0127 Unless, of course, one uses computer simulations (8).

That is the topic is chapter eight.

Computer simulations assume that spoken words are like tokens.  A token is a type.  Here, a spoken word would be a token of a symbol.

Is it easy to see the assumption?

Displacement has already occurred.

0128 This brings me to the metaphor that organizes this book.  Why does Mithen choose the metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle?

Well, obviously, the author wants to review various areas of research pertaining to the origins of language as pieces of a problem, so that fitting the pieces together will offer a solution.

0129 I ask, “Isn’t there a another reason that um… does not qualify as a ‘reason’?”

0130 What is the definition of “reason”?

In Original Sin and the Post Truth-Condition (by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues), “reason” serves as the normal context_3a and potential_1a of the dyadic actuality_2a, {what people think [cannot be objectified as] what people say}_2a.  For the postmodern, reason_3a,1a is the normal context of the intellect_3a operating on the potential of the will_1a.

In contrast, “pre-modern reason” is not “post-modern reason”.

For the premodern, reason_3a1a is the intellect_3a operating on the potential of the truth_1a.

0131 So, what am I asking for?

Consider the postmodern answer for why Mithen chooses the metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle.

Obviously, the answer comports with reason_3a1a as the author’s intellect_3a operating on the potential of the will_1a.

So, I am asking for an answer that is not obvious, where reason_3a,1a is the author’s intellect_3a operating on the potential of truth_1a.

Why does Mithen choose the metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle?

Am I registering two different mentalities operating within Mithen’s text?

0132 Why do I take the author’s metaphor of the jigsaw puzzle literally?

From his prior work, The Prehistory Of The Mind, I know that Mithen thinks intuitively and holistically.  His use of the metaphor of the history of the architecture of European cathedrals allows an implicit appreciation of explicit theories on the evolution of cognition in hominins.

The work under examination is different, because a coherent illumination gets veiled by disparate agendas of current research.  The diversity of the so-called pieces of the puzzle speaks to an incoherence, where pieces do not necessarily lock together.

0133 In my view, a coherent illumination may be revealed by biosemiotics.

See Biosemiotics As Noumenon, Parts 1-3, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

0134 Without a coherent illumination to objectively organize his subjective intuition, Mithen blindly reaches for a metaphor that can accomplish the task.

By definition, jigsaw pieces must fit together.

Correct?

Yes, but there is another avenue to appreciate Mithen’s intuition.

If I take the metaphor literally, I can intuitively portray the two crucial adaptations involved in explaining why language evolves in the milieu of hand-talk.

Here is a picture.

0135 A biosemiotic view of signs shows how language evolves by assigning the iconic and the indexal character of natural signs to displacement and the symbolic character of natural signs to grammar.  This view unfolds while examining Mithen’s text, which explicitly rejects the idea of gestural origins to language (in chapter four).

It is as if Mithen inadvertently conveys what current research into the evolution of language is not illuminating, and in doing so, provides this examiner with a weird sort of challenge.  How do the biosemiotic truths embedded within Mithen’s own text betray what he willingly expresses?

What a challenge!

I suppose, at this juncture, the reader may say, “Hey, you said that chapters eight (8) and nine (9) stand between the chapters on stone tools (7) and fire (10).  What happened to chapter nine (9)?”

0136 Okay, maybe, as I approach chapter ten, titled “Fire”, I should expect that sensible construction should fail.

After all, the domestication of fire marks the transition between two periods in Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019).

But more on that later.

0137 Here are take-home messages for chapter three (3) and chapter nine (9).

0138 From chapter three, I learn that there are lexical and grammatical words, and that these words engage in displacement in very different manners.  Lexical words associate to real elements in content and situation-level actualities.  Grammatical words associate to the contiguities between these real elements.

0139 Is there another way to say that?

Oh, manual-brachial word gestures are icons and indexes of their referents.  Plus, they are distinct from one another and that allows symbolic operations.

0140 What about spoken words?

Well, they are distinct from one another.  Does that help?

0141 Okay, if spoken words are distinct from one another, and if an infant can hear the sounds of language and innately knows that words should be distinct, then the infant may calculate the transition probabilities that one syllable should be followed by another syllable.  Consistent transitional probabilities identify a spoken word.

Did I say that correctly?

The transitional probability that one particular syllable follows another syllable is word dependent.  Something very analogous to the literal jig-saw puzzle metaphor takes place.  The infant fits the syllables into words.  Then, the toddler figures out how to fit words into statements.  And, the kid off to language mastery in childhood.

0142 But, what about the meanings and messages of words?

Okay, the newbie uses visual cues to lock in a meaning and a message, once the syllabic presence of a spoken word is established.

To me, the meaning aspect is like fitting pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together on the basis of the image fragment that each piece contains.

0143 Plus, what about the big picture?

Well, here is where the much studied topic of “mind reading” comes in.  This is so crucial because, if we could cast ourselves back into the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, we would have to actually gaze upon the person who is talking. The whole body is animated by what?… a mind?… or a brain?… or someone engaging in hand-talk.

This aspect of the big picture is very important, because… well… it is integral to hand-talk, but it is not part of language (defined as the biological capacity to talk).  I suppose that talk is more than language.  So, language may not be the crucial question.  Talk is.

0144 This shift in the crucial question calls to mind chapter 2B of An Archaeology of the Fall (by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues), titled “Words are not lies.”

So what is the title of chapter 2A?

“Words are lies.”

0144 That brings me to the question, “If proto-linguistic hand-talk adapts to the social circle of the team, then why should it become fully linguistic?  Plus, why should hominins have added speech to their hand-talk?”

Mithen tips his hidden hand with the willful and truthful title of chapter ten.

“Fire”.

0145 The domestication of fire takes place over a few hundred thousand years.  The period is pivotal.

Here is the list.

0146 Fire sparks the imagination.

Chapter ten, concerning fire, sits close to the middle of the text.  It stands at near center.  Mithen asks whether the domestication of fire parallels the adoption of spoken words in human evolution.  Mithen is fascinated by the question, asking, “What types of linguistic practices are enticed by fire.”

0147 But, the implications of fire for hominin evolution goes beyond linguistic practices.

To me, the first implication is that more teams are possible when food is cooked with fire.  Intense heat breaks down structural barriers in both plants and meats in ways that cultivated decay does not.

More opportunities for gathering food open up.  More teams are successful.  To an evolutionary anthropologist, this means more teams (15), increasing relevance of community (150) and bigger brain volumes (as natural selection operates to routinize the abilities and dispositions for each team).

0148 That said, Mithen’s fixation on linguistic practices offers a relevant second implication.

0149 In this examination, in the period between the start of bipedalism (3.5 Myr) and the domestication of fire (0.8-0.6 Myr), proto-linguistic hand-talk adapts to the social circle of the team.  Proto-linguistic hand talk facilitates sensible construction.  Sensible construction hones the content and the situation levels of a three-level interscope, because the team itself constitutes the a stable perspective level.

0150 The following compressed nested form tells the tale.

The normal context of collaborative team activity_3b,3a bring the actualities of lexical and grammatical hand talk_2a,2binto relation with the potentials of ‘locking in_1a, and assembling_1b a big picture_1c‘.

Surely, this compound nested-form addresses two questions.  What is happening?_3a  What does it mean to me?_3b

0151 The domestication of fire creates a new venue for hand-talk, initiating (what Michael Tomasello calls) the third period of hominin evolution.

This is the topic of chapter ten.

0152 Or, I should say, “These items should be the topic of chapter ten.”

But, the chapter is very short.

Besides archaeological evidence for the domestication of fire, Mithen only explicitly mentions “night talk”.  Other aspects are inferred (but not explicitly developed) when the author mentions technical innovations in stone tools that accompany and follow the domestication of fire.

0153 So, for the next section, I will take this examination in the direction that the author subtly and implicitly indicates, but clearly and explicitly rules out.

What happens when language evolves in the milieu of hand-talk?

0168 The success of Mithen’s metaphor of jigsaw puzzle, when taken literally and applied to manual-brachial gesture-words, suggests the the question that Mithen explicitly addresses is not the problem that Mithen implicitly struggles to solve.

0169 Here is another clue. Chapters two through nine present 8 pieces of his puzzle. Chapters eleven through fifteen present 5.  Chapter ten lands slightly offset from the center.  Chapter ten is around two-thirds into the book.  Chapter ten is brief.  Chapter ten is titled “Fire”.

With this in mind, take a look at the three periods of human evolution appearing in Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019), by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

0170 To me, this is uncanny.

The above figure suggests that the question that Mithen implicitly struggles to solve is not how hand-talk becomes fully linguistic after the domestication of fire, but rather, how the voice gets added to fully linguistic hand-talk.

0171 What happens to proto-linguistic hand-talk commencing with the domestication of fire?

0172 Fire cooks food.  In fact, fire cooks a wide variety of foods.  Intense heat detoxifies and breaks down the structure of raw foods.  More calories and other nutrients are available after cooking with fire.

That means more teams are more successful.

0173 Fire extends the day.  Fire cooks food and provides radiance after the sun has set.  This new time encourages talking.  It is easy to imagine how proto-linguistic hand-talk, routinely practiced within each team, ends up hybridizing into fully linguistic hand-talk.

0174 What is the key difference between proto-linguistic and fully linguistic hand-talk?

Proto-linguistic hand-talk only allows sensible construction.  The perspective-level is the team.  There is no reason to not be sensible.

Fully linguistic hand-talk allows grammatically correct counter-intuitive statements, such as the name, [image-RAVEN][image-MAN].  The statement defies sensible construction. The content and situation levels that would be apparent inteam activity are missing, and the individual must construct a perspective-level actuality that is shared by every other individual in community.

[RAVEN][MAN] turns out to be a trickster.

0175 Yes, this is the start of what we now call “religion”.

The irony is that the word “religion” is a label and labels cannot be performed using hand-talk.  Hand-talk pictures and points to referents that already exist, even though the referent does not have to be present.  When considering the spoken label, “religion”, what is there to picture or point to?

[RAVEN][MAN] 

0176 How crazy is that?

The evolutionary anthropologists, Michael Tomasello and Steven Mithen, each brilliant in a different way, mint technical labels cannot be pictured or pointed to using hand-talk.

0177 What does this mean?

Remember how natural selection works?

Natural selection is based on the reproductive success of individuals with dispositions and abilities to um… innately perform… the… um… “things”… that evolutionary anthropologists label.  This is what our ancestors do.  They know not what they do.  They do not have labels for what they do.  They pantomime and point to referents.  They act as living mirrors that only not only reflect the scenes before them, but actually adapt to embody those reflections.  As noted in The Human Niche (by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues), our kind adapts to the potential of triadic relations.

But, fully linguistic hand-talk cannot picture or point to those purely relational beings.

0178 Here is a picture of what happens to hand-talk at the start of period three.

0179 So, what about this social construction business?

0180 Well, that vulture tipping off the team as to the presence of a jaguar scene repeats, around a million years after the first story.  This time the vulture is so bold as to perch on the tree limb directly above the jaguar.  Also, this time I am a member of the species, Homo heidelbergensis, and my brain is as almost as big as a modern human’s.  Plus, I have a million of years of selection for throwing behind me, which means I should be a powerful shot.

Because I am much more vigorous and daring than I ever was before, when I run right and throw my rock, the most outrageous event occurs.

0181 The elder tells the tale at the still burning hearth, after we all happily ate the fire-cooked tubers that my team collected.

Here is the story, in hand talk.

0182 Each gestural-word pictures or points to a referent.  Each should be rapidly decoded, because each word-gesture is different from every other word-gesture.  In a way, the entire statement can be processed with sensible construction.  In another way, the statement demands social construction.  This is not simply what happens in a team.  This is what happens to all of us.

What happens to all of us adapts to the social circle of community (150).

0183 What about the voice?

As far as this examiner is concerned, the voice is added to fully linguistic hand-talk, over a period of hundreds of thousands of years.

0184 Why do I say this?

Well, Mithen has already ruled out this option.  So, my answer must shine, faintly, like the morning sun, through the clouds of his explicit abstractions.

0185 Mithen tells the reader that, around the same time as the domestication of fire, Homo heidelbergensis appears in the fossil record.

Mithen tells the reader, in chapter eleven, on language and the brain, that Homo heidelbergensis has the brain asymmetry (and other features) indicative of language.  But, this “language” is not a civilized language… er, speech-alone talk, because… well… the vocal tract is not quite right… but… it must be… since the gestural origin of language has been ruled out.

0186 Not only that, but in the same chapter, Mithen discusses the natural-historical observation that, even though Neanderthals (who are now extinct) and humans have the same size of brain, the shape of the brain is different.  This keys into the geneticist’s conclusion that the Neanderthal and human lineages split before hearths become common.

0187 The different brain geometries are revealing.  Neanderthals appear in the fossil record long before humans.  Their eyes and occipital lobes are larger.  The occipital lobes are devoted to visual processing.  On top of that, one of their cerebellar hemispheres is larger than the other.  Is the left side in charge of the right hand?

0188 Does that sound like a deepening commitment to sensible and team-oriented hand talk?

It does to me.

0189 In contrast, Homo sapiens appears in the fossil record much later than Neanderthals.  Their faces are flatter as part of a horizontal shortening of the face, a consequence of the back of the mouth going vertical, in a sense, which looks rather dangerous.  But, it makes for a wonderfully complex resonance chamber with the pharyngeal and sinus cavities.

Also, instead of an expanded occipital lobe, humans have expanded parietal lobes (think of sensory and motor strips) and frontal lobes (think about others along with oneself).

0190 Does this sound like the addition of speech to fully linguistic hand-talk?

It does to me.

0191 I ask, “What niche must have opened up, besides the social circle of the team, that not only allows for proto-linguistic team-bound hand-talk to become fully linguistic community-oriented hand-talk, but encourages the voice to join hands with manual-brachial gestures?”

Plus, is this niche precisely the puzzle that Mithen refuses to acknowledge explicitly, even as he implicitly provides information to answer?

0192 So, why introduce the voice to fully linguistic hand-talk?

Well, it may have something to do with adaptations to the social circle of community (150).

Or, the voice may play a role for even larger social circles, like mega-bands (500) and tribes (1500).

0193 The first three items in the following list derive from Razie Mah’s e-book, The Human Niche.  The last item comes from chapter four of Mithen’s book.

0194 How does the vocal tract come under voluntary neural control?

The first “how” considers the role of singing.

Mega-bands (500) gather seasonally.  Tribes (1500) gather on occasion.  Time is limited, because such a large gathering invites disease.  So, our hominin ancestors recruit the voice for rapid synchronization.  Singing together and breathing in unison are biological ways to entrain a large number for the tasks at hand.  Memories must be refreshed.  Births celebrated. New stories told.  Marriages must be arranged.  Deaths must be discussed.  Such are the branches and the roots of the tree of life.

Singing in these large social circles translates into everyday life through sexual selection.  Mate preference may well account for why male and female adults have different vocal ranges and can sing in harmony.

0195 But, there remains a second “how”.  A vocal accompaniment… a vocal adornment… is knit to each hand-talk word.  This is precisely where Mithen’s hidden intuition shines.

This is where synaesthesia enters the picture.

0196 Chapters ten, eleven and twelve of Mithen’s book, titled “Fire”, “Language and the Brain” and “The Genetics of Language” reflect “period three” in Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019) (by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues).

0197 Here is a picture.

This diagram presents an evolutionary scenario… a “just-so” story… for the evolution of fully linguistic hand-talk during and after the domestication of fire.

0198 First, the domestication of fire shifts selection pressure to the community, where new cognitive spaces support the team of teams.  

The community constructs traditions that bind all to the community, so much so that “I “do not identify with “my” team to the detriment of other teams that are not “mine”.

0199 Second, in teams, hand-talk yields sensible construction.  Only the content and situation levels are in play (unless something goes horribly wrong).  The team itself constitutes the perspective-level.

For the community, content and situation-level hand-talk supports social construction.  Grammatically correct, but counter-intuitive statements demand social construction.  Social construction builds perspective-levels for the community.  This is an incredibly different task.  But, all the social circles must come into harmony.  The collapse of a community is a disaster for all.

0200 Third,  the vocal tract comes under voluntary control due to singing.  Singing adapts to the occasionally gathering social circles that are larger than community (150).   Homo heidelbergensis has a brain size that comports with groups the size of communities, so resonant larger social-circles are empowered.   These include seasonal (mega-band (500)) and occasional (tribe (1500)) gatherings.  In our current Lebenswelt, communal singing remains a path for social synchronization.

0201 These take-home messages are implicit in The Language Puzzle and explicit in Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry.  These messages explain why the voice comes under voluntary neural control.  These messages account for that back of the mouth turn down the throat for our lineage (but not for the Neanderthal lineage).  Humans have flat faces and globular brains because the voice is added to hand-talk at the start of our species.

But, at this moment, I have not convincingly said how.

0202 Plus, there is piece of information on in chapter twelve, The Genetics of Language, that offers a cause to pause.

Here is a timeline for hominin evolution during and after the domestication of fire.

0203 Take a look at the last item.

How amazing is that?

When humans, having evolved in Africa, move into Europe, they interbreed with Neanderthals. Today, current populations carry several percent of the Neanderthal genome.

Who would have guessed?

0204 What does this imply?

The Neanderthals practice only hand-talk, presumably fully linguistic.  The humans practice what may be labeled, “hand-speech” talk, because the voice has been added to hand talk (remember, I have not mentioned how).  For interbreeding to occur, humans probably rely primarily on hand-talk (day-time talk).  So, the voice, even though linguistic, is not important enough to interfere.  We love the Neanderthals, even though they can’t follow our voices very well.

0205 Why is this important?

It tells me that the voice is added to fully linguistic hand-talk as an adornment.

0206 An adornment?

Imagine two rings that, once you and your betrothed place on your fingers, as an adornment, change your language, perceptions and thoughts.

0217 Chapter thirteen, concerning how spoken words keep changing, considers our current Lebenswelt of speech-alone talk, and then tries to project that backwards, into the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, using various evolutionary theories.  He recounts the proposals of Bernd Heine and Tania Kuteva in The Genesis of Grammar (2007).  He gives an example of “level two” grammaticization (on page 311).  It look exactly like the hand-talk story that engages social construction in point 0181.

Unfortunately, these theoreticians propose that their theory applies to the evolution of speech.

No wonder Mithen rules out the gestural origins of language.

0218 Nevertheless, even though the lessons of chapter thirteen are explicit and apply to speech-alone talk, they carry an implicit implication that hand-talk words change when vocal utterances are added as adornments.

0219 For example, Mithen notes that language change in our current Lebenswelt of speech-alone talk entangles three dimensions of semantics: meaning (wider or narrower), presence (weakening or strengthening) and message (amelioration and/or perjoration).

Do those sematic dimensions sound vaguely familiar (see point 0020)?

0220 So, how is an evolutionary anthropologist supposed to view the changes in semantic dimensions in regards to the consequences of synaesthesia, applied to fully linguistic hand-talk, during the flickering illumination of a communal fire?

0221 The implications are mind-boggling.

0222 That is not all.

Here is a another picture that re-configures Mithen’s central hypothesis, that synaesthesia plays a crucial role in the evolution of language, into a revelation concerning a reality that Mithen explicitly rules out.

0223 Speech is added to hand-talk as an adornment.

When does adornment become obvious in hominin evolution?

Weirdly, adornment is undeniable soon after the appearance of Homo sapiens in the archaeological record.

Coincidence?

0224 Chapter fifteen, concerning signs and symbols, mentions Charles Peirce for the first time.

In the above figure, standard (team-oriented) day-time hand-talk evokes sensible construction using natural signs.  Icons and indexes account for displacement.  Symbols account for grammar. This is covered earlier while taking the metaphor of the jigsaw puzzle literally.

Under these conditions, a “symbol” is a sign-relation whose sign-object is determined by habit, convention, tradition, law and so forth.  One key feature of symbols is that each symbol (in a symbolic order) must be distinct from any other symbol (in that same order).  In a finite symbolic order, symbolic operations may develop.

The contemporary anthropologist’s definition of “symbol” differs from Charles Peirce’s definition of “symbol” as a natural sign-relation.

0225 Chapter fifteen, concerning symbols and signs, relies on contemporary anthropological theory, where a symbol is ‘something’ that evokes social (as opposed to sensible) construction.  

0226 Here is a picture of the two key terms.

0227 Am I suggesting that day-time hand-talk comports with Peirce’s natural sign definition of “symbol” and that night-time speech-adorned hand-talk comports with the “symbol” of contemporary anthropology?

You bet.

0228 Then what, I further ask, is the social construction that Paleolithic artifacts elicit?

Ah, does it have something to do with the community?

Perhaps, riffing off of Tomasello’s nomenclature, I may label what “symbols” adapt to.

Obligatory communal actualizing.