How language began | Dan Everett | TEDxSanFrancisco

So, we're here in the syner of technology

and I just wanted to ask a simple question.

What was the greates technological

discovery ever made the basis for all

subsecuent technology,

and when was it made?

The gratest technological brakethrough

of human beings is language.

invented two million years ago

in the first and gratest information age

by Homo erectus: mom and dad.

Homo erectus was one of the most successful

crearures who ever walked the earth.

The lived on this planet for nearly

two million years.

We have so far lived on this planet

for a certain two hundred thousand,

perhabs as many as five hundred thousand.

So, we haven't lived the quarter

of the time that Homo erectus lived

on this planet.

Homo erectus was a marvelous creature.

Had the gratest brain the wolrd

have ever seen, maybe the universe

had ever seen.

The range of size of the Homo erectus brain

was about 950 CC, 75% of the size

of an adult Homo sapiens male

and roughly in the range of many

Homo sapiens females, and that proofs

to us that size doesn't matter.

The Homo erectus brain and body

were both phenomenal.

That was the first body Homo erectus

stood about as tall as we do.

They were probably aorund 150 pounds

and they were the first creatures

in the history of the universe capable of

persistance hunting or bipedal gate

enables us to run long distances and

cool down more efficiently than quadrupeds.

So, Homo erectus was actually able to

chase down its prey until the prey

either died of heat exhaustion or

Homo erectus beat it to dead with

a stone axe or club.

Homo erectus was a marvelous creature,

and they had many accomplishments.

Homo erectus made a variety of tools

starting with the Olduwan tools and,

they kept these tools and they

transported these tools and

they improved these tools, so they had

an upgrade: Acheulean tools

and they upgraded this to Levallois tools

and each tool was better than the one

before, but they weren't limited

to stone tools.

Homo erectus also made spears wooden

tools we have found hundreds of thousands

of year old spears, and they made

two kinds of sprears. They made spears

for throwing and spreasr for thrusting.

What does spears for thrusting mean?

It means you're a 5 ft 8 to 6 ft 1

Homo erectus male 150 lb

and you run up and stick that spear

into a mastodon.

These were first creatures, these were

brave creatures and they were

extremely intelligent creatures.

So, tools were one of the great

accomplishments that lets us know

what kind brain they were developing.

They also had representations of reality.

This is a 250,000 year old

partially naturally form and

partially artificially form by humans,

by Homo erectus venus. It's called

the Venus of Berakhat Ram,

and there's some evidence said

it was dyed red on certain parts.

A shell found on the island of a found

in Java, with engravings on the shell

by Homo erectus.

Homo erectus wasn't simply a toolmaker.

they were boat makers.

They traveled the oceans

2 million years ago.

How do we know this?

Well, the firts island that we find

evidence, is the island of Flores in

Indonesia, which would have been about

a 24 mile boat trip visible from land

about the size of the English chanel,

exept that Flores was then and now

surrounded the most treacherous

and strongest oceans currents

in the world.

They could't swim to Flores, they got

there by boat, and, this is actually

the island of Flores, and, it doesn't,

you know, I don't think Homo erectus

look quite like that.

But, archaeologists had actually

tried to simulate the voyages of

homo erectus by making graphs,

similar to the kinds of graphs that

Homo erectus would have made.

We know because of the amout of islands

that we find colonies of Homo erectus,

that their getting to these islands

was more than coincidence.

We know by the size of the colonies

the must have had there that multiple

individuals had to arrive around the same

time to start these colonies, and,

we know, therefore, that they

had the plan.

So, one was Flores, another was

Socotra. Then and now, 150 miles

into de ocean, from the nearest land,

where we find Homo erectus colonies.

That requires imagination, that sailing

to something in exploration, and

Homo erectus seems to do this.

So, there's also evidence that

Homo erectus head colonies on Crete.

So, Homo erectus was a seafarer,

Homo erectus was a toolmaker,

Homo erectus was

a very inteligent person, but

they did more than this.

Homo erectus also traveled the

world by land. Homo erectus evolved

1.9 million years ago by 1.7 million

years ago, which is not very long.

They were already in Beijin,

they were in Indonesia, they were

in the middle east, they were in Europe.

Homo erectus traveled, I won't be

sorprised when tne newspaper finaly

anounces that we have evidence of

Homo erectus in California, because

if they could walk to Beijin in a shot

period of time, It was just a little

hop skip and a jump up across the Bering

strait down into the new world,

maybe they did, maybe they didn't.

But their ability showed that they were

capable of a tremendous amount.

So, if we, now, it is not all good news

there were some deficiencies.

Homo erectus had the vocal apparatus

of a gorilla. They couldn't have made

all the sounds that we made.

They would have had a range of sound

more like what a gorilla could make.

Is that a big deal when it comes

to language? Well, no, it isn't.

There are many languages today

that have less than twelve sounds,

here's one: (speaking in Pirahã)

That's on of the languages I've worked on

in the Amazon over the past four years:

Pirahã, and it only has ten sounds if

you are a wonam, and eleven sounds if

you are a man.

And with eleven sounds you can produce

a fully functioning human language,

so, was erecrus capable of eleven sounds?

They didn't even need to be capable of

eleven sounds. You can type anything you

can communicate in English into your

computer. You can type it in Microsoft,

Word, or whatever software, or whatever

program that you use, and when you do that,

How many letters does a computer use?

Well, ultimately a computer only uses

two letters, two sounds: 0 and 1.

And, wtih those sounds you can communicate

anything.

So erectus, theoretically only needed to

make two sounds to communicate.

Our ancestors were the first and only

talking gorillas, with the anatomy that

they had. Their brains not only were

smaller, they were somewhat slower

than ours by the evidence, their

childhood development was faster tha ours,

which is disadvantage cognitively

because, our children have more time to

develop, I think is about 30 years now.

And they are able to put in the place

all sorts of cognitive mechanisms,

when I tell this joke in college, nobody

laughs, but, we know.

So, Homo erectus had andvantage and

disadvantage, but the most important thing

is that: none of the disadvantages

would have kept it from language and the

accomplishments we see.

So, rigth now scientist are exavating a

Homo erectus village about 750,000

years old and guests at off to Yakov,

in modern day Israel, and we find that

this village is organized hierarchically.

There's a section of the village for

processing animal products,

a section of the village for processing

plant products, another section of

the village where we find evidence of

the habitation. So, they not only built

villages, thuy built them in a structured

matter. So, they were capable of

hierarchical thought, they were capable of

planning, they were capable of imagination.

What makes language?

What was lackingo for them to

have language?

A language is just, in essence, two things:

Symbols and grammar.

And how many symbols do you need?

and, how many grammar do you need?

What's a symbol, first of all.

Charles Sanders Peirce, a philosopher

from United States, who lived over

a hundred years ago, defined three kinds

of signs: Indexes, which are physically

connected to what they represent.

So, you go outside, you smell smoke,

you know there's a fire.

Smoke is an index of fire.

You see a footprint, that's an index.

And the next sign, all animals need signs.

Our five senses evolved for us to be

able to read indexes.

without indexes and the ability to read

them, we can't function in the world.

The next kind of signs is an icon,

there's not a physical conetcion, but

there's a physical resemblance.

The figure of Berekhat Ram, that I showed

the venus earlier, that's an icon.

The Mona lisa is an icon.

The cross in Christianity started off

is an icon and has become a symbol.

So, you get this.

So, what is a symbol then?

The symbol is conventionally a sign that

is conventionally, or culturally connected

to its meaning.

So, take the number 4: F-o-u-r. or hold up

my fingers four.

That means what?

It means a cardinality of four,

we have to keep talking in English.

But, four is a cultural determent form,

and a cultural determent meaning.

Not all languages have mathematics.

Piraha, for example doesn't have even

the number one, there are not

mathematical concepts in that

language what so ever.

So, math is a cultural discovery,

if not a cultural construct, and

no everyone has math in that sense.

So, the symbols from math are culturally

determined.

Symbols are culturally determined.

The next thing we need to have a language,

and here's the fascinating fact.

When Peirce said that indexes come fist

and more simple, and then icons,

and then symbols.

He inadvertently, indirectly predicted

excatly what we find in the archaeological

record.

So, indexes all creatures have, those of

5 billion yeras old or however long

life been on earth closer to 4 billion.

But, when did the first icon, the first

image appear in the archaeological record?

Well, we have to go back 3 million years,

which is not that far back to

Australopithecus africanus.

And, we find in a cave of Australopithecus

to Makapansgat cave of Australopithecus

in South Africa, a small little 2 inch

by 3 inch stone