Re: Capacity for literacy


Jordan 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.

That might depend on whether the ability to read is related simply to
an increase in brain size, or to a change in cognitive capacity related
to a change in brain structure.

It might be that an actual adaptation evolved in early Homo sapiens
*senso stricto* fortuitously exapted us for reading. For example: a
Neanderthal brain, as large or larger than a modern human's, might not
bestow the capability to read because the increased size is in the rear
lobes rather than the frontal cortex (and before anyone accuses me of
portraying Neanderthals as dumb brutes, I don't know which parts of the
brain are used in reading etc, so this is purely speculative.)

Tracking ability, which hunter-gatherers display to an extraordinary
degree, is one which springs to mind if it involves the same part of
the brain that we post-industrial humans use for reading and writing. A
brain reorganisation improving this ability might have given them an
edge over human competitors who were less efficient at tracking and
finding game, especially in times or places when game was scarce.


First of all, it's obvious that the point of "at a sixth grade level"
is meant to exclude other apes. If it was at some simpler level, say
"at a third grade level," I suspect that the capability would also
exist in at least modern chimps, bonobos and gorillas (even though
afaik none have yet been actually taught to read).

Having said that, it's impossible to judge because we don't really know
how intelligent our ancestors were. The naive assumption is that the
first members of our genus (such as the habilenes) were smarter than
any existing non-human apes, because we tend to imagine the other apes
as having evolutionarily stood still in terms of the evolution of
intelligence. But that very much Does Not Follow; even if brain sizes
haven't increased all that much among our cousins, brain _structures_
may still have become considerably more elegant and efficient.

It's quite possible that modern non-human apes (such as Koko and Washoe
and Kanzi) are considerably smarter than were the gorilla and chimp and
bonobo ancestors of (say) 1.5 to 3 million years ago, when genus homo
was separating from the australopithecenes and paranthropines. It's
even possible that modern non-human apes are smarter than the _humans_
of 2 or so million years ago (brain sizes aren't much different!). But
I don't think that they can think at the level of the average human of
10-12 years, so ...

On what basis would you speculate that great apes have become smarter
over time? We don't know, because there are few if any actual pre-chimp
or pre-gorilla fossils from this time scale, but there is no
generalised trend within any evolutionary family toward increased brain
size or cognitive ability - humans being the remarkable exception.

Chimps and gorillas aren't larger-brained than orangs, who are
descended from an earlier branch in the great ape lineage. Nor were
gracile austraopithecines - I don't believe that the encephalisation of
later A africanus was significantly different from earlier A afarensis,
nor a'piths generally from chimps, their nearest ape relatives.

The question to be asked, if you hypothesise that great apes' brain
sizes have increased over time, is - why would they?


I could guess, though, that the latest period would be the start of the
efflourescence of human culture about 50 thousand years BP, and the
earliest period the appearance of the heidelbergines around 500
thousand years BP -- for the 6th grade level that is. So, somewhere in
between 50-500 thousand years ago?

Your guess is as good as mine...

Ross Macfarlane

.

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