Re: Capacity for literacy
- From: "Chapstick" <chapstick@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 03:12:05 GMT
<john0714@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1149905588.235396.54250@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
When do you think, say, within a 10,000 year window, the first Earth
creature was born, who could be taught to read at what is generally
considered a sixth grade level in the USA today had thre been anyone to
teach him? IIRC reading was inventedbout 5,000 BC but that late a date
was only because they had to invent the concept of reading from whole
cloth. And primitive illiterate societies discovered around the world
in the last 600 years have had individuals able to learn to read almost
immediately. So I presume the answer would be no later than 35,000 BC,
but how much sooner within a 10,000 year window? Do you think any
neanderthals were capable or any pre-neanderthals?
I already answered this same question back in april.... will post in those
words at end of htis post...
i agree with the other posters, except would put the date back to the
beginning of "our" species... currently believed to be about 200 kya.
All depends on how young the child begins instruction (and in our case in
this modern age, should be by 3 years old as a minimum, and becoming
literate by age 5 and functional by about 10 years old.)
All of these functions... readin' writin' and 'rithmetic' involve the
ability to remember the visual stimulus and process that in the brain... we
just don't know how that may have evolved... but i still maintain that it is
unlikely that any NEW brain feature evolved in order for us to begin writing
in about 8000 BC. Carl Sagan(?) made the comment that writing is just
another tool that we use to store memory... to improve memory. ...of course
my memory sucks at this time of night.
Reading and writing are social constructs.
look to music and singing to figure out the real humans.
I beleive that hss had these abilities from the very beginning of our
species... along with our ability to cultivate plants and domesticate
animals... just that none of that shows up as evidence in the archeological
record until much later... 10,000 BC or so. and that is also when the
population increased to a critical level and the evidence falls out....like
a substrate in a beaker.
--chap
FYI... here is the old post from April:
"Iphidaimos" <chrisray39@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1144681838.399431.189810@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
john0714@xxxxxxx wrote:
john0...@xxxxxxx wrote:
How long have humans had the ability to read and write had there been
someone to teach them?
The first examples of writing come from ancient Mesopotamia, roughly
modern Iraq, where a system of writing was invented as a means of
keeping records of goods some 5 - 5,500 years ago. This system was
later developed to convey more abstract ideas and writing as we
understand it today was born. As with many human inventions they wern't
taught but developed gradually over time.
I must admit this post is part of an experiment. It seems that in order
to make myself understood I must be the opposite of brief.
Suppose you had a time machine. You went back to 1900 A.D. and acquired
a healthy baby human. You adapted him out to good parents in the
present. He could be taught to read and write. Same again if you went
back to 1800 A.D. , then 1700, then 1600, so on and so on for hundreds
of times. The only variable being each was 100 years previous to the
last.
But eventually you would bring back a healthy human or proto-human that
could not be taught. Approxomately when do you think that would be? I
hope I make myself clear this time:)
I would suppose that all modern human beings going back to their first
appearance 150 - 200,000 years ago could be taught to read and write.
I agree with this date, with this post. That is, the assumption is that we
have not evolved physically very much since this first mutation into hss
about 150 kya. So, a teacher "beamed" down to that child could
theoretically teach the child to read and write. One would also assume that
the teacher has access to the child for a goodly number of years, including
of course the critical early years... perhaps even from birth... in that
reading is certainly linked to the cultural influence of the parent
"reading" to the child from birth onward. (in practicality, most of "us"
only read to our kids from, say, age 9 months onward.... but their is little
science to indicate that reading to a newborn is "good or bad.")
also, unlike broca's area which is clearly speech related, writing does
not seem to have a specialized brain area.... the skill merely co-opted some
of the preexisting motor skill areas. Reading is fuzzier to predict. The
material being read may be more important than the function of reading in
terms of what is receiving blood flow in fMRI's. Various areas of the brain
are activated, perhaps in response to emotional and other stimuli from the
material being considered.
--Chap
Beyond that - who can say? We have no way of really accessing the
capabilities of pre-humans. However, experiments seem to indicate that
chimpanzees can recognise abstract symbols and manipulate them in an
approximation of writing. Since many of our direct pre-human ancestors
had brains significantly larger than chimps and owned many of the
characteristics that make us human it is possible that they could
perform significantly better than chimps.
.
- References:
- Capacity for literacy
- From: john0714@xxxxxxx
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