Early Humans

[ysabetwordsmith]

Stone Age humans used these mysterious signs and symbols to store and share information, almost 40,000 years before writing was invented

The research team studied 260 mobile artifacts that contain more than 3,000 signs. The team focused only on intentional and non-practical surface marks. That means the signs were not accidental scratches or marks made for tool making.


Just in case you're curious, things we recorded at that time included but were not limited to:

* how many animals of a type were seen
* hunting targets on an animal
* records of divination to allow or deny hunting of a species
* other kinds of divination results
* days, often a lunar or menstrual cycle
* months, often for pregnancy
* number of anything that needed counting
* gambling or other gaming scores
* maps or directions to a place

A crucial point: temporary information was customarily inscribed on scrap bone or sticks. Anything on a tool, figurine, or other wrought item was more important or permanent. Animals were generally important, hence the prevalence of marked animal figurines.

Comments

[siliconshaman]

So.. pictograms? I thought those counted as a form of writing?

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

People seem to use "writing" as "recorded language" rather than "recorded information."

Re: Thoughts

[(Anonymous)]

???!?

What do they think *language* is??

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

Language has words and grammar, insofar as we know based on surviving examples. A left-pointing arrow and "Turn left" are not the same things, even though they both convey similar information. The latter adds what the local language is.

However, a case could be made for grammar, because the observed marks follow specific rules. In particular I'm thinking of Japanese with its object-class counting words, which go something like "One (we're counting long thin things) pencil" or "two (we're counting birds) ducks."

Re: Thoughts

[siliconshaman]

^ what they said!

Granted, it's possible for talk to not contain information... but really?!

Re: Thoughts

[conuly]

But crucially, not all information involves language.

If my cat runs up to me with her ears perked and her tail in a happy question mark, she's undoubtedly communicating to me, but she's not using language.

Likewise, if my dog suddenly pulls back her ears, tucks her tail between her legs, and cringes, she's communicating something else, but also without language.

If somebody comes up to me and starts speaking Chinese or Russian, and I want to indicate that I have no idea what they're saying and they should switch to English or else talk to somebody else, I can make a frowny face, shake my head, look away, and otherwise communicate to them that no two-way talks will happen. That's language on their side and communication on mine, but notably, language and communication do not happen together.

So let's look at signs. A skull and crossbones on a bottle is a pretty obvious, unambiguous, and internationally agreed upon symbol that means "poison". But it's not language. Language could be used to tell you what kind of poison it is, but if a person does not speak that language they might eat the food anyway. They need the information in a way that everybody can read, regardless of the language they speak.

A green light is an international symbol that means "go" and a red light means "stop". Even people who, for whatever reason, never learned to speak have a chance to understand green = go, red = stop. If you're in a foreign country, you can drive around knowing that green = go, red = stop, despite the fact that you cannot read the street signs. The signs contain language but, for you, no information. The lights contain information but no language.

Re: Thoughts

[siliconshaman]

It all depends upon how you define language. I lean towards taking a functional approach, it's the transfer of information. Communication in other words.

Your cat is communicating with you using body language. Ditto the dog.

It's not spoken but it is non-verbal communication with it's own syntax and grammar, ergo, it is language. Spoken words are, at the most basic, auditory symbols used as a means to convey concepts. Ones we have to learn as children.

Likewise, sign language is without a doubt, a language..even though it's not spoken. It is still communication, it fulfils all the requirements to called a language, irrespective of it not being spoken.

I maintain, language is the transfer of information using learnt symbols, communication regardless of the medium of transfer. It is not exclusively spoken. Thus, this set of ancient carved glyphs are still a written language.

We might not know exactly what it's meant to convey, since we don't know definitively the meanings behind the symbols, but that doesn't invalidate it. I don't know much Russian and couldn't read the Cyrillic script, but that changes nothing.

Re: Thoughts

[conuly]

With language, you can say something novel, something nobody has ever said before. You can say "Cheese ate all my cats, and then it turned green and flew away on a magical raft" and people will understand that vivid, but ultimately pointless word picture. And you could say that in just about any language in the world, including signed languages. (Or if the languages don't have specific words for any of those concepts for some reason you could define "raft" or "cat" or "magical".)

My cat is wonderful, but she cannot say new things. She can say a few small things, over and over again. She cannot combine those small things into new things. She can't say "Scared happy want want scared" and have it mean "I was scared and I'll be happy if you snuggle me, I want snuggles".

Re: Thoughts

[siliconshaman]

Go search youtube for cats using sound buttons, for example Billi. Yes they can form novel sentences, including using combinations of sound bite word to describe something that there wasn't a button for.

Cats can communicate using spoken language as well. Loki is my daughters cat, he is able to make sounds that resemble human spoken language. He has a vocabulary of maybe 50 or so words that are clear enough to understand, and context has proven he knows what they mean to. However, he is not exceptional in that regard, many cats can do this, if you listen and don't just dismiss the sounds they make out of hand because they have an 'accent'. (or speech impediment if you want to look at it another way.)

To use an example. After being taken to the vets, a long journey to a place he very much didn't like. He very plainly wailed "Home..now!" A sentence construction not heard before, although containing two words he knew... and very clearly conveying his thoughts and feelings on the matter.

Re: Thoughts

[conuly]

This is changing the conversation from "not every type of communication is language" to "yes, cats can use language".

Let's look at another type of communication - the poison dart frog. The frog is really brightly colored, which sends an unmistakeable signal to predators: "don't eat me!" but it's also definitely not language because frogs are born that way, they can't change it.

Re: Thoughts

[siliconshaman]

Ok, yes. That's however a different matter. A Poison arrow frogs coloration is a warning sign, that evolved. There's no conscious intent there. (unlike a skull and cross-bones on a bottle.)

The other requirement for language is conscious intent to convey information, regardless of how far removed that is. Those symbolic glyphs are obviously a conscious intent to convey..something, even though the person is long,long dead and the meanings lost. They are representative enough we can make a guess at the meaning.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

I agree that language involves a conscious choice to convey information. So it requires both a sense of self and a theory of mind (other selves exist whom you wish to communicate with). Note that some corvids are highly social and quite adept at both detecting and performing deceit. Thus, their language likely incorporates both true and false expressions.

Re: Thoughts

[siliconshaman]

Agreed.. They can probably lie.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

There is a whole branch of animal cognition studies that aim to identify which animals can distinguish a liar, and which will use deceitful tactics to manipulate others. These cluster in the most intelligence, most social species because dumb ones can't figure it out and solitary ones rarely if ever need it. If there are 30 others around you, it becomes vitally important to know who is reliable, and to make sure that others don't steal the treasures you cache.

Re: Thoughts

[siliconshaman]

... ok, my brain just went tilt.

There is a whole culture out there, composed of Corvids. With their own society, their petty disputes, grudges, politicking and everything that culture implies...and we know nothing about it!

Serious case of Sonder!

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

Yep. But where species intersect, we are not outside their sphere of interest. Corvids will declare individual humans to be enemies or allies, then spread this, so that other corvids classify that human the same. Some corvids really like humans for item drops, not just collecting shiny things, but using plastic lids as sleds. Some corvids "pay" humans by leaving shiny or interesting items beside the bird feeder. In one case, an allied human photographer dropped a camera lens down a gorge ... then got home to find that one of the corvids had brought it back.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

Communication exists on a spectrum:

* Nonlinguistic, simple signals
-- honest signaling (poison arrow frogs: bite me and die)
-- dishonest signaling (viceroy butterflies mimicking the monarch's warning of bad flavor)

* Simple, volitional communication
-- alarm calls
-- repetitive mating songs

* Proto-languages
-- wolves can hold a whole conversation in body language
-- prairie dogs and meerkats can combine a generic "danger" word with a specific word for "raptor" or "snake"

* Things that are quite possibly languages that humans don't understand
-- parrots are highly intelligent, social, and name their babies
-- whale songs are intricate and change over time

* Spoken, signed, or written languages
-- human languages
-- other species using symbol boards, speech buttons, etc. to construct sentences, express needs, and have conversations


The study of symbol use is related to but not identical to the study of language or communication in general. Humans use symbols widely, the complexity of which has escalated from finger fluting to cave art to counting-marks to pictograms illustrating how to use a sacred site to full literacy with alphabets and such. In particular, look at the progression from single simple symbols (arrow = this way) to combinations of symbols that make a statement (arrow + wavy line = "Go this way to water.").

Interestingly, while symbols can vary widely across cultures, a lot of them don't. There seems to be a common core of encoded concepts that people generally agree on. An arrow symbol might take many forms, but (unless fletched to indicate hunting) it consistently means "this way." A wavy line or lines is a widespread symbol of water. This suggests that making meaningful written symbols goes very far back in evolution.

Other species tend to use only basic symbols, like scratching a tree to say "A big bear lives here." But some are quite adept at figuring out how humans use symbols, as with corvids and stoplights. They wait for a red light, position a nut in the street, watch for cars to run over and crack it, then wait for a red light to stop the cars so they can safely eat the nutmeat. They know exactly what those signals mean and how to capitalize on the traffic flow, even though they didn't build any of the system.

Re: Thoughts

[siliconshaman]

As an aside, when people take hallucinogens and start seeing patterns, as long as they take the same sort & dosage, they independently report seeing very similar patterns regardless of their background.

The implication is that there are certain symbols and patterns hard-coded into our neural architecture.

It would not be unreasonable to assume that basic symbols used consciously, are built upon these subconscious 'primitives' and are thus universal.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>The implication is that there are certain symbols and patterns hard-coded into our neural architecture.<<

Or that those kinds of journeys take people to the same place, or set of places with predictable features. This makes sense given that different substances or techniques achieve results which are different from each other, but internally consistent.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Go search youtube for cats using sound buttons <<

Dogs use sound buttons too. There's also the experiment with horses where all of them learned to use a point board to say "Blanket On." :D

>>combinations of sound bite word to describe something that there wasn't a button for.<<

Now I'm remembering Koko signing "shit-scientist" for people she disliked.

>>Cats can communicate using spoken language as well. Loki is my daughters cat, he is able to make sounds that resemble human spoken language. He has a vocabulary of maybe 50 or so words that are clear enough to understand, and context has proven he knows what they mean to. <<

Yep. Conversely, I speak a little Cat well enough to make myself understood. I am better in Wolf.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>I maintain, language is the transfer of information using learnt symbols, communication regardless of the medium of transfer. <<

That's a good start. I would add that language has rules for moving symbols around to mean different things, to allow for novel expressions. Whereas most animals that can communicate have a fairly limited repertoire where each symbol has a static meaning. Most animals have an alarm call, but very few do what crows do and talk about the importance of mobbing Scary Mask every time he appears.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>If my cat runs up to me with her ears perked and her tail in a happy question mark, she's undoubtedly communicating to me, but she's not using language.<<

Maybe, maybe not.

Language doesn't have to be speech. Sign language, which relies heavily on body language and facial expressions to convey nuances or inflections, is still a language.

Also, interactions with animals depend on whether you are fluent in their mode of communication.

If a dog bounds toward me flailing his tail "Hello! I shall play with you!" and I don't want to be jumped on, I can narrow my eyes, show my teeth, and say, "Rrrr," which means: "Do not intrude on my space or there will be consequences." This body lacks ears to prick and tail to erect to specify, "I am dominant to you," but that seems to come across just fine. The dog usually stops and crouches or rolls over: "Sorry, boss. You are dominant to me. Let's not fight."

And that's a conversation with concrete results. We have communicated some precise concepts. It's not the same as a human language and not as complex, but it's a lot more flexible than a bird's alarm call.