The Evolution of Language, Creativity and Narrative

Rachel EDWARDS

Any account of the role of creativity and innovation in the evolution of language appears to face a fundamental dichotomy: either humans think in the languages they speak, or in another, unarticulated system. While the former of these hypotheses have advocates from both generative linguistics (e.g. Hinzen and Sheehan, 2013) and the diffuse community labelled ‘cognitive linguistics’ (e.g. Pederson et al., 1998), it nevertheless leads inexorably to the notion of linguistic relativity, associated with Whorf (1956), and in particular the stronger version of linguistic determinism. If there is an orthodox position now, it is that thought exists prior to its external expression, as Penn et al. note ‘the adaptive advantages of being able to reason in a relational fashion have a certain primacy over the communicative function of language’ (2008: 123). Moreover, as Schoenemann maintains ‘[symbols] for things must logically be applied to things that in some sense already exist in our own cognitive world. From an evolutionary perspective, there would be no point to communication (and therefore language would not have evolved) if such cognitive categories did not already exist’ (1999: 319). However, the relationship between a biologically endowed capacity for thought and a culturally determined conventional system for representation is not straight forward and recent interdisciplinary studies suggest a growing coevolution between culture and genes (Laland et al., 2010; Morgan, 2015; Richerson et al., 2010).

The creativity in tool manufacture and use has often been cited as evidence for the appearance of language. Scarred animal bones found in Ethiopia and dated from 2.5 mya show evidence of having been stripped of meat and thus the use of ‘Oldowan industry’ (early lower palaeolithic) stone flakes found nearby, associated with Australopithecus garhi. However these Mode1 category industries are not substantially different from the employment and modification of available materials for the construction of ad hoc tools by present day chimpanzees and it is reasonable to assume that such skills were transmitted through observation and emulation. It is rather the advent of Mode 2, Acheulean (mid-lower palaeolithic) hand-axes at approximately 1.75 mya in Africa, and subsequently in other parts of the world, that indicates a cognitive breakthrough (Beyene et al., 2012). These tools, manufactured by Homo erectus, were mainly of a uniform size and differ in a qualitative sense from preceding hominin and contemporary non-hominin tools, their manufacture involving mental rehearsal, taking a large lump of rock and, from this, imagining a finished tool, and so repeatedly knapping the rock until the desired shape is achieved (Wynn, 2012). The appearance of Mode 2 tools followed a period of genetic changes which resulted in some reorganisation of the brain, including greater lateralisation, and a doubling in brain size, an alteration that carried such deleterious effects that it must have been the result of a significant adaptive pressure. The cultural advancements that accompanied this period also included the first migration out of Africa indicating a capacity for innovation and accommodation to new environments, far quicker than evolutionary change could accomplish. There are also suggestions that H. erectus made use of fire and engaged in coordinated hunting and scavenging (Lynch and Granger, 2008).

A cultural revolution on such a scale is indicative of far greater cooperation than any that exhibited by any extant species of primate, and the presence of cooperation is a necessary condition for the emergence of language. Presuming that language in its modern form and the human modifications for speech did not appear de novo in the last few hundred thousand years, it seems most plausible that H. erectus was endowed with a form of protolanguage, building on the gestural communicative abilities of apes demonstrated in their natural environment, and the basic use of symbols following training in captivity (Gibson, 2012). However, this period in hominin evolution corresponds to a classic stage of punctuated equilibrium (Gould and Eldredge, 1993) and the subsequent million years are characterised by almost complete stasis. As the archaeologist J. Desmond Clark is reported to have observed, as Acheulean axes ‘had hardly changed shape through a million years…and across three continents’, then, if these hominins had language ‘these ancient people were saying the same thing to each other, over and over and over again’ (Stringer, 2011: 125).

The next period of cultural innovation in the hominin lineage begins around 500 kya and includes the construction of more sophisticated tools, formal artefacts, art, structures for living, transportation of valued materials over distances, rituals, migration and adaptation to new environments, accompanied by further brain growth and reorganisation culminating in the speciation event of Homo sapiens by 200 kya. As McBrearty and Brooks conclude, there was ‘a gradual assembling of the package of modern human behaviors in Africa’ between 250-300 kya (2000: 453). This species was endowed with a unique mode of cognition with distinctive characteristics including recursive creativity, conscious reflection and logical rule-based, abstract thinking enabling the construction of internal narrative with multiple participants  (e.g. Evans and Frankish, 2009; Eagleman, 2011). Most significantly, H. sapiens developed a complex system of symbols for the external representation of this mode of thinking: modern language with the properties of recursive embedding, and complex temporal, spatial and existential displacement.

Modern language, we argue, evolved as a result of the need to externalise creative narrative, a universal property of human cultures, not merely the utilitarian exchange of useful information (see also Tomasello, 2008). The ability to engage, as both tellers and listeners, in extended narratives, despite the cost in terms of time (if not energy), is an evolved trait and it is only through narrative that we, as individuals, came to develop advanced autobiographical memory and thus a sense of self (and others) and the ability to create and imagine future scenarios. Narrative helps to harness and stabilise memories for extended periods of time and also enables memories or stories to be shared with ever larger groups of people. Greater group size means that there can be greater social cooperation and efficient division of labour. We propose that language therefore, evolved in one breeding group of hominins for the purpose of narrative, which facilitated social and cultural innovations as well as greater social cohesion and enabled that group to outcompete rival hominin groups.

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