Evolution + Mothers and Babies = Language (Maybe), Part 1

If we can never know for sure how language came about, we are free to invent any hypotheses we want.  But I only get a charge out of plausible hypotheses. 

         For instance, I never went for the notion of language appearing in one fell swoop, fashionable in philosophy about twenty years ago.  It just didn’t make sense in terms of what I know about evolution.  François Jacob had it exactly right when he spoke of evolution as a tinkerer:  Evolution takes what is already present and tinkers with it, turning it into something different that might be useful. 

         This has been true about simple cellular respiration and photosynthesis that became complex, about gills that have become jaws and jaws turned into hearing apparatus, of fins becoming limbs, and on and on.  It must also be true about the development of language.

         The story of human mothers and babies and language starts with the evolution of a big brain for humans.  It’s easy to see that a big brain with greater intelligence must have been useful as soon as it evolved.  It’s hard to say what exactly were the first uses that made such a brain a plus in terms of natural selection.  Was it good for tool making which brought more food, for maintaining group efforts which brought more safety?  We can think of plenty of uses.

         But extra intelligence must have been very, very useful, because a big, intelligent brain did not come without a price.  And the price was that in order to develop a big brain, the human infant had to get born at a very immature stage.  The reason for this is that if we were born as mature as even chimpanzee babies, we humans couldn’t fit through our mothers’ birth canals. 

         In order for us to be born immature enough pass through the human birth canal, the timing of human development had to change.  We had to grow into all the rest of our developmental stages in pretty immature bodies.  So we wound up with almost no body hair even in adulthood.  And even if we had had the body hair, unlike chimp babies, our immature babies weren’t strong enough to hang onto the hair while we walked around gathering food and building shelters.

         In other words, until the invention of slings, human mothers had to carry their babies around in their arms no matter what else they were doing.  This had big implications that may have resulted in language!  Stay tuned!