Right, and it isn't speaking, and saying "I am in danger" or "I think
I'm in danger", it is just crying.

We (nearly) all acquire language; is there a categorical difference
between language and communication? And if so, is it the same
categorical difference as between Homo and non-homo ancestor. And if
so, again, what triggered and motivated it?

On 2020 Mar 30 , at 15:48, Felipe Carvalho wrote:

Great points Francesca,

I also adore Liedloff's work.

However, our babies still cry, in the sense that they are capable of
crying, and that very loudly for such a small creature (I don't know
many adults who could yell that loud).
Yes, in conditions of a perfect or optimal infancy, there probably
won't be much noise, even right after birth, but evolution doesn't
select that much for those optimal conditions, natural selection is
more strong around those where conditions aren't optimal, that are
somehow prepared to when conditions aren't optimal.
Other mammalian mothers also eventually drop, abandon, or mistreat
their babies, however, as far as I'm aware of, no other mammalian
baby (or non-mammalian) cries, much less this loudly. This must have
been selected for.
All those others were selected to being very silent, even in
despair. Even the loudest baby cat or baby dog (or baby tiger, lion,
monkey, hippo, horse, cow...) abandoned in the litter won't do
nearly as much noise as an human baby.


-----Mensagem original-----
De: AAT@groups.io <AAT@groups.io> Em nome de fceska_gr
Enviada em: segunda-feira, 30 de março de 2020 09:34
Para: AAT@groups.io
Assunto: Re: [AAT] John Hawks' new videos

We tend to believe that crying babies is the norm. But it's not.
Most babies will only cry if there is something wrong, ie: they're
hungry, need nappy changing, are tired and can't sleep, or in pain.
They will also sometimes cry just if they are put down. Being left
alone is not natural for a baby. In most indigenous societies, the
mother will carry the baby close to her body for the first few
months, even years, of life, sleep with the baby and feed the baby
on demand. If the mother needs her hands free, another person -
grandmother, sibling, aunt - may hold the baby. There are no cots or
cradles, no self-soothing moments. These babies rarely cry, and if
they do, it's a sign that there's something seriously wrong. A baby
that cries when put down to sleep on its own is simply alerting the
nearest adult that it is alone, a state of danger for a newborn in
nature.

I reared my babies in a similar way, co-sleeping, breast-feeding on
demand, and rarely putting them down alone. They almost never cried.
I also gave birth to my daughter in water, and one of the first
things the midwife remarked was how she didn't cry at all when she
was born and seemed very relaxed.

A very good book about all this is The Continuum Concept by Jean
Liedloff
https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FContinuum_concept&;data=02%7C01%7C%7Ce1cedd7b55664ff7290908d7d4a6a5c4%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637211684530007857&amp;sdata=xXeC7nXT6JdSgLOnuDCYgK9WnUuEw2hVoDZpS10XeTg%3D&amp;reserved=0

Keep well, stay safe.

Francesca

-----Original Message-----
From: AAT@groups.io <AAT@groups.io> On Behalf Of Mario Petrinovic
Sent: Monday, March 30, 2020 2:35 AM
To: AAT@groups.io
Subject: Re: [AAT] John Hawks' new videos

        Regarding other conjecture for crying, I am not aware of it.
People connect crying to emotions. This works in my case, because
the fear of being lost at sea is very stressful. Also, you can
imagine that mother would hit their babies in sea if they are
attacked by predators on land. So, all those are stressful situations.

        Besides, it is known that elephants are also capable of
crying.
But, it looks like elephants also came from sea.

        I'll give you my view on the beginning of language.

        First, yes, we were communicating before we had language.
Among different ways to communicate, we used body language, just
like any other animal. But, if your body is submerged up to neck in
water, you have to find the way to replace body language, and in
that situation there are not a lot of ways to do so.

        Also, I noticed that we are using language for social
purposes.
What grooming is for chimpanzees, chit chat is for humans.

        But, this will be interesting for you, I figured out the
very beginning of language.

        I have two sisters, two years younger, they are twins. 50
years ago my mother used to watch central new on TV. It was every
day at 8 PM.
So, we all had to be quiet when central news are emitting. But,
before the news there was a preparation. Those news started always
at 8:00 PM, right to the second, and there was a clock on screen
(with dials, lol), which was accurate, so that the whole nation can
adjust their clocks.
But this clock was going on for something like two minutes before
the news (probably to give adults enough time to adjust clocks, with
dials you can adjust them that way). So, what would we, kids, do, in
silence, while watching that clock, and waiting something to be
started? Well, we used to play a game. Hold your breath for a minute
(but no cheating), if you can. So, at 7:59:00 PM we closed our
noses, and started to hold our breaths. But, it started to be harder
and harder. By 7:59:45 PM we really struggled. While trying to hold
our breaths, you can clearly hear the sound "mmmmmmmmmmmm". I don't
know if this works for adults, because adults have different
apparatus, but you can try this with some kids.
When finally 8:00:00 PM came, we exhaled in relief, "aaaaaaaaaaa".

        Now, imagine a kid is diving for shellfish. His mother
awaits for him at the surface. Kid has to go deep, the deepest he
can. But he has problems to hold his breath. Of course, you cannot
hear his "mmmmmmmm" underwater, but when when he emerges you can
hear "maaaaaaa".
And when mother hears that, she approaches the kid. After some time
kid figures out that mother is likely to approach him hearing that
sound, so, he calls his mother "maaaaa". Sometimes mother has other
things to do, and kids becomes inpatient, "maaa, maaa".

        See, when you have *the right* scenario, things are putting
together all by themselves. I didn't know 80% of what I am writing
when I first compiled my scenario. But the things simply started to
stack all by themselves. It is not my fault, it is not that I have
great imagination, it is just that I manage to compile *the right*
scenario, and, of course, in *the right* scenario everything has
sense.

        Take a look at that, a father is diving for shellfish, but
he is going too deep. But he can do that. How come? Because his wife
is awaiting for him at the half way point up, to give him a "kiss",
to give him additional air.


On 29.3.2020. 22:32, Nick Barnett via Groups.Io wrote:

On 2020 Mar 29 , at 06:29, Mario Petrinovic wrote:

. . . I like your post very much, excellent basis for a discussion
about this subject. I am not sure, exactly, what is your point, but
we can discuss this in detail, no problem. I will, definitely, learn
something in the process.

And I like your reply -- this is getting embarrassing -- my point is
that I question your identifying the emergence of language and the
emergence of homo; I think other species exhibit meaning-exchanging
behaviour, communication, if you like, which we can't translate, and
therefore, we don't accord it the name 'language', but that might be
wrong, and arrogant as well, in the way that we don't see animals as
as intelligent as humans.

And of course it would be tautologous to say that human language
emerged when homo did, but maybe that's somewhere to start.

One thing about human language that people have noted is that some
words are onomatopoeic -- they sound or feel like what they mean --
but most are not; we each have a way of identifying from a sound we
hear spoken by others, to a meaning, and we, by and large, share that
way with other people who use the same language, ie, we usually
understand what people are saying.

Look at this email -- it's just words, no facial expression or body
language, no speaking louder, softer, higher, lower, quicker, slower,
no mannerisms or rhetorical gestures to add to my meaning -- but
readers share (more or less) the meanings of the words. Well, since
we
can only guess what animals are communicating to each other, we can
only guess how much they do that, share meaning of sounds or other
bits of communication.

I suppose you know you have language when you have neologism, ie, a
new word being coined for a new thing or concept (like Covid, say).

. . . Our babies cry, literally, from the day they are born, and
they
don't stop. No other animal has anything similar . . . So, this is
our main advantage in gaining language. Other animals are capable
intellectually for language, other animals also can produce sounds,
but we are far above other animals in that respect.

Interesting; yes; as a species, we've gone from what we are used to
calling communication (crying), to what we are used to calling
language (speaking words and understanding them), and as individuals,
in our early months, we do the same.

       How our babies came into situation that they *want* to
relieve [reveal] their position? . . . So, if our babies were left
in
sea, while their mothers were diving for shellfish, it is
necessarily
for our babies to relieve their position . . .

Plausible.

Are there other conjectures on why human babies cry? Are there other
conjectures on the transition to speaking?

. . . there are some environments where it is very difficult to hear
something . . . One such . . . is a rocky coast, where breaking
waves
produce a lot of noise, all the time. In such a situation, your
hearing ability is compromised, and you have to break through that
noise, if you want to hear something. This is very challenging, and
this is the right environment to develop the capability to analyze
sounds.

I'm not so convinced by this idea; there are plenty of species that
inhabit noisy environments -- watery, windy, other members of their
own species! -- is human hearing known to be better than ape hearing?

Nick