Anthropology 153- Lecture : Early Species of the Genus Homo, is the beginning of the Stone Age and the origin of human beings. This age is named after the stone tool artifacts MADE ACCORDING TO SYMBOLIC THINKING; artifacts found in association with the fossils of HOMO HABILIS hominins, with its skull size larger than those of australopithecine hominins from Chapter 13.

Anthropology 153- Lecture 5 For homework , please read pages 323 to 346 of the text, the first section of Chapter 14 Chapter 14, Early Species of the Genus Homo, is the beginning of the Stone Age and the origin of human beings. This age is named after the stone tool artifacts MADE ACCORDING TO SYMBOLIC THINKING; artifacts found in association with the fossils of HOMO HABILIS hominins, with its skull size larger than those of australopithecine hominins from Chapter 13. Symbolic Communication Anthropology's special contribution to scientific understanding of humanity is the concepts of _language and culture_, or the symbolic nature of human behavior, communication and social organization. Language and culture make human evolution unique in comparison with the evolution of other species ( see below). Culture is behavior ruled by a mental system of shared customs, traditions, values, ideas and material products of a particular group of people. Culture and language , or symbolic communication , are unique and exclusive characteristics of human beings, the species Homo sapiens . No other animal species has them, despite the exaggerated claims of some primatologists for chimps and gorillas. Other animals have communication between them BUT NOT SYMBOLIC COMMUNICATION LANGUAGE. The essential characteristics of culture and language in the anthropological sense are: 1) CULTURE human _acts_ following rules and pursuing purposes. Rules and purposes can be expressed IN WORDS, SENTENCES, PARAGRAPHS, etc. (symbolic signs). A specific Culture is learned; it is not genetic, not instinctive; it is learned from other people, especially previous generations (shared). A specific culture or language is learned. The capacity of a brain to learn them _is_ genetically based and unique to humans’ genes. 2) All culture can be represented in language. Language is critical in teaching culture. 3) All language _is_ culture; _but_ not all culture is language; that is , language is a form of culture. 4) ACTS are _bodily_ action, activity, motion, behavior. What is symbolic communication ? What is a symbol or symbolic sign in the technical linguistic and anthropological sense ? It using something to represent something it is not. Almost all words are symbolic signs. Here is my name : CHARLES BROWN. Those marks on the paper are not me; But they are used to represent me. This is using something to represent something that it is not. The technical term is that there is an _arbitrary, conventional, artificial or human made relation between the sign and the thing signified. The opposite of a symbolic sign is an indexical sign . The relationship between an indexical sign and what it signifies is not arbitrary (conventional, traditional) but necessary , natural. The classical example is smoke and fire. Smoke is an indexical sign of fire. A finger print is an indexical sign of a specific finger having touched something. Lightening is an indexical sign of thunder and rain. An iconographic sign is a drawing or picture. A drawing is not what it represents. But it is not arbitrarily related to what it represents. A drawing imitates or simulates what it represents so it is not arbitrarily related to what it represents, unlike a word. A word or sentence does not imitate or simulate what it represents. It is completely _not_ what it represents DISPLACEMENT The fact that a symbolic sign is not what it signifies , give humans the power to talk , communicate with each other about things and the experiences of people that are not immediately present but DISPLACED IN TIME OR SPACE from individual humans ! And cultural/linguistic learning is learning from the experience of other people, including learning from people who are now dead, learning about experiences that are not ours ; that are displaced from the immediate objects of our senses; experiences that are not available to us to see, hear, touch, smell or taste. So, signing or symboling , in the forms of both language and culture, is our species’ unique activity. And, importantly , also, most of human _learning_ is through symbols, culture, not as much by imitating, like other species. Not as much by "monkey-see, monkey do" imitation. Most of an individual human’s learning ( as opposed to inborn or genetically based knowledge) is through culture and language, not from that individual’s experience. This unique human ability is possible because of the DISPLACEMENT communication capacity of language or symbolic signs. Just to further explain the concept of arbitrariness/conventional , it refers to the relationship between the signifier and the signified. So, if the sounds d-o-g are used to refer to things that are dogs, we see that those sounds do not "imitate" or are not naturally related to dogs. The arbitrariness of a sign refers to the fact that in a sign something is used to represent something that it is not. Two _different_ things are arbitrarily identified, treated as the _same_. CULTURE AND LANGUAGE GIVE HUMANS AN UNIQUELY EFFECTIVE ABILITY TO ADAPT IN THE DARWINIAN SENSE BECAUSE OF THE DISPLACEMENT CAPACITY. These 2 capacities of Culture and language, symbolic communication, provided the human species with an enormous adaptive and Darwinian selective advantage compared to other animal species in the hundreds of thousands of years that the human species came to be and inhabit the whole globe, again to a greater extent than other animal species. (See section below “ CULTURALLY INHERITED ADAPTATIONS GIVE THE HUMAN SPECIES HIGH DARWINIAN FITNESS, BECAUSE CULTURAL ADAPTATIONS ARE CAUSED BY THE ADAPTIVE PROBLEM THAT THEY SOLVE”). This is because it made humans extremely interconnected both with living other humans, so that human labor and methods of physical survival are very _social_, not individualistic; and perhaps more importantly, _connected to dead generations of the species through , again, language and culture, as in ancestor veneration : myths, legends, stories, customs, historical accounts of past generations' experiences. Two (or a thousand ) heads are better than one in the struggles for survival and snuggles for reproduction . By sharing the experiences , discoveries, knowledge of many generations past and those of fellow living people, humans had and have a big Darwinian or natural selective advantage especially in the Stone Age in prehistoric times over the course of 100's of thousands of years and, starting going back about 2.5 million of years with the species Homo habilis (See Chapter 14 of the text). Again , this enormous social networking within living generations and between living and dead generations is encapsulated in the concepts of culture and language and symbolic communication , the _differentia specifica_ of the human species. MY HYPOTHESIS : CULTURALLY INHERITED ADAPTATIONS GIVE THE HUMAN SPECIES HIGH DARWINIAN FITNESS, BECAUSE CULTURAL ADAPTATIONS ARE CAUSED BY THE ADAPTIVE PROBLEM THAT THEY SOLVE. Culturally inherited adaptations give human species high Darwinian fitness- How ? Darwin’s natural laws , physiology laws , DNA-gene laws, and ecological laws are the central organizing principles of Modern Biology. The laws of symbolically constituted language and culture as the defining characteristics of humans are the central organizing principles of anthropology. Symbolic communication and behavior give humans a way of adapting ( in the Darwinian sense ) that is more efficient than adapting based on RANDOM GENETIC MUTATIONS , because cultural adaptations are caused by the adaptive problem ( problems in the struggle for existence) that they solve ; the adaptive problem causes humans to invent in symbolic thought , imagination, a solution to the adaptive problem . With language and culture , Necessity is the mother of invention Culture allows non-random Darwinian adaption , unlike genetic adaptations ; the adaptive solution does not arise only coincidentally with the problem it solves , not just by luck, randomly, as with genetic adaptations. For example , we might hypothesize that Homo erectuses ( see Chapter 14) invented clothes or controlled fire in response to moving into colder regions North of Africa . The acts of imaginative invention ( see invention by imaginative thinking discussed below ) were caused by the problem in the struggle for existence of cold body temperature. _The adaptive problem caused the invention of its own solution_. Relying on the adaptation by way of genetic changes ( maybe to re- grow fur) would mean waiting on a genetic mutation NOT CAUSED BY THE COLDER TEMPERATURE, a mutation not caused by the adaptive problem, but arising coincidentally or randomly relative to the problem it solves. In this hypothetical thought experiment , survival in the struggle for existence, material necessity, changes the cultural ideas of the inventors , adds a custom of clothes , costumes to the their customs , their traditions , their culture. NON-RANDOM ADAPTIVE SOLUTIONS Non-randomly arising solutions to adaptive problems are La Marckian-LIKE; not literally like the giraffe stretching its neck but analogous to that scenario. In LaMarck’s famous thought experiment /hypothesis on evolution as to “how the giraffe got its long neck”, the adaptive problem of food only available high up _causes_ the giraffe to solve the problem by stretching its neck (See page 9 of Chapter 1 of the text; this is a fictional account; it has been disproven by modern biology). The solution does not arise _randomly_ relative to the problem it solves. It is inheritance of an acquired characteristic. It is likely that more adaptive problems are solved if the problem tends to cause its own solution than if the solutions just happen luckily to occur or coincidently with the adaptive problem that they solve; as with _random_ genetic mutations solving adaptive problems. Thus , with culture, language (symbolic inheritance, symbolic imagination and symbolic communication ) humans have a more efficient adaptive process than all other life forms. Humans have both cultural or non-random adaptation ;and random genetic mutation adaptation . Other life forms , species , only have random genetic mutation adaptation. The adaptive solutions only coincidently arise with the adaptive problem that they solve. How does symbolic thinking allow humans to invent solutions to adaptive problems in response to the problem arising ? Because symbolic thinking allows imaginative thinking or imagination; a form of symbolic thinking ; imagination empowers invention. IMAGINATION Human imaginative thinking or communication is using something to represent ….NOTHING. For example , the words Mickey Mouse or Romeo and Juliet represent nothing because Mickey Mouse, Romeo and Juliet are fictional characters ; they don’t exist. However, an architect imagines as building as a blue print before it exists. The blueprint represents nothing or represents an invention that will be made in the future. Furthermore, symbolic thinking allows SYMBOLIC INHERITANCE of adaptive inventions by future generations ! Genes and culture/words are inherited - IN DIFFERENT WAYS . For example , almost all the words in the vocabulary of a living generation were invented by dead past generations , inherited. The invention of words is “acquiring” them, acquired cultural characteristics in past generations: and the words are inherited by future generations. Ancestor veneration The difference between humans and all other species is that through symbolic communication , words and culture, dead generations have a certain immortality and are part of the society of living generations . Living generations share the experiences of dead generations through SYMBOLIC INHERITANCE . Thereby knowledge accumulates. All humans stand on the shoulders of giants , as the scientist Issac Newton put it . Accumulated knowledge gives a growing ability to adapt, in Darwin’s sense , to problems in the struggle for existence . Symbolic Inheritance For anthropology, culture-language-Symbolic Inheritance is the unique species characteristic of _homo sapiens_. In a sense, "culture-language-Symbolic Inheritance is another word for "wisdom", inherited knowledge, from the notion that humans are the species _homo wise_. It is humans socially learned practices, customs, language, traditions, beliefs, religion, spirituality that make us "wise" in so many ways, certainly clever and winners _as a species_ ( not just as a few "fit" Individuals) in the struggles and snuggles to survive as a species. Since the advent of civilization, however, sometimes it's not so clear how wise our culture makes us. Greed, slavery, war, male supremacy, Egoism originate with Civilization ! It is better termed Savagery and Barbarism. Therein lies the central drama of the history of the human species. Nonetheless, clearly in the Stone Age, our having culture-language-Symbolic Inheritance was a highly adaptive advantage over species that did not have culture , stone tools , control of fire, knowledge of the nature of animals and vegetables , scientific knowledge even in the Stone Age (!); humans have always been standing on the shoulders of dead generations . This adaptive advantage allowed our species’ population to grow more than other animals raising our species fitness. This is evidenced by _homo sapiens_ expanding in population and therefore migrating to an expanded area of living space across the earth, out of what is now Africa to the other continents. Stone Age foraging-hunting-gathering and kinship ( “family tree”) organized, peaceful and sharing societies were the mode of life for the vast majority of time of human species ' existence, 99% plus