SaH 0017 The authors quest for a sphere of understanding. They seek the egg, so to speak, impregnated by Juri Lotman’s genius. In the interviews in chapter 2.1, Lotman is spent, although still alive. He is old. The interviewer is a youth, a personification of the metaphysical love-child born after Slavic civilization reveals herself to Lotman’s circumspection.
0018 The miracle of Lotman’s arrival in Estonia is, weirdly, recounted in the last interview (2.14) with psychologist and cultural theorist, Jaan Valsiner. As it turns out, Valsiner’s step-father was instrumental in getting Juri Lotman to Estonia after the Second World War.
0019 Jaan Valsiner demonstrates that the Tartu-Moscow’s sphere of influence is diffuse. His testimony is seconded by Paul Cobley (2.13), Terrence Deacon (2.12), Jesper Hoffmeyer (2.11) and Stuart Kauffman (2.10).
0020 The sphere becomes less diffuse in interviews with Roland Posner (2.9), Gunther Kress (2.8) and Wilfred Noth (2.7).
Notably, Noth conducts a discourse on the crucial potential of truth, as opposed to the potential of will. Indeed, the contrast between truth and will turns out to be integral to my examination of a 2017 article on Russian identity.
0021 Finally, the sphere becomes tangible with interviews with American anthropologist, Myrdene Anderson (2.6), who researched indigenous people in Sweden, Italian semiotician Paolo Fabbri (2.5), who railed against the wooly thinking that passes for “models” in contemporary humanities, and the Italian know-it-all Umberto Eco, who noted the importance of iconicity in semiotic humanity.
What?
“Semiotic humanity”?
What about semiology?
0022 Contemporary academic discourse is currently conducted with expert-coined spoken words, but these utterancescannot picture or point to their referents. Academics swim in a pool of differences… er… two arbitrarily related pools of differences. No one can tell where he or she flotates.
Flotates?
This is what happens when spoken words are placeholders in two arbitrarily related systems of differences.
0023 Finally, the interviews engage a still-living member of the original Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics, Boris Uspenskij (2.2). This interview gets a full examination in the course on Semiotics and History. Uspenskij stands within the sphere that the authors aspire to understand.
0024 So, what does Razie Mah’s contribution under the banner ofSemiotics and History offer?
0025 For the diffuse sphere, these examinations will present a historical narrative of ideas in the style of diagrams of purely relational structures. In short, Peirce-inspired diagrams offer a new way to narrate intellectual history.
0026 For the almost tangible sphere, these examinations practice a method of association, followed by a discussion of the implications. The articles provide material to fill in the empty slots of relational structures. When associations are made, implications become apparent.
0027 For the sphere itself, one unexpected insight is that, as the first ascendant of the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics struggles to fulfill the political mandate of the USSR (to make all fields of inquiry “scientific”), the researchers excavate the recently-buried remains of the civilization that is their subject of inquiry.
Imagine a scientific investigation of Russian language, history and literature, as a archaeological excavation into the being of Slavic civilization.
0028 Is that the same “she” that… um… you know… captured the attention of Juri Lotman?
How confounding.
0029 The next blog offers an introduction to Semiotics and History: The Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics.
SaH 0030 This course is a fully on-line study that appears in Razie Mah’s blog.
The course should be conducted (ideally) by a mature reader along with one novice or more, (less ideally) by two novices in collaboration and (perhaps, heroically) by a novice reader working alone.
0031 The field of home-schooling is exploding (a term associated with Juri Lotman) in America, but a wary public wants to taste the products, before committing to purchase. This online course is the first of many, I suppose, but the import for this particular exposition is obvious when considering current events.
0031 Estonia is awkwardly situated (along with the other Baltic states) between the Slavic civilization of Russia (to the east), and the Swedish, German and Polish civilizations (to the west). Estonia was part of the USSR, during the cold war; part of the West, during the American Empire’s unipolar moment; and now is about to be nudged into a Eurasian convergence, as predicted by political theologian, Alexander Dugin.
A nudge is both a danger and an opportunity, especially for the University of Tartu, with its department of semiotics, and for the University of Moscow, with its unique constellation of intellects.
0032 One of the questions asked in almost every interview in Kull’s and Velmezova’s book goes like this, “What needs to be researched by semioticians? Or, what topics of inquiry need exploration by newly certified semioticians?”
This course offer a number of suggestions, several in connection with a stunning post-scholastic discovery that may be attributed to the first ascent of the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics.
Discovery?
Look and see.
The original articles are available online.
0033 Here is the list of examinations.
Go to the month in Razie Mah’s blog and scroll down.
0034 (1.) Looking at Igor Pilshchikov and Mikhail Trunin’s Article (2016) “The Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics” (December 2025, 27 blogs, points 1-376)
0035 (2.) Looking at Ekaterina Velmesova and Kalevi Kull’s Article (2017) “Boris Uspenskij…” (January 31-10, 2026, 19 blogs, points 377-641)
0036 (3.) Looking at Boris Uspenskij’s Article (2017) “Semiotics and Culture” (January 9-2, 2026, 8 blogs, points 642-743)
0037 (4.) Looking at Mihhail Lotman’s Article (2017) “History as Geography” (late February 2026, 8 blogs, points 744-840)
0038 (5.) Looking at Mikhail Trunin’s Article (2017) “Semiosphere and history” (late March 2026, 8 blogs, points 841-952)
0039 (6.) Looking at Peeter Torop’s Article (2017) “Semiotics as Cultural History” (early February 2026, 11 blogs, points 953-1104)
0040 In a little over 1000 steps, the home- or guided-schooler can find out where the Tartu-Moscow School as been (in its first ascent) and where it may be going (in its second).
SaH0001 Razie Mah offers three foundational courses that cover human evolution.
These are:
The Human Niche
(also see the four accompanying commentaries as well as the three-part Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019))
An Archaeology of the Fall
(also see the three part Instructor’s Guide, as well as The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace and Original Sin and Original Death: Romans 5:12-19)
How To Define the Word “Religion”
(also see the ten primers, starting with A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form and A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction)
These courses are on sale by various electronic booksellers.
The texts are designed to be read and discussed in a seminar setting.
0002 For inquirers. educators and students would who like to try their hands at Razie Mah’s approach, Semiotics and History offers a path. This is one course consisting of many strands. Like a fiber in a rope, each strand strengthens the entire conceptual apparatus. With few execptions, each course completely appears in the blog. Some strands will have an electronic e-book component. So, don’t be afraid to make a purchase. You will find that the costs of Mah’s electronic works are reasonable.
In the following list, the date corresponds to the cover page of each strand. A strand typically covers a month.
0003 The following list extends into the future, because more strands will be added over time.
Feb 6,5, 2026
Looking at Kalevi Kull and Ekaterina Velmezova’s Book (2025) “Sphere of Understanding” (Part 1 and 2 of 3)
Feb 4, 2026
Semiotics and History: The Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics (Part 3 of 3)
May 30. 2026
Semiotics and History: Baroque Scholasticism
May 7, 2026
Semiotics and History: Baroque Scholasticism and Early Modernism
June 30, 2026
Semiotics and History: Early Modernism
July 31, 2026 Semiotics and History: Gnosticism in Modern America
0001 If I may present my conclusion at the beginning, “I suggest the following motto: First the bauplan, then the twist.”
0002 The full title of the essay under examination is “Unpacking the Neolithic: Assessing the Relevance of the Neolithic Construct in Light of Recent Research”. The article appears in the Journal of World Prehistory (2025) in volume 38:11, pages 1-58 (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10963-025-09198-0). The author is affiliated with the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C.
0003 The author’s argument follows the Greek tradition of (A) setting out prior propositions, (B) adding further information and assessments and (C) proposing one’s own solution.
Prior propositions (A) are covered in the section titled, “The Origin of the Term ‘Neolithic'”.
Further information (B) includes sections on neolithic emergences in southwest Asia and other regions, including China, Japan, eastern north America, Mesoamerica and the northwest America.
The author’s proposal (C) appears in a section titled, “Repackaging the Neolithic”.
0004 I examine each movement in the sequence A, C then B.
0005 In regards to the historical origin of the term, “neolithic” (A), the word appears in the 1850s in the context of prehistoric lithic technology. A distinction between old “paleolithic” and new “neolithic” tools reflects a fairly recent change in the human condition. The Paleolithic extends very far back into the evolution of the Homo genus. The Neolithic is fairly new and applies only to Homo sapiens. By “new”, I mean, say, starting less that 20,000 years ago.
0006 As it turns out, stone tools and fossilized bones are the most recoverable items from the distant past. So, the idea that our kind evolves will of course rely of this type of data. The implications are significant. If lithic technologies are like matter, then the archaeologist may speculate on forms of prehistorical human (or “hominid” or “hominin”) conditions.
0007 For example, the earliest paleolithic stone tools are labeled “Oldowan”. These tools can be made on the fly. If I strike one rock with another, I can fracture off a shard and expose a sharp edge. Of course, one must choose the right rocks for this trick. Plus, technique is important.
Later stone tools are labeled “Acheulean”. These stone tools are made ahead of time, by the same technique of hammering off shards to reveal an intended form that… somehow… is intrinsic to the original rock.
0008 So, what am I suggesting?
Is the actuality of matter and form intrinsic to rocks, and ancestral hominins learn to tamper with one real element (matter) in order to sculpt the other real element (form)?
0009 I am suggesting more than that.
Aristotle’s hylomorphe (hylo = matter, morphe = form) is an exemplar of Peirce’s category of secondness. Secondness consists of (at least) two contiguous real elements. For paleolithic hominins, a rock (matter) could be sculpted into a stone tool (form). From the point of view of the archaeologist, the hylomorphic structure still applies. The question is, “How?”
Paleolithic stone-tool technology “sculpts” prehistorical human conditions.
0010 Of course, the word, “sculpts”, serves as an aesthetic metaphor for the contiguity between paleolithic technology as matter and hominin conditions as form.
0011 The challenge for nineteenth-century anthropology is clear. Propose a better, more scientific, or at least, less metaphysical, label for the contiguity.
With only geological strata, stone tools and fossilized bones as evidence, proposals were necessarily speculative. But, archaeologists continued digging, and by the 1850s could make the distinction between paleolithic and neolithic. Also, they figured out a reason for why the advance from Oldowan to Acheulean stone tools “sculpted” more advanced hominin conditions. Man was making himself.
0012 What do these evidential and rational developments suggest?
For a Peircean, secondness is the dyadic realm of actuality. Secondness is only one of Peirce’s three categories. The other two are thirdness (the triadic realm of normal contexts, judgments, signs, mediations and so forth) and firstness (the monadic realm of possibility).
Each of these categories manifests its own logic. Also, each higher numbered category prescinds from the adjacent lower category. Thirdness prescinds from secondness. Secondness prescinds from firstness. Prescission allows the articulation of the category-based nested form, as described in Razie Mah’ e-book, A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form.
0013 Thirdness bring secondness into relation with firstness.
A triadic normal context3 brings a dyadic actuality2 into relation with the possibility of ‘something’1.
0014 Now I can slide the above dyad into the slot for actuality2 for the category-based nested form intimated by the title of V. Gordon Childe’s 1936 book, Man Makes Himself.
0015 The slide clarifies the contiguity, paleolithic technology constellates a substance, which I label, “technique”, that manifests an essence for the conditions of evolving hominins (that is, a substantiated form).
Consequently, the appearance of a new stone tool technology indicates a change in techniques as well as a change in the essence of the prehistoric human condition.
0016 According to Childe (1892-1957), the “neolithic” label encompassed more than a change in lithic technology. The prehistoric human condition gets entangled with all sorts of other matters, including sedentary communities, economies of delayed returns, various modes of storage and so forth. A long list of material arrangements gets entangled.
0017 As it turns out, once matter substantiates form, then form can entangle other matter, which is a confounding. Here, “confounding” is a technical term, precisely labeling one form originating from one matter and entangling another matter.
Historically, a confounding is an idea that belongs to Aristotle’s tradition. It is stumbled upon long after Aristotle’s campus went out of business. It is the brainchild of the Byzantine and Slavic civilizations.
0018 Here is a picture of Childe’s confounding.
0019 The upper three lines presents the neolithic thing. Neolithic stone-tool technology [substantiates] the prehistoric human condition. The nature of the [substance] is labeled, “technique”.
The lower two lines presents the entangled matter. The [entanglement] is difficult to label, because its nature is.. well… a long list of material arrangements.
0020 A list of material arrangements appears in Table 1 of the article. Even the social components of social mechanism, magico-religious sanctions and trade can be shoved under the rug labeled, “material arrangements”.
0021 As such, the “neolithic” may serve as an adjective to a noun, “revolution”, that appeals to academics sympathetic to Marxist formulations. Yes, they are the ones who only promote academics with similar sympathies. Also, Childe was… um… a sympathizer.
The question is not about whether prehistoric folk are “communist” or “fascist”, even though these labels may apply to this or that anthropologist of the 1930s.
The question is whether the Marxist formula applies to prehistoric folk.
0022 The answer becomes obvious, when Childe’s confounding resolves into the following hylomorphic structure.
0023 The above figure depicts a Marxist version of Aristotle’s hylomorphe, {matter [substantiates] form}. Childe’s hylomorphe lasts for nine decades (that is, until the present day at the start of 2026). Man makes himself through a standard Marxist formulation. Soon, Soviet era archaeologists adopt the stance that the appearance of pottery is a hallmark of neolithic emergence. Pottery is a material arrangement. The emergence of the neolithic is a human condition.
0056 Okay, I will continue drinking my cocktail in the following exposition.
I regard the last two figures, along with the figures that appear in the article under examination.
0057 There is something in B that suggests two bauplans3. Early Neolithic Bauplan 1 marks the terminus of the Lebenswelt that we evolved in. Late Neolithic Bauplan 2 denotes the start of our current Lebenswelt.
0058 Bauplan 1 looks like this.
The early Neolithic bauplan3does not permit untrammeled social and labor specializations. Rather, all social circles2m (family (5), friends (5), teams (15), bands (50), and community (150)) are optimized2f in the pursuit of the final cause of ‘settling down’1. It is the same way that different organs and organ systems are optimized for ‘settling down’ into an individual.
Details of optimization will be specific to each location (because efficient causes differ), yet produce something ‘general’, that manifests in excavation sites as varied as Catal Hoyuk and Tepe Gobekli. Domestication includes the local geography, plants and animals. Domestication may even include settlements more than a day’s walk away. Domestication may include the heavens.
0059 Once rendered in this manner, the slow, seemingly reversible, spiral into the neolithic thing2 gets depicted as thin dotted horizontal lines along the axes of arrangements versus time.
0060 The late Neolithic bauplan3 permits individual social and labor specializations. Something significant has changed. The key final cause of ‘settling down’ remains relevant. However, another key final cause cannot be ignored. The optimization of the early Neolithic somehow breaks down and the late Neolithic initiates a search for order1 that continues to this day.
0061 Here is a picture of what Bauplan 2 might look like.
0062 It is as if an individual, having been formed by a bauplan 1 gestation, gets born.
What a rude awakening.
0063 What about the timeline?
If I replace the increasing boldness of the horizontal dotted lines with a slowly rising bauplan 1 slope, and if I depict the most bold horizontal dotted lines as a bauplan 2 phase transition, then I get the following graph.
0064 What does this imply?
Obviously, bauplan 1 ends in a twist, that is, bauplan 2.
I noted this slogan at the start of my examination.
0065 Less obviously, the Neolithic revolution is not in the actuality of {material arrangements [substantiating] the neolithic condition}2.
“The Neolithic Revolution” involves a transition from the Lebenswelt that we evolved in to our current Lebenswelt.
0066 Fortunately, for the author, the American Marxist academic candle is about to exhaust itself, just as the Soviet Marxist illumination did decades ago.
Yes, the crisis begins.
0067 The impending change of cognitive grounds will be at least as great as the following transition from Karl Marx (1818-1883) to Juri Lotman (1922-1993). This transition goes sigmoidal in 1989.
0068 The following hylomorphic transition is derived in Razie Mah’s blog for December 2025, titled Looking at Igor Pilshchikov and Mikhail Trunin’s Article (2016) “The Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics”.
0069 Marx’s actuality2 is supposed to arise from the potential of scientific models1, even though the actuality2 served as doctrine, rather than a mechanical or mathematical formulation. Remember, Marx’s actuality2 conforms to the structure of Peirce’s secondness. Secondness is the realm of actuality. How easy is it to confuse this actuality with the realness of a mechanical or mathematical model? Yet, they are not the same.
0070 Lotman’s actuality2 arises from the potential of the semiosphere1, the universe of sign-relations. Semiotic arrangements are not the same as material arrangements. They are not even close.
0071 So, what am I saying?
The author senses that ‘something’ is coming and she figures out that it must concern a bauplan.
After all, bauplan is a term that is familiar to evolutionary biologists.
0072 Happily, the semiotician, Razie Mah, has already explored human evolution from the point of view of Peirce’s categories. The human bauplan is an adaptation to the niche (or the potential) of triadic relations. Plus, human evolution comes with a twist.
Here is a list of works by Razie Mah that pertain to Bauplan 1 and Bauplan 2.
0073 Surely, this is a lot to unpack. But, that is precisely what Melinda Zeder’s article calls for.
My thanks to the author for publishing this thought piece.
I reviewed Steven Mithen’s book, The Language Puzzle: Piecing Together The Six-Million-Year Story Of How Words Evolved (2024, Basic Books, New York). See Razie Mah’s blog for September 2025. The examination concludes on point 0235.
During the examination, I recall a book that Julian Jaynes publishes in 1976.
I wonder, “Why does Mithen’s book remind me of Jaynes?”
I now have a copy of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (First Mariner edition (2000), New York, New York) before me.
This explains why I start the current examination on point 0236.
0237 Julian Jaynes (1920-1997 AD) earned master and doctoral degrees in psychology at Yale University. He lectured in psychology at Princeton from 1966 to 1990. In 1990, he writes a postscript that appears in the Mariner edition.
This afterward lists the four hypotheses in Books I and II. Plus, the postscript expands on Part III, by discussing the psychological transition from the bicameral mind to subjective consciousness at the end of the Bronze Age in the Near East.
0238 Here is the list.
0239 So, why does Mithen’s book remind me of Jaynes’s work?
My review of The Language Puzzle led me to conclude that Mithen’s explicit rejection of a gestural origin of languageprevents him from realizing that his information implicitly supports the very position that um… he rejects.
Yes, if I ignore his declaration against a gestural origin to language, then I can start to recognize that speech is added to fully linguistic hand-talk after the domestication of fire, when the community becomes a social circle under pressure from natural selection.
0240 That reminds me of a curious pun that seems to have import in the year 2025AD.
The Russian word for “no” is “nyet”.
To the American ear, “nyet” sounds like “not yet”. And, that means, “Yes, but not now.”
So, when Mithen says, “nyet”, to the gestural origins of language, his English speaking bicameral mind hears, “not yet”. So, Mithen unwittingly drops clues to his nyet hypothesis within his own subjectively conscious argument. These hints offer a weird twist to Looking at Steven Mithen’s Book (2024) The Language Puzzle. It is as if Mithen’s own bicameral mind offers – what I will call – “a nyet hypothesis”.
0241 Now, consider the first two hypothesis (A and B) in Jaynes’s Books I and II.
First (A), subjective consciousness relies on spoken language. Mithen consciously proposes that spoken words are built over millions of years through synaesthesia, cross modal “leakage” of sensations, from visual things and events to auditory vocalizations.
0242 Of course, this proposal comes across as sketchy. Why would early hominins, such as the australopithecines and the early species in the Homo genus (3.5 to 0.6Myr – millions of years ago) do this? And how? The voice is most likely not under voluntary control. Involuntary calls rule the day.
But, the vocal tract changes over time. Most likely, the voice is on the verge of coming under voluntary control by the time that Homo heidelbergensis appears in the fossil record (perhaps, over 600kyr – thousands of years ago).
On top of that, Homo heidelbergensis shows up during the period when hominins domesticate fire (800-400kyr). So, Mithen consciously and cautiously suggests that the synaesthesia business really takes off around that time.
0243 The nyet hypothesis?
Well, of course, proto-linguistic hand talk has plenty of time to evolve without cross-modal leakage during the early period (3.5 to 0.6Myr) and even has a couple of hundred-thousand years to become fully linguistic after hominins start to play with fire (0.8 to 0.6My).
So, synaesthesia would not make a jump from things themselves to vocal utterances, but from manual-brachial word-gestures to vocal utterances.
Suddenly, synaesthesia no longer seems implausible.
0244 Second (B), compare Mithen’s nyet hypothesis with Jaynes’s proposal of the bicameral mind.
To me, the idea that manual-brachial word-gestures provide stimuli allowing synaesthetic crossover from visual to auditory sensations seems like “auditory hallucinations”.
0245 My goal in this first examination is to develop this impression.
Here is another online course on the same subject matter. All parts appear in Razie Mah’s blogs. Click on the month, then scroll downwards.
0012 These are sample courses. So, one may pick and choose points and reviews as one pleases.
Plus, there are lots of pictures. Pictures can be interesting and informative.
How so?
For the most part, the pictures are diagrams of purely relational structures.
0013 What am I selling?
Three online courses that cover the topic of human evolution. All are offered by Razie Mah. All are available at smashwords and other e-book venues. Merely purchase the e-books, print the pdf or read on a tablet. Each point can be discussed. The texts are designed to read and discuss.
A Course on the Human Niche contains the masterwork, plus four commentaries. This course introduces the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
A Course on An Archaeology of the Fall, contains the masterwork, plus outside reading (Paul’s letter to the Romans and Sura 5). An instructor’s guide is available. This course pertains to the hypothesis of the first singularity.
A Course in How To Define the Word “Religion” contains the masterwork, plus 10 primers. This course concerns our current Lebenswelt, which is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in. A “how-to” instruction appears in Razie Mah’s blog in December 2022.
0014 With that said, here is the second online course on this topic.
One: Looking at William Lane Craig’s Book (2021) “In Quest of the Historical Adam”
(September 31-1, 2022, 21 blogs, 120 points)
Two: Looking at John Walton’s Book (2015) “The Lost World of Adam and Eve”
(August 30-1, 2022, 22 blogs, 192 points)
Three: Looking at Andrew Kulokovsky’s Overview (2005) “The Bible and Hermeneutics”
(May 27-16, 2022, 10 blogs, 85 points)
Four: Looking at Carol Hill’s Article (2021) “Original Sin with Respect to Science”
(February 25-7, 2022, 15 blogs, 72 points)
Five: Looking at Roy Clouser’s Article (2021) “… Support of Carol Hill’s Reading…”
(March 8-1, 2022, 6 blogs, 34 points)
Six: Looking at Mark S. Smith’s Book (2019) “The Genesis of Good and Evil”
(January 31-13, 2022, 16 blogs, 100 points)
0015 Total: 90 blogs, 603 points, 10 hours at 1 minute per point.
Maybe, this online course lasts around 2 weeks.
Enjoy this sample and consider purchasing Razie Mah’s online courses.
EOT 0001 The evolution of talk is not the same as the evolution of language.
Language evolves in the milieu of hand-talk.
So, what is the story?
0002 A course on the topic of human evolution is already on the market.
See Razie Mah’s, A Course on the Human Niche, consisting of the masterwork, plus four commentaries.
The Human Niche
Comments on Clive Gamble, John Gowlett and Robin Dunbar’s Book (2014) Thinking Big
Comments on Derek Bickerton’s Book (2014) More Than Nature Needs
Comments on Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky’s Book (2016) Why Only Us?
Comments on Steven Mithen’s Book (1996) The Prehistory of Mind.
0003 The works are available for purchase at various e-book venues. In order to conduct the course, purchase the e-book to read on a tablet (or as a PDF to print). The class is not didactic. It is Socratic. The style is read and discuss. The text is broken into points. Each point can be discussed. So, a leisurely class may open the text, read out loud and ask what the point suggests.
0004 The masterwork came out in 2018 and is still highly relevant to inquiry into the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
How so?
The human niche is the potential of triadic relations.
No other course on human evolution poses this ground-breaking hypothesis.
0005 Nonetheless, six years later, Razie Mah adds to the first course with a second, consisting in two sequences of blogs. This blog-inclusive (as well as e-book exclusive) course serves as a supplement to the master course, especially in regards to the evolution of talk.
0006 The first sequence is collated and rounded out in a compilation, titled, Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019), making the blogs and the compilation ideal for a guided- and home-schooling course.
Michael Tomasello worked at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology for twenty years. He wrote a series of books on the evolution of human cognition, communication, thinking, morality and so on. In short, his books cover the evolution of the stuff of talk.
0007 Here is a list of the five commentaries in this first sequence.
One: Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (1999) “The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition”
(January 18-31, 2024, 12 blogs, 0-82 points)
Two: Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2008) “Origins of Human Communication”
(January 17-4, 2024, 12 blogs, 83-186 points)
Three: Looking at Michael Thomasello’s Book (2014) “A Natural History of Human Thinking”
(February 29-5, 2024, 22 blogs, 187-388 points, completes Part 1 of Comments, see below)
Four: Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2016) “A Natural History of Human Morality”
(March 26-1, 2024, 22 blogs, 389-600 points)
Five: Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Book (2019) “Becoming Human”
(points 601-793 are in Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019) Part 2, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues)
0008 Yes, to complete the course, one needs to purchase Part 2.
How sneaky is that?
So, that is the meaning of “blog-inclusive and e-book exclusive”.
0009 The second sequence is collated in the compilation, titled, Synaesthesia and The Bicameral Mind in Human Evolution. This compilation packages two commentaries on human evolution and sets the scene for a study of the first singularity.
This list continues the previous numbering.
Six: Looking at Steven Mithen’s Book (2024) “The Language Puzzle”
(September 29-4, 2025, 23 blogs, 0-235 points)
Seven: A First Look at Julian Jaynes’s Book (1976) “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”.
(October 31-8, 2025, 21 blogs, 235-525 points)
0010 Overall, this hybrid online-onsale course on the evolution of talk, by Razie Mah, are available for sampling (on the blog) and may be purchased at any e-book venue.
Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019), Parts 1 and 2 contains 753 points.
Synaesthesia and the Bicameral Mind in Human Evolution contains 525 points.
0011 Total: 1278 points, 21 hours at 1 minute per point.
Perhaps, this online course lasts around 4 to 5 weeks.
Enjoy this sample and consider purchasing other Razie Mah’s online courses, especially the one on the human niche.
0001 The full title of the book before me is The Language Puzzle: Piecing Together The Six-Million-Year Story Of How Words Evolved (2024, Basic Books, New York). Dr. Mithen is a Professor of Early Prehistory at the University of Reading. He has published before. More on that later.
The book works on the metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle. Fourteen chapters present the pieces. The introduction and conclusion stage and arrange them.
0002 This current metaphor is very different than a glorious historical metaphor used in a book published almost three decades earlier. The Prehistory of The Mind (1996) offers the historical development of the architecture of cathedrals in Europe as a lens for considering cognitive evolution. The metaphor works well because the nave associates to general intelligence and side chapels associate to specialized mental modules.
0003 From the genetic divergence from chimpanzees to the start of bipedalism, the simple nave of general intelligenceadapts to cognitive challenges.
From the appearance of bipedalism to the domestication of fire, specialized modules are added to general intelligence, but the two do not integrate. Indeed, both specialized modules and general intelligence are supported by their own, thick, walls. The metaphor is the Romanesque cathedral.
From the domestication of fire until the first singularity (think, “the potentiation of civilization”), general intelligence integrates with specialized modules, presumably due to talk becoming fully linguistic. Language becomes the walls, supported by flying buttresses of automatic decoding. The metaphor is the Gothic cathedral.
0004 Here is a picture.
0005 The metaphor is so wonderful that Razie Mah publishes the e-book, Comments on Steven Mithen’s Book (1996) The Prehistory of The Mind as one of the readers that accompanies the masterwork, The Human Niche, in the series A Course On The Human Niche (available at smashwords and other e-book venues).
0006 Mithen’s approach is also echoed in the work of another evolutionary anthropologist, Michael Tomasello, working at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, as discussed in Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019) (by Razie Mah, also see blogs for January through March, 2024).
0007 Mithen’s approach is also reflected in another review that belongs to the series, A Course On The Human Niche. The title is Comments on Clive Gamble, John Gowlett and Robin Dunbar’s Book (2014) Thinking Big. In this review, social circles turn out to be very important in hominin evolution. Mammalian brain size roughly correlates to group size. So, the larger the hominin brain grows, the larger the group.
Not surprisingly, Mithen’s metaphor indicates the social circle under the most intense selection pressure, irrespective of group size.
0008 What does this imply?
Obviously, group size is not the crucial factor in hominin evolution.
Whatever is increasing hominin brain size is.
0006 To me, it is not surprising that Mithen has not encountered Razie Mah’s review of his 1996 work, even though it is one of the few more-than-surface reflections on The Prehistory of The Mind available.
Perhaps, the same will go for this blog, which will take Mithen’s metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle quite literally.
0229 So, what is The Language Puzzle about, in an implicit sort of way?
It is about how speech gets added to hand talk after the domestication of fire.
The irony of the work is found in Mithen’s explicit denial of the gestural origins of language, while…
… at the same time, the author provides a solution to a question that he cannot even pose.
0230 Examinations don’t get better than this.
This examination adds value to Mithen’s work in a surprising fashion.
0231 This examination suggests that a tremendous amount of theoretical reformulation needs to be done. In particular, the following juxtaposition of events is suggestive.
0232 I ask, “Does Homo sapien’s encounter, love affair, then divorce from the Neanderthals create a condition where speech becomes more and more independent as a mode of talking? Does speech become capable of operating linguistically, independent of hand talk, yet remain integrated into the natural-sign references of hand-talk?”
0233 Take a look at the artifact of the lion-man, pictured in figure 3 on page 28 of Mithen’s text.
Maybe, we can ask him.
Do you think that he has something to say to us?
Surely, he cannot perform hand-talk.
So, the lion-man must speak for itself.
0233 Yes,it’s like synaesthesia gone wild.
0234 But, “wild” is not even close to this last implication, which tells me that our current Lebenswelt is not the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
What about the item in red?
See Razie Mah’s e-books, The First Singularity and It’s Fairy Tale Trace (for a technical proposal) and An Archaeology of the Fall (for a dramatic rendering), available at smashwords and other e-book venues.
0235 With that said, I thank Steven Mithen for publishing a book that can be fruitfully read both explicitly and implicitly.
Also, the story does not end here, because this examination plays a prominent role in the next commentary, Looking at Julian Jaynes’s Book (1976) “The Origin of Consciousness in The Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”.
