@ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftXQ4xwF-8g&t=23s
Part A.
The main points I saw were that thought can occur without language, that the development of language first happened when “people” started wearing beads to signal station or position within a group. I saw that I was correct in thinking that the overall development of language seems to occur as people tried to share information, such as when they first started making cave paintings to communicate things (how to hunt a bear perhaps) even after the original artist is long gone. Additionally, language seems to be a constant attempt to “see and understand” the world and its workings (including ourselves) and as we define more and more parts we find the need to look further, to redefine and re-evaluate information in deeper and more complex ways requiring even more and better language. We read that art and symbology are the precursor to language as the spoken, and even more obviously, the written word are themselves symbols, place holders for ideas and concepts that we have created to help us communicate better with each other and to help us to understand everything observable (and in this modern age, many things not observable by man). They spoke about how long we have been developing language, stating that we have found cave paintings in South Africa are somewhere between 77 and 100 thousand years old. We looked at the difference between an open and a closed language, an open language can and does grow, develop, and evolve with the culture it functions within, they also talked about how “knowing” and understanding a word were not related in lower brain functioning mammals such as the way my ferrets know to come to me when I ask “who wants a cookie” but they do not return to their den at night and talk about the chocolate chip I gave them earlier. I learned about the Hyoid bone which supports our tongue and allows the creation of sounds that others do not have (ex: the Chimpanzee has the same larynx and hyoid bone but it is located too high to allow more than grunts and shrills. They stated that language developed gradually and could not progress beyond our one capability to understand and explain the world around us, just as language continues to develop today. Finally, we learned about Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas within the brain, the former is concerned with speech production and the latter seems to have some effect on our ability to understand language, if either is damaged or not functioning properly there are issues forming sentences.
Notes:
Distinctly human intelligence proceeded humans venturing out of Africa.
Beads communicate such as position or status within a group.
Pre-modern humans did not seem to think up new things, only imitation.
Cave art is like a book with instructions or other information held safe to share even after the author (artist) is gone.
Early modern humans had greater range of trade as beads from far places are often found.
The brain developed slowly, eventually creating millions of connections that allow for us to become more intelligent and therefore to create language.
Large problems and social issues likely had a large hand in development of modern language.
After age 7 the “window learning language” begins to close.
Without language humans would be like apes and exist in a world where unseen things or events never happened.
Part B.
It would seem to imply that hominids did not think about tomorrow, perhaps life was so difficult that they could only think about survival, perhaps they were simply still far too undeveloped to progress beyond the most rudimentary tools (which would coincide with a lack of mental development and awareness of self). It could be read that the development of tools and eventually the use of beads coincides with the development of the brain, learning to make a few basic tools (that were then easily copied and reproduced) was more important to early hominids continued existence than the development of higher understandings were.
Carvings, Beads, and art can not be created without some understanding of symbology and therefore language as they are a form of communication, these should be considered the early throws of language.
Without some point of reference, there is no symbol; the creation of symbolic art represents an attempt by one to communicate with others much like the author of a book puts words to paper to share their thoughts.
The significance of language to cultural sophistication is a clear connection, the better the language is at describing the world the greater the understanding of the world. We should also note that as understanding grows, language grows, this allows us to ask better questions in our attempt to understand thereby creating more, better, language…
The illustrations made with the deaf learners was an interesting one. They showed, by example, that after the “language window” begins to close it is very difficult to teach a language to the students who instead began using their own sign language with each other. This means, despite not being exposed to language during the open language window, the human is (the modern human) is built to communicate.
This was not something I experienced in the usual way. I had to choose to teach myself these things as it turns out people with Asperger's generally do not have this development and if they do it is at a later age. That said I believe it is important not because it is about so-called mind-reading, “I believe I know what you are thinking”, but because it is how we learn to try and anticipate how others will respond to a given communication. It likely also is related to the development of empathy, both of which I still struggle with this to this day. I just do not understand so much of why people seem to think or feel the ways they do. I spend years and years, mostly without any real or strong connections to others, and watched, listened, and tried to make sense of the human-animal.
Pinker stated that it is solely due to the massive amount of acquired knowledge, collected by humans, and due to the mass of collected innovations (inventions) that man lives better than cavemen did. It is essentially what I told my children; “you are smarter than me, (they protest) I continue, you have the advantage of having access to everything I know, and you will build from there. You will be able to better understand things than I do, but first, you have to gather up as much of the available knowledge and wisdom as you can.