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Good talk

 

It’s good to talk

 GROOMING, GOSSIP AND THE EVOLUTION
 OF LANGUAGE
 Robin Dunbar
 Faber & Faber, £15.99
 MAREK KOHN
1    James Burke, that irrepressible Guru of Glib,
 pops up this month in a corporate computer
 magazine asserting that language evolved so that
 early humans could tell each other how to make
5 stone tools. The idea that there is a direct line of
 descent from Man’s first utterances to computer
 manuals is only a new take on an elderly theory,
 though. Darwin himself speculated that the expansion
 of the brain in early humans had proceeded in
10 conjunction with the shift to an upright stance,
 which had freed the hands to hold tools. His successors
 generally assumed the hands to be male,
 and the tools to be for hunting.
2    Since the 1970s, however, tool use has fallen from
15 favour as the privileged focus of human evolution.
 In 1978, Mary Leakey discovered a set of footprints
 in volcanic ash at Laetoli, in Tanzania. The
 tracks had been left by Australopithecines, the
 creatures from which the human lineage arose.
20 They had walked upright, yet they had brains of similar
 size to those of chimpanzees, and a similarly
 rudimentary capacity for tool use. Whatever had
 caused apes to stand up on their hind limbs, it was
 not the urge to wield tools.
325    Meanwhile, the 1970s and 1980s saw feminist
 scholars give “Man the Hunter” a drubbing from
 which he is unlikely to recover. Nowadays, females
 are not only recognised as essential to the evolution
 of what makes us human, but are seen as
30 prime movers in that process. For Robin Dunbar,
 they were the driving force behind language, which
 they developed to bind their societies together.
 Gossip, he argues, is not idle; it is the thread with
 which the social fabric is woven.
435    Dunbar has an absorbing story to tell, and he
 tells it attractively, striking a happy balance between
 the theoretical and the popular. It is based
 on his discovery that the size of the neocortex of a
 mammal’s brain - the evolutionarily newer area,
40 and a bigger proportion of the brain in humans
 than any other species - is related to the size of the
 group in which it lives. Dunbar’s findings lend support
 to the newer view of human abilities as driven
 by social pressures.
545    Dunbar reasons that primates had evolved their
 extra “thinking” layers of brain in order to function
 better within groups. They became able to develop
 their sense of who was who, who was related
 to whom, who owed what to whom; their ability to
50 do so depended on their neocortex size, which determined
 the size of their social groups.
6    The most important activity primates undertake
 to maintain relations is grooming, performed
 according to the closeness of relationships between
55 individuals. This takes up to a fifth of their
 time, which appears to be as much as they can
 spare while maintaining the other essential functions
 of life. The size of grooming cliques correlates
 with the size of the neocortex, and of the group as a
60 whole.
7    Dunbar saw this finding as support for the
 so-called Machiavellian theory of intelligence: that
 it evolved to permit individuals to manipulate each
 other. The purpose of extra neocortex was to
65 strengthen coalitions within groups, giving individuals
 a better chance of coping among large numbers
 of their fellows.
 The theory predicts that, going on neo-cortical
 size, humans ought to live in groups of about 150.
70 And so they do, Dunbar argues: within larger societies,
 groups of around 150 are a persistent feature,
 from clans to companies of soldiers.
8    It also predicts that modern humans ought to
 spend about 40 per cent of their time grooming
75 each other. Agreeable as this might be, it is not
 practical. Language therefore arose among the
 earliest modern humans as a sort of transcendent
 grooming, by which social interaction could be enhanced.
 About two-thirds of the time spent in conversations
80 is devoted to what could be classified as
 gossip. Our favourite topic is not the weather, but
 who’s done what with whom.
9    In order for language to realise its potential,
 Dunbar suggests, special mental devices came into
85 being that greatly enhanced humans’ abilities to
 comprehend the mental life of others. Whereas a
 baboon may be able to keep track of who has done
 what with whom, a person can also imagine what
 they were thinking.
1090    The use made of such insights may often fit the
 Machiavellian bill. But the very same applications
 may also be viewed as essentially cooperative if
 they cement coalitions. It would be nice to see a
 vision of language as women’s first great invention,
95 designed to promote social cohesion, forming
 the basis of a new research endeavour. That might
 ask how, if women first made language, they subsequently
 lost it to men.
 ‘New Statesman & Society’, March 22, 1996