Early Man and Communication

Man is classified as a primate, that is, he has a number of features which put him in the same group with, among others, the apes. As well as this classificatory relationship there exists an evolutionary one as well. The two relationships are not, in fact, separable; one presupposes the other. Man shares a common ancestor with the apes, but is certainly not descended from them, as many suppose. Estimates of the date by which we could talk of two separate families having evolved from the common stock varies between forty and sixteen million years ago. Since then, of course, the two families have continued to evolve independently.

Man's primate ancestors were tree-dwelling animals living primarily on the fruit and nuts that were to be found in the forests they inhabited. In these conditions much reliance would be put on eye and hand for swinging from branch to branch through the trees. The eyes, being set forward in the head, had overlapping visual fields. As a consequence man had developed the ability to see well three-dimensionally and to judge distances. The hand evolved in conjunction with the eye, for grasping, swinging and picking. Both hand and eye have played an important part in the evolution of man, as we shall see.

Our ancestors, like the other primates, lived in small groups, socially. Communication is a necessary part of social cohesion at whatever evolutionary level it occurs, and it would appear that these small groups were ideal for the evolution of communication systems. The communication systems depend both on a means of signaling and a means of perceiving the signals. Add to this the social conditions for communicating and also the wherewithal to interpret signals correctly and we have the four ingredients without which the systems could not operate.

What was needed on the receptor side was, first of all, keen enough vision to register the differences between the various signals. Man had developed binocular vision which was    admirably suited for such a use. One final ingredient remained to complete the system: the ability to make use of the signals and to act upon them suitably. Our ancestor's capacity for intelligent use of the information was vital. Brain and communicative abilities were evolving together.

A number of modes of signaling were available to early man. Vocal calls, facial expressions, gestures and postures all combined to act as part of the group communication system. It is said that the vocal signaling was particularly effective in the forest environment. Often these signals were used to draw attention to the gesture or expression of the individual making the call.

Of the pre-language systems, visual signaling started to become particularly important. Very complex facial musculature had evolved, which enabled a wide range of expressions to convey emotions. Facial signals evolved as a useful means of communicating and they had the added benefit of increasing social cohesion. This was because communication was dependent on at least two individuals getting, and remaining, in close contact.

Without the social conditions and the face-to-face contact the system could not have operated. Such signaling still plays a large part in our communications today. When we have difficulty in interpreting remarks on the telephone, we suddenly realize just how much our verbal conversations depend on non-verbal, visual communication.

As we have seen, each part of the total communication system, such as the visual signaling, was dependent on a number of factors. Anyone factor could place a limitation on the whole system or, by improving, could put selection pressures on the other parts to improve. This applied, of course, not only to communication but to all the characteristics involved in man's evolution.

At this point we can, as it were, step back and take a look at the selection pressures on man's ancestors thus far. He was, in some senses, a rather unspecialised animal since he had developed no special powers of offence or defence. He couldn't run fast and his teeth, hands and nails were not designed in the great carnivore tradition. These matters were not crucial, since he was living in reasonably comfortable circumstances. Fruit and nuts could be gathered in quantities within the forests, where predators could be avoided easily by using the trees for escape. In addition, his large brain and intelligent behaviour were a decided advantage, not to say a necessity, in coping with the situation. Man's, ancestors would have gained obvious selective advantages from social and communicative behaviours.

Together, the selection pressures were obviously pushing our ancestors in the direction of modern man, but at a normal evolutionary pace, that is, very slowly. What occurred to precipitate him into our modern world with such unseemly haste? Many alternative hypotheses have been put forward, stressing one aspect or other of the situation. Sociological evidence stresses social skills and co-operation; psychological evidence implicates intelligence, language and visual skills. Archaeologists point to the manufacture and use of tools as instrumental in the evolution of modern man. In fact Russian psychologists speak of language, by analogy, as a social tool. Lorenz has suggested that the domesticating effects of socialisation should be considered. In his view this process loosens the hold which instincts have on behavioural responses. In their place learning is substituted, thereby increasing the variety and adaptability of the responses.

The reader may be forgiven for becoming somewhat confused over the multiplicity of theories. The crux of the matter is that a number of structures and factors would seem to have been jointly responsible for the rapid changes that occurred. The importance of anyone factor, say language, at a given time would depend on its effect on the other factors in limiting or encouraging their improvement.

What would appear to have happened to our ancestors was that, having adapted efficiently to their forest environment without any narrow specialisation, they were capable of readapting to new conditions by elaborating on those capabilities they had already developed. In other words, such factors as intelligence, visual perception, hand -eye co-ordination, communication and social grouping all interacted to allow our opportunist forebears to lay the foundations of modern society. Language, technology, agriculture, culture can all be seen as developments of existing trends.

While this is so, we still have not attempted to explain the initial impetus, the fateful shove, which started our ape-like ancestors along this path. After all, they were reasonably well off in the forest. Why did they take to the more open steppe or savannah-like country with all its dangers? A partial answer is that a change in climate was reducing their forest habitat. Whether this forced them out into the open or whether they moved out to take advantage of new skills is problematical. Probably both factors helped.

The change to the open habitat produced fresh selection pressures in its wake. Our ancestors had to cope with great dangers from the large efficient carnivores that roamed their new habitat. They had to adapt to a new diet, containing meat, and a new way of life, hunting. They had to 'change structurally and socially to cope with life permanently on the ground.

One of the most important changes was the adoption of a bipedal gait in favour of the old quadrupedal, tree-adapted one. In more senses than one man had to learn to stand on his own two feet. With it he learned to run and hunt. Now that his arms were freed from locomotory involvement they could be used for throwing, fighting and carrying. Previously his teeth and jaws had been used for some of these purposes. Teeth and jaws could now alter to accommodate for other changes, such as the mobility required of the mouth for speech.

Standing upright gave man a greater field of vision and hence advanced warning of food and danger. Together with the freeing of the arms and hands and the ability to balance, three-dimensional vision allowed him the delicate abilities to make and use tools.

The change to a hunting life would have laid stress upon social co-operation and communicative abilities. At some point language evolved and large increases in brain size took place. It would seem that the increases in. brain volume followed rather than preceded many of the other changes; they were not dependent on it. With the emergence of language the abilities underlying it became the focus for intense selection pressures resulting in greater communicative competence. For those possessing it the faculty of language was of great survival value. Hunting and the other social activities could then be carried on much more effectively, thus enabling the community to support more individuals and to diversify its activities. (R. Gurney: Language, Brain and Interactive Processes, Edward Arnold.).

The Great Tradition And The Little Tradition

The disparity between Europe and Africa lies not so much in the community cultures of each as in the civilizations of each. Although this distinction can be traced back to Sir Henry Maine and beyond, it can best be understood in the terms given it by Robert Redfield, the American anthropologist. He claimed that there was, in all the 'old civilizations of the world' - that is, civilizations grafted on earlier cultures and peoples rather than founded anew as Anglo-American and Australian civilizations were - a disparity between a 'great tradition' and a 'little tradition', Redfield was led to this formulation by his interest in peasant cultures; unlike 'primitive' societies and unlike civilizations, the social groups that exhibit peasant cultures all depends to some degree on the existence of the 'manor' - the city or the Church or some other carrier of a 'great tradition'. The peasants – the carriers of the little tradition - do not themselves participate fully in the great tradition, although in most cases at least some of their members may move into the social groups that represent the great tradition.

Africa and Europe shared a little tradition that diverged on amazingly few points. But both areas also developed great traditions, and there it was that they most tellingly grew apart. On to a more or less common village community structure came to be grafted widely divergent institutions. In Europe the institutions of the great tradition were feudalism, the Church and its various political manifestations, the heresies and the Protestant movements, and finally the Industrial Revolution and all the changes that it wrought.

In Africa, the great tradition lay in the ideas of divine kingship, associated as it was with the major technological developments of metallurgy and ultimately of everything that follows from it. With the expansion of Arab culture across North Africa and down the east coast, the situation developed in which all of North Africa and the Eastern Horn became associated with the Near East. Arab occupation .of Europe was stopped (with a few exceptions) at the Bosporus and in the mountains of the Iberian Peninsula. Marc Bloch, the eminent French historian, has pointed out that one of the reasons that medieval Europe could develop as it did is that there was no invader to destroy European culture as it developed. We are used to thinking of the Teutonic tribes destroying Rome; we are not accustomed to realising that from the eleventh century on, there were no major invaders of Europe. The medieval civilizations - the great traditions - of Europe and those in the Sudan were in some regards alike. But the Arabs destroyed the civilizations that were developing in Africa. Had the Arabs got past the Spanish or the Turks, the medieval and modern history of Europe might well resemble that of Africa much more than it in fact does.

Moreover, Arab intrusion into Africa offered an easy path for Islamic influence once the Arabs themselves were Islamised: Islamic influence was never felt extensively in Europe except as an external factor - what Toynbee has called a 'challenge'. Africa did not 'and does not combat Islam. Christendom, through missionaries and other forces, is still combating it.

Thus, the shutting out of Africa from the European consciousness began with the desiccation of the Sahara. It was reinforced when certain aspects of Egyptian civilization came to be important influencing factors of Aegean and Greek culture, while differing aspects of the same Egyptian civilization went south to Cush and the kingdoms south of the Sahara. Then throughout the era that is known in Europe as the Middle Ages, both Europe and Africa turned inward to their own affairs, but in Africa those affairs were vastly changed by the Arab influx.

Yet through all the medieval period, there was trade - sometimes extensive trade - across the Sahara via the great kingdoms of the Sudanic areas and the peoples of the northern littoral of the African continent. We know, for example, that Africa was, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, flooded with cowrie shells which were brought by the Venetians from the Maldive Islands, and which crossed the desert. Cowries during this period became a type of currency in many parts of Africa, and ultimately became so plentiful that their value underwent serious deflation; in the most important centres they all but lost their value. We knew also that the flow of Negro slaves across the Sahara never totally ceased. Comparatively few got as far as Europe, but some did. During the period that European civilizations were largely cut off from the civilizations of Asia Minor and India, the commerce and other interrelationships of Asia Minor and India, and the commerce and other interrelationships between eastern Africa and Asia were at their height. It begins to look as if Europe were the Dark Continent.

When Europe began to rediscover Africa, along with her rediscovery of the rest of the world, a series of occurrences took place that made smooth and amicable relationships between the peoples of the two continents almost impossible. If we follow tradition and take the exploration voyages sponsored by Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal as our starting point, we discover that the exploration of Africa can be thought of as a continuation of the movements that began when the Iberians organised to force the Arabs out of the peninsular. In the years after 1407, when Prince Henry of Portugal took part in the sacking of Ceuta, opposite Gibraltar, he formed an academy and was instrumental in letting out on contract the task of exploring the west coast of Africa. His explorers received certain rights and rewards in exchange for claiming these areas in the name of Portugal and more specifically for bringing back items that could be used in national (not to say royal) trade. Among the earliest imports into Portugal were Moorish slaves. Negro slaves were not far behind.

In the next two or three centuries the exploration of the African coastlines was tied irretrievably with the slave trade. As we shall see, slavery is an African institution which has peculiar forms that are totally unlike the institutions of servility that were found in medieval Europe. For this reason, there was an effective misunderstanding between Africans and Europeans about just what slavery consisted of, and yet Africans were able, because they had a tradition of slavery, to exist and even to prosper in a slave situation. This fact led Europeans to state that they considered Africans to be 'natural' slaves and 'born' hewers of wood and drawers of water. As we have seen in our investigation of the development of racial attitudes, this idea very quickly implanted itself and led to disdain on the part of Europeans for Africans and African culture.

The abolition of the slave trade added fuel to the fire. For all that it was a humane movement and one which the modern world of that time had to undergo in order to develop industrialism to the point that it desired, the way in which it was carried out was ultimately most uncomplimentary to Africans and destructive to the relationships existing between Africans and Europeans. As we have seen, minimal claims were made for Africans - they were, after all, 'fellow creatures' and the implication was left that they might not be much more.

The situation was certainly not improved by the explorers of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These men, who were driven out of the European cultures which culminated in the strictures of the Victorian era, were, for the most part, either malcontents or men of overweening ambition searching for position and power. Such men were in no position to understand or even to perceive the intricacies of African civilization or the basic similarity between the 'little traditions' - the peasants - of Africa and those of Europe, although some of them - Mungo Park and David Livingstone - did see the similarities. Men like Cruickshank and Winterbottom also could see what they were dealing with and reported fully and correctly. The same could be said, however, for very few.

It was in this era that the idea of the Dark Continent – the phrase was Stanley's - came to the fore. With the exploration and with the expansion of the West which accompanied industrialisation and the vast social and cultural changes then going on, Africa was a. prime target for colonial expansion. In order for colonial expansion to take place, it became necessary to consolidate the view of African cultures as savage and barbarian in order to justify one's activities.

Europe and Africa, which had once been culturally close together, grew successively farther and farther apart. Africa, at the time the colonial empires emerged in the late nineteenth century, was thoroughly the 'Dark Continent', subject to almost all the stereotypes that remained in effect until after 1945. If one begins with Carthage, and has one's thinking dominated by events in a Europe cut off from the spread of Islam, and then by the modern colonial situation, the justification of the view becomes clear: Africa south of the Sahara is one world, and the Mediterranean is another. But the picture must be expanded at both its ends. 

(P. Bohannan: Africa and the Africans, Doubleday).

Your Rescue Mission Business

People who live in Colorado know what it means to climb mountains. On summer weekends, people troop out in casual hikers who have no idea of what they are doing. In sandals, shorts, and T-shirts, carrying a single container of water, they start up a trial at mid-morning. They have no map, no compass, and no rain gear.

Stories of tourists rescued from certain death after wandering off a trial, are told all the time. Regardless of the circumstances, Alpine Rescue always responds to a hapless tourist, “Well, since you ignored the rules of the wilderness, you’ll just have to bear the consequences”. Their mission is rescue. They pursue every needy hiker, no matter how undeserving.


The central goal of this blog is one of rescue. We’ll be pointing out in this blog that since no man is an island, and needs the help of another to succeed, all we can do just like a stranded hiker, is to call for help whenever the need arises.


Are you in need of help? Are you looking for where to find the help you need to start, grow or progress your business? Click Here FAST!