ASEBL Journal Volume 11, Number 1 | Page 46

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