Loquens : A characterization of “Hunter-Gatherers of Words”

Abstract

This paper makes three interconnected claims: (i) the "human condition" cannot be captured by evolutionary narratives that reduce it to a recent 'cognitive modernity', nor by narratives that eliminates all cognitive differences between us and out closest extinct relatives, (ii) signals from paleogenomics, especially coming from deserts of introgression but also from signatures of positive selection point to the importance of mutations that may underlie temperamental differences, which impact cultural evolutionary trajectories in specific ways, and (iii) these trajectories in turn affect the language phenotypes. In particular, they influence the development of symbolic systems and the flexible ways in which symbols combine.