Like I stated a few times further up on thread. I don’t think that it’s across the board that men are horrible speakers and women are excellent verbal communicators. No of course not because NOW there are so many other factors involved. Culture and gender bias and external presures. You might be a wonderful public speaker.

But what I would say is that women, generally speaking are more accustomed and socialized to verbalize their feelings and emotions. They will emote in that manner much more fluently then men. Men generally do not feel comfortable doing that at all.

Do you remember that book that came out a few years ago "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus"? Basically this book was for couples to better understand and deal with the differences in how males and females communicate their emotions.

No, this did not happen over night. These traits developed over thousands of years.

But your argument would seem to say this is inheritable? Not programed from a societal stand point?


My reason for asking is that if in a single generation the roles reversed would the trend reverse?


Also the idea that women got to choose there mates until recent times to me seems false.

The normal role for males would have been that of hunter, defender and of course procreation. The distribution of labor would have had women as hunter/gatherer, child and infant care and procreation also of course. Those would have been the standard divisions of labor in a tribal or clan society. Was there variation from these gender positions? Yes. Did it happen often? No.



Probably other men and that would have been included in hunting. Once again, I asked you to view this in terms of comparative roles. The women's activities would have been FAR more conducive to verbal expression.



I have answered this question about three times now. It is growing quite repetitive. How many babies were on that hunting trip? How much teaching were the men doing exactly while on these long hunting excursions? We know that it would have been far more beneficial for them to be quiet in order to ensure a successful hunt. I also told you that excessive noise was likely to attract a dangerous predator to the vicinity.



I told you that if and when they did verbally communicate it would have been as little as possible. Compare that to the women working together in small bands gathering the food supply. I believe men would have utilized non-verbal communication more often than not as modern-day hunters will use.



I do not think it would have been a good idea to make a great deal of noise when 3-4 men were together on a long hunting trip. Even once the animal was caught (silence would have been most appropriate up until then) now you are carrying a dead wildebeest or whatever it is. Do you really want to be chattering up a storm now while carrying a dead, bloody carcass all the way home? You were a moving target for predators. There was also rival tribesman who could ambush at any moment.



I don’t understand this comment.



The men would have been in danger the entire time they were gone. Speaking and making excessive noise would have only attracted more danger to them. Its common sense.



I never said they never once opened their mouths. I clearly explained the dangers involved in doing so. Then I asked you to think about this in COMPARATIVE terms with the activities of women.



Not attempted, that has clearly been established.



You are clearly reaching at straws. Men miles and miles away from home hunting wild game is hardly on par with women in collective bands (probably a few together at a time) rummaging closer by the cave to collect food stores. I’m sure wild animal attacks occurred. I’m not saying it never did but it would have not been on par with the dangers faced by the men.



Right I agree.



Oh is that what is spurring this on? You have always thought that the males dominated this entire situation. Well hate to break it to you but nope, women were the originators of language.



I never said that they never used emotive sound however they probably use physicality and weaponry in many cases.



Much more so than males.



So you are saying it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that there might actually be a need for such books to be written in order to salvage marriages and relationships experiencing communication problems? Okay if you say so.



Either agree with me because you feel what I am saying is logically sound or refute it. You admit that females were more than likely the originators of language.



This is irrelevant to the topic at hand which is the ORIGINATION of language in homo sapien.



Which is true.



What? You have shown no such thing. Please point this out. In fact, my argument has been dully supported. You have yet to refute any of my points.

You win...



P.S.

Borders also has a section of books concerning man haters...

You guys leave me alone. Im gonna cry now.

I dont hate men. Will you stop.

You guys have seemed pretty adversarial on this topic . . .

No. I wasnt. Creative were you?

sure . . . ok, nvm.

Nah...

All in good fun. No harm done here, and no hard feelings...



In general I agree that women communicate emotion more voluntarily than men. I just attribute the fact to a different cause.

Peace...

I don’t think we are going to agree on it any time soon but I’m done with it. It’s a theory, take it or leave it. I said that from the start. No hard feeligs. Its not like it makes a differance in our lives right now.

I think its a bit over simplified and probably incorrect to say that men hunted and because hunting requires you to not speak there for men did little speaking.

The idea that men would leave there women for months at a time to travel long distances for meat seems wrong as well to me. If there where other tribes that where aggressive in any way, or even the idea that there MAY be other tribes out there unfriendly to you, the last thing you would do is leave your woman and children unprotected, also even if there are other men out there that are TOO friendly I doubt a jealous man is going to travel too far and allow his spouse, or spouses to be taken.

Nomadic tribes would follow the resources, if you gather all the berries, fruit and hunt out a given area being nomadic and non agrarian you would then have to pack up and move on to follow the game and move into an area that has not been gathered dry so to speak.

Have you ever been to the carnival? Perhaps a better question is have you ever been to the carnival when they are packing up and moving? I am sure you have moved from one house to the next, but have you ever done this from the perspective of a large family? Imagine a whole village moving all of there belongings packing up temporary shelters, or even just tools. Even if most everything is rebuilt where you end up there is no chance in hell you are going to give up everything you worked so hard to make your life better there would be plenty of things you would want to take with you, including your family lol.

Men have great strength and moving packing transporting would be key to survival in a nomadic society, all of these things would require communication to stream line and improve efficiency.

The idea that men would leave behind the woman then travel long distance back with meat is also just plain wrong. If you are rarely getting meat, and it takes long periods of time to track, kill, and bring back meat, then there would reach a point when it was not worthwhile to do so, the very idea of an intelligent ape that has survived so well flies in the face of this kind of reasoning. What is efficient would be what was done, if hunting requires too much effort for too little reward, then the hunters would be out of business. Hunter would become gatherers, if food is on a tree and you are hungry . . . .

Also, if men are on a hunt they need food to survive while searching for prey, if we take your initial theory about them traveling long distance to hunt, then they would need that much more resource to survive, where would that come from? It would come from gathering. Men would need to be equally adept at identifying and gather proper fruit, berries, roots, veggies to survive, they would need fresh water ect. If they run out and are no where near there village its not like they can just head home restock and go back out, not to mention you need to travel light when you hunting. No men would have needed these skills, and needed to communicate between each other.

Also I imagine that for society to flourish communication would be required of both genders in equal amounts. I also am highly skeptical of the idea that women where left unprotected for any real period of time. I believe if a hunt would require traveling great distances, then the tribe would move a great deal of that distance to be closer to the needed resources.

This is also just dealing with the ideas of hunting, gathering, moving, packing, and protecting. I imagine there was a lot more to prehistoric mans life. If our history is any indication, men have been in charge for a long time. Deciding tribal affairs, conflict resolution, establishing pecking orders, all of these things would entail using highly nuanced communication.

Krimsa I really think your argument is valid that women would have done the majority of raising children, and the important times of a child's brain language center development is early, however to somehow make a line of reasoning that men are less dependent on communication to me seems unjustified given the complexity of survival, and human societal development.

It is not simply for men, go hunt, come back, eat kill, go hunt, come back, eat kill . . . . . I mean a large part of our need to communicate was probably putting uppity women in there places . . . lol j/k

I also feel its a bit oversimplified to simply insist on minimizing the role of women as the originators of human speech based on their diverse activities and the division of labor in clan life. Anyway, Jeremy, you are making the same arguments creative was so I dont think I need to repeat myself.

I have not even touched on the concept of hunting yet becuase to be quite honest its the least powerful of my arguments, but also quite valid.

When hunting you can talk, in fact need to as creative tried to point out.

Game animals predators are other animals 90% of the time, even in modern times deer do not spook from low volume speech from a distance. There hearing is very good, but a snap of a twig is far more likely to spook a deer, then is a low voiced word, trust me I know, been there done that lol.

When hunting there are different modes of capturing your prey unaware and setup a clean kill.

1) stalking.

2) ambush

Stalking is following tracks, moving quietly if the tracks are fresh. Once you are in the area of fresh activity then you go into silent mode, however stalking is by FAR the harder of the two ways to hunt.

The ambush is the preferred method of hunting even in modern times with long range highly sophisticated weaponry.

You watch and wait, and suspect that game will travel through a given area and you setup a blind, or climb a tree if you have a nice long range weapon. Deer tend to travel down trails especially when they are familiar with an area and use it regularly, the edge of clearings, the paths that lead to water, identifying food sources is a great way to find good ambush spots.

Stalking and ambushing both requires some advanced knowledge of what you are hunting, how your prey lives, how it travels, essentially its modus operandi. I can think of no way to teach a new hunter these things without communication.

We have whole books on different tracks alone. It would probably be pretty important to recognize different tracks to reach a conclusion on the modus operandi of a given animal, especially when your very survival is on the line if you fail to.
I feel you are being pretty dismissive here Krimsa, might that be a failure to communicate?

I dont feel I have minimized anything, I think you have set it on a pedestal this concept of yours and are yourself being a bit guarded with anything that may refute it. In fact we have only spoke on how men would use language we let you speak on how women would use language, so if anything we have not minimized the role of woman, we have not even spoke on it, we have only expounded on the role of men. I think you need to reread, and take more time to think, you are smarter then this reactionary attitude we are seeing. What is true is that your conclusion appears tacitly wrong, in fact your conclusion was to minimize the role of men in the development of language, doesn't this track, maybe a little projection here?

Your arguments for how powerful a tool language would be for the various activities women would have used still stands.

Also its rare you use my first name, that is an indicator that a person is irritated . . . shouldn't this be an interesting topic where we share ideas, and discuss them?

I am curious why you have responded in such a negative way?


Look the bottom line is, you used your imagination to come up with a physical set of things that would increase survivability and due to that increase would give having language a decided advantage, then took that to support the idea that language was chiefly developed by women.

I think your basic ideas are quite valid and acknowledged that from the beginning, me and creative have done no less.

We have used our imaginations to think about how life would have been back then, and come to conclusions with many details on how men would have used language and that language use would have lead to increased survival, no different in the method we used to find good arguments, your lack of acknowledging that could very well indicate a bias.

The thing is that our conclusion is not that men where the chief developers of language, no our conclusion is that it was a collaborative role, so where is that minimization coming in at? I can tell you, its coming in only your arguments.

If you are arguing for emotional accessibility meets communication then that is another topic entirely and IMHO has very little if nothing to do with prehistoric development.

We only have to look at recent societal pressure to understand that phenomena.

It is quite valid. Generally speaking hunting requires stealth and silence. The one exception that I could possibly conceive would have been on the island nation of Madagascar. The reason for this is that the first human inhabitants of this region could actually walk up to animals and kill them. These animals had never come in contact with humans before so they had no instinctual fear of them. As a result, about 80% of the entire animal population was wiped clean by these early hunters.



I don’t think I ever made the claim that a single word was never uttered on a long distance hunting excursion. I told creative (and you now) repeatedly to think of these activities in comparative terms. Is it beneficial to keep your voice at a lower volume while stalking wild game? Yes I think so. Is it useful to motion to your partners using non-verbal signals? Yes that sounds reasonable also. When I went hunting with some friends, they would motion to one another and use their voices as little as possible. That was 2 years ago and we are discussing Stone Age man here.




Both of these hunting methods require stealth.





Ambush hunting also requires silence. An ambush hunter would need to be as quiet as he possibly could. I realize it’s impossible to be totally silent. Humans are noisy by nature.



The word "stalk" in fact is defined as to pursue or approach prey, quarry, etc., stealthily. I believe that young boys who accompanied the older adults on these hunts would have learned immediately to keep their mouths shut and would have learned over the course of the hunting trip by observation. Communication is very often non-verbal. A point that has been sorely overlooked by Creative.

Krimsa said:

I also feel it’s a bit oversimplified to simply insist on minimizing the role of women as the originators of human speech based on their diverse activities and the division of labor in clan life. Anyway, Jeremy, you are making the same arguments creative was so I don’t think I need to repeat myself.



How am I being dismissive exactly? Couldn’t I clearly make that same complaint of the boys on this thread? Since all you have ever heard in your traditional studies of prehistoric man is that males were essentially the leaders in all aspects of life, this theory is baffling to you. I am merely showing that it clearly has merit and makes sense and not only that, some of these significant differences in the manner in which males and females communicate and verbalize their emotions can clearly be seen today.



Oh for pete's sake! This is not MY theory. I've read about it in an anthropological magazine once years ago. It was in fact written by a man so don’t start with that, Jeremy. I was the first to tell you that this is nothing more than a theory. I stand behind nothing. I feel it’s interesting and holds some weight. What’s wrong with that exactly? What you and creative are asserting is simply what has already been played to death in our classroom anthropological settings.

I’m simply bringing something new to the table.



Yes just as male anthropologists have done for the past 50 years or so. We also understand now that Neanderthal was in fact not a brutish, knuckle dragging “ape-man” but actually quite similar to homo sapien in many respects.



Jeremy, don’t patronize me. That is clearly unwarranted.





I use your first name all the time on threads. Would you prefer that I not? Why are you so angry?



Where did I respond to you or creative in a negative way? Creative clearly took shots at me and I held my tongue. I am all for a lively, intelligent debate but not when it degrades into petty insults. I will normally take my leave at that point.





And you have sat there and undermined the importance of the role of women in the development of human speech.

I believe that labor was generally separated along these lines, however there was probably overlap. Men tend to be more involved with tasks requiring peak physical strength, risk of injury and the need to travel long distances. Women tended to be more involved in tasks requiring endurance, low risk of injury, and low mobility. In societies where this division is marked, there tends to be a fairly high degree of sexual dimorphism.

Krimsa, first things first, there are no boys in this thread quite derogatory indeed.

I have seen pages of you being a little hot headed, and not really trying to discuss anything, extremely heavy handed in your assessments, and disparaging in your retorts, so I feel it necessarily to ignore you at this point.

However I find the topic quite interesting, I have no emotional baggage caught up in being right, so I will continue to talk out this topic regardless of your responses, which I will still read, but do my best to ignore anything not related.

I think after quite a bit of thinking on this topic that the whole thing is quite wrong headed thinking.

What is the root of a word? A word is based on an observation. An observation of either a thing, its attributes or a processes that has many things with attributes. The very fact we have so many words for both activities that men engage in and women engage in I think stands on its own and tends to relegate this idea to a simplified role.

How then once that observation is made does it get added to the lexicon of a prehistoric people? The only way would be through sharing of that word and expressing through other means its meaning. If work is done in small groups then the fruits of that labor are brought together for the communal good at some point, then it would make sense that at some point the people, male and female, would gather together to share the fruits of the peoples labor. I cannot imagine a new root being found by a woman, given a name, then shared at a communal gathering and her not relate her story of finding that root and coming to the knowledge that it was good to eat. Score one for that role which is typically held by a women.

When I was on my morning run, I started thinking about how programmable we are as people from the time of birth to death, and how expressive both genders really are, but just in different ways.

Now these things we learn would be lost if not for one of two things, are capability to read and write, or our capability to orally relate.

I spent a few years in collage as an actor, and met MANY men who grew up very differently from the stereotypical manly men who are extremely expressive yet also very manly. (many where not so manly if you know what I mean, but again more complexity)

This leads me to believe that each generation is independent from the last in the stereotypes that CAN be produced given the environment and the social pressures exerted by the parents of the child, and the community as a whole. This further illustrates with my previous example that the tasks, the actual activities are indeed formative of the character of the individual from time of birth to death, but this does not get added as a trait handed down independently to each gender. It is formed through experience, thus not really gender specific, but task specific, and based on expectations.

This general idea made me believe that this line of thinking is wrong headed, If a male child can be raised as a female and have all of the same behaviors with the same degree of stereotypical behavior then this entire argument is coming from the wrong angle and making the wrong conclusions.

Words are created by the observer of that behavior, they are "written" down prehistorically in the memories of its people once that word has been shared and agreed upon as permanent through wide use. Any activity that requires observation and is benefited by expression would make that word useful, I think there for that we (both creative, myself and most assuredly what ever person Krimsa is referring to that actually did come up with those good ideas have made) have made our arguments for how words are formed, but not LANGUAGE. Language is more then the words.

On that morning run I started thinking back to my memories of epic tales of adventure and exploration that where pervasive in greek society, and I remembered that it was many hundreds of years after these tales traveled around before they where wrote down. Mostly due to the fact that even then few people could read and write.

Again my mind wondered back to the idea of these hunters going out exploring the wilds, gathering information about other animals, detailing landscapes to make mental maps, taking home these tales of heroism in the face of adversity.

I then thought well, we cant just go out hunt, say nothing of our adventures then go back out and hunt again.

No indeed not. I see a great tradition of oratory that relies on imagination, but mainly relies on exploration, identifying new things, and relating that experience to the tribe which would be more then a few words, but would require actual language. Now when the camp fires are roaring, the food is set out and each person is sitting around telling tales, what tales would be more interesting?

The stories of staying near camp gathering herbs and roots and ruffage? The tales of bravery, the perhaps lies of monstrous beasts? The terrain of a world that has yet to be explored, the remotes tribes, the potential for finding or even engaging with aggressors?

I think it would have been a great thing indeed to sit around and listen to the MEN talk about there adventures. This however says nothing in my mind about the capability of men or women to speak, or use language, or even the capability to develop words, and use them in context.

Change the roles, I believe you change the stereotypes. Even now. Even then.

I don't think language was taught for a long time but more pass from generation to generation like animals do (watch and learn) and it evolve as humans expanded their inquiring mind, the teaching started more when humans started to use lettering and pictures to express their thoughts.

My humble opinion

And I have not been spoken down to by Creative? Simply because you agree with him now I am the one being "hot headed"? I have held my tongue and been more than tolerant of his musings and condescension. If you do not wish to discuss this with me I can only assume it is because you can offer no rebuttal to this theory.



And I do have some kind of "emotional baggage" here? I have stated nothing but the basic principles behind this theory.



Who or what is wrong? If this theory has absolutely no standing that is merely your personal opinion. You have not refuted its key points.



Yes and making claims that "men probably had to use langauge in order to keep uppity women in their place." is perfectaly acceptable to you? Quite the double standard in action here.

Anyway I am hurt and always liked you Jeremy but this has gone too far. Your libelous attacks are totally unfounded.