Re: Proto-World, Nostratic, etc.

From: Marc Verhaegen
Message: 227
Date: 1999-11-11

I agree with Piotr, just some comments on "habilis".
 
For discussions of fossil hominids, there are better places IMO, eg, http://www.egroups.com/group/paleoanthropology. I only want to say that the term H.habilis is used in different ways in popular books & in scientific papers. The famous fossil skull KNM-ER-1470 (with a brain size of ca.770 cc & with its supposed "speech centres" in its endocast, perhaps even some area of Broca) is nowadays not included in habilis but usu. in rudolfensis. The species habilis sensu stricto (eg, KNM-ER-1813 or OH-62) is today often included in the genus Australopithecus, and some even think that fossils like KNM-ER-1470 should not be included in Homo, but should be considered as some sort of large-brained robust australopithecine. So it's by no means certain that habilis was an ancestor of ours. H.erectus OTOH was probably very close to our ancestors.
 
Very probably there existed once a single Proto-World language at the time of the Last Common Ancestor of all living humans (sapiens), just before they first split into different groups (ca.150,000 years ago?), though we may never see this language reconstructed. Very probably the sapiens LCA ca.150,000 ya had some sort of grammaticised language. Probably our species is derived from erectus/ergaster, but whether these creatures already had some sort of speech (with or without grammar) is very doubtful. We're discussing these things & speech origins at http://www.onelist.com/community/AAT. Very interesting but very speculative. That's no problem as long as you know that you're speculating.
 
Marc