Recursive Language Revolution 70k Years Ago the Romulus and Remus Hypotheses | Hacker News Reader

Recursive Language Revolution 70k Years Ago the Romulus and Remus Hypotheses

biorxiv.org

30 pointsgaryclarke279 comments

It's interesting, but I'm very suspicious of statements like

"Without PFS, Neanderthals must have been simply wrapping the hides around their bodies like a poncho" or "As discussed above, building an animal trap is impossible without PFS"

Spiders can build traps without any language. Birds can build quite complicated nests without PFS. Yet we couldn't because we lack a particular language construct?

I'm pretty sure some things my dog does would be described as impossible without PFS by these authors :) Like burying a bone in one place when other dogs see it, then reburying it in another place when the other dog is in house :)

> as many as 18% of modern individuals exhibit PFS disability

wow, almost fifth can't combine even two objects in a novel way (and they can't learn to do it).

It sounds unbelievable

Yup. And according to the paper it means 18% of modern population couldn't sew a cloth or prepare a simple animal trap.

Sounds like bullshit TBH.

Several things:

-No genetic explanation at any point during the paper. It's all and well theorizing about evolution this genetics that, but if you don't have a mechanism, or even a putative explanation with actual genes involved and the evolutionary pressure behind them, don't expect to be taken seriously bt evolutionary biologists.

-The paper makes the assumption that a gap exists between the apparition of language and that of elaborate constructions, as opposed to us just not knowing more about it. It is entirely possible that humans from 300000 years ago were able to make figurines but we couldn't find any.

-What the hell is this doing on biorxiv?

-What the hell is RIO? I've never heard of this journal, and I don't think many people have (IF=0.8).

Overall this reads much more like a blog post than an actual article.

Among other notions, Lingua ex Machina [1] discussed possible evolutionary pathways which allowed complex language (nestable subject verb object clauses) to arise from simple language (just verb object statements).

I found that book on a lark and barely understood the content. I was tinkering with knowledge representation and semantic web stuff at the time. The utility of subject verb object clauses stuck with me and seems to come up frequently.

I'd love some ELI5's for how this paper advances our understanding.

[1] Lingua Ex Machina: Reconciling Darwin and Chomsky with the Human Brain [2001] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/252045.Lingua_Ex_Machina

I'm only half way through the paper, but it's a very interesting read. One thing I don't get though; I'd have thought that the dative case would be very useful, if not essential, to humans living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, but the paper seems to suggest that the necessary neural machinery to support the grammatical case only came into existence 70k years ago. What am I misunderstanding here?

The paper says that Hunter Gatherers existed well before 70,000 years ago, but this genetic mutation enabled the invention of recursive language, particularly spatial preposition. This enabled more abstract communication and planning, so for instance, Romulus and Remus on their first Buffalo hunt, dug a pit and covered it with branches in a location where the buffalo would naturally run to, when chased. They trapped far more buffalo than the typical zero or at most one - of traditional chase and spear method - ie they were far more successful than anyone before them. The benefit of this enhanced collaboration far outweighed the cost of slower brain development in children, so the mutation rapidly spread and dominated.

Previously posted

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22324236

Really interesting but poorly written (for a scientific publication). Had a few sentences that were like “big leaps” logically. I’m no scientist but this read differently from most papers I’ve come across.

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