Adam's Tongue: How Humans Made Language, How Language Made Humans Review

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Adam's Tongue: How Humans Made Language, How Language Made Humans ReviewBickerton does a nice job skewering many of his colleagues, but I am not convinced by his own theory, and certainly it is something of a letdown after the buildup. Still, if you enjoy reading about evolution, I can recommend "Adam's Tongue".
Bickerton proposes that in the evolution of homo sapiens, they developed a new way of living, by "power scavenging". This meant chasing off the other scavengers, which in Bickerton's theory they could only accomplish by weight of numbers, since their weaponry consisted only of stones, some sharpened. Since humans needed to move in small bands to locate food, this meant they needed to "recruit" other bands when a large dead animal was spotted. Language grew up as a recruitment tool, although once developed, it found many other uses. Bickerton believes language must precede more complex thought, rather than the other way around, although no real evidence is given. In particular, he emphasizes displacement, which means referring to things which are not present, and makes a big distinction between humans and other primates in this regard. Kind of strange, since it is known that chimpanzees will on occasion go on raids against neighboring chimps to cite one example of displacement type thinking. Bickerton also believes ACS(animal communication systems) are genetic rather than learned, but no evidence is given, and since even Bickerton acknowledges that there is such a thing as animal culture, evidence is surely needed. In fact, monkeys are not naturally afraid of snakes, it is learned behavior, so why would the particular scream reserved for snakes not also be learned [...]
Bickerton makes a big point of the great divide between ACS and language, with one not naturally evolving into the other - yet that is exactly what he describes toward the end of the book (p.218), to the reader's great surprise.
Adam's Tongue: How Humans Made Language, How Language Made Humans OverviewHow language evolved has been called "the hardest problem in science." In Adam's Tongue, Derek Bickerton—long a leading authority in this field—shows how and why previous attempts to solve that problem have fallen short. Taking cues from topics as diverse as the foraging strategies of ants, the distribution of large prehistoric herbivores, and the construction of ecological niches, Bickerton produces a dazzling new alternative to the conventional wisdom.

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