Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1999 22:19:25 +0200
From: Mario Vaneechoutte <Mario.Vaneechoutte@rug.ac.be>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Paper on chimp culture
Tim Rhodes wrote:
> 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.
I am also playing with the idea that our very good imitative capacities are very
much triggered indirectly by our language. One of the issues is that after a few
years in life we have a concept 'imitation'. We know that we sometimes are
expected to imitate, if only to be accepted in our social group (ot to please
mum and dad). When trying to induce imitative behaviour in animals, all we have
is some food reward as communication and motivation. It seems much easier to
trigger humans to imitation (in addition to our natural innate imitation
capacities, shared with other animals), possibly because of language (leading to
reflexive awareness).
(By the way: Marc Verhaegen (see my website) suggests (based on some
interesting, but neglected articles and on personal ideas) that
australopithecines are actually the ancestors of chimps and gorillas and not
ours.)
>
>
> -Tim Rhodes
>
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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