Something You Should Know - What Makes You Uniquely Human & How Words Affect Your Thoughts

Starting point is 00:00:00 The search for truth never ends. Introducing June's Journey, a hidden object mobile game with a captivating story. Connect with friends, explore the roaring 20s, and enjoy thrilling activities and challenges while supporting environmental causes. After seven years, the adventure continues with our immersive travels feature. Explore distant cultures and engage in exciting experiences. There's always something new to discover. Are you ready?

Starting point is 00:00:27 Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, why major storms get named and what happens to those names afterwards. Then the interesting questions about what makes us uniquely human. Questions like, is the primary function of sex in humans to reproduce? Because statistically, the answer appears to be very much no. Is that unique to humans? And the answer turns out to be, well, no, because loads of animals have non-reproductive sex. Also, what should and should not go down your garbage disposal? And the power of language and how the language you speak affects you. For instance...

Starting point is 00:01:09 So some languages only have the words for black, white, and red. They don't actually have words for other colors. Now, if you don't have a word for blue or green or yellow, does that impact the way you perceive blue, green, and yellow? And if you don't have a word for embarrassment or shame, does that mean you don't really feel embarrassment or shame? All this today on Something You Should Know. This is an ad for better help. Welcome to the world. Please read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings

Starting point is 00:01:40 and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit betterhelp.com to learn more. That's betterhelp.com. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome. This is Something You Should Know. We start today by talking about storms. Unfortunately, over the last several years, we've heard a lot about,

Starting point is 00:02:26 and many people have experienced, some very dangerous storms. And those big storms all get a name. And there's a reason for that. It can get complicated tracking storms and trying to alert the public using the location of the storm, latitude and longitude. By naming a potentially dangerous storm, it makes it a lot easier for everyone to follow along. Storm naming dates back centuries. In the 19th century, storms were named after the Saints Day on which they hit.

Starting point is 00:03:00 After that, Australians started using female names. The National Hurricane Center in this country jumped on that bandwagon in 1953, and then they introduced male names in 1979. But winter storms didn't start getting names until 2012, and we have the Weather Channel to thank for that. Alphabetical is still the go-to order for naming storms, and if a storm develops into a monster, like Milton, Ian, Andrew, Katrina, Sandy, then those names are retired forever. And that is something you should know.

Starting point is 00:03:42 Here is something I bet you've thought about from time to time, and that is, are we humans really exceptional from other creatures on Earth, or are we just different? There are many things that people assume are uniquely human that turn out not to be. But there are some interesting things about humans that are unique to us that you may not have even considered. This conversation that you're about to hear is going to make you think differently about being a member of the human race. My guest is Adam Rutherford. He is a science writer and broadcaster and author of the book,

Starting point is 00:04:19 The Book of Humans, A Brief History of Culture, Sex, War, and the Evolution of Us. Hey Adam, welcome to Something You Should Know. Thank you, Mike. It's very nice to be on your show. So I think everyone has their own thoughts about how humans are exceptional, how we're similar or different to other animals on Earth. So if you would, just pick an example of something most of us believe about being human and drill down into what you discovered that would be really surprising. So for example, right, sex is a

Starting point is 00:04:53 really interesting example for humans, because if you ask any high school student what is the primary function of sex, they will say it is to reproduce, right? Sex is for reproduction. And that is true for any sexual organism. Until you look at the stats for humans, where if you begin to account for the number of times that humans have sexual intercourse, male-female sexual intercourse, that actually results in a pregnancy, the answer is that it's statistically insignificant, right? It's, you know, it's 0.01% or something just completely off the statistical significant charts. So you say, well, what is the primary function of sex? It's to reproduce. But actually,

Starting point is 00:05:39 the amount of reproduction that happens as a result of having sex is almost immeasurable. And then if you add on top of that all of the sexual acts that can't result in a pregnancy, then the number just vanishes. And so you have to re-ask the question, well, is the primary function of sex in humans to reproduce? Because statistically the answer appears to be very much no. Is that unique to reproduce? Because statistically, the answer appears to be very much no. Is that unique to humans? Is this behaviour, which is a sort of extraction from biological evolution, is this something that only humans do? And almost every time asking these types of questions, the answer turns out to be, well, no, because loads of animals have non-reproductive sex, and one of the functions of sex is reproduction. But there are

Starting point is 00:06:26 tons of other purposes of sex, which means that every sexual behavior that we see and enjoy in humans, we also see in other animal species. Every single one that you, the listener, are currently thinking of, but I won't go into detail. I'll leave that up to your imagination. Well, that's such a great example because, I mean, you're right. Ask anybody. The purpose of sex, it's to make babies, and yet there's an awful lot of sex that has nothing to do with making a baby. But what you said about other animals, that does surprise me

Starting point is 00:06:58 because I've always thought that it was only humans that had non-reproductive sex, but you're saying other animals do too. So that's fascinating. Yeah, yeah. And so whilst looking at these sort of uniqueness theories, and lots of people over the years have had successful careers researching and writing popular books about these uniqueness theories, you know, here is the thing that makes humans different from other species. And pretty much every single one turns out to be not nearly as unique or not nearly as uniquely human as previously thought. So, you know, another obvious one is communications. Like, what are we doing now?

Starting point is 00:07:38 We are speaking to each other in a lexicon that is previously agreed over thousands of generations to the extent that this complex vocal anatomy is producing sound waves into this microphone that is being transmitted across the Atlantic to you and it's feeding into your eardrums and you can understand what it is that I'm saying. That's amazing. That's an amazing thing. But animal communication is something that happens in all animal species, perhaps not to the same degree of sophistication. But Darwin had this phrase in The Descent of Man where he talks about difference in scale, but not in type,

Starting point is 00:08:18 right? That, I think, is much more where humans are on that sort of spectrum. We definitely have the most sophisticated communications of any animal that we are currently aware of. But animals are communicating all the time in super sophisticated ways. And it's only really in the last few decades that we've begun to listen. So, again, not nearly as unique as we used to think we were. One thing that I've heard is uniquely human that I want you to comment on is our human ability to be cruel for the sake of being cruel. That human beings hurt and kill just for the heck of it kind of thing. And that other species don't do that. True?

Starting point is 00:09:00 I think there is some truth in that. So we rely, as a sort of ultra-empirical view of nature, which I think we're obliged to take as scientists, even though it's kind of dull, is that the universe is indifferent. Evolution is absolutely indifferent to suffering apart from humans. And so maybe it is the case that we have the capacity to be cruel or to be sympathetic and empathetic in a way that other animals can't, because the rest of nature isn't cruel. We cannot say that any aspect of behavior by non-human animals is cruel. What we can say is that they are indifferent to suffering. Well, again, what you just pointed out is so interesting because, well, here's the example. You see these videos on TV from time to time from some closed circuit camera in New York or wherever, where some thug goes up to somebody at random and just hits them, smacks them in the face. You don't see that with other animals.

Starting point is 00:10:05 I mean, it doesn't seem like you do. I've never seen it where people just go hit people, cause suffering for no reason other than to seemingly just to do it. But as you just pointed out, on the other hand, usually, you know, people rush to that person's rescue. We are empathetic and sympathetic, and you don't see that in other animals too often either, that they're somewhat indifferent. They just go on about their day. So whereas humans can be cruel, we can also be kind.

Starting point is 00:10:41 Yes, I think that's right. And the kindness comes from our sociality. And maybe the cruelness does as well, our competitiveness and our warlike tendencies that we form tribes. War and violence is another way of sort of assessing human uniqueness theories, because we have gone to war and we have been at war pretty much continuously for the last at least 10,000 years or so. Do we see other examples of territorial formalized battles in other organisms? And the answer is mostly not. We do see hints of it in chimpanzees. The behavior, as far as we can tell, looks quite similar to the sort of systematic violence and territorial challenge, territorial takeovers we've honed our technology to weapons of terrifying, destructive capabilities.

Starting point is 00:11:49 But lots of organisms use tools in defense and in attack. And that's not just primates. That goes all the way down to creatures that we've been, you know, evolutionarily separated from for literally millions, tens, hundreds of millions of years. Things like crabs, pom-pom crabs, who use torn up anemones held in their claws to fight with other crabs for territory. I mean, that particular example I'm very fond of because I'm sure it's terrifying if you're another crab, but they look like cheerleaders to us

Starting point is 00:12:23 because they, and we refer to them as pom-pom crabs rather than boxer crabs, because they sort of move around with these little fluffy balls. But nevertheless, you know, it's an example of using something available in their environment as a weapon. And that doesn't imply that there is shared ancestry between those crabs doing that and us. But it does imply quite strongly that using things available around in your environment as weapons of war or as weapons of attack is something that is very, very cross-species and part of the lexicon of human evolution. When you look at other species, like watch bees or watch a herd of whatever, there seems to be an order. There seems to be, you know, rules that they're following. Whereas humans have rules and people follow them, but there are a lot of people who don't follow them. They fall outside the rules and they break the rules. And I wonder, is that uniquely human?

Starting point is 00:13:26 Because other species seem to have more of a everybody does their job and everybody seems to understand what the rules are. I don't know about that. I mean, yeah, I guess. We have formulated rules which are determined as socially constructed ideas. They are things that we agree by consensus are, this is how you should behave in society. And, you know, one of the most obvious ones is thou shalt not kill, which is not a specifically Christian or Old Testament Ten Commandment. Almost every culture has a version of thou shalt not kill and how are we doing on that as a species well you know not great i feel like that if jesus were to come back today he'd probably say i do i

Starting point is 00:14:12 need to clarify what i meant by thou shalt not kill because you guys don't appear to be doing very well at it but those rules are are determined by our cultural and social interactions. We agree as societies that these are the ways that we should behave, and those change over time. They change, some of them change very slowly, some of them change incredibly quickly. The acceptance of a seemingly universal human characteristics, such as homosexuality, male-male and female-female,

Starting point is 00:14:44 appears to have existed in every society for as long as we've had humans. But its acceptance in society has changed significantly over time. But it's happened very quickly in the last, you know, 10 or 15 years, at least in this country, I mean, I'm in London, in a way that, you know, my children aged 16 and 18 find it absolutely baffling. My point being that the rules that we impose are done by consensus and they're subject to our cultural norms and the way our culture changes, whereas animals, they don't tend to have rules like that, as far as we're aware.

Starting point is 00:15:25 I mean, that may not be the case in some social animals. I'm not sure. But yeah, that is a cultural difference, which I think is not uniquely human, but looks like a very human trait. We're talking about what it is that makes us uniquely human. And my guest is Adam Rutherford. He's author of The Book of Humans, A Brief History of Culture, Sex, War, and the Evolution of Us. Take back your free time with PC Express Online grocery delivery and pickup. Score in-store promos, PC Optimum points, and more free time.

Starting point is 00:16:00 And still get groceries. Shop now at pcexpress.ca. This episode is brought to you by Melissa & Doug. Wooden puzzles and building toys for problem solving and arts and crafts for creative thinking, Melissa & Doug makes toys that help kids take on the world because the way they play today shapes who they become tomorrow. Melissa & Doug. The play is pretend. The skills are real. Look for Melissa & Doug wherever you shop for toys. So Adam, I think whenever you talk about what makes us uniquely human, you have to consider that it's our brain, that we have a very advanced brain that's able to think. The fact that we can actually sit and talk about what makes us human is what makes us human, because other species can't do that.

Starting point is 00:16:53 They can't examine things and discuss things like we do, and that is, in fact, what makes us uniquely human. Well, I think there's a foundation of truth in that, but I think we have to be more specific than just referring to it as our brain, because I think there is a uniqueness theory that is emerging from this type of work, and this is work I write about and talk about,

Starting point is 00:17:19 but there's lots of researchers thinking about this. And it's not specifically our brains. We don't have the biggest brains nor the most complex brains. And we sort of are slightly dependent on how we measure intelligence or cognitive abilities, which is a very sort of human-centric, anthropocentric type of idea. But I think it's more to do with the fact that we are teachers and that the way that we transmit knowledge between generations and and indeed with our peers from me to you and you to me and everyone you communicate with on a day-to-day basis you are

Starting point is 00:17:59 voluntarily sharing information which does not necessarily help your survival. And that type of cultural transmission of knowledge and accumulation of knowledge, that I think is uniquely human. And I think it's not just uniquely human, but I think our ability to do that marks the transition from this earlier version of humans into the modern version of humans, which happens at some point, and by point I mean, you know, over the course of several thousand years, but something happens in the last hundred thousand years

Starting point is 00:18:36 where we see an earlier version where information is not retained in a longitudinal way, and afterwards it is. Now we think, because people in my lab have modelled this based on the input of things like the emergence of art and the emergence of sophisticated technologies all around the world,

Starting point is 00:19:00 and what we think is the key factor is the size of populations. So at a point where our populations begin to explode in various places around the world in the last 100,000 years or so, we suddenly see the emergence of things like cave art or sophisticated tools that didn't exist beforehand. We are a species of experts in a way that no other organism is. So if you want to learn about human evolution, you come and talk to me. If I want to learn about, I don't know, Shakespeare, I'll go to a Shakespeare expert. If I want my car repaired, I'll go to the mechanic.

Starting point is 00:19:40 I'll go take the car into the shop because I can't do that. No other species has that type of specialisation. And you can imagine in an evolutionary context that this type of behaviour where people become experts and transmit their expertise into their social group, in a small population, that information can be lost over time. But in a big population, if you can convey it to a larger audience, in the era of pre-writing,

Starting point is 00:20:07 then some of those ideas begin to stick. And so it is the accumulation of knowledge over generational time, which I think makes us teachers. And I think that's what makes us unique. But we couldn't do any of that without our brain, our very sophisticated human brain. Yeah, that is definitely true. I mean, that is definitely true. That is absolutely true. We've got a very, very large cerebral cortex and an ability to retain and convey information. But I think really, and I don't want to sound mystical or pan-psychic about this, it's not just our individual brains, it is the space between our brains which allows this to happen.

Starting point is 00:20:47 It's that we need our brains. We need the interaction between my brain and your brain for that knowledge to become permanent. What else would people find interesting because it is uniquely human or interesting because we think it's uniquely human, but it really is not. Well, I love talking about tools, actually. And it was Darwin who suggested that we were uniquely tool users. And this was sort of definitionally human because, you know, what are we doing right now? I've got a computer in front of me with a microphone, my phone's there, and there's a pair of scissors on the table. And we've been tool users for millions of years, long before Homo sapiens actually existed.

Starting point is 00:21:30 Our evolutionary ancestors were using stone tools and wooden tools. We literally name eras after the type of tools that were being used, the Neolithic, the New Stone Age. And so you go, well, is it just humans you know is it is is tools the things that make us humans and the answer to that is absolutely not and we see tool use in hundreds of species across many different types of of organisms ranging from birds so for example the corvids so those are like um crows we know that they use sticks to fish out grubs or they have incredible cognitive abilities to use tools. We know that orangutans sharpen sticks and use them to spearfish.

Starting point is 00:22:17 Chimpanzees also sharpen sticks and use them to sort of kebab sleeping bush babies in trees and one of the very best my favorite example of tool use is specifically about a subset of tools which is fire right humans have really learned to control fire and use that as a tool to build not just the modern world but to cook foods and which which completely changed our diet and our ability to move around the planet especially to move to colder areas so maybe it was fire that is uniquely human well it turns out absolutely not there are three species of raptor birds in australia that in the last couple of years 2019 2019 it was, the paper was published, where they were observed hanging around in trees where bushfires had started. And they'd pick up a stick that was

Starting point is 00:23:14 burning in their claws and fly off with a burning stick and fly over natural fire barriers such as roads or rivers and drop the stick in dry areas of brush and start a new fire. And then they go and sit in a tree and wait. And as the fire spreads, the little critters, the animals that are running away from being burnt to death, run out and form a buffet, a moving buffet for these birds to pick off and eat so we've got bird species that we are we are more than uh more than 200 million years distantly evolutionarily related to also having a command of fire in order to survive which i just think is so so magical that and i think it's one of those things that you think, God, that's so, you know,

Starting point is 00:24:06 our ability to control fire has built the modern world. We are so dependent on our ability to control fire. And that must be uniquely human. Well, it turns out the birds have been doing it for at least 100 million years longer than humans have ever existed. Well, I really like having conversations like this. They get me to think about a topic in a very different way, and you've certainly accomplished that today. I've been talking with Adam Rutherford.

Starting point is 00:24:37 He's a science writer and broadcaster in the UK, and he is author of the book The Book of Humans, A Brief History of Culture, Sex, War, and the Evolution of Us. And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Great having you on. Thanks, Adam. Oh, thank you. If I can

Starting point is 00:24:55 make people think differently about things, then my job is done. Metrolinks and Crosslinks are reminding everyone to be careful, as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals. Be careful along our tracks and only make left turns where it's safe to do so.

Starting point is 00:25:20 Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. From the kitchen to the laundry room, your home deserves the best. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. The world is full of languages. We use words to communicate. And yes, we also have gestures and tone of voice and facial expressions. But at the heart of our communication are words, whether it's English words or any other language. And it makes you wonder, where did language come from? And how did people communicate before language existed? How does language evolve into what it is? It's interesting stuff, and here to discuss it is Stephen Mithen.

Starting point is 00:26:17 He's a professor of early prehistory at the University of Reading, an esteemed archaeologist, and author of over 200 articles and books. His latest book is called The Language Puzzle, piecing together the six million year story of how words evolved. Hi Stephen, welcome to Something You Should Know. Hello Mike, it's great to be here. So do we know, can you explain when talking started and and you know what did people do before they started talking when did they grunt or i mean how how did it all happen well that's

Starting point is 00:26:54 that's the big question i mean as you say million dollar questions what does what does talking mean because even when we talk to each other, we use loads of gestures and body language, and that's communication, all sorts of information and what we're thinking and our emotional states. And we see that in all sorts of animals around the world. I mean, insects communicate with each other. Some people say plants communicate. But what you're talking about is the foundations of the language that we have as human beings. Now, our close living relatives are the chimpanzees. We shared an ancestor with them between six and eight million years ago. And we say, see, they've got a pretty developed form of

Starting point is 00:27:36 both vocal and gestural communication. They don't use words, but use a whole variety of grunts and chatters and barks and so forth, which are communicating something. Normally it's information about how they're feeling. Sometimes it's warnings to each other. Sometimes it's their anger, their emotions, and they use gesture as well. And we got a guess that our common ancestor with those chimpanzees that lived about six million years ago we think that's by comparison comparing our dna probably communicated in the same way and that our language today our spoken language with its words and its grammar and so forth evolved from that that basis over the last six million years so when chimpanzees make those noises and grunt and and

Starting point is 00:28:27 bark and whatever they do is it a language you can translate like oh that grunt means tree not in that detail we would often refer to them as like holistic communication because they tend to make a whole sequence of sounds barks and grunts, varying in their pitch and their tone and so forth. And together, that phrase normally means something like, beware, there's a snake in the grass. Now, we don't know if it means beware in the snake and grass or means one way and hide, or I'm scared of that what's moving we can't translate it literally but the impact of it is as if we were saying watch out there's a snake in the grass and the chimpanzees have these chimpanzees and and other primates as well they have these

Starting point is 00:29:18 phrases that have that impact on others but they don't it's not as if one bit of their sound phrase relates to one, what we'd think of one word or one entity. It's like a holistic phrase. And all the chimpanzees know exactly what he's talking about. Yeah, broadly. Yeah. I mean, a lot of it seems to be instinctive, not only hearing them, but also when making those sounds. There's been some great work with vervet monkeys, and you can see that the juveniles, they're sort of learning this language, but some of it's instinctive. So whereas the adults, if they see an eagle or something like that, they'll have an alarm call for it. Now the young ones might make that alarm call when they see perhaps some leaves floating off the trees

Starting point is 00:30:06 so they've sort of got most of it genetically inherited but they're still doing a little bit of learning about how these how these phrases work but they're really limited you know they only have a small amount of these phrases and they can't sort of vary them so you can't they can't sort of a monkey can't sort of say uh has an alarm call for an eagle and then switch it to some other creature that's never seen before they're very limited in their in their range very different like human language where we're able to make up sentences about basically anything we like and we mix, and we mix words together, we mix meanings together. So that's what humans did initially when they started communicating with each other, much like the chimpanzees?

Starting point is 00:30:58 We think so, yeah. When we say humans, of course, we mean our sort of more ape-like ancestors that would call the earliest humans. These are the Australopithecines living between six and two million years ago. And then the earliest members of our homogeneous, Homo habilis and then Homo erectus, lived up to about a million years or so ago. Well, it sure makes you wonder, like, so how did it happen where somebody somewhere somehow must have said, hey, I got an idea. We're going to call this a rock and everybody's going to call this a rock and you're going to know exactly what we're talking about because we're all going to agree that this is now a rock yeah well it couldn't have happened like that well probably you know it just couldn't happen like that and you know that was one of the great um dilemmas that the great thinkers of the in the enlightenment period um they couldn't resolve

Starting point is 00:31:46 this because they thought well if we're going to talk we've got to have the ideas on our head to talk with but then those ideas really come from the words that we use you know can you have ideas without words well you can but they're probably quite limited so how all the language thing got going is a really big question now probably in my my view and a view of many others as well, you know, the most obvious way it would get going would by using words like onomatopoeias. You know, if I mimic a bird call, for instance, it's not a word for a bird, but that word can eventually stand for the word for the bird. And I might make a movement or make a sound, which doesn't mimic the sound of the bird or an animal, but maybe the

Starting point is 00:32:34 way it moves, you know, a low, heavy grunting sound for what an elephant is like. So these onomatopoeias are what we call iconic words or words that capture the senses of something moving. That's probably the earliest words because we can say those and somebody else can have a good guess as what they mean because they're having the same sensations as us when they're seeing the same thing or looking at it. And these are called iconic words and they're still very pervasive in our language today. In fact, when children are acquiring language, most of the early words they learn are what we'd call iconic words. They have this sense of the object within them, rather than being entirely arbitrary,

Starting point is 00:33:17 like many of our words, that most of our words are, we use, especially when they're adults. And those words would be words like? Well, like, for you know a dog we call it dog in english or we call it a hund in german or in in french it's a purely arbitrary word for the what you're looking at you know the word dog doesn't suggest it's got four legs or tail or barks, nor does the word hund. But if I would said to you a word like balloon. Now, when I say balloon, my mouth becomes rather round and I make these rounded sounds

Starting point is 00:33:54 of these rounded vowel sounds. You might have quite a good guess if you're looking at various objects, which one of those would fit with the word balloon as opposed to another word which might have lots of little short sharp spiky vowels you might guess that relates to some small spiky thing psychologists have tested these with humans they've given they've given them shapes with with of different types and then they're given them these types of words which have these different vowel and consonant sounds. And so they match them up.

Starting point is 00:34:31 And generally, words that have low back vowels with O's and OO's, people associate those with round shapes, obviously. And words that have very sharp edges, like click, clack, cl clack they'd be associated with sharp things now that makes sense because it connects the sounds we're saying and what we're seeing and it was probably that sort of process that got words going in the first place and you know my guess is the earliest language has depended on these what we call iconic words or

Starting point is 00:35:02 sound symbolic words and was rather later in time, once people got used to that sort of language, and when people began to need more words, the arbitrary words were invented and came to be learned and could be remembered and recalled. And who did that? And when did that happen? I reckon that's happening at around, probably at around half a million years ago. You see, around that time, we have our ancestors, they evolved from Homo erectus to a rather larger brain species, one that we call Homo heidelbergensis, that we think is the ancestor of both the Neanderthals and modern humans. Now, we can see a lot of behavioral change of those species. They're the first ones that start using fire really you know on a large and

Starting point is 00:35:51 regular scale. They're making much more sophisticated stone tools and they've particularly got larger brains. Now it's likely that the complexity of the lifestyles by that time is simply needing more words than those iconic words can provide. And they've also got a larger brain with a larger memory capacity. So I think at that time, the way language is evolving, we've got the increasing presence of entirely arbitrary words. And that's when language really begins to flourish and begins to extend, not just one language, but into the multiple languages like we have today so i'd put that key change at about half a million years ago i find it interesting like so british english and american english you can come here and do fine and i could go there and

Starting point is 00:36:36 do fine but there are words that you use that i don't use and words that i use that you don't use and i wonder what they're so so similar but then there's these certain words and phrases that are so so different it's partly it's culture it's so social tradition how it comes they're quite how they become adopted ultimately um goes down to you know details of social interactions and transitions and origins etc but as you say you know there's there's simple things aren't there like what would you say you'd say the same sidewalk I'd say the pavement you'd say the boot of your car and I'd say the truck that's right and you'd I'd say a flat and you'd say an apartment yeah so these are arbitrary differences in

Starting point is 00:37:24 language which don't really have any significant effect on a level of the I'd say a flat and you'd say an apartment. Yeah, so these are arbitrary differences in language which don't really have any significant effect on a level of the communication. But we adopt those words because they're the socially accepted way of speaking. I'd be fascinated to know how all these different languages started and why some of them are similar to others and and Some people speak multiple languages and what how all that works From my experience of working with linguists and knowing linguists people who speak especially and people who speak multiple languages the more languages you speak The easier it becomes to learn another language

Starting point is 00:38:02 Because you sort of intuitively identify the similarity of the language you speak you already speak and you come to recognize those similarities but you know one of the really interesting things is is whether the language you speak changes the way you think about the world that's one of the one that's a really interesting issue about language it's not you know we don't use only language to communicate we use it to think ourselves you know we're always turning ideas over in our head but whether the words we use influence the way we think and see the world is a really big issue that's been discussed by philosophers and psychologists and linguists

Starting point is 00:38:39 and i think that's also relevant for the evolution of language, because we do in the past, in prehistory, see sudden periods of immense cultural diversity when people start living in very different ways. And my guess is they're perceiving the world quite differently, which probably reflects quite different languages that they're using at that time. Yeah, because you think in your language, right? I don't think people think about that very often. But like if you said, think of a red flower, you know, I'm thinking the words red flower. Yeah, but what some people have argued is that different languages have different types of colour words. Okay. So some languages only have the words for black, white and red. They don't actually have words for other colours. Now, if you don't have a word for blue or green or yellow,

Starting point is 00:39:36 does that impact the way you perceive blue, green and yellow? You know, do you see and think of them as just ranges of greys or reds and so forth? Or if you don't have words for a particular type of emotion, like, you know, if you don't have a word for embarrassment or shame, does that mean you don't really feel embarrassment or shame? Or could you not differentiate those particular emotions? So we have different words for everything. But if you don't have those words, how does that affect those particular emotions? So we have different words for everything, but if you don't have those words, how does that affect your particular thoughts? I think these are really interesting issues about language.

Starting point is 00:40:14 So there are languages that don't have words for green and blue. So what do they say when they see green and blue? They don't talk about it, I think. They don't label it. I think, um, they don't label it. Uh, I'm not sure what they, I'm not sure what they actually say. I mean, people have done color tests of these and they can certainly distinguish them, but they don't have a label for these words. It's like other languages, you know, some languages don't have names for lots of numbers.

Starting point is 00:40:42 You know, they may have num- words for one, two, three, four, but not necessarily have a language where you can create a word for any number you like, like we can do in English. So these are really interesting issues about the relationship between language and thought and culture. Well, doesn't that seem odd though that how could you live in this world and not perceive and want to identify something that was green or especially blue I mean the sky is blue I mean how can you not have a color for that well you don't necessarily have you don't necessarily need to label it differently from other colors perhaps anyway it's been a huge issue in linguistics for, you know,

Starting point is 00:41:26 50 years or so, trying to work out why some languages have lots of color words and some languages have very few color words. Where does English fall on that spectrum? Do we have... We do. We do pretty well. Yeah, we do pretty well. I mean, we have about 11 really big color terms, you know, the primary colors. Then, of course, we have loads of words for very fine distinctions of colors like crimson or bazillion or aqua and things like that we very rarely use right and in fact in fact you know if you said that's aqua i might say no i see

Starting point is 00:41:59 that more as sort of turquoise or something like that we don't necessarily have a really clear definition of those sorts of words and and even i you know i i always arguing with my wife about whether something's blue or green because we seem to see it differently and we seem to label things differently so um we use words as labels but it doesn't necessarily mean we're always talking about the same thing does it were there times in history where there were big changes in language because of what was going on in the world? So probably a big change that happened in the race of language evolution was when people discovered agriculture about 10,000 years ago. You know, before that, people were living in small, mobile hunter-gatherer groups had quite specific languages that had been pretty very slowly changing if at all for hundreds maybe thousands of years

Starting point is 00:42:53 but when you start getting the big farming communities then the first towns and the first ancient civilizations like in ancient Mesopotamia that must have been a time when language began to change very, very rapidly because of just the scale of the community and the diversity of activities. And of course, that's also at the time that writing is invented for the first time. And that marked a big change in language evolution because now people are, for the first time, are writing down eventually words and what people are saying. And that sort of freezes language in a way. So today, spoken language tends to change at a much quicker rate than written language. You know, when we write, we tend to have to use all the grammatical rules

Starting point is 00:43:38 and so forth. When we speak, we very rarely use all of those. So there's a difference between spoken and written language at the rate at which they change. And the rate of both of those depends on the size of the speech community and its economy and its diversity and so forth. This is all related to the era of sociolinguistics, which tries to understand the relationship between language and language change and the nature of society. You know what I wonder is, if I were to travel back in time, say just 30 years ago, 40 years ago, and talked with my grandmother, would the language seem off just in 40 years, or does it not change that fast? I'm sure you could understand each other and have good conversation.

Starting point is 00:44:30 But of course, the particular words you'd use would be quite different. You know, imagine your grandmother would be talking about a gramophone or a wireless set, and she would hear you would have names for all sorts of tools and implements that you have no idea what they are, how they use. And equally, if you talk to your, well, if I talk to my grandchildren now, they'll come out with words that I'm not quite sure what the meaning of those are because of the way they're using. They'll have lots of words about high tech and games and online stuff that I don't understand at all. So I think language does change really rapidly, not becomes unintelligible, but just because society and technology is changing so much. Well, it's quite a story and quite a journey from the grunts and groans of early times to the language, the very adaptable language that we have today.

Starting point is 00:45:24 I appreciate you coming on and telling that story. Stephen Mithen has been my guest. He is a professor of early prehistory at the University of Reading, an esteemed archaeologist and author of over 200 articles and books. His latest book is called The Language Puzzle, piecing together the six million year story of how words evolved. There's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Appreciate you coming on. Thank you for being here, Stephen.

Starting point is 00:45:52 Well, thank you, Mike. It's been great talking with you. A common kitchen debate you've heard and maybe been involved in is what can and cannot go down the garbage disposal. You may have heard that things like chicken bones and eggshells are good to put in the disposal from time to time because they help sharpen the blades. On the other hand, you may have heard that chicken bones and eggshells are the worst thing to put down there. So Consumer Reports finally got to the bottom of the debate. Their experts say both eggshells and chicken bones take a long time to decompose,

Starting point is 00:46:29 and once they're chopped up, deposits can get stuck in traps and sections of the pipe, causing blockages. It's best to skip bones and shells in your disposal. And while we're on the topic, other things that should not go down the disposal, according to Consumer Reports, are grease and oil, a large number of vegetable peels, better to throw those in the trash, and anything that is not food. And that is something you should know. It may seem like a little thing, but the very best way you can support this podcast is to help us grow our audience one person at a time, or maybe two people at a time. So if you share this podcast by using the share function on the platform that you listen to on, you can send an episode of this podcast to someone and they can listen and become another listener. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. shows every week designed to entertain and engage and possibly enrage you. And don't blame me. We dive deep into listeners' questions,

Starting point is 00:47:47 offering advice that's funny, relatable, and real. Whether you're dealing with relationship drama or you just need a friend's perspective, we've got you. Then switch gears with But Am I Wrong?, which is for listeners who didn't take our advice and want to know if they are the villains in the situation. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events and present situations that we might even be wrong in our lives. Spoiler alert, we are actually quite literally never wrong.

Starting point is 00:48:11 But wait, there's more. Check out See You Next Tuesday, where we reveal the juicy results from our listener polls from But Am I Wrong? And don't miss Fisting Friday, where we catch up, chat about pop culture, TV, and movies. It's the perfect way to kick off your weekend. So if you're looking for a podcast

Starting point is 00:48:25 that feels like a chat with your besties, listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce.

Starting point is 00:48:46 That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your

Starting point is 00:49:29 podcasts.

Something You Should Know - What Makes You Uniquely Human & How Words Affect Your Thoughts

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.