Paternity, jokes, and song: A possible evolutionary scenario for the origin of language and mind

Abstract

Abstract The nature of modern language and human sexuality, combined with G. H. Mead's 1934 conjecture that the existence of human minds presupposes prelinguistical progenitors who had become “objects to themselves,” allows construction of a sociobiological model of the evolution of mind and language from Australopithecus to modern humanity. The model has an early and long stage characterized by short metaphorical utterances delivered in the cadences of song, and a recent stage initiated by the emergence of grammar characterized by staccato speech and potentially long utterances. We argue that grammar enabled the disambiguation of long utterances and led to a compensatory increase in the rate at which they were delivered; this in turn led to phonemicization and encephalization. A solution to the problem of duality is also offered. The hyperstability of Lower Paleolithic tool-kits is explained as a by-product of the mimetic transmission of the first stage protolanguage, many features of which are retained in similarly mimetic features of contemporary speech. Modern ceaseless, rational invention, apparent since the Upper Paleolithic, is explained as a by-product of grammar and the resultant emergence of “ideons,” or manipulable ideas. A three-component model of human evolution is offered in which a coevolutionary interaction among genes, memes, and ideons may be capable of explaining many puzzling features of the human condition.