flightless birds waiting for humans to teach them to fly’).
The origin of language is a cause of endless dispute which, given that just one creature can speak, may never be resolved. Darwin thought that perhaps it began with imitation: that ‘some unusually wise ape-like animal should have thought of imitating the growl of a beast of prey, so as to indicate to his fellow monkeys the nature of the expected danger’. The Descent of Man also suggests that it could have started with love songs, and that speech was in part a side-effect of sexual selection. Perhaps it was; or perhaps it grew instead from the simple fact that we are social animals. Apes groom each other because the constant pacification calms them all down and cuts down the conflict that is never far from the surface. Big groups demand too much scratching time but reassuring sounds can placate lots of individuals at once. The savage breast might first have been charmed in that way; possibly, indeed, with song - which could be why some stutterers can sing a sentence when they cannot say it.
However it began, language makes us what we are. The ability to speak is coded for on the left side of the brain and plenty of primates have a brain almost as lopsided as our own. Even so, chimp tongues fill their mouths while ours are dainty in comparison. The human tongue has retreated down the throat. The language of Shakespeare is a complex set of sounds made as the space above the larynx flexes and bends. The anatomical changes leave evidence in the shape of the skull. Neanderthals had chimp-like mouths and could do little more than grunt. The first skull capable of speech emerged no more than fifty thousand years ago - not long before the explosion of technology that led to the modern world.
One British child in twenty has some form of speech disorder. A certain rare inborn abnormality makes it impossible for those who inherit it to cope with grammar. Baby mice with the same damaged gene make fewer squeaks than usual when removed from their mothers, and people with a version impaired in a different way are at risk of schizophrenia; of, like Saint Joan, hearing voices that are not there. The normal version found in humans differs in two of its amino acids from that in all other primates. It is foolish to speak of a gene for language but if the transition from animal to human turned on speech it may have involved rather few molecular changes. The situation is confused by the discovery that Neanderthals have the human version of the gene, which must hence date back to our inarticulate joint ancestor.
Wherever they came from, words are the raw material of a new kind of genetics, in which information passes through mouths and ears as well as through eggs and sperm. It moved us on from our status as a rare East African ape to the most abundant of all mammals. Ideas, not genes, make us what we are. Our DNA is not very different from those of our kin, but what we do - or say - with it has formed our fate.
Even so, the famous ‘indelible stamp’ is without doubt imprinted into the human frame. Modern biology shows that chimpanzees are even more like us than Charles Darwin imagined - but in no more than the most literal way. The strengths and the limitations of his ideas in deciphering what makes us human have become ever clearer as knowledge advances. His theory is powerful indeed but enthusiasts need to be reminded where its power comes to an end.
In 1926, the Soviet government sent an expedition to Africa. It was directed by Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov, famous for his work on the hybridisation of horses and zebras by artificial insemination. The Politburo hoped to do the same with men and apes, for the experiment would be ‘a decisive blow to religious teachings, and may be aptly used in our propaganda and in our struggle for the liberation of working people from the power of the Church’. In Guinea, Ivanov obtained sperm from an anonymous African and inseminated three
The origin of language is a cause of endless dispute which, given that just one creature can speak, may never be resolved. Darwin thought that perhaps it began with imitation: that ‘some unusually wise ape-like animal should have thought of imitating the growl of a beast of prey, so as to indicate to his fellow monkeys the nature of the expected danger’. The Descent of Man also suggests that it could have started with love songs, and that speech was in part a side-effect of sexual selection. Perhaps it was; or perhaps it grew instead from the simple fact that we are social animals. Apes groom each other because the constant pacification calms them all down and cuts down the conflict that is never far from the surface. Big groups demand too much scratching time but reassuring sounds can placate lots of individuals at once. The savage breast might first have been charmed in that way; possibly, indeed, with song - which could be why some stutterers can sing a sentence when they cannot say it.
However it began, language makes us what we are. The ability to speak is coded for on the left side of the brain and plenty of primates have a brain almost as lopsided as our own. Even so, chimp tongues fill their mouths while ours are dainty in comparison. The human tongue has retreated down the throat. The language of Shakespeare is a complex set of sounds made as the space above the larynx flexes and bends. The anatomical changes leave evidence in the shape of the skull. Neanderthals had chimp-like mouths and could do little more than grunt. The first skull capable of speech emerged no more than fifty thousand years ago - not long before the explosion of technology that led to the modern world.
One British child in twenty has some form of speech disorder. A certain rare inborn abnormality makes it impossible for those who inherit it to cope with grammar. Baby mice with the same damaged gene make fewer squeaks than usual when removed from their mothers, and people with a version impaired in a different way are at risk of schizophrenia; of, like Saint Joan, hearing voices that are not there. The normal version found in humans differs in two of its amino acids from that in all other primates. It is foolish to speak of a gene for language but if the transition from animal to human turned on speech it may have involved rather few molecular changes. The situation is confused by the discovery that Neanderthals have the human version of the gene, which must hence date back to our inarticulate joint ancestor.
Wherever they came from, words are the raw material of a new kind of genetics, in which information passes through mouths and ears as well as through eggs and sperm. It moved us on from our status as a rare East African ape to the most abundant of all mammals. Ideas, not genes, make us what we are. Our DNA is not very different from those of our kin, but what we do - or say - with it has formed our fate.
Even so, the famous ‘indelible stamp’ is without doubt imprinted into the human frame. Modern biology shows that chimpanzees are even more like us than Charles Darwin imagined - but in no more than the most literal way. The strengths and the limitations of his ideas in deciphering what makes us human have become ever clearer as knowledge advances. His theory is powerful indeed but enthusiasts need to be reminded where its power comes to an end.
In 1926, the Soviet government sent an expedition to Africa. It was directed by Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov, famous for his work on the hybridisation of horses and zebras by artificial insemination. The Politburo hoped to do the same with men and apes, for the experiment would be ‘a decisive blow to religious teachings, and may be aptly used in our propaganda and in our struggle for the liberation of working people from the power of the Church’. In Guinea, Ivanov obtained sperm from an anonymous African and inseminated three
Similar Books
