Evolutionary Tools Help Unlock Origins Of Ancient Languages

Scientific American ^ | 9-23-2005 | Sarah Graham

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks go to FairOpinion for ably executing the ping duties.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[SunkenCiv]

This @#$%^*! article is related to the topic.

Almost Before We Spoke, We Swore
by Natalie Angier
September 20, 2005

"The Jacobean dramatist Ben Jonson peppered his plays with fackings and "peremptorie Asses," and Shakespeare could hardly quill a stanza without inserting profanities of the day like "zounds" or "sblood" - offensive contractions of "God's wounds" and "God's blood" - or some wondrous sexual pun.

The title "Much Ado About Nothing," Dr. McWhorter said, is a word play on "Much Ado About an O Thing," the O thing being a reference to female genitalia.

Even the quintessential Good Book abounds in naughty passages like the men in II Kings 18:27 who, as the comparatively tame King James translation puts it, "eat their own dung, and drink their own piss."

[SunkenCiv]

similar story at the Slimes:

Linking of Languages May Speak Volumes
By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: September 27, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/27/science/27lang.html

[SunkenCiv]

[SunkenCiv]

From Squeak to Syntax:
Language's Incremental Evolution
by Gary Marcus
April 11, 2006

Rather than emerging from scratch in the course of human evolution, FOXP2 has been evolving for several hundred million years -- in a way that placed it perfectly for evolving a critical role in language acquisition... FOXP2's lineage stems from a family of "forkhead" genes (named for a piece of the protein they produce). Forkhead genes have long been in the trade of managing the actions of other genes. (In the parlance of biology, they are "regulatory" genes.) In the forkhead lineage, many related genes emerged, each with a different function. FOXP2 evolved from a particular set of descendant genes that early in the history of vertebrates began to specialize for controlling muscles. Participation in motor control in turn placed FOXP2 in a prime position for evolving a role in vocal learning, as it did both in songbirds and in humans. FOXP2 is thus not a gene that was invented purely for the purpose of language... When tiny genetic differences are important -- when they correlate with survival -- they spread rapidly through the population, and that is exactly what has happened in the case of human FOXP2.

Forkhead genes have long been in the trade of managing the actions of other genes. And how does anyone know this? Because it has to be true, that's how! ;')

[SunkenCiv]

· GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach · · join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic · subscribe ·
	Antiquity Journal  & archive  Archaeologica  Archaeology  Archaeology Channel  BAR  Bronze Age Forum  Discover  Dogpile  Eurekalert  Google  LiveScience  Mirabilis.ca  Nat Geographic  PhysOrg  Science Daily  Science News  Texas AM  Yahoo  Excerpt, or Link only?	Just updating the GGG info, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.
· History topic · history keyword · archaeology keyword · paleontology keyword · · Science topic · science keyword · Books/Literature topic · pages keyword ·