ASEBL Journal – Volume 11 Issue 1, January 2015
form of reductive ‘smoking gun’ evidence that links evolution directly to literary
works, but this seems no great problem.
How could there be direct evidence? One cannot extract Odysseus’ DNA of course or
plug Achilles into an fMRI, but this kind of guffaw is nothing more than a straw hominid. Overlaps can be brought to bear on another. The disciplines do require different
vocabulary and utilize different methodologies, but as with any set of languages,
translation is always possible, and the more each side practices this translation, the
easier and more accurate it becomes. Carroll notes, “To generate adequate interpretive
commentary from an evolutionary perspective, we must construct continuous explanatory sequences linking the highest level of causal explanation…to particular features
of human nature and to particular structures and effects in specific works of art”
(2011: 69-70). While there is only a correlative relationship yet proven, the confirmed
proof is interesting enough to legitimate some of LD’s claims. As more and more
fMRI studies are done, there will be a surfeit of further understanding on the brain’s
functions.
Rhythm, Lullabies and Poetry
Just as the marvels of Lascaux and Chauvet caves prove that -among the many examples of Neolithic cave art (Clottes, 2008; see also McBrearty and Brooks for a sweeping account of hominin development) – humans, as a species, have been artistic, have
been sensitive to their environment, to the animals around them, to the issues of life
and death, for a very long time. Musical instruments extend back at least 35,000 years
in the form of flutes made of vulture bones and ivory, found in southwestern Germany
(Conrad, et al.,2009). The implication is clear that a musical tradition – in order to
have instruments, especially ones requiring skills sophisticated enough to craft complex instruments – would be much older than the discovered artifact. This is the same
for the elaborate and highly ornate painting styles of the Neolithic artists. It is the
same with language and communication. Christian suggests that in order for early
hominins – the precursors of modern humans – to survive and migrate, they must have
had some form of language that conferred survival advantages (2005: 159-168). While
the implications are clear that language and art are older than probably suspected,
physical evidence is of course scarce.
Once again, though, it is clear that the compounding of evidence, be it neurological or
anthropological, suggests very old and deeply rooted broad trends in human behavior.
This is neither reductive nor left to sheer ‘mind-mystery’. It has long been known that
honey bees communicate (Esch, 1967 & Frisch, 2011), that chimps can be taught rudimentary symbolic language (Zlatev, 2008: 142), that vervet monkeys have particular
sound relations to identify predatory animals (Diamond, 2003: 45), and that corvids
are capable of abstract tool-use and reasoning (Marzluff, 2012: 1-10), and these birds
even have language-learning brain centers similar to those of humans (2012: 41-64). It
would seem odd to somehow figure the language of homo sapiens as anything other
than similar instance of a shared continuum. In human language use, sensitivity to
rhythm leads to manipulation of rhythm and syncopation to create differing types of
meaning, much in the same way that non-humans – like the vervets – control pitch to
indicate different predators. That rhythmic meaning stems not just from linguistic or
46