0180 The first singularity?

What is this something that spread from the Ubaid to the rest of the ongoing Neolithic and late Paleolithic?

0181 It is a change in the way humans talk.

0182 Say what?

The evolution of talk is not the same as the evolution of language.

0183 Language evolved in the regimen of hand talk.

Linguistic hand talk was so successful that bands could form bands of bands… er… tribes.  Tribal gatherings used the voice for rapid social synchronization.  The voice came under voluntary neural control.

0184 Then, with our own species, the voice was able to tap into the language capacity that had evolved under hand talk.  Humans are the only species that talked with both manual-brachial gestures and voice.  Both channels were fully linguistic.  I call this hand-speech talk.

For an evolutionary argument, see Looking at Steven Mithen’s Book (2024) “The Language Puzzle”, appearing in Razie Mah’s blog during September 2025, along with Looking at Julian Jaynes’s Book (1976) “The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”.  Both works compose Razie Mah’s e-book, titled Synaesthesia and the Bicameral Mind in Human Evolution (available at smashwords and other e-book venues).

0185 Anatomically modern humans practiced their dual-channel way of talking for tens of thousands of years.  Hand-speech talk lasted through the Paleolithic and into the Neolithic.

0186 Then, in a freak social accident, starting over 7800 years ago, two distinct village cultures meld on the shores of the infilling Persian Gulf and become one culture, the Ubaid.  In the process, they lose the hand-talk channel of their hand-speech talk.  They practice speech-alone talk.  The Sumerian language is a creole.  No wonder it is unrelated to all families of languages.

0187 The difference in semiotic (or sign-) qualities between hand (and hand-speech) talk and speech-alone talkaccounts for the potentiation of unconstrained social complexity.

0188 Here is the transition in terms of a change in the way humans talk.

0189 Yes, the semiotic qualities of speech-alone talk potentiated unconstrained complexity. 

0190 Before the first singularity, the iconic and indexal qualities of hand-speech talk grounded words in intuitive reference.

Everything we knew was couched in hand-speech talk.