Globularization and Domestication

Benítez‐Burraco, Antonio; Theofanopoulou, Constantina; Boeckx, Cédric

doi:10.1007/s11245-016-9399-7

Cited by 39 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 161 publications

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“…As discussed in detail by Benítez-Burraco et al (in press) SOX9 interacts with BMP2, BMP7, DLX2 , and HES1 . All of them are core components of the network believed important for globularization and language-readiness (reviewed in Boeckx and Benítez-Burraco, 2014a).…”

Section: Asd and The Genetics Of The Domestication Syndromementioning

confidence: 87%

Language Impairments in ASD Resulting from a Failed Domestication of the Human Brain

2016

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Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are pervasive neurodevelopmental disorders entailing social and cognitive deficits, including marked problems with language. Numerous genes have been associated with ASD, but it is unclear how language deficits arise from gene mutation or dysregulation. It is also unclear why ASD shows such high prevalence within human populations. Interestingly, the emergence of a modern faculty of language has been hypothesized to be linked to changes in the human brain/skull, but also to the process of self-domestication of the human species. It is our intention to show that people with ASD exhibit less marked domesticated traits at the morphological, physiological, and behavioral levels. We also discuss many ASD candidates represented among the genes known to be involved in the “domestication syndrome” (the constellation of traits exhibited by domesticated mammals, which seemingly results from the hypofunction of the neural crest) and among the set of genes involved in language function closely connected to them. Moreover, many of these genes show altered expression profiles in the brain of autists. In addition, some candidates for domestication and language-readiness show the same expression profile in people with ASD and chimps in different brain areas involved in language processing. Similarities regarding the brain oscillatory behavior of these areas can be expected too. We conclude that ASD may represent an abnormal ontogenetic itinerary for the human faculty of language resulting in part from changes in genes important for the “domestication syndrome” and, ultimately, from the normal functioning of the neural crest.

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Section: Asd and The Genetics Of The Domestication Syndromementioning

confidence: 87%

Language Impairments in ASD Resulting from a Failed Domestication of the Human Brain

2016

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“…However, the last stages of the process, and the transition from Neanderthal to AMH skull-shape (more globular), might have been driven by language. Some authors argue that globularization may have originated in 'self-domestication' with associated neotenization, affording better neural connectivity, and they highlight wide networks of genes potentially involved in this process [36][37][38][39]. However, the recent reanalysis of 300 ky early AMH skulls from Morocco shows that these skulls do not have a fully globular shape despite their fully modern faces [3 ,40 ].…”

Section: Functional Genetic Differences Between Amh and Neanderthalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neanderthal language revisited: not only us

Dediu

Levinson

2018

Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences

110

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Here we re-evaluate our 2013 paper on the antiquity of language (Dediu and Levinson, 2013) in the light of a surge of new information on human evolution in the last half million years. Although new genetic data suggest the existence of some cognitive differences between Neanderthals and modern humans -fully expected after hundreds of thousands of years of partially separate evolution, overall our claims that Neanderthals were fully articulate beings and that language evolution was gradual are further substantiated by the wealth of new genetic, paleontological and archeological evidence briefly reviewed here. IntroductionIn 2013 we published a paper [1] arguing that vocal language has had a long and gradual evolution in the 1.5 my since Homo erectus, and that Neanderthals were articulate humans, not very different from us. We marshaled paleontological, archeological and genetic evidence against the saltationist view that language evolved abruptly within the last 100 ky (e.g. [2]). Since then there has been a flurry of new evidence from paleontology, archeology and ancient DNA that, we argue here, largely supports our views of a much deeper antiquity and gradualism. The human treeOne striking finding is that many human lineages were coexisting just 300 kya (including Homo naledi, Homo floresiensis, Denisovans, Neanderthals and even anatomically modern humans [3 ]), another being the degree of reticulation in the human tree evidenced by genetics. Recent data suggests that at least 50 ky of interactions on a vast geographic scale from the Levant to Siberia and Western Europe gave plenty of scope for interbreeding; Figure 1 shows some of the gene flow across the Neanderthals, Denisovans and ourselves.The ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans left Africa c. 650 kya, and by 450 kya had diverged into these two lineages, and there are indications of early Neanderthal and Denisovan interbreeding [4], and of interbreeding between Denisovans and yet another archaic hominin. The Neanderthals then interbred with anatomically modern humans (AMH) on at least three occasions, likely when AMH first came into the Levant 100-120 kya [5 ,6], and also during AMH's move into glacial Europe (c. 50 kya [7]). For example, a Siberian Neanderthal has AMH genes introgressed c. 110 kya [7], and an early AMH with Neanderthal anatomical features c. 40 kya from Romania [8] had Neanderthal ancestry just 4-6 generations before [9]. Recent data suggests that while Neanderthals and Denisovans clearly form a clade, the mtDNA groups the former with AMH due to their original mtDNA being replaced by an AMH-like lineage probably through interbreeding before c. 270 kya [10]. It is now clear that such interbreeding did leave traces in contemporary modern humans outside Africa at the level of a few percent of the genome, with regional and inter-individual variation probably due to repeated interbreeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans [5 ,11 ,12 ]. Contact between human lineages is also revealed by other lines of evidence including the oral commen...

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“…The encompassing nature of the HSD hypothesis makes it what some would call an “umbrella hypothesis”: it simultaneously explains multiple traits, with a single mechanism driving a cascade of events. Accordingly, it has received prominent media and popular science attention, and several recent publications have cited it as firmly established and used it to interpret aspects of brain evolution in humans . Overall, therefore, the HSD hypothesis deserves serious scrutiny as a likely candidate to explain patterns in human evolution.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the self‐domestication hypothesis of human evolution

Sánchez‐Villagra

Schaik

2019

Evolutionary Anthropology

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“Self‐domestication” has been invoked to understand important aspects of human evolution, integrating physiological, behavioral, and morphological information in a novel way. It proposes that selection for reduced aggression on animals undergoing domestication provides a model for selection favoring prosocial behaviors in humans and for a set of seemingly independent features, which arose as a result of developmental correlation. We review the history of the idea and examine patterns of domestication. A lack of empirical studies on evolutionary rates and variation thwarts meaningful comparison with domestication. The neural crest hypothesis for domestication has great explanatory power but it is difficult to test. We suggest a scenario in which the morphological byproducts of domestication can act as an honest signal of reduced xenophobia. Future studies should test if alternative explanations for the features deemed to result from self‐domestication are mutually exclusive and generate data to test predictions of these hypotheses.

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Globularization and Domestication

Cited by 39 publications

References 161 publications

Language Impairments in ASD Resulting from a Failed Domestication of the Human Brain

Language Impairments in ASD Resulting from a Failed Domestication of the Human Brain

Neanderthal language revisited: not only us

Evaluating the self‐domestication hypothesis of human evolution

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