Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

But Mr. Darwin adds another feature to the hypothesis now under consideration, as follows:—

“When we treat of sexual selection we shall see that primæval man, or rather some early progenitor of man, probably first used his voice in producing true musical cadences, that is in singing, as do some of the gibbon-apes at the present day; and we may conclude, from a widely spread analogy, that this power would have been especially exerted during the courtship of the sexes,—would have expressed various emotions, such as love, jealousy, triumph,—and would have served as a challenge to rivals. It is, therefore, probable that the imitation of musical cries by articulate sounds may have given rise to words expressive of various complex emotional states.”[314]

Such, then, is one way in which it appears to me quite conceivable that the faculty of articulate sign-making might have taken the first step towards the formation of speech. But, not to go further than this first step, I can see another possibility as to the precise method of attainment, and one which I think is still more probable. It is the opinion of some authorities in anthropology that speech was probably, and comparatively speaking, late in making its appearance; so that our ancestors in whom it did first appear were already more human than simian, and as such deserving of the name Homo alalus.[315] Now, if this were the case, the course of our hypothetical history would be even more easy to imagine than it was under the supposition previously considered. For, under the present supposition, we start with an already man-like creature, erect in attitude, much more intelligent than any other animal, shaping flints to serve as tools and weapons, living in tribes or societies, and able in no small degree to communicate the logic of his recepts by means of gesture-signs, facial expressions, and vocal tones. Clearly, from such an origin, the subsequent evolution of sign-making in the direction of articulate sounds would be an even more easy matter to imagine than under the previous hypothesis. For, let us try to imagine a community of Homo alalus, considerably more intelligent than the existing anthropoid apes, although still considerably below the intellectual level of existing savages. It is certain that in such a community natural signs of voice, gesture, and grimace would be in vogue to a greater or less extent.[316] As their numbers increased (and, consequently, as natural selection laid a greater and greater premium on intelligent co-operation, as in the case of social insects),[317] such signs would require to become more and more conventional, or acquire more and more the character of sentence-words and denotative signs.[318] Now, where the signs were vocal, the only ways in which they could be developed so as to meet this need would be, (1) conventional modulations of intensity, (2) of pitch, and (3) of time-intervals. But clearly, neither modulations of intensity nor of pitch could carry improvement very far, seeing that the human voice does not admit of any great range of either. Consequently, if any improvement at all were to be effected—and it was bound to be effected, if possible, by natural selection,—it could only be so in the direction of modulating time-intervals between vocal sounds. Now, such a modulation of time-intervals is the beginning of articulation.

That is to say, the first articulation probably consisted in nothing further than a semiotic breaking of vocal tones, in a manner resembling that which still occurs in the so-called “chattering” of monkeys—the natural language for the expression of their mental states. The great difference would be that the semiotic value of such incipient articulation must have been more largely intellectual, or less purely emotional: it must have partaken less of the nature of cries, and more of the nature of names. It seems probable that, as all natural cries are given forth by the throat and larynx, with little or no assistance from the tongue and lips, these first efforts at articulation would have been mainly restricted to vowel sounds, sparsely supplemented by guttural and labial consonants. This state of matters might have lasted for an enormous length of time, during which the liquid, and lastly the lingual consonants would perhaps have begun to be used. This is the order in which we might expect the consonants to arise, in view of the consideration that the gutturals and labials would probably have admitted of more easy pronunciation than the liquids and linguals by an almost speechless Homo.[319] From this point onwards, the further development of articulation would only be a matter of time and mental growth; but I think it is highly probable that the initial stages thus sketched probably occupied a lapse of time out of all proportion to that which was afterwards required for the higher developments.

Moreover, in this connection we must not neglect to notice the “clicks” of the African Bushmen and Hottentots, which appear to furnish us with direct evidence of the survival among these low races of a primordially inarticulate system of sign-making.[320] No one has studied the languages of these peoples with so much labour or so much result as the philosophically minded Dr. Bleek, and he says that the clicks which occur in the great majority of their words, “must be made an object of special attention if we would arrive at even an approximate idea of the original vocal elements from which human language sprang.”[321]

The clicks in question are four in number, or, according to Bleek, “at least six.” They are called the dental, palatal, cerebral, and lateral. The lateral click is the same as that which is employed by our own grooms when urging a horse. The dental is also used by European races as a sound expressive of disappointment, unspeakable contempt, &c. In books it is usually written “tut, tut,” which serves to show how hopeless is any attempt at translating a click into any articulate equivalent. The other two clicks are formed by the tongue operating upon the roof of the mouth. Some remote idea of the difficulty of rendering a language of this kind into any alphabetical form, may be gained by trying to pronounce one of the words which are printed in our European treatises upon them. For example, the Hottentot word for “moon” is printed ║ khãp, where ║ stands for the lateral click, kha for a guttural consonant, and ˜ for a nasal twang.

With reference to this inarticulate kind of sign-making, which thus so largely prevails among the languages of low races in close organic connection with articulate, it seems worth while to record the following observation which was communicated by Professor Haeckel to Dr. Bleek, and published by the latter in his work already quoted:—

“The language of apes has not hitherto received from zoologists the attention which it deserves, and there are no accurate descriptions of the sounds uttered by them. They are sometimes called ‘howls,’ sometimes ‘cries,’ ‘clicks,’ ‘roars,’ &c. Now, I have myself frequently heard in zoological gardens, from apes of very different species, remarkable clicking sounds, which are produced with the lips, and also, though not so often, with the tongue; but I have nowhere been able to find any account of them.”

Upon the whole, then, it appears to me extremely probable that in these clicks we have survivals, in lowly developed languages, of a formerly inarticulate condition of mankind; or, as Professor Sayce remarks from a philological point of view, “the clicks of the Bushmen still survive to show us how the utterances of speechless man could be made to embody and convey thought.”[322]

In its main outlines the hypothetical sketch which I have given follows that which Mr. Darwin has drawn in his Descent of Man. As we have already seen, however, there is this important difference. Mr. Darwin entertains only the second of the three alternative hypotheses here presented, or the hypothesis which assumes that the rudiments of articulate speech began in the “ape-like,” or “early progenitors” of man. He does not seem to have entertained the idea of Homo alalus as a connecting link between these early progenitors and Homo sapiens. I may, therefore, here briefly give my reasons for thinking it probable that this connecting link had an actual existence.