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3.31 AVERAGE
3.31 AVERAGE
A book that impotently asserts a baseless claim that contradicts what linguists, archaeologists, historians, biologists, psychologists, sociologists and neurologists have worked tirelessly for a century to understand about language. This book is utter fiction and exists in contrast not only with scientific evidence but with common sense.
I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that a linguist likes to use more words than he needs to. With a cheeky critique of Chomsky here and there, he makes a really solid case for the origin of language.
challenging
informative
slow-paced
I find Everett's proposition a lot more convincing than Chomsky's, which I've always thought was preposterous. Language is nothing more than specialised abstract pattern recognition, and pretending it's anything beyond that seems awfully self-important.
On that note, even though Everett concludes that H. erectus was just the kind of person that came before H. sapiens, there's a not insignificant amount of talk about H. sapiens' status as the pinnacle of evolution, being an “improved” version of H. erectus. Since we live considerably longer than our bodies are prepared to, as a species we endure ridiculous chronic pain and mental illness, and we're so maladapted that if the electric grid went down tomorrow society would collapse because we overwhelmingly don't know what to eat if it's not something we can buy at the supermarket. So presuming that our intelligence and our culture have created a very fancy niche for us to become The Best at Evolution feels a little silly. Yes, our social structure allows us to take care of those who would not have been able to care for themselves, but that's mostly in socialist countries. People in the US routinely die because they can't afford healthcare or food, so this is more of a hypothetical in many cases.
From the anthropological standpoint, the assertion that H. erectus was the first to be self-conscious is wild speculation. For all we know, the first animals to be self-conscious were octopuses. Everett also has a bias towards monogamy, concluding it's an evolutionary advantage. Monogamy is, by any measure, an entirely recent arrangement, and not even that common around the world right now. It's much more likely H. erectus was polygamous, if not socially, at least sexually.
He also makes the assumption that the mouth and larynx shifted to accommodate a growing brain, when it's likely it was the other way around: switching to cooked foods required less chewing and smaller jaw muscles, so the mouth atrophied and got smaller, and the brain was able to get bigger and make use of the additional calories. This also created breathing problems, which is why snoring is so common in people. Clearly big brains are not all they're cranked up to be.
Which brings me to the entirely too long section discussing brain size relating to intelligence, in which Everett nevertheless concludes it's irrelevant. Which we knew already because, for years, men were trying to argue than men's brains were bigger than women's so they were more intelligent. Everett even mentions this in the book, so I have no idea why he felt it was necessary to spend so long on this point.
Additionally, while I agree with Everett that culture is intrinsic to humanity, I'm not convinced it's exclusively a human thing. Elephants and crows have mourning rituals. Birds teach each other what their songs mean, and they change if they move to a different area or if they grow up separated from their relatives. In extreme cases, when the overwhelming majority of adult birds die off in an area and the young birds are left to fend for themselves, they often resort to a very rudimentary version of their species' song, or even adopt a different bird's song as their own. This is knowledge passed down through generations, not something purely instinctual. Tool use is also very often taught both in birds and other apes.
Lastly, I don't think we are in a position to determine whether or not birds have languages because we can't understand them. I doubt our hearing is good enough for it and I don't know if electronic analysis of bird song would help us decipher it. It hasn't so far. What I believe is that it's far more complex than Everett gives them credit for. We are also so far removed from the lived experience of a dog, with their incredible sense of smell, that we may be missing a tremendous amount of information. I'm sure this applies to other animals, and assuming they don't have a language is pretentious.
To be fair to Everett, he does include caveats about most things and he sounds like someone who would change his mind if challenged with something that contradicted his views if he found it convincing. Well worth the read.
On that note, even though Everett concludes that H. erectus was just the kind of person that came before H. sapiens, there's a not insignificant amount of talk about H. sapiens' status as the pinnacle of evolution, being an “improved” version of H. erectus. Since we live considerably longer than our bodies are prepared to, as a species we endure ridiculous chronic pain and mental illness, and we're so maladapted that if the electric grid went down tomorrow society would collapse because we overwhelmingly don't know what to eat if it's not something we can buy at the supermarket. So presuming that our intelligence and our culture have created a very fancy niche for us to become The Best at Evolution feels a little silly. Yes, our social structure allows us to take care of those who would not have been able to care for themselves, but that's mostly in socialist countries. People in the US routinely die because they can't afford healthcare or food, so this is more of a hypothetical in many cases.
From the anthropological standpoint, the assertion that H. erectus was the first to be self-conscious is wild speculation. For all we know, the first animals to be self-conscious were octopuses. Everett also has a bias towards monogamy, concluding it's an evolutionary advantage. Monogamy is, by any measure, an entirely recent arrangement, and not even that common around the world right now. It's much more likely H. erectus was polygamous, if not socially, at least sexually.
He also makes the assumption that the mouth and larynx shifted to accommodate a growing brain, when it's likely it was the other way around: switching to cooked foods required less chewing and smaller jaw muscles, so the mouth atrophied and got smaller, and the brain was able to get bigger and make use of the additional calories. This also created breathing problems, which is why snoring is so common in people. Clearly big brains are not all they're cranked up to be.
Which brings me to the entirely too long section discussing brain size relating to intelligence, in which Everett nevertheless concludes it's irrelevant. Which we knew already because, for years, men were trying to argue than men's brains were bigger than women's so they were more intelligent. Everett even mentions this in the book, so I have no idea why he felt it was necessary to spend so long on this point.
Additionally, while I agree with Everett that culture is intrinsic to humanity, I'm not convinced it's exclusively a human thing. Elephants and crows have mourning rituals. Birds teach each other what their songs mean, and they change if they move to a different area or if they grow up separated from their relatives. In extreme cases, when the overwhelming majority of adult birds die off in an area and the young birds are left to fend for themselves, they often resort to a very rudimentary version of their species' song, or even adopt a different bird's song as their own. This is knowledge passed down through generations, not something purely instinctual. Tool use is also very often taught both in birds and other apes.
Lastly, I don't think we are in a position to determine whether or not birds have languages because we can't understand them. I doubt our hearing is good enough for it and I don't know if electronic analysis of bird song would help us decipher it. It hasn't so far. What I believe is that it's far more complex than Everett gives them credit for. We are also so far removed from the lived experience of a dog, with their incredible sense of smell, that we may be missing a tremendous amount of information. I'm sure this applies to other animals, and assuming they don't have a language is pretentious.
To be fair to Everett, he does include caveats about most things and he sounds like someone who would change his mind if challenged with something that contradicted his views if he found it convincing. Well worth the read.
didn't finish
Daniel Everett's research is great! But he's not a very good writer
Daniel Everett's research is great! But he's not a very good writer
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
I'm not sure I agree with all the hypotheses but elegantly written.
Not exactly what I was expecting, I struggled with some of editorial aspects of the book like structure and style at times, a slightly frustrating read for me.