To speak or not to speak......

The first half of the language assignment, to have a conversation without using and words or ASL, was difficult. You can only say so much by pointing! I did use some signs such as using two hands to form a large rounded belly to talk about my pregnant sister. I was trying to tell a story and almost waited to tell my friend after the assignment but decided that wouldn’t be fair to the assignment. My attempt was to have a normal conversation and to not let the assignment influence what I wanted to say. My friend got close to what I wanted to say but not exactly and it made a difference to the meaning. My sons are disappointed by the fact that their aunt is not having a girl. My friend guessed that my boys were sad that I was not pregnant and then she guessed that they were sad because their cousins were sad they were not having a sister. It became really frustrating and I wanted to give up.

My friend said that talking to me without me using my voice was interesting and fun. She said, “We were able to convey a point. It was difficult to understand details and parts of the conversation. It felt like a game of 20 Questions. I think it was easier because of the baby. She can’t tell me what she wants and I have to read her emotions and motions all the time. And it was funny when you were trying to hold a conversation but discipline the kids.” I did have to break into the experiment because my boys were doing things on the playground that were close to becoming dangerous. At first I tried to ask them to stop without talking but they were too far away and couldn’t see my waving so I had to yell when they got to a point of danger. My friend said she could tell I was torn whether or not to break into speech before I actually did it. I did add a little extra time for having to speak. The funny times she was talking about were when the boys were just being naughty but not dangerous and I was trying to take care of it in silence. My friend did not alter her way of communication except in that she had to ask a lot more questions than usual.

Spoken language most definitely has the advantage in conveying complex ideas. There is no way to explain who you are talking about or if you are talking about a different location than where you are. I can see a speaking culture getting very frustrated and impatient with a non-speaking culture. In a way we experience this with our small children before they can talk. A parent has to guess for quite a while what their child wants or needs until they get to know their child so well that they can tell the difference in the cry or expression. When the child is a baby and you have exhausted everything you can think of that they might be crying over, it is very draining and frustrating at times. I used to work in a bank and we had deaf customers who couldn’t speak. Most of them were lip readers and we did fine that way. Some wrote what they wanted on a piece of paper and that was good too. Some could not read lips and could not read words either. They tried using gestures but I could not always understand. Sometimes they would just leave and we were both frustrated but I also felt very pained emotionally. He was sad that he could not be understood or he was embarrassed and I was sad that I could not help him and never wanted to make him feel ashamed or hurt. It was very hard. Most of the time they would bring someone back with them who could tell me what they wanted. Again, they knew each other so well that they could communicate without words or gestures. Some of the other impatient tellers would get very angry and yell at the person. Sometimes a teller might speak rudely to the person but I know that they could tell by the facial expressions that the teller was irritated. No matter how frustrated I got I always maintained kindness and patience as well as I could. If I felt that I was going to get too annoyed then I would go get the supervisor to try and help them. So, the lack of symbols and language affect not only normal communication but emotions.

The second half of the assignment, speaking with no emotion, was difficult at first but once I got into the pattern of it, I found it easier. Since it did take some time to get my voice monotone I added some extra time so that I would be doing it for fifteen minutes in total. I do use my hands but I didn’t find that too difficult to keep under control. My friend has a one year old and while we were doing this assignment, her daughter did something really cute. My friend said, “Oh look!” and I did but I couldn’t express any joy and saying, “How cute” without any joy in my face just felt awful. If she hadn’t known about the assignment she would have thought I was mean! I felt mean in that I seemed so disinterested just by the fact that couldn’t truly express myself.

My friend said it was fun trying to watch me try to be expressionless in my face and actions.  This part of the assignment affected her more. When I started speaking that way, she started speaking that way and she had to make herself speak normally.

We can convey an idea more easily in detail without the use of expression but emotion is left out completely so feelings are not portrayed. Words are important but vocal inflection is very important to the meaning behind the words. There are some people who cannot read body language, such as a blind person and it is so detrimental to fully understanding but at least they can hear so they get the voice inflection. Children also cannot read body language accurately. Body language just comes naturally with the inflection; they work together as one unit and both are extremely important for accurate communication. When a person cannot read body language there are so many situations that could be misunderstood even to the point of being dangerous. I think there are people who also read too much into body language and misunderstandings also occur that way. I can see that if my former customers I spoke of before could not read body language then they might not get their feelings hurt as much by callous people.

Charles Dawson, an amateur archaeologist, reported finding a primitive piece of skull in the small town of Piltdown in Sussex, England in 1912. This fossil was believed evidence of  the earliest human ancestor and placed man's beginnings in England. More pieces were found by Dawson and his small group but no more were discovered after his death. The skull fragments had been under study for some time and finally in 1953 were deemed a hoax. Dating methods had changed over the years and when Kenneth Oakley of Britain's Natural History Museum used a chemical test and determined that the fossil was significantly younger than was originally thought,it was discovered that the fossil was a hoax. He also revealed that the fossils had been dyed with chemicals and the teeth filed down to mimic human wear patterns.

When the hoax was exposed, Britain's Natural History Museum was embarrassed as well as the British scientific community. Some scientists were not surprised by the revelation having been skeptical for quite some time. Regardless, the infamous find steered scientists down the wrong path for years.

Piltdown Man is a classic story of jealousy, ambition, rivalry, pride and ego driving people to do things that would make them famous, regardless of the truth. Scientists have received a negative fallout from this episode. People want to know how easily are scientists deceived? How could they have been fooled for so long?  Some say that is was not in anyone's mind to imagine it was a hoax because it fit in with the theories of the time. Many believe that it's possible scientists did know it was a hoax but wanted to believe so hard that they ignored some obvious flaws. Which would bring into question their integrity on a different level. Many thought that the theory of evolution should be brought into question.The truth is that many, many people over a span of four decades wasted their lives exploring avenues that were completely false and just dead ends. The structure had to be redone and when the hoax was revealed there were sighs of released frustration and confusion and light bulbs going on  all over the scientific community. Things became clearer with Piltdown Man out of the picture and studies could once again move forward. I wonder how far ahead we would be now if that hoax had been revealed sooner.

Kenneth Oakley and L. E. Parsons examine  Piltdown Man

Improvements in scientific methods and equipment made the hoax easier to discover. Oakley used the the fluorine absorption test to date the fossil, which was a new dating technique at the time. Items that were in soil would, over time, absorb fluoride from the groundwater. It could be estimated how long the item had been in the ground by measuring how much fluoride was in it. In order for this to work there must be another similar item to compare it with since the amounts of fluoride fluctuated in the groundwater. Because fluoride is absorbed at different rates by different items this method is not completely accurate and can be compensated for by using calculations accommodating for the rate of absorption with a large margin of error. A microscope was used to examine the molars and the file marks were clear in showing that the teeth had been falsely worn and plugged with chewing gum and sand.

 It is not possible to completely remove the human factor to prevent future errors, however, the idea is raised that with new technology it would be more difficult to perpetrate such a hoax.....or would it? While a hoax might be easier to prove, with more advanced technology is it not also easier to fabricate a more advanced hoax that could be more difficult to solve? I would not want to remove the human element, given the choice. Curiosity, and appreciation are what make science great. Without humans there are no questions to be answered.

A moral to take away from the story of the Piltdown Man Hoax......your own selfish pride and ambition can affect not only you but people you never even imagined; on a huge scale for years to come. In your personal life, while one doesn't want to live their life being skeptical of everyone and everything, exercise wisdom in what you take at face value. Judge not only by what you see but who is handing it to you. Question yourself if you want to believe something and make sure that you are seeing what is true or not true and not just what you want to see. It can follow you for the rest of your life and into others' lives.

Sociality and Mating Patterns of Primates

 

Lemurs live only on Madagascar in various regions of the island. The climate and habitats range from dry deserts to wet rainforest. Lemurs are social but live in small groups and love mostly in trees. They forage for food alone at night and nest in groups during the day. All but two species mate according to the seasons when resources are more plentiful. The mating season is very short lasting only roughly three weeks in a given year. The mating pattern is adaptive to the environment because of the reliance on resources during the birth season.

Spider Monkeys are found primarily in Central and South America but as far north as Mexico. They live in trees and rarely come down to the ground. They form groups of 15 to 20 and break down into smaller sub groups during the day. These groups vary in size according to the competition for food.  The female picks her mate from among the group and bears offspring once every three to four years.  The young depends completely on the mother for everything for the first ten months of its life. Since it’s the females responsibility to find food for the group and the intense care of the young ones at the same time it could be derived that this is why she only mates every few years.

Baboons are found in East Africa. They live on a variety of climates and are typically ground dwellers but sleep in trees or cliff faces. They are extremely adaptable. They are social creatures and stay together in groups of about 50, with the ratio of males to females 1:2. Mating behavior varies according to the troop and its social structure. In some groups the male can mate with any female. In other troops the male woos the female of his choice.

Gibbons are found in tropical rainforests in Asia and live in trees. They live in small familial groups similar to our families. Gibbons mate for life after singing to find each other. When a pair find they like each other’s song, they find one another and mate approximately five hundred times in a three day ritual.

Chimpanzees’ natural habitat is the rainforest although they have been found in swamps, woodlands, savannahs and bamboo forests. They spend equal time in trees and on land. They are very social and live in groups of several dozen. The females mate with many males and are sometimes restricted by the dominant male forbidding some males to mate with her. She is sometimes forced to find mates in other groups because of this.

In summary, there are many differences in mating patterns among these primates with the gibbon and chimpanzee being the closest to human beings. I did have a hard time finding an adaptation in these traits in connection with environment on a few of these.