Which one did mankind come up with first: words or pictures?

(probably right)

erm... and shit came before both pictures and words, obv.

Depends how you define words. Grunts calling attention to something (eg "ungh" = "run! sabre toothed tiger!") could be defined as words when they differentiate enough from each other (eg "arngh" = "I'm thirsty", not to be confused with "tiger!"). Language involves abstract thought as do pictures, so I suspect they came about simultaneously.

(x-post)

Yeah, I don't mean grunts.

that was also when they found out the effects of smoking banana skins

xxxxxpost

The difference between animal-like communication and both words and pcitures is that grunts can be used only to address the current situation, whereas both words and pictures can project to the past and the future. Maybe cavemen addressed the immediate situation with grunts, but used pictures to talk about history and the future.

xpost

If you don't count pictures as written language, spoken language was definitely first. All early writing systems use abstracted pictures as linguistic signs.

FIrst alfabet was found in Egypt apparently. I assume people talked/drew poop long before that. ;)

xpost

What makes you think he had one?

like, say when you're working in a sandwich factory you don't constantly think about the words "bread, cabbage, tomato, ham, bread" as you're making the sandwich (you can, it helps to concentrate sometimes) and you spend most of the time staring at the cute girl at the other assembly line anyway and the thought process is just you picturing yourself nailing her hard and she moans in joy but you don't necessarily think about that in terms of words (like "insert penis take out penis girl eyes shut touch right boob girl open mouth girl moan insert penis...")

i.e. language is a tool that helps to focus abstract thought however abstract thought does not require a lanauge to happen.

Yeah, it does make sense, I don't know if it'll ever be possible to resolve the argument. Some people think language symbolises thought, some people think thought is only possible through language.

this is interesting, I got the link from badgerminor's blog.

You're missing a step there though. First there's the actual cat and the actual sensation of pain before they can exist as either word or idea. There didn't necessarily have to be a concept of "pain" before somebody said "ouch" or a concept of "a cat" before someone pointed at the actual animal and said "cat."

But whilst you could assume that intelligence and language co-evolve implicitly, the idea that language expresses underlying concepts is hard to dodge as a binary. It either does or doesn't.

If this scenario were theoretically possible then you would have essentially written language (the pictogram), followed by abstract thought, followed by the spoken word. But I don't think this scenario is actually borne out by science so it's nothing but an amusing thought experiment.

xxpost

I think it works both ways: Cats clearly exist and the word "cat" is a label for the abstract cat.

But there exist cultures which don't distinguish between the colours we call "green" and "blue" - they see them as different shades of the same colour. The fact that we have different words means that we view them as separate features of reality.

It is when you try to tell somebody else about it.

Yes, that was a major flaw in my post that I realized as I was hitting send. To revise then, couldn't it be theoretically possible to go abstract thought -> written language (via pictures) -> spoken language?

What if there is only one type of cat (say, some sort of mountain lion) in the vicinity of this early man? Would he not see them all as being the same thing and be able to label them without coming up with the abstract concept of "cat" as a category?

It is when you try to tell somebody else about it.

Not really though. A dog barking to tell it's owner that someone is a the door does not necessarily equal language.

I'm obv not arguing an "I am right" thing anywhere here, just a "this is what I believe is probab'ly right or most useful".

Koan back atcha: can people who don't know what a garden is see weeds?

Yeah, I don't think mr. early man is going to notice the small differences from cat to cat within the same species.

The abstract concept of "cat" involves categorising experience, something which must have evolved before we were humans. Other animals know what animals are the same species - when my dog saw dogs on tv he used to try to go behind the tv setg to try and sniff their arses when he was young. (i.e. he could categorise by visuals). Then when he got older he didn't, cos he learnt the difference between real and tv.

Yeah, I don't think mr. early man is going to notice the small differences from cat to cat within the same species.

I don't know - learning the difference between dangerous and non-dangerous is a key evolutionary factor.

xposts a go go

say, if somebody asks you "what colour is your car", for the first few times at least, you'd first picture the car in your mind, remember what it looked like, and say "oh, it's white". you categorised it as fitting the word "white" so that you can answer the question

whereas, say, if someone put two cars behind a curtain, one is yours, and one is the same car but different colour. and then when they raise the curtain you'd instantly recognise your car. you know it because you recognise it, there's a thought process that doesn't involve words. when someone asks you how you spotted your car, you'd perhaps say "well, one is blue and one is white, mine is white so this is my car" you analysed your thought later and discussed it, with language.

you can obviously then argue that even if you don't talk to anybody, thinking itself is really communication between you and your brain (or at least, one part of your brain to another part of your brain) and the chemicals etc involved is a kind of language in itself (analogy see perhaps machine code in computers?) but for the sake of this discussion i really thought of language as the use of common symbols/sounds to convey ideas, and under this kind of definition then it is obviously quite clear that (at least, at the very beginning) ideas come before the words to express them.

So language doesnt have to be spoken or written - it can be sign, it could be music for all the brain would care. What seems important is the mind's fundamental capability to acquire a language at a young age. I think Wittgenstein goes into this stuff too, though I havent read him.

Sacks posits that in some ways sign is a more elegant lingustic structure even than speech/writing because it is 3 dimensional - one gestures in full space, so elaboration can be greater than with words, which we tend to have to augment with inflections and such for subtleties.

I love this shit.

I personally think they kind of go hand in hand and there is no first among the two. i mean, whichever one happened chronologically first just did so by coincidence and there isn't any real importance to that fact.

Also, I really love to try to picture the very first days of development of a spoken language. I always think of a couple cavemen who've just killed a sabre-tooth tiger and are standing around it. Caveman #1, having dealt the mortal blow, decides to claim it and give it some kind of label, so he points to it and grunts "gurba" meaning "mine" or more precisely "belonging to caveman #1". Caveman #2 thinks he's using "gurba" to express "sabre-tooth tiger" so he nods and tries to remember this new word well. Caveman #3 think's he's using it to express "dead" and he likewise nods to remember the word.
later that week they take down a wooly mammoth, only caveman #3 is the one who gave it the last spear-thrust. while it's lying there on the ground dead, Caveman #3 points to it and grunts "gurba". Caveman #2, a little bit confused and pissed off at Caveman #3's supposed ignorance, starts to hoot and holler and gets in #3's face. Meanwhile, #1 smiles and thinks #3 has just foolishly handed over rights to the best flanks of meat and begins to cut it up, as is the custom of the one who is credited with the felling of the beast. #3 sees #1 moving in on his game and attacks, #2 sees dumbass #3 attacking #1 and they all eventually kill each other.