Re: Neanderthal and PIE

Lars Finsen wrote:
> ROGER MILLS wrote:
>> What if, by some freak of evolutionary development, the Neanderthal
>> language was transmitted _genetically_?
>
> Not a bad idea. The whole thing about human language as we know it is
> that it's so inherently redefinable. Let's say that these Neanderthals
> never innovated that redefinability, and communicated with instinctive
> signals like any monkey, except that they had evolved into a degree of
> complexity approaching a real symbolic language. Theoretically the
> grammatical structures of this lingo could be entirely different from
> normal ones - makes my mouth go watery when I think about it. But that
> isn't relevant to your context, of course.
Well, some bird songs have a good amount of complexity, so it's quite
possible that a complex phonology could develop for whatever reason
(e.g., as a sign of a well-developed memory and fine coordination), and
over generations the different sound-sequences could acquire specific
associations of meaning. Bird songs are not entirely genetic (birds
raised without hearing the songs of their parents might sing an
imperfect variation of their song), but they are specific enough to the
species that it's possible to recognize many birds just by listening to
them. So the common ancestor of Neanderthals and humans in this
hypothetical world could have had a similar sort of communication
system. Many kinds of birds are able to learn new songs, even adopting
the songs of other birds -- the mockingbirds in North Carolina imitate
North Carolina birds, while those in Texas imitate Texas birds. So the
ancestors of modern humans could have been more like mockingbirds in
that respect and adopted many of the Neanderthal words. It's still a
stretch, but it's getting closer to the sort of thing that could be
plausible for a story.

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