The questions anthropology dare not ask: why and how were language and culture invented ?!?

The questions anthropology dare not ask: why and how were language and culture invented ?!?



I'd say culture and language originate in childcare with mothers naming children to care for them and teach them: trans-generational communication.



Yes difference , unity of differences , identity of differences ; using something to represent something that it is not; like a Name; in the beginning was the Idea , the Word , the Name.




Robert says : "I believe they evolved from grunts and gestures made to indicate desires of primitive primates."


Yes evolved and revolutionized primitive primate communication. There is a qualitative leap from primitive primate communication to human language and culture.  Humans use symbol systems; primitive primate species do not.

Symboling is using something to represent something that it is not as with words . Primitive Primates do not have true words .


Todd says : "Actually, anthropologists asks both of these questions all of the time. Here are some relevant citations. The first citation (Alexander 1974) is particularly influential.

Alexander, Richard D. "The evolution of social behavior." Annual review of ecology and systematics 5.1 (1974): 325-383.

Tomasello, Michael. Origins of human communication. MIT press, 2010.

Tomasello, Michael. The cultural origins of human cognition. Harvard University Press, 2009.

Shennan, Stephen. "Demography and cultural innovation: a model and its implications for the emergence of modern human culture." Cambridge archaeological journal 11.1 (2001): 5.

Mithen, Steven J. "The Prehistory of the Mind a Search for the Origins of Art, Religion and Science." (1996).

Richerson, Peter J., and Robert Boyd. "The Pleistocene and the origins of human culture: built for speed." Perspectives in ethology 13 (2000): 1-45.

Stout, Dietrich. "Stone toolmaking and the evolution of human culture and cognition." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 366.1567 (2011): 1050-1059.


Animal individual organisms have two types of thoughts: Sensation-Perceptions and Memories. All are cell processes in the brain.

Sensations-Perception are immediate sights, sounds, smells, and feels.

Memories are records of past sensation-perceptions.

Humans have uniquely and majorly records of past sensations-perceptions in the form of symbols, words, language and culture.

Humans also have memories they have rearranged or modified : imaginings .

Since 6,000 years ago there is a lot of what you are talking about, Devin Boyd, I must agree with you completely on that.

I'm trying to use science to get to how human society was 200,000 years ago when our 23 chromosome pairs were set : original human nature in our genes. I'm thinking it was super peaceful among everybody in the 25 to 50 person bands, and peaceful between bands . They were organized based on kinship , family relations connecting everybody. The kinship was organized based on ancestor worship , tradition to dead ancestors of family .