- 09 Apr 2010 20:30
#13366079
Language, math and communication has served us well. The more we have been able to communicate with a broad number of people, the more we have increased our skill sets. Consider the old world, Europe Asia and Africa to the new world N and S America, Australia. Stone architecture and cosmology was well developed in early societies, but it was in the old world where vast amounts of information were broadly exchanged, from Roman concrete to Chinese gun powder to the printing press. This exchange was facilitated because the old world had something the new world did not: horses. knowledge was exported with tradable goods.
It hard to say that our opposible thumbs were indispensible in our development, because its hard to find a thumbless society and see how it developed, but we can look at the effects of communication.
I'm not sure if we are all that superior to other animals, or just lucky enough to have the right configuration to do what we do, and because these activities or achievements are important to us both individually or collectively, we regard them as successes that make us superior to beasties. But isn't it interesting how often we instuct our children to 'look within' for what is important: compassion, non-judgemental love, faithfulness etc.
I think most of us think our family pets trump us every time.
define second stage tool making, svp.
Language is having the ability to communicate. It doesn't have to be through the spoken word (ASL?). If you study a species long enough, you'll see that most social animals- by which I mean a species that lives collectively, from a congress of baboons to a herd of horses, have the ability to communicate through fixed behaviours rather than through spoken language/symbol manipulation.
Well, lets be clear here.... Only man and parrots have the necessary throat structures that allow for complex sounds. It's pretty hard to correct a dog's grammar when he's telling me that he needs to go outside, but he gets the message through, loud and clear. Not being able to speak is not the same as not being able to communicate a concept, or to use language. Primates have been taught to use sign language. Pigs and primates and dolphins and parrots are thought to be among the brighter lights because they demonstrate the ability to solve complex problems with touch-screen computers
lastly, some one said animals don't create art. There are animals that create art, and I think one example was an elephant. Anyway, every time I wear a white shirt down to the stables, some hairy great joker wipes his mucky mouth on me. A random mess, or the equine equivalent to a Jackson Pollard? who's to say
It hard to say that our opposible thumbs were indispensible in our development, because its hard to find a thumbless society and see how it developed, but we can look at the effects of communication.
I'm not sure if we are all that superior to other animals, or just lucky enough to have the right configuration to do what we do, and because these activities or achievements are important to us both individually or collectively, we regard them as successes that make us superior to beasties. But isn't it interesting how often we instuct our children to 'look within' for what is important: compassion, non-judgemental love, faithfulness etc.
I think most of us think our family pets trump us every time.
Vera Politica wrote:This is incorrect or perhaps entirely misleading. Second stage-tool making (and anything beyond) is limited to man.
define second stage tool making, svp.
Vera Politica wrote:Not every creature has language. The only creature that seems to have developed remnants of syntactical structure are whales - but even those who admit there is some organization in whale songs admit it is far inferior to the syntactical complexity of human language.
Language is having the ability to communicate. It doesn't have to be through the spoken word (ASL?). If you study a species long enough, you'll see that most social animals- by which I mean a species that lives collectively, from a congress of baboons to a herd of horses, have the ability to communicate through fixed behaviours rather than through spoken language/symbol manipulation.
Vera Politica wrote:Human language is, perhaps, the definitive demarcation between animals and humans. Thus, it is not that our language is written, it is that our language has a complex hierarchy of syntactical organization that is not seen elsewhere.
Well, lets be clear here.... Only man and parrots have the necessary throat structures that allow for complex sounds. It's pretty hard to correct a dog's grammar when he's telling me that he needs to go outside, but he gets the message through, loud and clear. Not being able to speak is not the same as not being able to communicate a concept, or to use language. Primates have been taught to use sign language. Pigs and primates and dolphins and parrots are thought to be among the brighter lights because they demonstrate the ability to solve complex problems with touch-screen computers
lastly, some one said animals don't create art. There are animals that create art, and I think one example was an elephant. Anyway, every time I wear a white shirt down to the stables, some hairy great joker wipes his mucky mouth on me. A random mess, or the equine equivalent to a Jackson Pollard? who's to say
“There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true" - Winston Churchill