From: "Tim Rhodes" <proftim@speakeasy.org>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Paper on chimp culture
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1999 08:46:43 -0700
Mario wrote:
>[...] So, humans had some capacities which made
>it possible that language emerged 'spontaneously' from their interactions.
That is
>one of the claims of our article: not that we are specially gifted with
language
>genes, but that several preadaptations (adaptations for other reasons than
>language) came together, from which language arose as a cultural
phenomenon.
I have a mental image of our pre-australopithecine forbears having a type of
birdsong (or would that be ape-song) which, after they'd been playing with
it for a couple million years, gave them a leg-up in other types of
imitation.
-Tim Rhodes
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit