The Issue of Evolution - Part Four
by A. Robert Malcom
Evolution, as said, is progression. How, then, did the shift to being aquatic apes induce progression to eventually become Homo sapiens? What were the consequences to the aquatic apes of "showing off"? For one, a primate by nature is, in the juvenile stage especially, a restless and curiosity-oriented creature. But while a primate, as said, is by nature curious, by the time it has attained adulthood, this curiosity has considerably diminished. Aquatic apes, on the other hand, because of the fact of their spending their time in the waters, developing bipedalism and other attributes as consequences, also had another major shifting - the lengthening of the juvenile stage of development.
This lengthening was made possible by the shifting to bipedalism and the enlargement of the pelvic bones to accommodate the larger newborn head during birth - and the fact that the newborn was, by the scale of development corresponding to other primates, prematurely birthed [a comparative scale would require a gestation period of 21 months], thus necessitating an enviroment far less hazardous for the continued survival of the newborn than other primates had to have - far enough less a hazard that the development of the infant/child into a juvenile was not as quickly a premium and could thus take place at a more leisurely pace. The same could be said for the continuation of growth from juvenile into adult, which allowed for greater development of the brain-usage, assuring greater chances of species survival. This extension of juvenile development, for example, made for a major difference in the way "showing off" progressed, for in fostering the growth of the brain, the curiosity was extended, with the inclusion of it into adulthood as a consequence.
Along with these developments, yet another came into place as an extended consequence - language. Speech is a special property of being human. All the higher animals, at least, possess a wide assortment of communication skills - smells, gestures, involuntary cries which constitute automatic responses to various situations such as hunger, danger, and so forth. But for the aquatic ape, there would have come times, because of the uniqueness of being in the waters, that there would be need of volitionally utilizing sounds to indicate whats and wheres in an enviroment wherin so much is out of sight and smell of others. Yet it is one thing to become able to volitionally make sounds [primates, after many and long time efforts, have been able to achieve this in labs], quite another to turn these sounds into abstractions which pertain to specific concepts. Somewhere along the way the first noun had to come into existence.
There have been a number of suggestions as to how this might have happened - but all are predicated on the notion that it was among the adults [and, for the most part, among the males] that this momentous event took place. I think this is an error of perception. There is little argument that once the abstractionization started taking place, it was applied to adult usage - such as hunting game that was aquatic, where there would have been need to communicate the kind of game to others unable to see or smell the animal. But the essence of biology is to perpetuate the species - which means the emphasis is on the young, and it is that which adults are for, to bring into the world more of those young, another generation to continue the specie. The essence, then, of survivability is the successfulness of the young to gain to adulthood so as to themselves give forth another round of young. This means that most likely, it was among the young that speech first came into being.
[to be continued]
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