Hallo!

On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 20:55:30 +0200, Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:

> The mother of invention is necessity.  As long as
> Paleolithic humans were well adapted to their environ-
> ment and could, in their own view, live in reasonable
> wellbeing they had no incentive to invent anything.

Yes.  People tend to stay with their habits, and most are slow
in accepting new technologies.

> I'm quite convinced that the end of the latest ice age,
> with changes in climate, geography, flora and fauna --
> notably the extinction or decimation of big game --
> was a crisis for humans in Eurasia, and that agriculture
> actually meant an adaptation to living conditions for
> which humans were ill adapted, 

Right.  Agriculture was not invented in places ideally suited for
it, such as the blackearth plains of Ukraine or the loess-filled
valleys of Central Europe - those were, for the very same reasons
why they make good arable land, sufficiently rich foraging grounds;
it was invented on the edge of an expanding desert.  People started
farming because foraging was no longer sufficient to maintain the
population.

>       and gave rise to a 
> permanent sense of discomfort with life in human
> culture, giving rise to this drive for 'improvement',
> which in fact means a constant increase in alienation
> from the conditions of life we were naturally adapted
> to.  Not that a return to those conditions is possible
> or even desirable anymore, but the spirit of Man against
> or above Nature is a real problem, since it has made
> culture a threat against the survival of the biosphere.

Well observed.  Paradise is gone, there is no way back, but we must
find a new way of life if we want to survive.

> I'm also convinced that language is at least as old as
> toolmaking.  Surely all biologically modern humans have
> spoken languages of the same type and complexity as we
> do now, since everyone everywhere without exception (pace
> Pirahã, which I think is pathological) has spoken such
> languages in historic times, and so the origins of
> language must lie further back, biologically.

As I said before, there is no sharp boundary between "language" and
"non-language".  It is clear that all non-impaired individuals of
_Homo sapiens_ have language; it is also clear that our closest
living relatives (genus _Pan_) have not; what _Homo_ species other
than _Homo sapiens_ used to communicate among themselves is unknown,
but it probably had at least some features of modern human languages,
the later the more.  It was a slow and gradual process which lasted
at least 2 million years.

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