Putting cognitive carts before linguistic horses

Did courtship drive the evolution of mind?

The driving force in the evolution of language and the human mind was the advantage gained in courtship by efficient communicators. Ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny may offer an alternative to Donald's picture of the relative origins of language and mimesis. Very recent evidence is pertinent to dating the origin of language.

The role of vocalization, memory retrieval, and external symbols in cognitive evolution

The human vocal apparatus is part of a vertically integrated system, and I agree withLicbennanthat modern high-speed phonology co-evolved with our capacity for grammar.Olsonand I agree that some distinctly human thought skills appear to be fairly recent cultural acquisitions related to the introduction of new symbolic technologies and external (that is, nonbiological) memory storage.Stenning's concern with my use of the term “episodic” can be resolved by distinguishing between episodic storage and retrieval.Baum's suggestions regarding courtship and cognitive evolution seem to apply better to mimetic expression than to language.

Episodic is what apes are not

Donald presents a three-stage theory of the evolution of cognition – episodic, mimetic, symbolic. This commentary is chiefly concerned with his use of the first term “episodic” which conflicts with standard usage in the memory literature. This conflict of usage has more than terminological implications for Donald's theory.

On Neanderthal speech and human evolution

Loring Brace's assertion that “Neanderthals were just as capable of articulate speech as we are” reflects ignorance of speech anatomy and physiology. Metrical analyses of hyoid bone morphology cannot predict supralaryngeal vocal tract (SVT) shape. Houghton's (1993) “modern” Neanderthal SVT reconstruction yields an impossible creature who had a larynx positioned in his chest. The reconstructed modem SVTs of early fossil Homo sapiens indicate brains that can regulate speech, consistent with Merlin Donalds timetable for the evolution of language.

Taxing memory: Writing, memory, and conceptual change

Writing is important not because it “extends memory” but because it invites new concepts. The basic cognitive resources, including memory, have remained unchanged for perhaps a million years but the objects on which it has to work have changed significantly partly because of writing which has tended to turn speech into an object of reflection and analysis.