On the Ape Argument

Thank you for the help this* night Gianni, now some article on your theory of evolution (it's not really Darwin's).

You said that the monkey or ape could have started developing into man, as he discovered tools ... I asked if you meant we developed new functionalities because of how we behave ... you affirmed.

This is not a common theory among scientists who believe evolution, any more than among scientists and others who do not believe evolution. I suspect it may be more common than expected among evolution believers who are not scientists.

This is called Lamarckism. Lamarck imagined that the girafes got their long necks through centuries or millennia or even millions of years of lifting heads and stretching necks to reach leaves. This is not how genetics work. If I chose to go near uranium too often, I may develop genetic damages, and I may transmit them to others, but I will neither for myself nor for my offspring develop a thick skin that defends from radioactivity, like elephant skin or tree bark.

Now, the thing is, you are not unique.

There are way more people who believe Evolution than who believe the exact science which is being said about it right now by scientists, or than even believe anything remotely like any kind of correct science in connexion with this.

Back when I did believe in Evolution, I also believed in magic - as a kind of force that could be harnessed, like that magician in an issue of Superboy or Superman with scenes set on Krypton. I was not unique. Both were pushed in the seventies.

I signed, but I forgot half of our meeting. I forgot about the reasons why Lamarckism couldn't work in this case.

There is a difference between discovering you can use a stick as a tool and even producing a tool with some simple operation, like putting two bamboo sticks together and then use it ... and learning to produce, actively, in advance, tools. To a man, there is a difference in patience. But an ape will not get the patience - or other skills - required to start producing tools.

Especially as, in order to transmit the production of certain tools (Levallois style has been mentioned**, and a larger and less refined version of Levallois has been mentioned with Homo erectus), you can't transmit it just by showing, you have to do some explaining.

And starting to try to explain when you have no experience of explaining anything at all ... well, that's not what apes will do.

Like all beasts, they have a system of very pragmatic, often emotive, certainly not notional, signals, that are not subdivided into morphemes, and into morphemes further subdivided into phonemes, but are simple, and that's why their number is much more limited, too limited to bring on notional language. I will link to the French post that I made about this that links to and resumes lots of English ones on this blog.

New blog on the kid : Une série de posts sur mon blog créationniste-jeune-terre
https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2022/03/une-serie-de-posts-sur-mon-blog.html

But it is also a question about a different anatomy:

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Neanderthals Spoke
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2021/02/neanderthals-spoke.html

These differences come with differences in genes, and functional genes do not develop from no where by a mutation. A mutation may leave a gene functional in a slightly different manner (producing pheomelanine instead of eumelanine, for instance), but it cannot create a function. Hence FOXP2 gene, Broca's and Wernicke's areas, the correct form of the throat overall, the correct form of the hyoid, the correct form of the ear to hear human phonemes, this won't happen by mutations, from apes that lack all of above.

And them trying to invent tools and then getting that for it, that's a fairytale - and not the best one./HGL

* That other night, sorry, I resumed the post after a long pause.

** Daniel Everett, "Homo Erectus and the Invention of Human Language"
31st March 2020 | Harvard Science Book Talks and Research Lectures
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uUilIN-8gk