Re: Human speech 350,000 years ago?

Glenn wrote:

    Dick wrote:

> > Hollers for attention and simple, basic nouns of everyday
> > objects may have been in usage for as long as you suggest.
> > Being capable of speech, however, is not the same as
> > communicating in a useable language complete with verbs,
> > adjectives, adverbs and the like. So what is "language"?

> > The Japanese people (Ainu not considered) obviously derived
> > from the same race as the mainland Chinese people. Yet they
> > speak totally unrelated languages.

> Not if you look at the written language of Japan and China. The zi
> (word) for country in both Mandarin and Japanese are identical. Take a
> look at the passports of those two countries.

It is commonly known the Japanese borrowed Chinese characters for their
written language. Just as the Sumerians taught the Accadians how to write
in cunieform style, but the Accadians simply used similar styled characters
to record their own language texts.

> The Chinese language
> > which is the base of the Vietnamese language, Cambodian,
> > Thai, etc. uses high tones, low tones, rising tones and
> > falling tones to change the meaning of what otherwise would
> > be identical words.

> It is incorrect to say that Chinese is the base of those other
> languages. They all had a common ancestor none of which were Chinese.

Point well taken.

> Where exactly did I speak in my post of Japan and China?

Why would you bring up anything that invalidates your own theory?

> And the Sandawe and Hazda are not based on fossils and are based upon
> genetics and linguistics. No one said that every single language must
> show the very same connections or must be click languages.

I don't think Africa and Tanzania helps your case. Tribes in Africa
separated by only a few hundred miles speak unrelated languages which comes
closer to confirming my view that language suitable for writing flood
narratives, or tales of Gilgamesh was a more recent innovation (< 15,000
years ago) rather than an archaic invention.

> > I think you could conclude that it would be unlikely that the
> > sort of conversations in Genesis attributed to Adam, Eve,
> > Cain and Tubal-Cain in the pre-flood period could have been
> > verbalized prior to the Neolithic.

> Bull roar. There is no reason to have all the facilities of language
> 350, 000 years ago but no one knew what to do with those facilities.

I'm sure vocalization was helpful in shouting a warning when an enemy tribe
approached, and so on. But, "Pardon me Fred, could you please pass the
reindeer meat?" I don't think so.

> You know, your view on this is biased because it violates your ideas
> about Adam.

Actually, my ideas about Adam are confirmed by a wealth of historical data
and evidence. My comments here were simply to point out that the Japanese
and Chinese have been isolated less than 15,000 years ago, and the languages
they developed bear no similarity. That would infer that the advent of
language sufficient for pre-flood Genesis conversations, at least in this
one example, occurred less than 15,000 years ago, not 350,000.
Received on Sat Jul 3 14:40:26 2004