01/21/26

Looking at Ekaterina Velmezova and Kalevi Kull’s Article (2017) “Boris Uspenskij…” (Part 10 of 19)

0507 So, where was I?

Where have I traveled?

I have walked through the first of two interviews with a prominent member of the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics at its first ascendant. Because my approach capitalizes (some would say, “exploits”) Peirce’s formulations, my examination adds value to the discussion. Diagrams of purely relational structures, such as the interscope, permits a visualization of semiotic changes and developments through time.

0508 The second interview, starting on page 425, discusses thirteen questions. Predefined questions offer an awkward format for an interview. Given the hyperventilation that occurs during the interview on August 25, 2011, the hope is for a more structured encounter at Uspenskij’s villa in Rome on May 27, 2012.

The interview concerns Uspenskij’s 2007 book, Ego Loquens: Language and the communicative space.

0509 The Latin term, “ego loquens“, roughly transliterates into “I speak”.

Of course, the end of Descartes’ famous slogan immediately comes to mind, “therefore I am.”

I speak, therefore I am.

0510 But, what am I?

Perhaps, I am language_2b (that another person can read like a literary text_2b) as well as a communicative space (like the way that I, as a literary text_2a, entangle a communal cognitive space called “language_2a“).

0511 How confounding.

A communal cognitive… er… communicative space_2a is the language_2am that is entangled by the literary text_2af, not as a thing itself_2b, but as a model_2c of structural_3b and semiological_3a signification_3c.

0512 I hope that this statement justifies the use of the title of Uspenskij’s book to label the fundament and derivative interscopes, as shown below.

0513 Look closely at the above figure.

Can the reader see a triadic relation where a semiological_3a structuralist_3b model_2c (SV_i) stands for a literary text as form_2af (SO_i) potentiated by meaning_1a, presence_1b and message_1c in the normal context of a defining intellect (SI_i)?

0514 At this point, I would like to introduce the interventional sign-relation, first brought to visualization in Comments on Sasha Newell’s Article (2018) “The Affectiveness of Symbols” and then used as a tool in Looking at John Deely’s Book (2010) “Semiotic Animal“. Both works are by Razie Mah. The former may be purchased at smashwords and other e-book venues (while the time lasts!). The latter appears as a series in Razie Mah’s blog during October, 2023).

0515 The interventional sign-relation?

How informative.

Please tell.

0516 In general, the interventional sign-vehicle (SV_i) is a perspective-level actuality_2c.

The interventional sign-object (SO_i) is the represented content-level actuality_2a.

The interventional sign-interpretant (SI_i) consists in the content-level normal context_3a and potential_1a.

0517 An interventional sign-vehicle (SV_i) stands for its sign-object (SO_i) in regards to an interventional sign-interpretant (SI_i).

0518 Here is a general diagram.

0519 This rendition of Peirce’s sign-relation in terms of Peirce’s category-based nested forms is founded on the notion that both the SV and the SO belong to secondness, the realm of actuality, leaving the SI to include both thirdness and firstness. Since nested forms occupy levels in an interscope, the SO occupies the actuality on the adjacent higher level than the SV. The SI occupies the same level as the SO.

0520 This rendition implies that there are three signs contained within any three-level interscope.

Each sign connects the levels of two adjacent categories, except for the interventional sign, which goes from thirdness to firstness. One dare not call that “prescission”.

0521 Unless, one imagines, not precission among levels, but among interscopes.

The interventional sign-relation constellates precission between two interscopes.

In this case, the “tiers” belong to firstness and secondness.

How informative.

0522 Tiers of interscopes is not new.

Precission among tiers of interscopes can be found in Razie Mah’s chapter on presence in How To Define The Word “Religion”. Ten primers belong to the corresponding course, for those interested in a step-by-step exposition.

Precission among tiers is also intimated in the very structure of the article under examination. The first interview, part one, deals with the possibility of exact methods_3c virtually bringing structuralism_3b into relation with the potential of semiology_2a. The second interview, part two, deals with Uspenskij’s literary text_2af, Ego loquens, and considers the possibility of meaning_1a, presence_1b and message_1c.

01/16/26

Looking at Ekaterina Velmezova and Kalevi Kull’s Article (2017) “Boris Uspenskij…” (Part 14 of 19)

0575 Page 437 introduces a question (#7) concerning translation.

Why is adequate translation between languages impossible?

There are two specifying sign-relations in the TMS regime.

0576 In the first specifying sign-relation, in the fundament interscope, the literary text_2bf is substantiated by the language_2bm (SO_s) that virtually situates spoken words_2a (SV_s) as langue_2am and parole_2af of a particular mother tongue. Translating a literary text into another mother tongue risks misreading the content character of a literary text_2af, especially when the text is rich with word-play.

0577 Here is the specifying sign-relation for the loquens interscope, in general.

Parole_2af (SV_s) stands for language_2bm (SO_s) in regards to a structuralist paradigm_3b((1b)) (SI_s).

0578 If the word-play is not translated, the text does not make sense.

In other words, an alien reader may not be able generate an adequate semiological_3a structuralist_3b model_2c of the original text.

The text_2bf is not funny anymore.

0579 In the second specifying sign-relation, in the derivative interscope, social interaction_2bf is substantiated by a cognition_2bm (SO_s) that virtually situates the language of meaning_2am (SV_s) that has been entangled by the literary text_2af. Can this operation be translated into the various languages of a positivist intellect? What if the positivist language is too different? Then, will it be virtually situated by a style of cultural inquiry_3b that makes no sense at all, such as computer operations_3b.

0580 Say what?

Here is the specifying sign-relation for the ego interscope, in general.

A positivist language_2am (SV_s) stands for cognition_2bm (SO_s) in regards to a cultural-studies paradigm_3b((1b)) (SI_s).

0581 What if the literary text_2af is a series of apparently irregular scratches_2af that the academic thinks are inscribed near the center of only one side of each of the before mentioned pieces of fossilized wood?

What could these scratches_2af mean_1b in terms of the language of anthropology_2am?

0582 Of course, after the excavation, the researchers take the artifacts to Professor Rabenmann, who still has an office at the old Institute of Archaeology.

What will the old man have to say?

0583 They explain the find and give him the two flat pieces of fossilized wood. The Professor notes cord markings are on the opposing side of the scratches and much closer to the end of the flat pieces, than the marks.

Are the marks intentional?

What do these artifacts translate into?

0584 Hmmm. The professor is not sure. He opens the drawer to his desk and takes out a ball of string. He measures out a meter, then cuts the string with a scissors. Then, with a degree of deliberation, he places the stones face to face and starts to wind the string around the two pieces, retracing the one sided cord markings.

0585 Professor, what are you doing?

Give me a moment. I want to see.

You are not going to break them, are you?

Oh no, no breakage, these are hard as stone. Now, look I have tied them together.

Now what?

0586 Then, the professor takes a walnut that is on his desk, places it between the two pieces, right where the scratches are, and presses the stone slabs together.

0587 The novices almost pass out.

“There you go. It is a nutcracker.”, the professor says, while picking the meat of the nut away from the shell.

0588 Yes, the word “translation” now applies to two literary texts. The loquens_2bf text (the one everyone talks about) is substantiated by the language of the mother tongue_2bm. The ego_2af text (the one that Uspenskij talks about) entangles the language_2am of the TMS positivist intellect_3a.

0589 Later, the students use interferometry to make three-dimensional images of each fossilized piece in order to demonstrate that, if the two cord-impressed ends are bound by a simulated structure, then enough force could be simultaneously applied to the opposing termini as to compromise the mechanical integrity of a Persian walnut.

Now, that is what I call, “translation”!

0590 I recall that at the very opening of the second interview, Part II, Uspenskij notes that the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics is primarily interested in culture. It does not regard inanimate and animate processes as significant.

0591 With that recollection in mind, consider a literary_2af… er computerized input_2af that entangles a coding language_2am.

Here is a picture.

0592 Does a cybernetic intellect_3a turn computer input_2af into machine code_2am according to the potential that ‘each word of the input translates into a sequence of machine codes’_1a?

0593 Does the answer imply that entanglement is translation, broadly speaking?

Entanglement is translation.

Does this apply especially to the content-level actuality_2a of the “ego” interscope, in so far as it embodies the sign-object of an interventional sign-relation (SO_i) and the sign-vehicle of a specifying sign-relation (SV_s)?

10/31/25

A First Look at Julian Jaynes’s Book (1976) “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” (Part 1 of 21)

0236 Why do I examine this work?

I reviewed Steven Mithen’s book, The Language Puzzle: Piecing Together The Six-Million-Year Story Of How Words Evolved (2024, Basic Books, New York). See Razie Mah’s blog for September 2025. The examination concludes on point 0235.

During the examination, I recall a book that Julian Jaynes publishes in 1976.

I wonder, “Why does Mithen’s book remind me of Jaynes?”

I now have a copy of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (First Mariner edition (2000), New York, New York) before me.

This explains why I start the current examination on point 0236.

0237 Julian Jaynes (1920-1997 AD) earned master and doctoral degrees in psychology at Yale University. He lectured in psychology at Princeton from 1966 to 1990. In 1990, he writes a postscript that appears in the Mariner edition.

This afterward lists the four hypotheses in Books I and II. Plus, the postscript expands on Part III, by discussing the psychological transition from the bicameral mind to subjective consciousness at the end of the Bronze Age in the Near East.

0238 Here is the list.

0239 So, why does Mithen’s book remind me of Jaynes’s work?

My review of The Language Puzzle led me to conclude that Mithen’s explicit rejection of a gestural origin of languageprevents him from realizing that his information implicitly supports the very position that um… he rejects.

Yes, if I ignore his declaration against a gestural origin to language, then I can start to recognize that speech is added to fully linguistic hand-talk after the domestication of fire, when the community becomes a social circle under pressure from natural selection.

0240 That reminds me of a curious pun that seems to have import in the year 2025AD.

The Russian word for “no” is “nyet”.

To the American ear, “nyet” sounds like “not yet”. And, that means, “Yes, but not now.”

So, when Mithen says, “nyet”, to the gestural origins of language, his English speaking bicameral mind hears, “not yet”. So, Mithen unwittingly drops clues to his nyet hypothesis within his own subjectively conscious argument. These hints offer a weird twist to Looking at Steven Mithen’s Book (2024) The Language Puzzle. It is as if Mithen’s own bicameral mind offers – what I will call – “a nyet hypothesis”.

0241 Now, consider the first two hypothesis (A and B) in Jaynes’s Books I and II.

First (A), subjective consciousness relies on spoken language. Mithen consciously proposes that spoken words are built over millions of years through synaesthesia, cross modal “leakage” of sensations, from visual things and events to auditory vocalizations.

0242 Of course, this proposal comes across as sketchy. Why would early hominins, such as the australopithecines and the early species in the Homo genus (3.5 to 0.6Myr – millions of years ago) do this? And how? The voice is most likely not under voluntary control. Involuntary calls rule the day.

But, the vocal tract changes over time. Most likely, the voice is on the verge of coming under voluntary control by the time that Homo heidelbergensis appears in the fossil record (perhaps, over 600kyr – thousands of years ago).

On top of that, Homo heidelbergensis shows up during the period when hominins domesticate fire (800-400kyr). So, Mithen consciously and cautiously suggests that the synaesthesia business really takes off around that time.

0243 The nyet hypothesis?

Well, of course, proto-linguistic hand talk has plenty of time to evolve without cross-modal leakage during the early period (3.5 to 0.6Myr) and even has a couple of hundred-thousand years to become fully linguistic after hominins start to play with fire (0.8 to 0.6My).

So, synaesthesia would not make a jump from things themselves to vocal utterances, but from manual-brachial word-gestures to vocal utterances.

Suddenly, synaesthesia no longer seems implausible.

0244 Second (B), compare Mithen’s nyet hypothesis with Jaynes’s proposal of the bicameral mind.

To me, the idea that manual-brachial word-gestures provide stimuli allowing synaesthetic crossover from visual to auditory sensations seems like “auditory hallucinations”.

0245 My goal in this first examination is to develop this impression.

10/17/25

How the Voice Gets Added to Hand Talk in Human Evolution Part B3 (Part 13 of 21)

0400 Steven Mithen does not explore the implications of synaesthesia with respect to what modern anthropologists regard as “symbols”. So-called “symbols” represent ‘something’, but modern anthropologists do not know what that something is.

Symbols may be artifacts, in the same way that hand-talk word-gestures are artifacts. To start, hand-talk words (and artifacts) image and point to their referents. So, the hand-talk word is sensibly specified. But, something like a vocal utterance, a spoken word, whose referent must be socially constructed, gets added in hand-speech talk.

The vocal utterance enters a cognitive space where its meaning, presence and message are specified (by its association with a hand-talk word). At the same time, the vocal utterance opens a cognitive space (as SO_i) that bears witness to the utterer’s commitment_2c (SV_i).

Surely, this fits the nature of adornment.

0401 At the start, when speech serves as an adornment to hand-talk, the social construction is minimal. The vocal utterance is decoded as picturing and pointing to its referent. Indeed, this is the innate (or default) stance by Homo sapiens in regards to words (irrespective of mode). If a word exists, so must its referent. Plus, the word pictures and points to that referent. A referent precedes the word.

0402 The next step explores the cognitive spaces opened by adornment and… well… the possibility that hand-talk and speech-talk can be decoded independently.

0403 When Homo sapiens first appear in the archaeological record, they practice hand-speech talk. Spoken words adorn hand-talk word-gestures. Night-time talk is the motivation. But, soon enough, hand-speech talk is practiced in the day as well. As with body decorations, the modes of hand-speech talk are regulated by tribal traditions.

Why?

Speech is linked to synaesthesia and synaesthesia is tied to social construction.

0404 With these associations, I suppose that speech begins to take on a life of its own, not in the arena of sensible construction, but on the stage of social construction.

Nevertheless, even as cultural practices of adornment mount, hand-talk still characterizes species impressa_2a. Sensible construction, typical for team activity, remains dominant, especially during the day.

0405 Here is a picture of the timeline of development.

0406 By 125 kyr, it is obvious that ochre is being used for something (such as body adornment) and sea shells (presumably attached to fiber strings) are found in campsites along with traces of fire. So, speech must be on the way to taking on a life of its own, after over one-hundred thousand years since the inception of the species.

Okay, the two-fully linguistic modes business takes time, without some “push”.

Humans enter ice-age Europe starting around 90kyr. Humans walk from Africa into Eurasia in waves, perhaps corresponding to climate transitions or improvements of Paleolithic technology.

0407 Genetic evidence leads to the conclusion that Neanderthals and humans interbreed, in Europe, between 65 and 45 kyr. Then, interbreeding stops.

Ah, the “push”.

My guess is that this period is when hand-talk and speech-talk take on lives of their own.

0408 When humans first contact Neanderthals, they both engage in fully linguistic hand-talk. However, the Neanderthal does not speak fluently, nor does the Neanderthal have interest in adornment. Neanderthal interest in adornment may well derive from exposure to human techniques and technologies. But, the speech aspect does not change significantly.

Of course, human cultures adapt to take advantage of Neanderthal limitations by increasing occasions for the use of speech.

Today, a business professor would call the process, “market differentiation”.

0409 But, speech is linked to synaesthesia and synaesthesia is tied to social construction.

A cultural shift in favor of speech as an independent mode of talking leads to an explosion in expressions of adornment_2b, cross-modal species impressa_2a, and um… can I say?… spiritual awareness_2c?

In other words, interventional sign-objects (SO_i) become more and more significant and, at the same time, awareness that there must be corresponding sign-vehicles (SV_i) (or commitments_2c) increases.

0410 In some respects, this is what Steven Mithen’s 1996 masterwork, The Prehistory of the Mind, is all about. He uses historical trends in the construction of cathedrals as a metaphor for the evolution of the human mind.

In the first period of hominin evolution, the open-nave cathedral (of general intelligence) flourishes. This period lasts from 7 to around 4 My.

In the second period of hominin evolution, the open-nave cathedral gives way to the Romanesque style of separate chapels (specialized mental modules associated with team activities) connected to a small central nave (of general intelligence). This period lasts from 4 to 0.6 Myr.

Then, in the third period of hominin evolution, the Romanesque style gives way to a Gothic architecture, where chapels (of specialized cognition) integrate into a soaring central nave (of language-enhanced general intelligence) that is supported by massive flying buttresses (of automated neural processing, like decode and evaluate). This period lasts from 0.6 Myr to 0.01 Myr.

0411 Yes, this period describes the Biblical intention (the appearance of Homo heidelbergensis), creation (the appearance of Homo sapiens) and blessing of humanity (the slow transition of hand-speech talk, from speech as adornment to speech as a fully linguistic modality) quite well.

Yes, synaesthesia and social construction have the potential to greatly enhance Mithen’s 1996 metaphors.

Once humans walk from Africa into Eurasia, the Neanderthal homeland, the Neanderthals cannot keep up with humans.

The human’s Gothic mental architecture develops in highly competitive ways. Cross-modal impressions_2a support phantasms_2b that are intelligible within multiple social circles. Speech develops as a separate mode of talk due to cultural natural selection.

0412 All the while, the bicameral (two-chambered) mind grows strong, pumping interventional sign-relations.

Here is a picture.

0413 The right-side Wernicke’s region is no longer simply assessing the iconicity and indexality of hand-talk gesture-words. It also introduces a vocal, synaesthetic and symbolic quality that enhances the intelligibility of the phantasm_2b. The first evaluation supports the human’s commitment_2c to sensible construction. The second contribution lifts the human’s commitment_2c to social construction.

The left-side Wernicke’s region still automatically decodes hand-speech talk. Hand-talk and speech-adornment may be decoded simultaneously or independently. The independent decoding is particularly notable, given the production of evocative artifacts, such as the “lion man” from Hohlenstein-Stadel, Germany (estimated 41-35 kyr) or the female figurine from Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic (dating to 29-26 kyr, see page 28 in Mithen’s book, The Language Puzzle).

0414 Modern anthropologists call these artifacts, “symbols”, because they do not know what they represent.

Steven Mithen’s nyet hypothesis changes the question entirely.

The question now asks, “What are these artifacts speaking?”

10/8/25

A First Look at Julian Jaynes’s Book (1976) “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” (Part 21 of 21)

0519 I conclude this first look at Julian Jaynes’s breakthrough masterwork, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, with a brief summary.

I examine the First Mariner Books edition, published in 2000, which offers the advantage of a postscript… er… “afterword”, written in 1990, fourteen years after the first edition.

The afterword does not substitute for the masterwork, even though it neatly distills the complex argument into four propositions.

0520 Here are the four propositions.

0521 This examination commences with these four propositions.

Why do I pursuit of this topic?

In my view, Mithen’s 2024 work, The Language Puzzle, exhibits the hallmarks of both subjective consciousness and bicameral mind.

0522 This examination concludes with modifications on Jaynes’s four propositions.

0523 Each of these modifications have been discussed in full.

These modifications bind together Mithen’s nyet hypothesis, pertaining to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, and Jaynes’s historical hypothesis, pertaining to our current Lebenswelt.

These modifications demonstrate that our current Lebenswelt (items in blue) is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in (items in green).

These modifications propose how the first singularity is a major cause for this difference.

The first singularity stands between the green and the blue items.

0524 Steven Mithen publishes in 2024, almost precisely five decades after Julian Jaynes publishes in 1976. So much has happened during the past fifty years. Also, so little has happened, when it comes to developing Jaynes’s four propositions. How strange it is that Steven Mithen’s bicameral mind may have constructed a foreword to Jaynes’s masterwork, without the author consciously realizing it.

0525 This is precisely the irony that permeates Jaynes’s landmark work.

Who could have known?

So concludes this first look at Jaynes’s text.

10/3/25

The Evolution of Talk: A Note on How to Proceed (Part 1 of 1)

EOT 0001 The evolution of talk is not the same as the evolution of language.

Language evolves in the milieu of hand-talk.

So, what is the story?

0002 A course on the topic of human evolution is already on the market.

See Razie Mah’s, A Course on the Human Niche, consisting of the masterwork, plus four commentaries.

The Human Niche

Comments on Clive Gamble, John Gowlett and Robin Dunbar’s Book (2014) Thinking Big

Comments on Derek Bickerton’s Book (2014) More Than Nature Needs

Comments on Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky’s Book (2016) Why Only Us?

Comments on Steven Mithen’s Book (1996) The Prehistory of Mind.

0003 The works are available for purchase at various e-book venues. In order to conduct the course, purchase the e-book to read on a tablet (or as a PDF to print). The class is not didactic. It is Socratic. The style is read and discuss. The text is broken into points. Each point can be discussed. So, a leisurely class may open the text, read out loud and ask what the point suggests.

0004 The masterwork came out in 2018 and is still highly relevant to inquiry into the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

How so?

The human niche is the potential of triadic relations.

No other course on human evolution poses this ground-breaking hypothesis.

0005 Nonetheless, six years later, Razie Mah adds to the first course with a second, consisting in two sequences of blogs. This blog-inclusive (as well as e-book exclusive) course serves as a supplement to the master course, especially in regards to the evolution of talk.

0006 The first sequence is collated and rounded out in a compilation, titled, Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019), making the blogs and the compilation ideal for a guided- and home-schooling course.

Michael Tomasello worked at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology for twenty years. He wrote a series of books on the evolution of human cognition, communication, thinking, morality and so on. In short, his books cover the evolution of the stuff of talk.

0007 Here is a list of the five commentaries in this first sequence.

One: Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (1999) “The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition”

(January 18-31, 2024, 12 blogs, 0-82 points)

Two: Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2008) “Origins of Human Communication”

(January 17-4, 2024, 12 blogs, 83-186 points)

Three: Looking at Michael Thomasello’s Book (2014) “A Natural History of Human Thinking”

(February 29-5, 2024, 22 blogs, 187-388 points, completes Part 1 of Comments, see below)

Four: Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2016) “A Natural History of Human Morality”

(March 26-1, 2024, 22 blogs, 389-600 points)

Five: Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Book (2019) “Becoming Human”

(points 601-793 are in Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019) Part 2, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues)

0008 Yes, to complete the course, one needs to purchase Part 2.

How sneaky is that?

So, that is the meaning of “blog-inclusive and e-book exclusive”.

0009 The second sequence is collated in the compilation, titled, Synaesthesia and The Bicameral Mind in Human Evolution. This compilation packages two commentaries on human evolution and sets the scene for a study of the first singularity.

This list continues the previous numbering.

Six: Looking at Steven Mithen’s Book (2024) “The Language Puzzle”

(September 29-4, 2025, 23 blogs, 0-235 points)

Seven: A First Look at Julian Jaynes’s Book (1976) “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”.

(October 31-8, 2025, 21 blogs, 235-525 points)

0010 Overall, this hybrid online-onsale course on the evolution of talk, by Razie Mah, are available for sampling (on the blog) and may be purchased at any e-book venue.

Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019), Parts 1 and 2 contains 753 points.

Synaesthesia and the Bicameral Mind in Human Evolution contains 525 points.

0011 Total: 1278 points, 21 hours at 1 minute per point.

Perhaps, this online course lasts around 4 to 5 weeks.

Enjoy this sample and consider purchasing other Razie Mah’s online courses, especially the one on the human niche.

09/30/25

Looking at Steven Mithen’s Book (2024) “The Language Puzzle” (Part 1 of 23)

0001 The full title of the book before me is The Language Puzzle: Piecing Together The Six-Million-Year Story Of How Words Evolved (2024, Basic Books, New York). Dr. Mithen is a Professor of Early Prehistory at the University of Reading. He has published before. More on that later.

The book works on the metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle. Fourteen chapters present the pieces. The introduction and conclusion stage and arrange them.

0002 This current metaphor is very different than a glorious historical metaphor used in a book published almost three decades earlier. The Prehistory of The Mind (1996) offers the historical development of the architecture of cathedrals in Europe as a lens for considering cognitive evolution. The metaphor works well because the nave associates to general intelligence and side chapels associate to specialized mental modules.

0003 From the genetic divergence from chimpanzees to the start of bipedalism, the simple nave of general intelligenceadapts to cognitive challenges.

From the appearance of bipedalism to the domestication of fire, specialized modules are added to general intelligence, but the two do not integrate. Indeed, both specialized modules and general intelligence are supported by their own, thick, walls. The metaphor is the Romanesque cathedral.

From the domestication of fire until the first singularity (think, “the potentiation of civilization”), general intelligence integrates with specialized modules, presumably due to talk becoming fully linguistic. Language becomes the walls, supported by flying buttresses of automatic decoding. The metaphor is the Gothic cathedral.

0004 Here is a picture.

0005 The metaphor is so wonderful that Razie Mah publishes the e-book, Comments on Steven Mithen’s Book (1996) The Prehistory of The Mind as one of the readers that accompanies the masterwork, The Human Niche, in the series A Course On The Human Niche (available at smashwords and other e-book venues).

0006 Mithen’s approach is also echoed in the work of another evolutionary anthropologist, Michael Tomasello, working at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, as discussed in Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019) (by Razie Mah, also see blogs for January through March, 2024).

0007 Mithen’s approach is also reflected in another review that belongs to the series, A Course On The Human Niche. The title is Comments on Clive Gamble, John Gowlett and Robin Dunbar’s Book (2014) Thinking Big. In this review, social circles turn out to be very important in hominin evolution. Mammalian brain size roughly correlates to group size. So, the larger the hominin brain grows, the larger the group.

Not surprisingly, Mithen’s metaphor indicates the social circle under the most intense selection pressure, irrespective of group size.

0008 What does this imply?

Obviously, group size is not the crucial factor in hominin evolution.

Whatever is increasing hominin brain size is.

0006 To me, it is not surprising that Mithen has not encountered Razie Mah’s review of his 1996 work, even though it is one of the few more-than-surface reflections on The Prehistory of The Mind available.

Perhaps, the same will go for this blog, which will take Mithen’s metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle quite literally.

09/18/25

Looking at Steven Mithen’s Book (2024) “The Language Puzzle” (Part 11 of 23)

0097 The earliest stone tools show us that, once a team becomes both successful and long-lived, the disjuncture between the two selection pressures remains. Once a new team habit settles in, individuals adapt to the habit over generations, rather than the habit adapting to the individuals.

One clue to the validity of this conclusion is found in the stability of stone tools.

Here is a timeline.

0098 Oldowan stone tools are made the same way for almost a million years. To me, this suggests that the perspective level of the following interscope does not change, because the team activity persists over generations. Improvements in the Oldowan team activity are not as crucial as discovering another lucrative team activity. The Oldowan team is one. We do not know how many others there are.

0099 But, what about the individuals that participate in the Oldowan team activity? Are they subject to natural selection for abilities to assess which stones to choose for rapid construction and whether a carcass is worth scavenging?

Yes, the content and situation levels of the above interscope show features where natural selection can operate. Obviously, there are many specialized cognitive abilities that can be rewarded, through natural selection, over many generations. Indeed, while the Oldowan stone-tool “kit” remains stable, a new species of human evolves, complete with substantially larger brains.

0100 After Homo erectus appears in the fossil record in Africa, a few more hundred thousand years pass before the team changes. Mithen describes Oldowan and Acheulean stone tools in detail, but does not elaborate on how they were used.

0101 Oldowan stone tools are utilitarian and made on the spot. Opportunistic scavenging seems to be the likely definition of success_2c.

Acheulean stone tools are more sophisticated and are made ahead of time. Perhaps, this implies new ways to extract food. Homo erectus hunt some sort of creature that can be taken down with what appears to be a fairly large stone tooth. This is not the only possibility, but it is the one that appears in the following figure.

0102 Perhaps, the Acheulean stone-tool kit is used by more than one team.

It is difficult to know, without time travel.

If we moderns could time travel, I suspect that we would be amazed at the variety of extractive technologies that Homo erectus masters prior to the domestication of fire. Homo erectus migrates out of Africa and into Eurasia around a million years ago. Then, along with the domestication of fire, more refined Acheulean stone tools appear. New stone tools imply that new teams are constellating, this time with hunting definitely in mind.

0103 Here is the ongoing timeline of hominin evolution.

09/11/25

How The Voice Gets Added to Hand-Talk In Human Evolution, Part A1 (Part 17 of 23)

0154 What a banner!

0155 The evolutionary anthropologist, Steven Mithen, publishes a book in 2024 with the full title, The Language Puzzle: Piecing Together The Six-Million Year Story Of How Words Evolve (BasicBooks: New York). The book purports to describe the evolution of “language”. But, what is “language”? Is language the sole province of speech? Of course not, deaf communities practice so-called “sign-language”. I call this practice, “fully linguistic hand-talk”.

0156 Despite the reality that language can be performed in two modalities, manual-brachial gesture and voice, Mithen rules out the gestural origins of language. Consequently, he faces the challenge of portraying the vocal origins of language.

0157 The problem?

Consider the following comparison.

0158 Two features are integral to language.

The first is displacement. “Displacement” means that “the referent of the word does not have to be present”.

The second is symbolic operations. Symbols are sign-relations whose sign-objects are based on habit, convention, law and so forth. Within any symbolic order, a symbol must be sufficiently different from any other symbol as to be readily recognized. A finite set of symbols constitutes a symbolic order. Symbolic operations constellate within a symbolic order. One name for such symbolic operations is “grammar”.

0159 Archaeological evidence for bipedalism predates 3.5 Myr (million of years ago). At this time, vocalizations are not only involuntary, but they tell everyone that a referent is present. It is the opposite of displacement. Vocalizations denote placements.

Of course, that means that involuntary calls may be labeled indexes, in so far as the call indicates a presence. That means that involuntary calls are indexes.

But, an involuntary call cannot be called a linguistic sign-relation whose sign object is determined by pointing, contiguity, cause and effect and so forth. And, that is an index, too.

0161 Okay, that may be confusing.

Vocal calls are indexes in the same way that an emergency alarm is an index. The alarm cannot tell me much more than “an emergency is happening”. That is not displacement.

Manual-brachial gestures can point to something, even when that something is not present (like the location of the sunrise). Manual-brachial word gestures allow displacement.

0162 In regards to symbolic operations, consider taking the metaphor, a word is like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle,literally. Then, say, 1.7 million years before present time, while I am digging tubers with my team, not far from the forest’s edge, a vulture lands in a nearby tree and one of us notices that… uh oh… there is a jaguar in that tree. The vulture sees the jaguar. The jaguar eyes the little hominins. We know why the vulture decides to land. The vulture wants to see what happens.

Everyone gathers what tubers they have into leaf-baskets. The elder of the team signs the following gestures to me and I reply.

0163 Elder signs [point-YOU][image-RUN][point-RIGHT][image-THROW].

Then in reply, I say, [point-ME][raise ROCK].

0164 Each iconic and indexal gesture-word has already been honed through usage to be sufficiently different from any other word-gesture (in our team-oriented lexicon) as to be instantly recognized. So, the imagery and the indications snap together into one Gestalt, shared by both elder and myself.

Of course, Mithen discusses displacement and grammar, but not in this manner. He proposes that displacement for the vocal channel involves synaesthesia, that is, cross-modal sensing. But, how would this apply to the problems faced by teams, while extracting food under dangerous conditions (which Michael Tomasello labels “collaborative obligatory foraging”)?

0165 So, what is the key point?

Mithen claims to be solving a six-million year old process. But, his metaphor of the jigsaw puzzle, when taken literally, takes us through the period that stretches from the start of bipedalism to the domestication of fire. This corresponds to Michael Tomasello’s “period two”.

Indeed, Mithen is not aware that his choice of metaphors undermines his claim against the gestural origin of language.

0166 Is that sort of funny?

In what way?

Technically, before the domestication of fire, hand-talk is protolinguistic. Each team has its own protolanguage. Plus, this protolanguage is not fully linguistic because it does not permit grammatically correct counter-intuitive statements, such as:

[imageTREE][point to EYES][roll EYEs back and forth]

0167 Oh, yes. Our kind evolves in a surveillance society. And we are on the menu.

The trees have eyes and are watching.

09/4/25

Looking at Steven Mithen’s Book (2024) “The Language Puzzle” (Part 23 of 23)

0229 So, what is The Language Puzzle about, in an implicit sort of way?

It is about how speech gets added to hand talk after the domestication of fire.

The irony of the work is found in Mithen’s explicit denial of the gestural origins of language, while…

… at the same time, the author provides a solution to a question that he cannot even pose.

0230 Examinations don’t get better than this.

This examination adds value to Mithen’s work in a surprising fashion.

0231 This examination suggests that a tremendous amount of theoretical reformulation needs to be done. In particular, the following juxtaposition of events is suggestive.

0232 I ask, “Does Homo sapien’s encounter, love affair, then divorce from the Neanderthals create a condition where speech becomes more and more independent as a mode of talking? Does speech become capable of operating linguistically, independent of hand talk, yet remain integrated into the natural-sign references of hand-talk?”

0233 Take a look at the artifact of the lion-man, pictured in figure 3 on page 28 of Mithen’s text.

Maybe, we can ask him.

Do you think that he has something to say to us?

Surely, he cannot perform hand-talk.

So, the lion-man must speak for itself.

0233 Yes, it’s like synaesthesia gone wild.

0234 But, “wild” is not even close to this last implication, which tells me that our current Lebenswelt is not the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

What about the item in red?

See Razie Mah’s e-books, The First Singularity and It’s Fairy Tale Trace (for a technical proposal) and An Archaeology of the Fall (for a dramatic rendering), available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

0235 With that said, I thank Steven Mithen for publishing a book that can be fruitfully read both explicitly and implicitly.

Also, the story does not end here, because this examination plays a prominent role in the next commentary, Looking at Julian Jaynes’s Book (1976) “The Origin of Consciousness in The Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”.

An Archaeology of the Fall

A Horror Story by Razie Mah

Category Archives: The Evolution of Talk