From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Sun 06 Jul 2003 - 13:27:02 GMT
I have recently been skimming through Scientific Americans I missed reading
in the past few years. The Dec. 2001 issue had an article "How we came to
be Humans" by Ian Tattersall. I found something related to recent
discussion on this list. Here is a paragraph:
"This inevitably brings up the question about the Neanderthals that
everyone wants answered: Could they talk? Many people, especially looking
at the spectacularly beautiful stone tools that the Neanderthals made with
such skill, find it hard to believe that they couldn't. How, other than
through the use of language, could such remarkable skills have been passed
down over the generations? Well, not long ago a group of Japanese
researchers made a preliminary stab at addressing this problem. They
divided a group of undergraduates in two and taught one half how to make a
typical Neanderthal stone tool by using elaborate verbal explanations along
with practical demonstrations. The other half they taught by silent example
alone. One thing this experiment dramatically revealed was just how tough
it is to make stone tools; some of the undergraduates never became
proficient. But more remarkable still was that the two groups showed
essentially no difference either in the speed at which they acquired
toolmaking skills or in the efficiency with which they did so. Apparently
learning by silent example is just fine for passing along even
sophisticated stone tool-making techniques."
Keith Henson
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