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tools and language
Iain Davidson (idavidso@METZ.UNE.EDU.AU)
Wed, 21 Aug 1996 10:14:12 +1000
Jesse Cook recently wrote:
A recent personal communication from a well known anthropologist says: "A
comment I have made previously about McGrew's *Chimpanzee Material
Culture*...is that, despite all the most ingenious and committed research,
it takes enormous effort to find something about other animals that looks
remotely like the behavior of humans."
If it was ever discovered who this appropriately anonymous anthropologist
was I would be mortified if anyone thought I was saying that chimpanzees do
not make tools. They do, but so do lots and lots of species of animals (I
always wonder about birds' nests, and then find that others think it
tremendously controversial to say that nests are tools). And all but one
do this without language.
Tim Ingold has written about the languageless transmission of skills among
craftsfolk, and it is indeed likely that early hominin stone tool making
must have been learned without explanatory instruction (like Tai chimps and
nut-cracking) but I concur with the view that modern humans learning stone
knapping are likely to be doing some internal chatter to themselves about
what they think is going on. It is one of the problems I have with Nick
Toth's and Kathy Schick's replication approach to stone artefacts that
simply by demonstrating a replicative method they are not replicating the
process of manufacture, still less the process of learning that method.
*************************************
Iain Davidson Tel +61 +67 732 441
Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology Fax +61 +67 732 526
University of New England
Armidale, NSW 2351
AUSTRALIA
Home page http://www.une.edu.au/~Arch/ArchHome.html
see also http://www.une.edu.au/~Arch/HumEv.html for a
description of
W. Noble & I. Davidson 1996 Human evolution, language and mind.
Cambridge University Press.
Already released in Australia
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