefficient, and inflexible symbol system is very difficult to acquire, depends on significant external social support in order to be learned, and forces one to employ very counterintuitive learning strategies that may interfere with most nonsymbolic learning processes. The first symbol systems were also likely fragile modes of communication: difficult to learn, inefficient, slow, inflexible, and probably applied to a very limited communicative domain. . . . Neurologically and semiotically, symbolic abilities do not necessarily represent more efficient communication, but instead represent a radical shift in communicative strategy. It is this shift, not any improvements, that we eventually need to explain.
As a rule, he argues, significant changes in communicative systems in other species occur "in the context of intense sexual selection."
It is at the point in the life cycle where choice of mate takes place that evolutionary theory predicts we should find the greatest elaboration of communicative behaviors and psychological mechanisms in both pair-bonding species and polygynous species, though the communicators and the messages may differ significantly in these two extremes. Between these extremes there are many more complex mixtures of reproductive social arrangements that add new possibilities and uncertainties, and thus further intensify selection on the production and assessment of signals.
Deacon then points out that human mating arrangments, though diverse across societies, share some characteristics that make our speciesnearly unique: "cooperative, mixed-sex social groups, with significant male care and provisioning of offspring, and relatively stable patterns of reproductive exclusion, mostly in the form of monogamous relationships." According to Deacon, "reproductive pairing is not found in exactly this pattern in any other species." The reason this pattern is not found, he argues, is that it's a recipe for sociosexual disaster: "the combination of provisioning and social cooperation produces a highly volatile social structure that is highly susceptible to disintegration."
In evolutionary terms, a male who tends to invest significant time and energy in caring for and providing food for an infant must have a high probability of being its father, otherwise his expenditure of time and energy will benefit the genes of another male. As a result, indiscriminate protection and provisioning of infants will not persist in a social group when there are other reproducing males around who do not provision, but instead direct all their efforts towards copulation.
These effects get worse if males and females spend a lot of their time apart, as necessarily happens if males are out hunting and scavenging while females are gathering plants with children in tow. "Hunting and provisioning go together, but they produce an inevitable evolutionary tension that is inherently unstable, especially in the context of group living. Besides ourselves, only social carnivores seem to live this way."
Carnivores that engage in cooperative group hunting include wild dogs, wolves, hyenas, lions and meercats. All such creatures exhibit particular ecological and reproductive patterns that defuse the resulting evolutionary tension. Among lions, provisioning takes place among a "pride" of closely-related females (sisters, aunts etc.). One, two or rarely three male lions take over a pride and guard it against other males -- who will try to kill the cubs to bring the females into estrus -- but do not provide food. Among wild dogs and wolves, the cooperative hunting pack includes both males and females, and they provision both pups and a nursing mother. However, in a given pack there is usually only one reproducing female, who is typically the mother of many of the hunters. Other females are kept from becoming sexually receptive by social pressures and perhaps pheromones. There is usually also only one reproductively active male in a pack.
The typical human pattern involves many reproductively active males and females living in a group while maintaining patterns of sexual exclusivity, with male provisioning of children although mated males and females spend considerable time apart, is never found among the social carnivores.
Deacon suggests that this background helps to explain why the evolution of systematic hunting as a major food source for our hominid ancestors posed a difficult problem in social engineering.
The acquisition and provisioning of meat clearly would be a better strategy for surviving seasonal shortages of more typical foods than shifting to nutrient-poor diets of pith, bark, and poor-quality leaves, as do modern chimpanzees. But this is only possible if there is a way to overcome the sexual competition associated with paternity uncertainty. The dilemma can be summarized as follows: males must hunt cooperatively to be successful hunters; females cannot hunt because of their ongoing reproductive burdens; and yet hunted meat must get to thoese females least able to gain access to it directly (those with young), if it is to be critical subsistence food. It must come from males, but it will not be provided in any reliable way unless there is significant assurance that the provisioning is likely to be of reproductive value to the provider. Females must have some guarantee of access to meat for their offspring. For this to evolve, males must maintain constant pair-bonded relationships, and yet for this to evolve, males must have some guarantee that they are provisioning their own progeny. So the socio-ecolgogical problem posed by the transition to a meat-supplemented subsistence strategy is that it cannot be utilized without a social structure which guarantees unambiguous and exclusive mating and is sufficiently egalitarian to sustain cooperation via shared or parallel reproductive interests.
Deacon argues that this problem required -- or at least invited -- a solution mediated by symbols.
[C]ertain things cannot be represented wthout symbols. . . . Although there is a vast universe of objects and relationships susceptible to nonsymbolic representation, indeed, anything that can be present to the senses, this does not include abstract or otherwise intangible objects of reference. This categorical limitation is the link between the anomalous form of communication that evolved in humans and the anomalous context of human social behavior.
For hunting and provisioning to co-exist in large groups of reproductively active hominids, Deacon argues, it was necessary to establish a certain sort of social contract. If this contract can be establishing and maintained, then everyone is better off. However, it will not work until nearly everyone observes the terms and also enforces observance among others.
Essentially, each individual has to give up potential access to most possible mates so that others may have access to them, for a similar sacrifice in return.
Accomplishing this requires two things. First, you have to establish a shared understanding of who is bonded with whom. According to Deacon, "this information can only be given expression symbolically", because it "is a prescription for future behaviors," not just a memory or an index of past behavior, or an indication of current social status or reproductive state, or even a prediction of probably future behavior.
The pair-bonding relationship in the human lineage is essentially a . . . set of promises that must be made public. These . . . implicitly determine which future behaviors are allowed and not allowed; that is, which are defined as cheating and may result in retaliation.
Second, you have to get everyone else that might be involved to agree not to cheat, and to help protect against cheating.
For a male to determine he has . . . paternity certainty, requires that other males also provide some assurance of their future sexual conduct. Similarly, for a female to be able to give up soliciting provisioning from multiple males, she needs to be sure that she can rely on at least one individual male who is not obligated to other females to the extent that he cannot provide her with sufficient resources.
A marriage contract is a social contract, not just an agreement between the bonded pair. It is typical in human societies for the social group as a whole to play an active part in maintaining sexual exclusivity between individuals; this is something that happens in no other species. Deacon argues that it happens among humans because all members of the group "are party to the social arrangement, and have something to lose if one individual takes advantage of an uncondoned sexual opportunity."
Deacon is less clear about the first steps in the process of establishing such social contracts. He suggests that the ability of apes to acquire limited symbolic abilities in laboratory settings give us an indication of what our species' symbolic beginnings might have been.
In a word, the answer is ritual. Indeed, ritual is still a central component of symbolic "education" in modern human societies, though we are seldom aware of its modern role because of the subtle way it is woven into the fabric of society. The problem for symbol discovery is to shift attention from the concrete to the abstract; from separate indexical links between signs and objects to an organized set of relations between signs. In order to bring the logic of token-token relationships to the fore, a high degree of redundancy is important. This was demonstrated in the experiments with the chimpanzees Sherman and Austin. It was found that getting them to repeat by rote a large number of errorless trials in combining lexigrams enabled them to make the transition from explicit and concrete sign-object associations to implicit sign-sign associations. Repetition of the same set of actions with the same set of objects over and over again in a ritual performance is often used for a similar purpose in modern human societies. Repetition can render the individual details for some performance automatic and minimally conscious, while at the same time the emotional intensity induced by group participation can help focus attention on other aspects of the objects and actions involved. In a ritual frenzy, one can be induced to see everyday activities and objects in a very different light.
To sum up: Deacon thinks that early hominids developed symbolic communication as a way to establish social contracts, a form of reciprocal altruism permitting stable family and group structures, which otherwise would not have permitted hunting and scavenging for meat as a systematic source of supplemental food during times of drought. This set the state for nearly two million years of evolutionary adaption for improved symbolic communication, probably due to sexual selection (crudely, females preferred males who could make more convincing promises).
Note that Dunbar and Deacon might both be right: perhaps the development of gossipy chatter as an extension of grooming behavior created a substrate for symbolic reference -- maybe originally involving personal names -- that in turn opened the way for the kind of public "contracts" about mating that Deacon sees as crucial to permit systematic hunting.
Another perspective on the initial development of language treats it as a sort of accidental side-effect of larger brains, which on this view developed for some other reason (say to facilitate tool use and/or social dynamics).
This "side-effect" theory would be an example of what Stephen Jay Gould has called evolutionary spandrels. The original meaning of "spandrel" is a space between two arches and a horizontal cornice above them; this space began as an accidental (but unavoidable) consequence of architectural techniques based on the combination of arches and domes; because this accidental space is a convenient place to put paintings, it developed into a planned part of buildings with a specific function. Gould argues that many evolutionary developments are of this kind -- some feature arises as an accidental side-effect of another change, but then turns out to be useful and comes to be itself shaped by selective pressures.
This spandrel theory is not inconsistent with other accounts of the selective pressures for language development.
However, in the thought of Noam Chomsky, it seems to be associated with a perspective that is not too different from Muller's: language is a "rubicon that no brute shall cross." Though his perspective is more elaborately anti-Darwinian (quotes collected from Dennett 1995):
"In the case of such systems as language or wings it is not easy even to imagine a course of selection that might have given rise to them (1988)".
"It may be that at some remote period a mutation took lace that gave rise to the property of discrete infinity, perhaps for reasons that have to do with the biology of cells, to be explained in terms of properties of physcial mechanisms, now unknown... Quite possibly other aspets of its evolutionary development again reflect the operation of physical laws applying to a brain of a certain degree of complexity. (1988)"
"It is perfectly safe to attribute this development [of innate language structures] to 'natural selection', so long as we realize that there is no substance to this assertion, that it amounts to nothing more than a belief that there is some naturalistic explanation for these phenomena." [1972]
Gould, attributing the idea to Chomsky: "The universals of language are so different from anything else in nature, and so quirky in their structure, that origin as a side consequence of the brain's enhanced capacity, rather than as a simple advance in continuity from ancestral grunts and gestures, seems indicated."
"In studying the evolution of mind, we cannot guess to what extent there are physically possible alternatives to, say, transformational generative grammar, for an organism meeting certain other physical conditions characteristic of humans. Conceivably, there are none -- or very few -- in which case talk about evolution of language capacity is beside the point."
Are these quotes as ignorant of evolutionary theory and results as they seem?
In any case, they resonate with Stuart Kauffman's notions that "selection is not the sole source of order", because the systems that selection operates on exhibit emergent structures "for free", by virtue of very general mathematical properties.