Re: Capacity for literacy


John Roth wrote:
Lee Olsen wrote:



I don't think the problem (and the test) is all that complicated, nor
would it require a lot of speculation. Using chimps and children as
models (as to what they can accomplish at what age) I would speculate
the ability to read was present 400,000 years ago...plus or minus
100,000 of course.

As the OP said, reading as we think of it shows up on
the historical record somewhere in the vicinity of 7,000
years ago. Visual symbolism shows up earlier; some of
the cave paintings in western Europe come to mind.

If visual symbolism means something, then evidence of it shows up a lot
earlier elsewhere than in western Europe. A bordered X scratched on a
squared ochre block comes to mind. An artifact shaped far better (more
perfectly symmetrical) than any possible utilitarian function comes to
mind. Manganese sharpened to a point certainly was used to mark
something. Shell bead evidence is still poorly dated, but still is very
convincing for the Middle Paleolithic.



However, there's a generally accepted divide with "modern"
h.s. being the only species capable of generalized symbolic
behavior.

Wrong.


That's usually dated at about 35kya in western
Europe,

Was dated--- past tense, even Klein doesn't believe that anymore.

although it's clearly earlier as my remark about
Australian aborigines was intended to show.

Yes, here we agree. A lot earlier by my way of thinking.


There are also supposed to be substantially earlier African
sites, but I'm not in posession of that data. Sorry.

That's OK, it doesn't take long to Google them up.


The origin of h.s. is murky.


The question that was asked: "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?"
Sixth-grade level is a 12-year old mind. He didn't ask about adult
reading.


There's a good deal of genetic
evidence that there was a bottleneck of some kind with an
effective population of around a thousand individuals.

I can't imagine how bottlenecks relate to reading capacity at the
sixth-grade level.



And to be blunt about it, I simply refuse to take dates
that are derived from behavior as anything other than
wild speculation.

John Roth

By that line of thinking, in the strictest sense, "generalized
symbolic behavior" is nothing more than behavior, thus wild
speculation. One does not need to know language or writing in order to
paint on a cave wall, as Nicholas Humphrey (1998) so forcefully
demonstrated.

Lee Olsen

.

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