Forrest's space

In following up with the idea of writing book reviews, The Ape that Spoke seems to be a good starting point.

Although it gets bad reviews, and deserves most of what’s in them, John McCrone’s account of the birth of language was an enjoyable read, and at least somewhat enlightening. Most things we rely on every day have a history; we know how cars were invented, when computers were born and how they caught on, et cetera. The story of language is a mystery, though, for a glaringly obvious reason.

It’s a fascinating question, and without a time machine, it will have to go without a definitive answer. The ones we manage to come up with, then, are multi-pronged. Understanding how full-blown language might have unfolded demands a foundation in biology, Mendelian evolution, psychology, anthropology, and, of course, linguistics. Daunting as that might sound, it’s what makes the book so compelling … as noted in a few of the Amazon reviews.

The Good

Predictably, The Ape that Spoke begins with the dawn of humanity, and a bit of context. Species survival strategies are discussed; humans have very few offspring, but invest very heavily in their care, as opposed to fish, who lay tens of thousands of eggs in a fire-and-forget manner. Whereas a newborn horse can stand and run almost instantly, a human infant depends for dear life on its parents for many years. McCrone describes the human brain as a risky experiment that almost failed, exhausting 20 % of our energy, and thus calorie supply.

A large part of the book is devoted to the back-story of human evolution, and told as a narrative. This is the greatest story ever told, and the quality of the writing is exceptional. ( By contrast, Genesis, by Robert Hazen, deals with equally fascinating subject matter, but is far less intoxicating to read. )

The attention span is given a lot of space in the book;  if the goal is communication, breaking ideas into small enough chunks to be said and understood is essential.  People seem to have about a ten-second “working memory,” forcing us to speak more quickly ( perhaps this is why we don’t pause between words, the way we do when we write them? ), and to structure our speech into short bursts, to express as close as possible to complete, independent thoughts between breaths.

Finally, in discussing human thought, cognition, and what these might tell us about how language works ( in the sense that understanding Windows might help understand why a third party application crashes ), metaphor is covered in a very interesting way.  We tend to learn as if there’s nothing new in the world, but relating unknown concepts to familiar ones.  McCrone points to a few examples of cultures thinking of the world in terms of the most advanced science at the time, from Freud relating the subconscious to the workings of a steam engine, to our modern affinity for thinking of the brain as a computer.  This carries the warning to not be fooled by analogies ( the brain is like a computer in many ways, but unlike a computer in many others ), but also lays the foundation for ancient hunters and gatherers to extend their new proto-language.

The Bad

On the whole, I would recommend this book to anyone who’s even vaguely interested in these topics, but with some caveats. All of my objections seem to roll up to a common theme: McCrone oversimplifies too much, and goes out on limbs, drawing conclusions that seem unfounded. ( That the answer is speculative is a given. )

Communication and language aren’t the same thing, similarly to how travel and riding in a car aren’t necessarily the same thing. Emotion is described at great length, as a sort of internal communication system ( I’m hungry, or stressed about predators I might expect to find here, etc ), which McCrone implies is a level below full-blown consciousness. Gorillas pound their chests to let others in their troop know they’re angry, and, usually, avoid a fight. Given enough generations of modern humans at first making grunts and pointing, toning their voice to express raw emotion, a proto-language must have evolved. This is probably the answer, and Jared Diamond suggests that domestication unfolded in more or less the same way, in Guns, Germs, and Steel.

My largest detailed complaint comes from McCrone making the same mistake as many before him, including, most famously, George Orwell in 1984. Language and thought are made out to be the same thing - a common error. The “inner voice” we all seem to share is described as being central to consciousness itself, and the book asserts that the different experiences of life that a human and a dog have, come down mostly to people having language, giving them the ability to tug at memories, imagine the future, etc, while lesser animals are trapped in the present, with their own memories, but no way to jog them at will. An obvious objection is that, if we’re unable to jar old memories without words to remind us of them, how do we cause the right word to the center stage of our awareness, to call up the memory? In fact, thought happens independently of a person’s “mother tongue;” if not, learning a language would be impossible!

The Tie-Ins

This isn’t the only attempt to answer a question like this; a century ago, the French linguistic society banned speculation on the origins of speech. Instead, The Ape that Spoke is a synthesis of research and theory in the many fields it touches on. Many of the concepts peripheral to this book are expanded on in others. On that note, the books below may also be of interest.

Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct is a far more technical work on “psycho-linguistics,” describing the insight noun and verb phrases can shed on the stuff of thought. Although the origins of complex grammar are left to the imagination, watching a pidgin form into a creole in the case of Nicaraguan Sign Language, offers some hint into how this may have unfolded.

Already mentioned, Guns, Germs, and Steel is a history of the past 13,000 years, and describes the coevolution of humans and the myriad species we’ve domesticated; this, too, sheds some ( not terribly much ) light on how language might have formed. Diamond goes further, explaining how reconstructed ancestral languages can fill in missing details in the Bantu Expansion, and other large scale human movements.

Taken less seriously, Terrence McKenna’s Food of the Gods offers some insight into consciousness itself, and provides a surprising historical context for the inner voice McCrone gives so much importance to. ( The Romans used to think this voice belonged to the gods, giving out advice to the people who were hearing it. )

Finally, McCrone uses the word ‘evolution’ in both a technical and a metaphorical sense.  This isn’t uncommon;  many scientists describe their work poetically.  It can be frustrating in a (somewhat) technical book, though, and much of what The Ape that Spoke describes as evolution ( especially in the later chapters ) is “cultural evolution.”  The closing chapter of Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene, introducing memetics, plays counterpoint to much of this book.

"Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride."
-JFK

Seattle can be a difficult city to navigate by car:  the roads are named to confuse visitors, and the traffic confounds locals.  For short journeys, from Queen Anne to Pioneer Square, for example, a bus ride gives enough time to read an article in a magazine, or a short story.  ( Blue Winds Dancing is my favorite lately;  the brilliant imagery describes why I feel compelled to leave the house. )  Longer excursions, say across town, make cars a little more viable, although parking is almost never easy, and traffic is beyond unattractive long before it gets to its worst.

Kennedy was right about getting around on two wheels.  Of course, he had Hyannis in mind, and not Seattle's urban core.  It's amazing how varied the landscape is, though:  apart from commuting to and from work ( we have a shower! ) is the fun JFK talked about.  A trail hugs the water from the West Seattle Bridge or further south to Discovery Park and parts further.  It departs from the water, at least momentarily, but is a great ride.  So is the Burke Gillman.