From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Wed Jan 09 2002 - 18:31:02 MST
On 9 Jan 2002 at 18:37, L' Ermit wrote:
> Joe, thanks for the article link
> [http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran/ramachandran_p1.html]. His
> hypothesis seems eminently believable, although there is some information
> that I think he is missing, and in the light of which, I think he will need
> to rework his paper somewhat.
> This is the fact that prior to approximately 120-130 kyears BCE we could not
> have talked even if we had wanted to, as our throat/tongue structure would
> not have allowed us to.
> We do know that we developed our ability to speak somewhere around then
> (from skull and jaw muscle anchorages), at the cost of becoming able to
> choke - which suggests that being able to speak was one of the three most
> costly selection processes we have indulged in.
> And that also gives us the answer to the question of what is "most
> important" to humans, as it was not until we learnt to communicate by speech
> that we began a cycle of rapid development...
>
I agree with your caveat; I also agree that the verification of the
existence of mirror neurons is important, and requires me to modify,
although not reject, my thesis in my paper TOOLS, LANGUAGE AND
TEXT. One of the elaborations I am contemplating is the division of
memes into IP-memes (for imitation of percepts memes) and the subset
CC-memes (for communication of concepts memes). The former seem
to be the province of most mammalian species, and are essential for the
transmission of necessary skills from parents to children, such as
toolmaking and use, shelter building, hunting, and gathering, while the
latter appear restricted to homo sapiens and perhaps the higher apes
and cetaceans.
>
> Regards
>
> Hermit
>
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