Oral Era - Beginnings
- Hominization and Language- they create each other
- Language changes strategy, allows cooperation
- Ramapithecus - 3 million years ago - shows changes in
brain based on 'cranial casts.' Travels.
- Language changes the way we 'think'
- Language makes society more complex- leading to more
language! A feed back problem.
- Clothing, new tools (fire, axes, hunting and gathering
strategies, leadership problems, personal relationship problems, environmental
changes)
- Brains grow larger- until they physically can't be birthed!
- Class Discussion included:
- Noam Chomsky: are some language skills inate?
- Benjamin Whorf: does language change the way we 'think.'
Homo Sapiens Sapiens - beings who were physically
like us (100,000 BCE). More near to our time:
- Paleo-lithic - "old stone age"- good
times of hunting and gathering. Abundant 'art' (in caves, for example.
30,000-12,000 BCE)
- Meso-lithic - "middle stone age" - decline,
hard times with exhausted resources and changed environment (12-8,000 BCE).
Art and innovation go dormant.
- Neo-lithic - "new stone age" - new strategy
to get out of hard times times- agriculture and domestic animals/ herding.
(8000-4000 BCE). Explosion of new ideas and trade.
Return
to RTF/Com309 Overhead Page