Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 19/04/2007 13:21, Isaac Fried wrote:
> Peter, 
>
>
> According to the opinion of the vast majority of biologists we were 
> all, "Semites", "Aryans" etc., at one point (many many years ago) 
> exactly as intelligent as an amoeba. By the universal law of 
> continuity, one may argue, we were, at one time or another, at every 
> stage in-between. ...

Actually, no. Genetics would suggest that changes are not continuous but 
in steps. Amoebae have no legs, we have two, does that mean that we 
evolved through having half a leg then one leg? No, it doesn't work like 
that, at least I don't think so. Similarly it is genetically likely that 
human intelligence developed in a series of distinct steps rather than 
continuously, although the details must be speculative.

...
> I think you will agree with me that the phenomenon of Linguistics is 
> curious: Here you have super-intelligent, high-powered, 
> goodly-supported, vastly-educated, all-knowing, computer-toting, 
> professors ponderously discussing a language originally developed by 
> people who barely knew how to start a fire. 
No, Isaac. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire humans and 
their ancestors have controlled fire for something of the order of a 
million years. No linguist would hope to reconstruct language further 
back than 10,000 or possibly 20,000 years.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
Blog:    http://www.qaya.org/blog/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/