New book about Adam and Eve by William Lane Craig

BTW, I am not convinced the Neanderthals were incapable of language. Geneticists apparently think they had a version of the FOXP2 gene.

Also I think there is a big flaw in the Nichols argument. It only shows that all human languages descended from a common language which existed at that time. It does NOT show that there were no other languages previously.

Posted the above before I read your response…

yep.

Agreed. I even think there is excellent evidence that verbal communication was being used previously and that we were adapting to this for some time. Where you draw the line for what should be called language is a difficult question and it is even more difficult to find evidence…

interesting question… I wonder if there are genetic/brain adaptations to the more abstract aspects of language… hmmm…

Thanks in advance.

Atkinson’s thesis was debunked almost immediately. Our resident linguist @Christy might have a comment on the theory.

https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.1208841

Abstract
We show that Atkinson’s (Reports, 15 April 2011, p. 346) intriguing proposal—that global linguistic diversity supports a single language origin in Africa—is an artifact of using suboptimal data, biased methodology, and unjustified assumptions. We criticize his approach using more suitable data, and we additionally provide new results suggesting a more complex scenario for the emergence of global linguistic diversity.

https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.1207846

Abstract
Atkinson (Reports, 15 April 2011, p. 346) reported a declined trend of phonemic diversity from Africa that indicated the African exodus of modern languages. However, his claim was only supported when the phonemic diversities were binned into three or five levels. Analyses using raw data without simplification suggest a decline from central Asia rather than from Africa.

The evidence is definitely limited, but there are some converging lines that point in the same direction. (I reference some of this material in my article linked in Post #32 above.)

Language Evolution
Above all, it’s important to remember that language evolved along with the body, vocal tract, and brain. Language didn’t spring into existence in the modern form that we recognize. It most likely began with pointing/informative gestures, which “animals who lack language systematically fail to understand.” Individual words developed from gestures, which accords with theories of embodied cognition and cognitive linguistics.

So the earliest form of “language” was most likely a combination of gestures and a few simple words. It’s best to call this a protolanguage to avoid confusion. From there, linguist Sverker Johansson argues that language evolution followed a similar path to childhood language acquisition: 1) One-word stage; 2) Two-word stage; 3) Hierarchical structure but lacking subordinate clauses and embedding; 4) Flexibility/Recursivity; 5) Fully modern grammar. All of the first four stages should be considered proto-language.

Physical requirements for speech
The first requirement is walking upright. Bipedalism not only allowed the larynx to descend, it relieved the thorax of its support function while running, which allowed our early ancestors to coordinate their breathing, running, and vocalizing.

The second requirement is a modern spine with enough space for the nerves that control the respiratory muscles needed to articulate words. H. erectus from Dmanisi (1.75 million years ago) had such a spinal column.

The third requirement is a vocal tract and hyoid bone similar to ours, without an air sac like other primates. Australopithecus possessed a hyoid similar to chimpanzees. Neanderthal and heidelbergensis have a hyoid identical to sapiens, while late erectus is intermediate. (See here for a summary.) The hyoid is necessary for vowel sounds in human speech, so the implication is that late erectus was capable of speech, but not capable of the full range of sounds modern humans can produce.

Converging lines of evidence
Prehistoric trade networks provide some of the best indirect evidence of language evolution. Prior to 1 million years ago, natural resources for food, toolmaking, etc., came from within the “home-range” of hominins, which was about the same as it was for earlier primates. Around 1 million years ago, trade networks suddenly appeared, meaning the stone to produce a tool found in one place could come from as far away as 100 km. The existence of trade implies an improved form of communication. Since the physical requirements for speech were present by this time, it’s reasonable to conclude that protolanguage came into existence around 1 mil years ago.

Trade networks expanded to 300 km around 100,000 years ago in Middle Stone Age Africa, and by 35,000 years ago transfer distances had increased to as much as 800 km. These dates indicate some sort of language breakthrough around 100 ka that wasn’t finished until 35 ka. Interestingly, Neanderthal trade networks never extended beyond 75 km. That indicates they likely spoke a protolanguage throughout their existence.

I won’t detail the evidence of symbolic behaviors, since this already is too long, but they roughly follow the same dates outlined above. A few very early, ambiguous examples starting around 700 ka, more obvious symbolic elements around 100 ka, and an “explosion” of Venus figurines and other unquestionably symbolic behaviors after 40 ka.

Finally (hooray!), the phenomenon of “globularity” appears in the sapiens lineage starting around 100 ka and completing around 35 ka. As one of the early researchers into globularity said, this was the “language-ready brain.” Computational analysis of the brains of modern H. sapiens
and Neanderthal
found that they had smaller cerebellar hemispheres than us. “Although both species have similar total brain volumes, a globular brain confers distinct advantages: Larger cerebellar hemispheres were related to higher cognitive and social functions including executive functions, language processing and episodic and working memory capacity.”

Note the dates 100 ka and 35 ka. Trade networks, symbolic behaviors, and the globular brain all are associated with those two dates. From these converging lines of evidence, it seems protolanguage began around 1 mil years ago and continued to evolve into “modern language” around 100 ka. Language and symbolicity then co-evolved with the globular brain to bring us to “full modernity” about 50-60,000 years later.

Whew. Done.

1 Like

Historical linguistics is not really my area. Sometimes I can recognize if someone is really wrong, but I’m pretty useless when it comes to evaluating if someone is right. All of you who have looked into the details of human evolution and cultural development probably know way more about the topic than I do.

2 Likes

It looked like an extremely sketchy way of dating the origin of language.

1 Like

The first two pieces aren’t really historical linguistics. Atkinson claimed that phonemic diversity was less the farther from Africa, much like genetic diversity. The authors who debunked it looked at “the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS),” which binned everything into three or five levels. “However, this kind of simplification of the data lost most information of the phonemic diversity and might have resulted in bias conclusion.” You might find it interesting if you have time, which you probably don’t. :wink:

I don’t have time, for sure. One thing I remember from coursework is that languages with fewer phonemes tend to be tonal (The languages with the largest consonant inventories are non-tonal). In current practice, we conceptualize of suprasegmental features as functioning like phonemes in some ways. In Me’phaa, nasalization, vowel lengthening, glottalization, and tone can all carry grammatical information and are often used to distinguish words. Tonemes are a thing now. So it strikes me as reductionistic to assume that you can quantify a language’s complexity solely based on phoneme inventories. If I remember correctly, languages tend to lose tone not gain it. I don’t know if they theorize that protolanguages were tonal, but I would imagine they were.

1 Like

Toneme? That’s a new one on me. The second critique I linked said something about tone diversity:

Similar problems happened to the simplification of tone diversity. Most tonal languages in Africa have less than four tones, whereas most tonal languages in Asia have more than four. The Kam spoken in southwest China has the largest tone inventory (15 tones).

An older book that’s held up pretty well is “The Singing Neanderthals” by Steven Mithen. He suggests they spoke a protolanguage that resembled rhythmic humming more than anything else. I like his thesis but would place it nearer to H. erectus. If you have an “incomplete” hyoid and can’t clearly pronounce vowel sounds, your first spoken “words” probably would resemble a sing-songy “hmmmm.”

1 Like

W. L. Craig is not an evolutionary creationist but a progressive creationist.

It seems to me that so-called progressive creationism fits the evidence quite nicely. Progressive creationism suggests that God intervenes periodically to bring about miraculously new forms of life and then allows evolutionary change to take place with respect to those life forms.

from here

I suppose I am not grasping the “subtle distinction” between this and old earth creationism with a special creation of A&E. Or perhaps Craig’s position has changed from 2013?

Although I now tend to accept evolution as fact, I still struggle to reconcile that with some NT ideas, particularly from Paul, as others have noted. But I think it was inevitable that Paul, probably like most or all of his contemporaries, would have concluded that there must have been an ‘original’ pair of humans from whom we all came. Surely that is the conclusion he would have come to when looking around at society, and asking - where did we all come from? Well I, Paul, was born from 2 parents, a man and a woman, as was John over there. My parents were also each born from a man and a woman, as were their parents. And so on. So it makes logical sense tat there must have been an original man and woman, and that is what Genesis also seems to say, even if it was written primarily as a polemic against other NE creation stories (as I tend to think). And human sin must have come from somewhere, logically the first man. So that to me is the problem. Paul seems to think that human sin began with the first human, and that human sin has now been dealt with by the ‘last’ man, Jesus.

But on the other hand, Paul is the first to say that ‘all have sinned’. That is, it is all our sin that Jesus deals with, not just ‘Adam’s’. Of course Paul seems to imply that just as all were affected by Adam’s sin, so all will be affected by Jesus’ reversal of that. But that isnt the case, as Paul seems to believe that not all will be saved. He’s not a universalist. So perhaps within his own words there is inconsistency.

Overall I think Paul represents the typical Jewish understanding of his day regarding the origins of humanity, and the state of the world. How that affects how one understands the ‘word of God’ is debatable.

Others have mentioned there may have been differing views on Genesis in 2nd Temple Judaism- are there any links to such writings?

Peter

1 Like

‘but they likely used a combination of gesture and a few words to communicate.’

you mean like teenagers?!

2 Likes

One can hold to that conclusion without making it genetic. I hold that there is an inheritance of the mind from God via A&E and it is that which Jesus sought to replace. After all, you don’t think Jesus brings a genetic transformation to Christians, do you?

You’d have to ask him. All I know is what he described in this book, which I’ve already reported.

Thanks for the post, Glipsnort (!!)… I am going to read the review in a bit…I would find his ideas interesting. Also liked Swamidoss’ ideas on the subject.

1 Like

According to Joshua Swamidass, who probably does know him very well by now, WLC does affirm common ancestry.

If anyone doesn’t want to plough their way through a book, then you could listen to this episode of the Unbelievable podcast. Craig appears with Swamidass and they discuss the book and some of the issues involved.

1 Like

What saddens me, personally, to the point of despair, is the efforts men will go to - and it’s ALWAYS men, and almost exclusively protestant men (the only exception I can think of being De Chardin) - to put ancient texts which use yet more ancient texts, fiction on fiction, prior to the disinterested story of existence. No one of any calibre at all, no believer with any intellectual honesty can stare in to the infinite pit of eternity, of uniformitarianism. Even many postmodern atheists. Those blatant, primary realities are all in a collective blind spot, even for true worthies like Sir John Polkinghorne who fell at the pathetic fallacy of incredulity.

The universe is practically infinite, it has trillions of inhabited worlds. It is one of infinite from eternity, in series and parallel, which has nothing to do with the illusion of fine tuning.

If God grounds being, He does it as if He didn’t.

Craig might as well be a YECist: You must believe that Jesus had to be sacrificed for your originally freely chosen inherited sinfulness, or burn.

It really, really, REALLY is that simple.

Why does it bother you so much that, out of the billions of inhabitants on one of those trillions of worlds, some of them are wrong about the nature of existence?

1 Like

He thinks that all of the details should not be taken literally. Truths that he thinks are expressed in the primeval history include:

  • God is the good, personal, transcendent designer and creator of the physical world.

  • Man(*) is the pinnacle of physical creation.

  • Marriage is gendered

  • Work is good.

  • We should have a Sabbath.

  • ‘Man and woman alike have freely chosen to disobey God’.

He does not offer any justification for these or any procedure for extracting the truths from the myth.

(His word, not mine)

1 Like

Because it’s the dominant, overwhelming, intimidating voice in the agora. Because Christianity is infantilized by it. And those here who know have no way of transcending that due to their fears.

It would be helpful it you would distinguish what is unique to “Swamidass’ ideas” on this topic, in contra-distinction to those of W.L. Craig.

Swamidass borrowed “genealogical Adam” from David Opderbeck here at BioLogos, and from the implications of the work of Ken Kemp, a Roman Catholic philosopher (who built on the work of other Roman Catholic philosophers, scientists and theologians).

Swamidass’ ideas on this tend to be unoriginal, as I see them. They offer a new synthesis of sorts for evangelicals to finally open up their reading lists and listen to Roman Catholics more closely on the topic of human origins than they have previously. Is that a message you get from Swamidass and his sources, Robin?