 Welcome to What's Sex Got to Do With It? We're here with Heather Remoff, my favorite 84-year-old great-grandmother in all of the United States. Wow. And so, we're still at 84, right? Oh, yes. Don't, don't, don't, don't. But of course that means I'm in my 85th year, you do know that. Yeah, I understand. I understand. I've just been staying at 84 for a little while. No, it's going to stay that way. Yeah. A little bit. All right. That's fine. So, the name of this chapter is First Words, the Evolution of Language. I think I have a good sense of where this title came from. Oh, give me your sense of it, Len. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm asking you questions here. That's sort of an expression I hear. I think it probably has biblical origins. In the beginning there was the word I'm not a church person. Yeah. But I, and other books on the evolution of language, we use that expression first words. I think there was actually a book that was a collection of essays on the evolution of language that might have been called first words. But I so much believe that Homo sapiens starts with language. Gotcha. And so understanding the origin of language is such a, so is that what you were thinking of, Tommy? Well, I guess having read all of it made, it just made sense that what you were thinking is that humans, the language was what really separated us, you know? And so the only reason I didn't want to answer the question, which you got me to do anyways is that I didn't want to spend a whole lot of time on this, you know, because this chapter is just so full of questions in, and I'm just going to have the hardest time keeping everything, you know, to 28 minutes and 10 seconds, you know? But I will start with some reading, the confession in one of the early paragraphs. And you start with, okay, I confess that recall of my interviews with women has influenced my speculative account of the origin of our species. I find it impossible to put out of my mind that one woman told me regarding her decision to have sex for the first time with the man she later married, he gave me a bite of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich and the next thing I knew, we were in bed. Was that literal? Was it literally a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Yes, literally a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But the fact that he, I think he may have made the peanut butter and jelly, it was his peanut butter jelly sandwich and he gave her a bite of it, he literally fed her. And so that, you know, and the reason that I recall that is that I was imagining my hypothetical garden of Eden where suddenly we have this, I think it was in that chapter where suddenly there's this, what I call prototype one, this little baby that's been born with 23 chromosome pairs. And I began to imagine what would happen to that prototype one as the child grew and demonstrated various skills that would emerge as the child reached maturity. And I think that's why, because I was imagining, oh, he's smashing a nut with a rock that other primates can't do and then he's feeding one of the females that's watching and then I think I recall at that point I went to, oops, maybe I'm taking this story too far, I can't help but remember. But I envisioned the courtship feeding as being an early, an early innovation. Yeah, I was just wondering if maybe, you know, that was. But that's a true, no, that was a genuine quote from one of the women I interviewed. Yeah, I love it, I love it, that's great. And it makes me, you know, I sometimes go through these phases where I eat a certain food a lot for a while until I'm just tired of it. Now I feel like PBJ's kind of back in my near future. So, but then my whole deal is that I have to be careful about giving someone some of my PBJ because I don't know if I'm sending them. Yeah, you have to watch. So, I think we touched on this, me, in some of the earlier segments. But I am still kind of fascinated by this whole notion of the one of kind, you know, variant, the naked ape as you call the individual. How is it able to reproduce? Because me, earlier on you said, well, there might be the situation we have multiple or more individuals undergoing these fusions, you know, chromosome 2, so it's not happening just in one place, it's happening, anything that's causing that. But it just seems that, it seems like the frequency still has to be fairly low. Oh, I think it probably was low. Lynn, there's so much we don't know, in part because we're locked into, you and I were talking earlier about the early Darwinian notion of natural selection, which I do believe needs to be updated. But for example, what used to be called dark RNA, I think it's now called non-coding RNA. A lot of that may be viral in origin. So, you know, we don't know, when we were infected with viruses, just look at how COVID-19 has impacted so many different body parts. I mean, people get all kinds of reactions from having been infected with that particular virus. I think it's even possible that there could have been a viral infection that swept through that might have made the telomeres weak and made those kinds of fusions more likely. We don't know, but I don't think it would be a one-off. You know, I think there would be, and just like the Neanderthal and the Denisovans, they also have 23 chromosome pairs. So, that was going on. I guess what I'm driving at, though, is that would that disruption be so large, that that kind of individual could only mate and have viable offspring with another individual that had similar mutations? I suspect that that is the case then. It's just so much harder for it to get going because now you just have two individuals and then you're going to have the in-breeding. But we don't know that it was only two. I mean, as I said, there could have been solar flares. There could have been a whole lot of things that might have challenged the stability of our genomes. And as I mentioned, I think in an earlier chapter, I don't think all chromosomes are created. Some are more vulnerable to those kinds of copying errors and nondisjunction and so forth. I think it's possible, but again, that's speculative. I'd like to get other people thinking about this. I need more ideas. I agree, and you do say that as speculative. And sometimes to me, I'm just kind of interested in the details, and I did not look at the footnotes closely and then go to the sources. Because that's not the point, really, of this book. And as we were slowly getting towards the latter chapters where the whole reason for this book is going to become really apparent. And so as I said earlier, it's a nice little mystery in Hunt. And so I take it for that. But also along the way, though, we get to explore some topics. And so one is, or you mentioned, the difference between language and communication. Can you tell me? Yes. And I think all species, plant and animal, have communication. And the person who alerted me to the difference between language and communication is the late linguist, Derek Bickerton. And he, for him, to be true language, it has to show displacement. And he uses the word displacement differently than another linguist, Noam Chomsky, but for Derek Bickerton, displacement characterizes language. And that is the ability to describe something that you can't see or point to, something in the past or something in the future, something that's not immediately there. Where he felt that communication is just about things that are immediately there. And it was so interesting to me. He started by saying, we need to look at what humans do differently from other primates to get an idea of where that symbolic ability came from, the ability to imagine a past and to picture a future, to talk about things that happened over a hill that we can't see. And so he started, let's look at the difference between humans and non-human primates. But then he very quickly veered away from that and started looking at what I call haplodiploid species like honey bees communicating and so forth. But really, the difference that makes a difference is the difference between humans and non-human primates. And in fact, language is symbolic communication. Of all the trillions of species that have ever evolved in the billions of years of life on this planet, only one, only one species has evolved symbolic communication that I know that I've ever heard of and that's humans. So that is the source of our exceptionalism. Language is the source of our exceptionalism. That's what makes us different and that's what enables us to communicate with other members of our species who've been dead for generations. I can talk to Darwin. It's what enables me to communicate with someone on the other side of the world. Language just makes us, that is the source of our exceptionalism, but I say that it's a double-edged sword. I was trying to understand the difference between language and communication. That's the difference, the displacement. He was, I forget, one of the examples he gave was buzzards circling over a kill, but to me, you can point at that in gesture, but that's not the same as the true displacement where you can talk about, oh, when I was out this morning, I saw there was a dead woolly mammoth on the other side of that hill, and let's go try to harvest some meat from that, talking about something that you can't see. You say that when he talked about he uses ants and bees communicating about something else, it's out of sight as an instance of them using displacement. I think his whole point is that maybe displacement isn't the difference between language and communication, and you say that, well, essentially because they're haplodiploid, they are essentially being... It's almost like one individual. But I was thinking, well, yes, we're deployed, but we're so closely related. I mean, the genetics between one individual and another, just aren't that great. It's not that great at all. Yeah, and then we have the pheromones, and so I was thinking, well, maybe he's onto something, maybe it is something other than the displacement that really is the difference between language and communication. Language is symbolic communication, and it's that ability to symbolize, to communicate with symbols that really does set us apart from all other species. To me, it explains everything. I mean, it really does explain how we're so different, and it's much of what makes us wonderful, Len, and it's also... It's got a downside, but it's not so great. We'll definitely get into that. One of the things you talk about is what you write about is the olfactory receptors that are found on the skin. Isn't that amazing? It is, and so it makes me wonder now, do you know if other primates have that also, the ones that precede us in the evolutionary tree before that? I don't know that. Because that would be interesting, maybe that is something that... I've only heard of it in relation to humans, and that's a fairly new, I think, discovery in relation to humans, that we have olfactory receptors in our skin. And that, to me, is fascinating because to me, that's pheromonal communication is those olfactory. And I think, I know in the book, I make a point about we lie with language. Language enables us to lie. That's one of the downsides to ourselves and to others. But pheromones tell the truth. And I think that's one reason why touch is such an important component of human courtship. Do you know if there are taste receptors also on the skin? I'm not aware of that. I was just wondering. Smell and taste are so closely related. Of course, you can taste differently, but that's your tongue that's doing the reception. That I don't know about. And I think the fact, as I'd explained in an earlier chapter, whenever there's a major genetic change, like a chromosomal shift, a whole lot of things change that aren't necessarily adaptive, but they're not necessarily maladaptive either. They just come along for the ride. We've been described as the hairless ape or the naked ape. I think there was a book, was it Desmond Morris? The Naked Ape. But the fact that we don't have much hair on our skin, and then suddenly there are olfactory receptors in the skin touches a very important part of human courtship. A very important part. And I think we're reading people's signals that they may be getting a better sense through the messages they're sending via pheromone than we might be through what they're saying. I hear it. It is fascinating. I'm just so curious about all of those things. In the preface of this book, I asked my imagined reader to read it with an open mind, to forget everything they think they know. You've been really good at doing that, by the way. Read it with an open mind and be thinking about your own theories. Don't accept my ideas as the last word. Because that's what humans are good at. I want ideas from other people. That's how we build reliable theories by incorporating a lot of different ideas. I really love it when something I write makes someone go, I wonder if that could possibly be true. How would that work? Those are the questions that I find to be so much fun. I'm having one of those moments now. I'm darting about really rapidly. We're limiting these chapters to 30 minutes, 28 minutes. This one just had so much to me. I'm not really going on. We just have to touch on things. There's one point where you talk about comfort revolution. It proceeds much more rapidly than the brain allows. I'm wondering, is it really cultural evolution or is it just cultural fashion? Yeah, I think it's probably cultural fashion. Maybe I was referencing something that Terence Deacon had written in his wonderful book. I think it was the symbolic species that co-evolution of language and the brain. Yeah. In his book when I read it, he was talking about cultural evolution of language. Like how new languages develop. How quickly that happens compared to how slowly the brain evolves. But there I part company with one of the people I most admire is Derek Becker. I think the change in our brain, because I'm such a fan of this theory of it happening at the moment of the chromosomal fusion, I think the change in our brain, the ability of our brain to process symbolic communication, probably that ability was pretty abrupt and pretty fast. So I think that was evolution happening fast. But then of course we had to build on it. So I part company with one of my heroes a little bit. But he knows much more about biology than I do. That's his field. So then you don't feel as if we are outpacing our brain. Culturally. Well just as a species. Like our language and what we have created as a result of our language has outpaced our brain's ability to deal with the... of. And where I look where I would go to an example of that would be the digital revolution has happened so fast. And it's amplified what I consider our species specific traits. Things that are basic to us. But digital media amplifies it in a way that it exaggerates it. And I think in that sense we've gotten into a little bit of trouble where our cultural evolution the skill with technology that we have has gone so fast that our brain hasn't caught up necessarily and in some ways it can be harmful to us. But caught up to what? Like I think it disturbs our sense of peace. Like we hear so much about young people on their screens all the time. And the rise in the level of their stress and anxiety as a result of the amount of screen time they spend and I think that has been documented that the two are correlated. So the things that have made us comfortable as humans our technology that's our cultural evolution has speeded that up in such a way as to cause some disruption in our... Yeah, yeah. That's the cultural evolution has speeded up in a way that our biological or biologically social selves are not totally adapted to. Certainly for myself that's very true. I'm a publisher's nightmare and that I do know social media. So what I find when people are doing screen time they're normally communicating to other people. It's not generally that people are doing screen time and only focus on themselves. That's the wrong way of saying it that they are in isolation. In fact a lot of the gamers are playing these interactive games with other people. So I see it now as can our species handle being as connected as we are and increasing all these other connections and as you know as you get more and more connections then the range of responses that you get increases but also the probability that you're going to get a negative response goes up and generally it's like people can handle the positive responses but the negative ones are what do them harm and I think just as a species we're wired up to react more strongly to the negative input than the positive input but the more connected you are the more likely you are to get that negative input and so I think maybe where the argument for support is that maybe we just can't handle as much connectedness as our technology has given us and maybe it'll take a while to evolve to that maybe we can't maybe it's just too much maybe we have to figure out a way to decrease the amount of connectedness those are such good questions to discuss I think those are things we have to talk about for the next book well you're ambitious for me yeah so I'm going to cut you off just a little bit because I just have one more question maybe I can ask it some other time but right now it's staring me in front of me is there any other reason for a concealed ovulation? other than a mutation no not the cause but you say that concealed ovulation allows for deception or because this is because you're talking about truth and lies in the section so what do you think was the evolutionary advantage that concealed ovulation gives women more choice gives the female much more choice you think it could have been any other reason for it well again I think that I believe that that was a pretty abrupt I don't think that was selected for I think that happened and then we used it in a way that benefited us but I don't think concealed ovulation was selected for but if it could be selected for it gives women much much much more control of their reproductive options I hear you I'm just scrolling down because I can't remember if this question looks like it's not in oh actually I think it might be so do you think monogamy and marriage preceded language wow I never actually thought of that well certainly species that don't have language are monogamous so I don't think the two you know I don't think language and monogamy necessarily go together but primates are they generally or are they generally monogamous no I'm actually thinking more of species of birds that are monogamous well I think language helps in pair bonding I certainly do and given that I think the capacity for language and the capacity for concealed ovulation came as the result of one mutation and the ability of symbolically create contracts date of missiles so you could consider marriages like a contract and a way of saying I own how you possess me so I'm just really I think that's an interesting one to talk about so yeah I do like what you say about mathematics is unblemished I think there's something very pure about math and when people ask about reality I think it ultimately comes down to one plus one equals two and from that everything flows kind of refreshing to see that because you were talking about that in the context of lies and how math is kind of like impervious to that I mean they say you can lie with statistics but that's not math itself that's us doing something with the results of math I I think that's the mathematical thing is fascinating the purity of that yes and so we have about a minute and a half left here and I'm not going to go anything else because we'll go over time and I will just say to folks who are listening to this and watching it you want to read everything up to chapter eight of course before we read chapter eight but when you get to chapter eight it's just so full of interesting information it's not the climax but it certainly takes off do you know how that chapter came to be there was a friend in California who's interested in linguistics and she was coming to visit me she said oh Heather let's have a salon we'll invite a bunch of your friends over and we'll discuss the evolution of language between lasagna and the cheesecake and so then I started reading up on the evolution of language prior to Sarah's visit and that was the origin of this chapter related to food always of course there would be an opportunity to come back and visit this chapter because this segment could have been three times as long but anyways thank you very much and we'll be coming back for chapter nine which is called can we rewrite the script so thank you folks thanks yeah I did