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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" align="center">=====================================================<br>
<b>L O W L A N D S - L - 17 August 2010 - Volume 03<br>
</b><a href="mailto:lowlands.list@gmail.com" target="_blank"><span style="" lang="FR">lowlands.list@gmail.com</span></a> - <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/" target="_blank"><span style="" lang="FR">http://lowlands-l.net/</span></a><br>
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=====================================================</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">From: <span class="gd"><span style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">Sandy Fleming</span></span><span class="gi"> </span><span class="go"><<a href="mailto:sandy@fleimin.demon.co.uk">sandy@fleimin.demon.co.uk</a>></span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Subject: <span class="gi">LL-L
"Evolution" 2010.08.17 (01) [EN]</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">> From: <a href="mailto:heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk">heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk</a>
<<a href="mailto:heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk">heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk</a>><br>
> Subject: LL-L
"Evolution" 2010.08.16 (02) [EN]<br>
></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">> What a brilliant
observation! Though I don't think this is an<br>
> 'instead of' so much as as an 'addition' to the argument. The process<br>
> of building up a sequence of actions to produce a desired effect may<br>
> still have contributed largely to the creation of sequencing of<br>
> thought - but it is so very possible that that thought might have been<br>
> manifested by hand signs/gestures + speech/communication whether<br>
> silent or not. And I can well understand that in certain circumstances<br>
> silence would be imperative i.e. when stalking and gestures vital for<br>
> communication,</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Even more so when fine
control of mouth movements hasn't been developed<br>
yet.<br>
<br>
What I'm saying is that sophisticated language may have developed even<br>
before speech.<br>
<span style="color: rgb(136, 136, 136);"><br>
Sandy Fleming<br>
<a href="http://scotstext.org/" target="_blank">http://scotstext.org/</a></span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">----------</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">From: <span class="gd"><span style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);"></span></span><span class="gI"><span class="gD" style="color: rgb(200, 137, 0);">Mark Dreyer</span> <span class="go"><<a href="mailto:mrdreyer@lantic.net">mrdreyer@lantic.net</a>></span></span><span class="go"></span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Subject: <span class="gI">LL-L "Resources" 2010.08.15 (06) [EN]</span><span class="go"></span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: rgb(91, 16, 148);">Beste Marcus,
Roger & All:</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Subject: LL-L
"Resources"</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">From: <span style="color: rgb(0, 104, 28);">Roger:</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: navy;">p. 16-18
Jean-Marie Hombert (director of the CNRS and linked to the university of Lyon)
dates, in an interview, the <strong>origin of
modern languages</strong> (with a complex syntax) <strong>70.000 to 55.000 years ago</strong>, based on
the hypothesis that for crossing sees and oceans a spohisticated level of
language is supposed to be necessary. Distances over see over 100 km needed a
developped form of communication for preparing food for more than 3 days etc.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: navy;">Mark:</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: navy;">Will someone
please tell the good J.M. Hombert that that hypothesis is a one-legged troll!
Crab-eating macaques have done the trip. So have a lot of other small-to-medium
animals, & we may riguorlously rule out the Wallace-Line. I myself have
certainly fasted for longer than three days, & frequently walked well
over 100Km, on two occasions simultaneously; & it is nothing to brag about.
Such an interval is no unbreachable divide throughout the length of the History
of Man. Such 'accidental' exploration is on record for many islands in the
South. Pacific (an appropriate place to start one should suppose).</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Another string of (Roger's)
thought:<br>
If <i>Homo sapiens</i> had the brains 150,000 years ago why did it take him so
long to develop extensive knowledge and why was the development so rapid in the
most recent period?</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Mark:</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">A good point, & is it
necessarily true? The fact that we know of nothing else doesn't mean there was
no previous flowering of civilisation. We have had a few 'Dark Ages'. It is no
great extrapolation to postulate another really big one pre-dating the Wurm. I
am a catastrophist. I am willing to accept there may well have been just such a
'Cultural Winter). It would fill in certain anthropological gaps & answer
some objections so vociferously raised by E von Daniken & his lot.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Mark:Now I'm getting testy:
Is this Marcus?</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">There was no relevant
genetic evolution of the brain since a very long time ago. Well, there are
studies that suggest a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence" target="_blank">connection
between brain performance</a> [measured as 'intelligence'] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence" target="_blank">and
race</a>, but even when we omit the methodological problems (educational
penetration, the irrelevance of 'mathematical logic' as measured in IQ tests to
nature-bound people like the Bushmen of Africa who do the worst performance in
IQ tests)...</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Mark:</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Huh??? According to my late
Uncle Jannie, a mining engineer & amateur anthropologist, all 'native
recruits' were checked for their potential as shift-bosses, according to an
IQ-test that weeded out nine in ten Bantu. Bushmen qualified across the board,
& that was better than us Whiteys or Hottentots managed. I have heard
work-psychologists agree that no IQ-test is trustworthy, particularly at the
higher readings. While I readily concede a connection between race &
intelligence, it is noteworthy how little mother-wit is needed in the
generality of the population for incredible cultural progress to be made &
sustained, given only a modicum of smarties. Take a cross-section of our
21st-Century Huminity & dump them on a desert island & let's see if
they can muster enough cultural leaven & technical know-how to sustain even
a 16th-Century life-style... I doubt. A single, slow, planet-wide catastrophe,
hitting only the economically active generation over the span of a generation
could so easily kick us back into the Stone Age.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Marcus:</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Is curiosity a wholly social
phenomenon? Why did nobody invent the wheel before 6000 BP? A wheel is less
useful without streets or draft animals, but even to a stone-age man living in
the flat steppe a pushcart is useful e.g. to transport his tent, isn't it? Did
they have so few belongings that they could transport it on their backs and
carts were just unnecessary?</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Mark:</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">You are right there. But do
you know that they knew & used wheels in South America?
On children's toys!</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Marcus:</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">You note that the arms race
of technology, the beginning of agriculture and the end of the Ice Age
coincide. You may not see the connection but I do, for our Culture alone.
The end of the ice age is a very important event with far-reaching consequences
world-wide, & I am certain agriculture preceded the same. The agriculturally
interesting areas were just in different regions. So how did the end of the ice
age trigger the development of agriculture?</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">No, Marcus, it merely
triggered our record of it of our nascent beginnings at the close of the Wurm.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. How much did that great hand of
Ice across the World wipe away in its sweeping stroke down to the bedrock of
all our temperate regions? I reckon a whole lot.<br>
<br>
(Is this still on-topic on Lowlands-l? Sorry, if not ;-) )<br>
<span style="color: rgb(136, 136, 136);"><br>
Mark Dreyer</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
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