Re: The advantages of choking to death
- From: "Sverker Johansson" <lsj@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 16 Jan 2006 00:13:29 -0800
unrestrained_hand@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> My dear wife just went thru a coughing / choking spasm, as we all do at
> times, because it "went down the wrong pipe" (yes, she survived!). It
> got me to thinking. I know that our current arrangement allows us to
> speak. But surely the first hopeful monster with the capacity to choke
> to death would not have spread his/her genes throughout the genepool
> unless it had advantages that outweighed the occasional disadvantage of
> choking to death. So what were they?
'Hopeful monster' theories of evolution are hopeless.
But apart from that, improved language is the obvious advantage.
It has also been argued that a deeper fuller voice is a mating
advantage for males, for which there is some evidence.
This would explain the transformations taking place at puberty
for males, but not why the larynx descends in todlers.
> Was it a gradual enough transformation that our language capabilities
> developed with the disadvantage?
This is the most reasonable alternative, though the change is hard
to trace in fossils. The preponderance of the evidence points
towards the change taking place after Homo ergaster, but before
the split between us and Neanderthals. Not solidly nailed down,
though, and we are nowhere near resolving the time it took.
See my book 'Origins of Language' for more details.
http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=CELCR%205
> Is it associated with brain changes,
> making us more clever or something?
We do get bigger brains in the same timeframe, but we have no
clue as to cause and effect here.
> On a related note, I saw a new sarticle on a one-eyed kitten born alive
> recently. It only lived a day or so. Mammals with cyclopsian defects -
> like this kitten - don't have any nose. Whatever other problems it
> had, its human was trying to nurse it, but it probably didn't know how
> to drink and hold its breath at the same time. I assume this is
> instinctive with humans - altho obviously not always working perfectly.
Humans are born with the larynx in the standard mammal (non-choking)
configuration, otherwise babies would have trouble nursing.
The larynx doesn't descend until the kids stop sucking and start
talking.
--
Best regards,
Sverker Johansson
-----------------------------
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy,
education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would
indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of
punishment and hope of reward after death." - Albert Einstein
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