0053 Well, after making a commitment to vocalization as the only pathway for the evolution of language, chapter fivecovers speaking and hearing.

Here is snapshot.

0054 This comparison is only the start.  Because vocalization is not under voluntary control at the start of bipedalism, the lineage will have to wait almost three million years before language can evolve with Homo heidelbergensis (who appears along with or after the domestication of fire, between 0.8 and 0.6 Myr).

Or something like that.

0055 So, why not start with manual-brachial gestures?  Bipedalism (present by 3.5 Myr) enslaves the foot and frees the hand.  The arms and hands are already under voluntary control.  Plus, manual-brachial gestures can pantomime and point.  They can serve as iconic and indexal natural signs.  The referents are imaged or pointed to.

The next challenge is to frame displacement in terms of two issues.  First (M), a chimpanzee will almost always use its general intelligence to solve problems to get food for itself.  In other words, the great apes forage for themselves.  Second (N), there must be a way to frame the displacement that occurs with manual-brachial gestures.

0056 Indeed, these issues crop up in chapter six, concerning iconic and arbitrary gestures… er… words.

0057 I start with the first issue (M). The period of concern starts at 4.5 My and accounts for the emergence of the earliest species of the Homo genus, around 2.5 Myr, along with Oldowan stone tools.

0058 Two adaptive changes (M1 and M2) key into the transition from living in tropical forests (characteristic of the common ancestor, at 7 Myr) to mixed forest and savannah (at 4.5 Myr).

0059 The first adaptive change (M1) is anatomical.  Bipedalism enslaves the foot and frees the hand to carry things, ranging from babies to rocks.  Also, the hands (“manual”) and arms (“brachia”) are capable of communicative gestures.  Bipedal species travel from one location of seasonally rich resources to another.  They travel in bands (50).  So, a certain amount of cooperation among family (5) and friends (5) is necessary.

0060 The second adaptive change (M2) is… well… may I say, “cultural”? 

With all the travel, settling in and packing out, there is less time for individual foraging.  Indeed, individual foraging does not provide enough to keep each person in the band alive.

However, a team of around 15 souls can gather enough to feed a band of 50.  Well, no one thinks of it so analytically.  On a good day, a team of around 15 can gather enough to feed all their family (5) and friends (5).  Yes, that covers everyone in the band, more or less.  On any given day, a band of 50 supports two or three teams.  One is bound to get lucky.

0061 Now, I turn to the second issue (N).

This second issue lines up with the topic of chapter six: iconic and arbitrary words.

0062 Certain spoken words act as icons, or pictures, of features of their referents.

For example, mice squeak and lions roar.  The high-frequency sounds of “mice” and “squeak” contrast with the low-frequency sounds of “lion” and “roar”.  So, Mithen proposes that the sounds of words could serve as icons (or images) of their referents, thus achieving displacement (where the word stands for the referent even when the referent is not present).  He proposes a specific mechanism of how that could occur.

0063 I say, “Why not use manual-brachial gestures to the same effect?”

A tiny motion can picture a mouse.  A broad motion can image a lion.  And, the sounds that they make can be denoted by accompanying facial expressions.  In this way, “mouse squeaks” is performed by a manual-brachial gesture, [pantomime MOUSE], while facially expressing sound, [open MOUTH], and further gesturing [point to EAR].

Now, imagine “me” being a short distance outside of a the forest, digging tubers with sticks, with a team of seven or eight.  One of my compatriots catches my attention and quietly signs [image JAGUAR][point to TREE].  Then, without lifting my head much, I see that everyone is gathering what tubers they have into their leaf baskets.

0064 Now that is displacement!

There are three males in the team.  We know that it is our job to cover the retreat.  I quietly grab two rocks, one for each hand, and look toward the elder for a signal.

0065 Manual-brachial gestures are inherently iconic and indexal, more so than any “iconic” sound.  Hand-talk gesture-words are natural signs that picture and point to their referents regardless of whether the referent is present (or in this case, seen if I only turn around).  The question becomes, “If the referent is not present, then how do I guess what the referent must be?”

0066 Ah, there must be more.

The manual-brachial gestures must be sufficiently distinct that they are rapidly decoded.  In short, they must operate as symbols, that is, as signs whose sign-objects are determined on the basis of habit, convention and so forth.

At the foundation, each symbol in a symbolic order is recognizably different than any other symbol.  A finite symbolic order permits symbolic operations (that is, grammar).

0067 Manual-brachial word gestures are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.  It is as if each “word-gesture” has only a limited number of edges, or other manual-brachial gesture-words, that they fit into.  So, a leading word-gesture_2a will have the potential to lock-in_1a around four other word-gestures.

This constraint may be considered a symbolic aspect that is intrinsic to the icons and indexes of manual-brachial word-gestures.

0068 Here is a picture of six pieces and how they will assemble, according to the prior example.

0069 Connecting one piece to another is similar to a symbolic operation.

Civilized folk do not need to be instructed in how to handle a jigsaw puzzle.  The big picture is on the box.  Each of the little pieces has a fragment of the big picture.  Plus, each little piece has edges that lock onto other pieces in a way that expands that fragment.  I call the result, “an assembly”.

Manual-brachial word-gestures assemble into a fragment of the big picture.

0070 Suddenly, a jaguar, who nobody noticed before, is in a nearby tree.  I suppose that a vulture landing at the top of the tree caught the gaze of a member of the team.  We know what vultures are all about.  A vulture perching nearby is not a welcome sign.

The elder looks at me and signs [YOU (pointing to me)][image-RUN][point RIGHT][image-THROW].

0071 When it comes to moving, as a team, back towards the safety of the forested woods, I will roll right and prepare to throw my rock at the jaguar.  The other fellow will roll left and do the same.  I come to this plan, not using explicit abstractions, but through implicit abstraction.

0072 How does implicit abstraction work?

The iconic and indexal nature of the word-gesture permits displacement, where the referent no longer needs to be actually present.  (Mithen quotes psychologists Pamela Perniss and Gabriella Vigliocco to this effect on page 151 of the text.)

At the same time, the symbolic character of each word-gesture means that it not only is distinct from other gesture-words, but it also fits with other word-gestures through simple operations, just like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle fit together through simple, intuitively natural, operations.  The symbolic character of protolinguistic hand-talk develops independently within each hominin team, under conditions of obligatory collaborative foraging.

0073 Implicit abstraction is holistic.  So, the sensible construction of what I am going to do does not dwell on each piece that goes into an assembly.  Instead, just like a modern human toying with pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, a sensible construction snaps together as a gestalt.

Through the habits of the team, iconic and indexal manual-brachial gestures take on a distinctiveness that makes each gesture into a recognizable word.  

0074 In chapter six, Mithen discusses iconic and arbitrary spoken words.  Displacement is accounted for by iconic spoken words. But, arbitrary spoken words can proliferate and inhibit the success of iconic spoken words. Consequently, Mithen suggests that the evolution of language is postponed until after the domestication of fire.

0075 So, what is the problem?

Displacement is the ability to indicate a referent, without the referent actually being present.  Iconic and indexal natural signs involve displacement.  The adaptation of displacement probably takes place before or during the evolution of the Homo genus.

0076 Why do I say this?

As far as I can see, obligate collaborative foraging requires word-based communication, that is, displacement.  If the iconic word-sound route is too slow, then why not exploit another generator of signs that is under voluntary control (that is, manual-brachial gestures)?

0077 What about stone-tools?

In chapter seven, stone-tool technology is discussed. Oldowan tools appear in the fossil record either before or around the same time as the first species in the human genus: Homo habilis.

To me, this indicates the relevance of Tomasello’s hypothesis of obligatory collaborative foraging and Gamble, Gowlett and Dunbar’s concept of the social circle of the team.  It also indicates that displacement as a cognitive adaptation has already taken place (or takes place with the emergence of the Homo genus).

0075 To recall, Mithen rules out the gestural origin of language in chapter four. He asks (more or less), “How does one account for the long and gradual modification of the call-system of vocalization if language evolves in the milieu of manual-brachial gesture?”

And, how can an ape figure out whether an iconic gesture pictures this or that referent?

0076 Of course, a biosemiotician can turn these questions around and ask how involuntary calls, such as the vervet alarm-call business, can adapt to displacement, when the purpose of calls is to indicate the presence of the referent.  All vocalizations in the mammalian world seem oriented to call attention to the presence of a referent, rather than making a (not present) referent present as a sign-object in a sign-relation.

0077 Displacement is the foundation of language.  Displacement is a sign-process that makes a referent present as a sign-object, even when the referent is not present.  This is precisely what spoken words do.  In Mithen’s account, displacement and speech co-evolve due to a process called “synaesthesia”.  “Syn” means “across”.  “Aesthesia” means senses (the basis for aesthetics).  So, “synaesthesia” involves sensory cross-over.

For Mithen, the crossover is from vision, smell, taste and touch to hearing.

The idea has a respectable pedigree.

But, this examiner rejects the application of synaesthesia to this period of human evolution on the following basis.

0078 Once the inquirer considers Michael Tomasello’s proposal of obligatory collaborative foraging as the cultural adaptation dominating the second period of hominin evolution, from the emergence of bipedalism to the domestication of fire, then the evolution of proto-linguistic hand talk does not seem so far fetched.  The manual-brachial gesture-wordserves as an iconic and indexal sign-relation, accounting for displacement. The social circle of the team demands that word-gestures are constrained and easily recognizable.  This accounts for why words can literally be compared to pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

0079 Say that again.

Comments on Clive Gamble, John Gowlett and Robin Dunbar’s book (2014) Thinking Big (available at smashwords and other e-book venues) allows to inquirer to claim that the social circle of the team (15) associates with obligatory collaborative foraging.  Then, team endeavor_3c serves as the normal context for the perspective level, which accounts for displacement.  Without a perspective level, displacement does not occur, because displacement belongs to the potential_1c of the whole picture_3b.

0080 Here is a diagram of the three-level interscope.

On the content level, in the normal context of matching_3a, the way that one edge of a jigsaw puzzle piece fits into the edge of another piece_2a emerges from (and situates) the potential of ‘locking in’_1a.

On the situation level, the normal context of the whole puzzle_3b brings the way that one assembly of pieces fits into another assembly of pieces_2b into relation with the possibility of ‘assembling sections of the jigsaw puzzle’_1b.

On the perspective level, the normal context of a team endeavor_3c brings the vision captured in the jigsaw puzzle_2c into relation with the possibility of ‘a big picture’_1c.

0081 Of course, this figure confounds manual-brachial word-gestures and pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.  It is as if gesture-words are symbolic, just enough, to not only distinguish one from another, but to provide a certain two-dimensional shape.  So, the shape of one word-gesture will habitually lock into the shape of other gesture-words, in the same way that one piece of a jigsaw puzzle locks into a limited number of other pieces (typically, four).

In short, by taking the metaphor that a word is like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle literally, one arrives at a picture of how symbolic operations (or grammatical conventions) might operate in team proto-languages.

0082 Here is a picture of how the literal metaphor limits the number of options for each step of a sequential statement.

0083 Each of the pieces is iconic and indexal, in so far as it is a natural sign that images or indicates its referent (even when the referent is not present).  Also, each of the pieces is arbitrary (or symbolic) in so far as team conventions make sure that each gestural-word is distinct and easily recognizable.  This characteristic defines symbols.  In any symbolic order, each symbol is distinct from all other symbols, according to habit, convention, tradition and so on.

Symbolic operations connect the pieces together.

0084 This raises the question, “Do the teams engaged in obligatory collaborative foraging know what they are doing?”

The answer is “no” and “yes”.

0085 By “no”, I mean that the following two-level interscope does not apply to the family (5), friends (5) or the band (50).  Protolinguistic hand-talk is an adaptation to the team (15), just as the team is an adaptation to obligatory collaborative foraging.

Homo habilis and the later, and more brainier, Homo erectus, do not really know what a biologist says that they are doing.  How can one picture or point to any of the terms in the explicit abstraction labeled obligatory collaborative foraging?

0086 Rather, these folk (if I can call them “folk”) try to exploit food sources that are seasonal and locally available.  And, if they cannot, they walk to the next location that has food.  Working in teams cultivates a certain type of thought pattern and this pattern has a lot in common with solving a jigsaw puzzle.  One fits this or that piece together, then adds on pieces to assemble something akin to a statement.  Then, one fits the statements together to fashion a big picture.

0087 Here is a picture of the hand-talk that adapts to operations within each team.  Each team has its own protolanguage and, over generations, hominins get better and better at performing the following two-level interscope.

In other words, sensible construction is an adaptation to team activities.

0088 A Primer on Natural Signs and A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction offer other ways to appreciate how natural signs promote implicit abstraction and how working in teams encourages sensible construction.  Manual-brachial gestures are natural signs that are not purely symbolic.  They are icons and indexes.  Sensible construction occurs on the content and situation levels.  The perspective level is present, but constant.  Such is the nature of each team.

0089 So, hominins do not know what they are doing.

At the same time, they do.

0090 By “yes”, I mean that there is good reason to suspect that teams are operational even before evolution of the Homo genus.

0091 I love Tomasello’s highly explicit terminology.  Foraging means looking for food.  Collaborative means that teams are engaged in extracting food in an ecology of mixed forest and savannah, where locally rich food resources are both widely separated and seasonal.  Obligatory means that, if they don’t succeed, they will starve.

So, bipedal apes and early humans are always on the lookout for ways to exploit food sources that do not put them in conflict with other species.  Every trick that works eventually supports a team.

0092 For example, when a large animal dies on the savannah, all sorts of predators and scavengers will have their fill, but they can’t eat everything and they rarely gnaw through the large bones.  There is always something left to scavenge.

The appearance of Oldowan stone tools, dating slightly before the earliest fossils of the Homo genus, suggests that the hominins of the day found a trick.  They could rapidly shatter one rock, by hitting it with another rock, in such a fashion that a sharp edge would be revealed.  Then, that shape edge can be used to crack long bones to get the marrow fat and to scrape anything that is left on bones of an already scavenged carcass.

The work is dangerous because carcasses attract attention of both predators and other scavengers, such as hyenas, who are most unpleasant.  So, a team must work together in order to allow one or two to manufacture the Oldowan sharp edge and to scrape tissue and break bones.

0093 This is the topic for chapter seven.

To me, making stone tools is all about two types of selection pressures.

Here is a picture.

0094 There is one pressure that points to the team on the perspective level.

The normal context of a team endeavor_3c brings the dyadic actuality, {hand-talk assemblies [holistically moving to] success}_2c into relation with the possibility of ‘a big picture’_1c.  For hand-talk, the big picture_1c is what team activities aim to accomplish_1c.  Success is the extraction of food_2c.

0095 What does this imply about Oldowan stone tools?

Oldowan stone tools mark the start of a new style for extracting food in the ecology of mixed forest and savannah.  As long as this style remains productive, a team within a band will coalesce in order to perform the extraction.  The longer that a team exploits its opportunities, the more likely that aspects of the team activity will come under natural selection.

0096 This second pressure points to the individual within the team, operating on the content and situation levels.  Over generations, individuals with dispositions and powers that comport with team success will reproduce more successfully.  As such, the favored dispositions and powers more and more tend towards becoming adaptations,expressed phenotypically by individuals within the band.

0104 Looking at the prior figure, I can see that the domestication of fire (stretching from 0.8 to 0.4 Myr) marks a turning point.  As if to telegraph the same message, the author places two chapters between the chapters on making tools (7) and fire (10).  The first chapter offers lessons from simulations of artificial languages (8).  The second chapter concerns finding and learning the meaning of words (9).

Both chapters report on research on speech-alone talk.

0105 A brief recap is in order.

The markers are in red in the following figure.

0106 The period from the start of bipedalism (say, around 3.5 Myr) to the domestication of fire (starting 0.8 Myr) is the second period of hominin evolution, according to evolutionary anthropologist, Michael Tomasello.  The first is between the separation of our lineage from the chimpanzees (around 7 Myr) to bipedalism.   See Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019), by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

0107 Obligate collaborative foraging potentiates practices where hominins forage together in order to gather more food than what each can eat individually.  The excess food is shared with family (5) and friends (5).  The motivation is not direct reciprocity, where I give you something and you give me something in return.  The motivation is indirect reciprocity, where I give you something now and expect you to give me something (in return) later.

0108 The team (15) turns out to be crucial in hominin evolution in many ways.

First, the team (15) is the social circle where proto-linguistic hand-talk evolves.  With that adaptation, our lineage enters into what I euphemistically call, “the human niche”.  According to an e-book with that label as title (by Razie Mah, once again, available at smashwords and other e-book venues), the human niche is the potential of triadic relations.

The other social circles, family (5), friends (5) and band (50) prosper with the success of each team (15).

0109 Second, the success of established teams supports attempts to find other sources of food that other species either are not aware of or ignore.  This includes culinary tricks that civilized folk would prefer not to do, such as creating conditions where over-ripe fruit is allowed to rot or already rotten material is buried in order to harvest the insects who thrive on the decay.

Unfortunately, these patterns for extracting food do not leave archaeological traces.

0110 Stone tools do.

The Oldowan (rapidly made on site) and the Acheulean (made in preparation of team excursions) testify to the invention of perspective-level category-based nested forms that last for generations.  Each team constitutes its own perspective-level.  Each team has its own proto-linguistic manual-brachial proto-language.  Each team activity selects for individuals with advantageous anatomical, physiological and cognitive traits and dispositions.  Cognitive capacities are honed to the specific team-activity.

Today, cognitive scientists conduct experiments that reveal these diverse mental modules.  Evolutionary psychologists propose Darwinian explanations for why these mental modules exist.  However, I have to admit, its hard for any civilized person to imagine the various teams that never left any archaeological traces.  Cognitive psychologists identify mental modules, but cannot tell us how they came to be.

0111 As an academic evolutionary anthropologist, Dr. Mithen thinks his way into a curious lacuna.  The mental module business is the foundation for the Romanesque cognitive architecture described in The Prehistory Of The Mind (1996).  In this architecture, the capacity for language should be located in each of the side chapels, rather than hiding in the nave with general intelligence.  After all, the side chapels (of each team tradition) is where talk is used.

So, talk should be an adaptation to the sensible construction of team work.  This is precisely where hand-talk shines, because iconic and indexal manual-brachial gestures (that is, pantomime and pointing) always and already embody displacement.  Iconic and indexal sign-objects exist even when their referents are not present.

0112 At the same time, consider the point of view of an academic in evolutionary anthropology who is relying on subject matter produced by modern cognitive psychologists. Cognitive psychologists are being awarded grants for research into the nature of language.  Of course, language should belong to the nave of general intelligence precisely because um… that is where experts currently think it belongs.

Everyone agrees, fully linguistic language does not evolve in the domain of the team (15).  Indeed, it evolves in a social circle that is larger than the band (50).  That domain is the community (150), which notably, coincides to the group sizethat correlates to the brain size of Homo sapiens.

0113 So, what is the lacuna?

Well, the protolanguage that evolves in the domain of the team is not fully linguistic.  It adapts to the potential of sensible construction.  Also, it is integrated into the specialized neural modules that are adaptations to successful teams. 

I suppose that if hand-talk is locked into each team (or Romanesque chapel, associated with specialized cognitive modules), then hand-talk can be ignored.

What about fully linguistic language?

Can hand-talk become fully linguistic, within the social circle of the community, the team of teams?

Here is where current research into the nature of language enters the picture.

Modern research suggests that the inquirer’s speculative interest should be focused on the evolution of speech-talk within the community, because today, everyone practices speech-alone talk.

Does that meet the definition of “a lacuna”?

0114 To me, this points to the take-home messages from chapters three and eight.

0115 Let me explore each in turn.

0116 In chapter three, Mithen (working with a paradigm from modern linguistics) distinguishes between lexical and grammatical words.  Lexical words have referents.  Grammatical words act as clues to how lexical words properly combine to construct prose.

0117 I ask, “How should I associate the labels “lexical” and “grammatical” to elements of the foundational category-based nested form, appearing in Razie Mah’s masterwork, How To Define The Word ‘Religion’ (available at smashwords and other e-book venues), shown below?”

A normal context₃ brings an actuality₂ into relation with the possibility of ‘something’₁.

Definition₃ brings a spoken word₂ into relation with the potential of ‘meaning, presence and message’₁. 

0118 Obviously, “lexical” and “grammatical” are spoken adjectives that convey two different presences.  “Lexical” says that the word has a referent that (theoretically) can be pictured or pointed to.  “Grammatical” says that the word has a referent in the symbolic operations that we call, “grammar”.

0119 If I consider hand-talk as a jigsaw puzzle, a literal metaphor developed earlier, then I see that “lexical” associates to real elements in the content- and situation-level actualities and “grammatical” associates to the contiguities.

0120 To me, this says that there are two aspects to the evolution of language.

The first is displacement.  The iconic and indexal sign-relations of hand talk adapt to this aspect.

The second aspect reflects the contiguities that must manifest in order for one sign-relation [to fit with] another sign relation_2a and for one assembly to [to fit with] another_2b.  Contradiction resolving mechanisms operate in order for this second aspect to occur.

0121 May I call the suite of contradiction resolving mechanisms, “grammar”?

For a follower of the philosopher of Charles Peirce, another label comes to mind: “symbolic operations”.

In short, the contiguities cannot actualize if words are not sufficiently distinct from one another.  Icons (images) and indexes (pointing) do not have boundaries in the same way that symbols do.  So, one feature of the symbolic operationsis to regard only the habitual or conventional aspect of an iconic and indexal word-gesture.

0122 In chapter three, Mithen discusses Noam Chomsky’s proposal of a universal grammar.  It was fashionable for a time.  Some evolutionary anthropologists still espouse the general approach.  However, every explicit attempt at delineating mechanisms for how such a grammar works, fails.  How is it that any child can grow up in any culture and become a fluent practitioner of that culture’s language?

What is the mechanism that allows this?

0123 Take a look at the above figure and ask the question, “How is it that any competent person can figure out how to play a jigsaw puzzle without formal instruction?”

The solution is contained within the problem, because the problem is purely relational.

0124 Say what?

Take a look at how the content- and situation-levels fuse into a category-based nested form that looks very similar to the nested form for definition.

0125 Iconic and indexal hand-talk_2a,2b presents a problem.  How does one place the actuality₂ into the appropriate normal context₃ and potential₁?

Well, part of the solution is already in the problem.  Because hand-talk is iconic and indexal, and because these icons and indexes operate on both the content and situation levels (recall the terms, “lexical” and “grammatical”), displacement has already occurred.  Displacement is built into the iconic and indexal word-gesture.  The sign-object is the referent whether or not the referent is present.  Displacement follows the logic of secondness.  Displacement says that there is no contradiction between the iconic and indexal sign-object and the referent.

0126 The solution consists in the realization of a normal context₃ and potential₁.

Following the logic of thirdness, the normal context₃ excludes other normal contexts₃, which (ironically) seems to include Chomsky’s influential “universal grammar”.

At the same time, the ‘something’₁ that supports wholeness₃ consists of a suite of properties that might stand under the umbrella of “symbolic operations”.  Following the logic of firstness, these symbolic operations are inclusive and allow contradictions.

For the jigsaw puzzle, one can describe one edge [fitting into] another edge in terms of cause and effect (or grammatical rules), but one cannot describe a single jigsaw piece (with four edges) participating in an assembly, where the assembly starts to manifest features of a big picture, in terms of cause and effect.

0127 Unless, of course, one uses computer simulations (8).

That is the topic is chapter eight.

Computer simulations assume that spoken words are like tokens.  A token is a type.  Here, a spoken word would be a token of a symbol.

Is it easy to see the assumption?

Displacement has already occurred.

0128 This brings me to the metaphor that organizes this book.  Why does Mithen choose the metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle?

Well, obviously, the author wants to review various areas of research pertaining to the origins of language as pieces of a problem, so that fitting the pieces together will offer a solution.

0129 I ask, “Isn’t there a another reason that um… does not qualify as a ‘reason’?”

0130 What is the definition of “reason”?

In Original Sin and the Post Truth-Condition (by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues), “reason” serves as the normal context_3a and potential_1a of the dyadic actuality_2a, {what people think [cannot be objectified as] what people say}_2a.  For the postmodern, reason_3a,1a is the normal context of the intellect_3a operating on the potential of the will_1a.

In contrast, “pre-modern reason” is not “post-modern reason”.

For the premodern, reason_3a1a is the intellect_3a operating on the potential of the truth_1a.

0131 So, what am I asking for?

Consider the postmodern answer for why Mithen chooses the metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle.

Obviously, the answer comports with reason_3a1a as the author’s intellect_3a operating on the potential of the will_1a.

So, I am asking for an answer that is not obvious, where reason_3a,1a is the author’s intellect_3a operating on the potential of truth_1a.

Why does Mithen choose the metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle?

Am I registering two different mentalities operating within Mithen’s text?

0132 Why do I take the author’s metaphor of the jigsaw puzzle literally?

From his prior work, The Prehistory Of The Mind, I know that Mithen thinks intuitively and holistically.  His use of the metaphor of the history of the architecture of European cathedrals allows an implicit appreciation of explicit theories on the evolution of cognition in hominins.

The work under examination is different, because a coherent illumination gets veiled by disparate agendas of current research.  The diversity of the so-called pieces of the puzzle speaks to an incoherence, where pieces do not necessarily lock together.

0133 In my view, a coherent illumination may be revealed by biosemiotics.

See Biosemiotics As Noumenon, Parts 1-3, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

0134 Without a coherent illumination to objectively organize his subjective intuition, Mithen blindly reaches for a metaphor that can accomplish the task.

By definition, jigsaw pieces must fit together.

Correct?

Yes, but there is another avenue to appreciate Mithen’s intuition.

If I take the metaphor literally, I can intuitively portray the two crucial adaptations involved in explaining why language evolves in the milieu of hand-talk.

Here is a picture.

0135 A biosemiotic view of signs shows how language evolves by assigning the iconic and the indexal character of natural signs to displacement and the symbolic character of natural signs to grammar.  This view unfolds while examining Mithen’s text, which explicitly rejects the idea of gestural origins to language (in chapter four).

It is as if Mithen inadvertently conveys what current research into the evolution of language is not illuminating, and in doing so, provides this examiner with a weird sort of challenge.  How do the biosemiotic truths embedded within Mithen’s own text betray what he willingly expresses?

What a challenge!

I suppose, at this juncture, the reader may say, “Hey, you said that chapters eight (8) and nine (9) stand between the chapters on stone tools (7) and fire (10).  What happened to chapter nine (9)?”

0136 Okay, maybe, as I approach chapter ten, titled “Fire”, I should expect that sensible construction should fail.

After all, the domestication of fire marks the transition between two periods in Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019).

But more on that later.

0137 Here are take-home messages for chapter three (3) and chapter nine (9).

0138 From chapter three, I learn that there are lexical and grammatical words, and that these words engage in displacement in very different manners.  Lexical words associate to real elements in content and situation-level actualities.  Grammatical words associate to the contiguities between these real elements.

0139 Is there another way to say that?

Oh, manual-brachial word gestures are icons and indexes of their referents.  Plus, they are distinct from one another and that allows symbolic operations.

0140 What about spoken words?

Well, they are distinct from one another.  Does that help?

0141 Okay, if spoken words are distinct from one another, and if an infant can hear the sounds of language and innately knows that words should be distinct, then the infant may calculate the transition probabilities that one syllable should be followed by another syllable.  Consistent transitional probabilities identify a spoken word.

Did I say that correctly?

The transitional probability that one particular syllable follows another syllable is word dependent.  Something very analogous to the literal jig-saw puzzle metaphor takes place.  The infant fits the syllables into words.  Then, the toddler figures out how to fit words into statements.  And, the kid off to language mastery in childhood.

0142 But, what about the meanings and messages of words?

Okay, the newbie uses visual cues to lock in a meaning and a message, once the syllabic presence of a spoken word is established.

To me, the meaning aspect is like fitting pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together on the basis of the image fragment that each piece contains.

0143 Plus, what about the big picture?

Well, here is where the much studied topic of “mind reading” comes in.  This is so crucial because, if we could cast ourselves back into the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, we would have to actually gaze upon the person who is talking. The whole body is animated by what?… a mind?… or a brain?… or someone engaging in hand-talk.

This aspect of the big picture is very important, because… well… it is integral to hand-talk, but it is not part of language (defined as the biological capacity to talk).  I suppose that talk is more than language.  So, language may not be the crucial question.  Talk is.

0144 This shift in the crucial question calls to mind chapter 2B of An Archaeology of the Fall (by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues), titled “Words are not lies.”

So what is the title of chapter 2A?

“Words are lies.”

0144 That brings me to the question, “If proto-linguistic hand-talk adapts to the social circle of the team, then why should it become fully linguistic?  Plus, why should hominins have added speech to their hand-talk?”

Mithen tips his hidden hand with the willful and truthful title of chapter ten.

“Fire”.

0145 The domestication of fire takes place over a few hundred thousand years.  The period is pivotal.

Here is the list.

0146 Fire sparks the imagination.

Chapter ten, concerning fire, sits close to the middle of the text.  It stands at near center.  Mithen asks whether the domestication of fire parallels the adoption of spoken words in human evolution.  Mithen is fascinated by the question, asking, “What types of linguistic practices are enticed by fire.”

0147 But, the implications of fire for hominin evolution goes beyond linguistic practices.

To me, the first implication is that more teams are possible when food is cooked with fire.  Intense heat breaks down structural barriers in both plants and meats in ways that cultivated decay does not.

More opportunities for gathering food open up.  More teams are successful.  To an evolutionary anthropologist, this means more teams (15), increasing relevance of community (150) and bigger brain volumes (as natural selection operates to routinize the abilities and dispositions for each team).

0148 That said, Mithen’s fixation on linguistic practices offers a relevant second implication.

0149 In this examination, in the period between the start of bipedalism (3.5 Myr) and the domestication of fire (0.8-0.6 Myr), proto-linguistic hand-talk adapts to the social circle of the team.  Proto-linguistic hand talk facilitates sensible construction.  Sensible construction hones the content and the situation levels of a three-level interscope, because the team itself constitutes the a stable perspective level.

0150 The following compressed nested form tells the tale.

The normal context of collaborative team activity_3b,3a bring the actualities of lexical and grammatical hand talk_2a,2binto relation with the potentials of ‘locking in_1a, and assembling_1b a big picture_1c‘.

Surely, this compound nested-form addresses two questions.  What is happening?_3a  What does it mean to me?_3b

0151 The domestication of fire creates a new venue for hand-talk, initiating (what Michael Tomasello calls) the third period of hominin evolution.

This is the topic of chapter ten.

0152 Or, I should say, “These items should be the topic of chapter ten.”

But, the chapter is very short.

Besides archaeological evidence for the domestication of fire, Mithen only explicitly mentions “night talk”.  Other aspects are inferred (but not explicitly developed) when the author mentions technical innovations in stone tools that accompany and follow the domestication of fire.

0153 So, for the next section, I will take this examination in the direction that the author subtly and implicitly indicates, but clearly and explicitly rules out.

What happens when language evolves in the milieu of hand-talk?