Did the Australopithecines Sing?

Abstract

Some years ago Hockett and Ascher (CA 5:135-68) developed several hypotheses as to how and when human language evolved from a primate call system. Their blending hypothesis for the opening of the call system has been criticized (Reynolds 1968), but to my mind no acceptable alternative has been offered. Carini's (CA 11:165-67) derivation of language from infant babbling is evolutionarily backward, as Washburn and Lancaster (CA 12:384-85) point out. The genetic propensity of human infants to babble is the result of selection by language. Carini's reply (CA 12:385) only emphasizes the differences in theoretical approach. His comparison of language with writing, by which he attempts to demonstrate that language had no communicative function but was purposeless at first, is implicitly antiDarwinian. Washburn and Lancaster outline the great many biological characteristics of man which are due to selection by language. Perhaps Carini would accept these as due to evolution, but he must postulate that babbling was a nonadaptive, purposeless, random behavior which simply existed for no reason prior to its role in the origin of language. This position is reminiscent of many previous postulations of nonadaptive traits in man, invariably discarded because of their inconsistency with genetic theory. Mutation, the source of all genetic variation, is indeed random; but if, for example, the sickle cell gene was ultimately a mutation from normal hemoglobin, nevertheless its widespread high frequencies are due to selection. A functionalist or Darwinian approach emphasizes deterministic, causative explanations for the existence of widespread, complex differ-