Commonality of Worldwide Myths

Animals don't have language in the full sense that we do. So any comparison on that ground would be highly questionable.However I have read that songbirds DO have different "dialects" - i.e. there are regional variations in song within a species.

Could help by notice that this response follows the exact same problem that Creationists have with evolution.Check out these two sentences -Different languages evolved as groups got seperated and continued developing their languages in isolation.Different species evolved as groups got seperated and continued developing in isolation.Now let's look at your response:"No one knows how language began"or the typical Creationist response to evolution:"Science can't tell us for certain how life began"But, you aren't reponding to the original statement. I don't care how language (or life) began. It's completely irrelavent to the mechanics of how language(or life) got to where it is today.Is it an interesting question? Sure. Do I have theories? Sure. But it has nothing to do with the mechanics of the original statements.

Depends, I guess, on what you mean by language?Do you mean, they don't have the ability to communicate their internal emotions to a different individual? - they certainly canThey can't communicate information that they have obtained to a different individual? - the certainly canOr is it more like, they can't communicate abstract ideas? - I can't prove they can, but I know you can't prove they can'tSimply because we don't speak dolphin doesn't mean that dolphin's don't have language.

Animals can certainly communicate. But none come close to a full human language. With training a chimpanzee can manage a level equivalent to a young child (a 5 year old IIRC).But it also must be remembered that the comparison offered is not even rudimentary language, but simple basic sounds. At that level there is much more commonality between humans - and even then I seem to recall that most animals are - relative to humans - quite limited in the range of sounds they can make.

With training a chimp can manage a level equivalent to a young child in Human communication.However, with training, humans can't seem to manage much in chimp communication.I'm being argumentative here for a reason. Just because we don't speak chimp doesn't mean that chimps don't speak chimp.I don't think that language is one of those "clear cut" barriers which seperate man from animal. In fact, I don't think there are any "clear cut" barriers at all.

BTW, we are WAY off topic here.My original question is: Are common features in world wide myths a function of common factors in human life? Or do they necessarily indicate that all stories arise from some specific event?Why can't people from around the world, given the same circumstances, show the same degree of creativity?

This message has been edited by Phatboy, 09-11-2005 03:35 PM

The evidence is that chinpanzees ack the capability to handle language - any language - at anything near the level of a human adult. Doubtless, extinct hominid species could do better - but it is rather hard to test the language capabilities of an extinct species.c

The "Tower of Babel" story as it stands is a myth.Moreover, the tendency for languages to diverge is a fact (or to be more accurate was a fact before the advent of modern communications) and thus there is no reason to propose a single event causing languages to miraculously diverge.

wel m8 Iz nt sure dat dis S D case. AFAICS der hs bn no changes n D lang @ ll. I tnk we'll ll uz it n D same wA n D fucha as we curNtly do.

More to the point you can develop a tree of languages that show divergences similar to those of {culture/race/ethnic backgrounds} and that the divergence is on the same timeline as these changes.This leads to the conclusion that either the Tower of Babel never happened or it was when the first language split into two different forms, which would hardly fit the picture of every person speaking a different tongue.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

Are we even sure that language started with Homosapien?

NoWe can assume that those who did the artwork in the Lascaux caves and others in S. France were operating with some form of communicationhttp://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/lascaux/en/But we can't be sure that other bands used the same means.We can also assume that those who worked together to make tools in what is now Tanzania were operating with some form of communicationHomo habilis - WikipediaBut we can't be sure that other bands used the same means.What we can do is look at the common features in all the existant languages and build a {grammatical\phonetic\etc} tree similar to the way genomic trees are constructed, and find that the result bears a remarkable reflection of the same tree based on {cultural\ethnic\racial} developments, even factoring cross-fertilizing between groups that interact (at both levels).I read a fascinating article on it but have lost my reference.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

Why wouldn't language, like writing, like astronomy, like art, like agriculture, like so many things, be an example of repeated, independant discovery?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I think it is clear that we have an innate language drive. I doubt that we have an innate agriculture drive.