The document discusses the evolution of human language abilities. It argues that humans developed the ability to rotate vowels and consonants, allowing for a much larger vocabulary than monkeys which only have basic "boom boom" calls. This rotation ability emerged because humans could produce more vowels and consonants. Humans gained this enhanced articulation from mutations that made them long-distance runners, expanding their breathing and laryngeal flexibility. The author believes language evolved out of our African ancestors' ability to discriminate patterns in sensory input and form memories, and that the three major language families originated from three migrations out of Africa.

2. SIMON PRENTIS – SPEECH!
HOW LANGUAGE MADE US
HUMAN – KINDLE – 2021
The author is no phylogenist of
language and despite remarkably
interesting ideas and the a priori
assumption that all languages can say
everything in a way or another, he ignores
the following elements and that is
regrettable.
1- language is NEVER a simple
sequence of noises, not even sounds.
They are vowels and consonants from the
very start. Monkeys do not have a
language, but they have calls that are built
the same way as our words: vowels that
enable consonants to be uttered on a basic
pattern C-V-C.
2- the difference between the "calls"
of monkeys and human words is not in the
difference between sonorous or vocal
architectures of the items or units, but in
the fact that human language invented the
rotation of vowels and consonants. The
basic call of the monkeys I know is "boom"
often doubled up into "boom boom." It is a
call for attention before any meaningful call
can be uttered (note that only concerns

3. males and the researchers who studied these monkeys know that women and the young
are "speaking" when they are together, but no study has been made of their
communication or “language”: sexism at work there). You can see, and this is true of
human languages, a syllable is C-V-C with the possibility of having one consonant reduced
to zero. If the monkeys I know had had or even had in the present this rotation of vowels
and consonants (cat, bat, mat, pat, hat; cut, cot, cap, car, cam, cab, etc.) they could
produce with the means they do have in their calls at least 125 or so calls, but they only
have six or seven calls.
3- Question. Why did humans develop this rotation? Because they were able to
utter or articulate a lot more vowels (not so many more, just two or three times more than
monkeys, at times slightly more if we take into account the slight phonetic variations on
each vowel according to their environment) and consonants.
4- Question: Why were Homo Sapiens (and probably, though less, older Hominins)
able to produce many vowels and consonants? Because Homo Sapiens developed some
mutations that enabled him to become a long distance, fast, bipedal runner, and these
mutations were selected because they gave Homo Sapiens a great advantage in his
hunting in the savanna, and they had a collateral side-effect: they expanded the breathing,
articulatory and laryngeal and glottal flexibility and power with a higher level of innervation
controlled and managed by the Broca zone in the brain that is the coordinator of all
physical and physiological functions of the body. That's where Chomsky has it wrong
because he is rewriting the Old Testament of his Bible. So many Caucasian or European
linguists do the same, and note if you start from the Quran, you get the same genetic
bias.*
5- That happened when Homo Sapiens emerged from his previous ancestors,
Homo Erectus, Homo Ergaster, and now Homo Bodoensis. Neanderthals and Denisovans
descended from Homo Erectus respectively in Europe (indirectly via Homo
Heidelbergensis) and in Asia (we don't know more). Homo Sapiens was the first Hominin,
to be a long-distance bipedal runner and that happened 300,000 years ago.
6- All references to the cognitive or cultural, or whatever other names, revolution
between 70,000 (Hariri) and 45,000 years ago is from mostly Caucasian and European
research centers and researchers a way to avoid answering the simple question: where
did these Homo Sapiens come from and what communication did they have? By the way
what communication did Homo Erectus, and all his descendants have? Read what Sally
McBrearty has written and published on the subject.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0VUrC4tvqk

4. 7- Then you could avoid the Christian- or Mesopotamia-centered myth of the Tower
of Babel. The three great linguistic families in the world are the results of three migrations
out of BLACK Africa (the principle that ONLY Greenberg accepted). This erasing of the
Black African origin of humanity is pure and simple European-centered racism developed
a long time ago and linguistically devised by people like Humboldt and his Indo-Germanic
languages.
8- Your NOT starting from these simple questions lets yourself be trapped by the
Chomsky Semitic approach (meaning both Jewish and Islamic: the two religions agree on
this point: language is a divine endowment, call it genetic to sound secular). You have to
shift your thinking from common sense to a phylogenetic approach, but not the
phylogenesis of biology. In fact, the phylogenesis of sociology, anthropology, and transfer
it to linguistics: language is based on the brain's ability to discriminate patterns in what the
senses provide the brain with and to remember them, meaning identify them in the brain in
brain-code. Most animals who have a memory can do this. But man being able to develop
the articulated language we know, he is able to develop a mind (Bertrand Russell and
Buddhism) and language, meaning consonant-vowel clusters become words when they
are attached to brain-code units, and then this language will become articulated language
by embedding the communicational situation into the language itself, and that will produce
the syntax (note you do not consider ergative languages for which the main spatial
nominal element of a clause is the direct object that is submissive to or dominated by the
temporal verbal element, and the agent is only secondary, meaning it is not a direct active
agent), after the first articulation (vowels and consonants), and the second articulation
(categorization of the lexical items as spatial or temporal). That general phylogeny is, in
fact, developed in the three vast families of languages: Semitic or Afro-Asiatic root
languages; isolating or character languages; and synthetic-analytical languages that can
be either Turkic agglutinative languages or Indo-European and Indo Aryan languages (and
Sanskrit is the ancestor of only the Indo-Aryan ones: there is a deeper original language
that was common to all these people before they left the Iranian Plateau around 10-12,000
years ago, maybe slightly more, but after the peak of the Ice age, and these people arrived
on this Iranian Plateau and stayed there sometime around 45,000 years ago, arriving from
Black Africa of course.
9- My practice with languages like French, English, German, Pali, and a few others I
practice as a linguist like Sumerian and Maya, is that you CANNOT translate the meaning
of one language into any other language that easily and faithfully: it is not enough to be a
black woman to be able to translate the poetry of a black poetess: translation is a
profession that is not and should not be limited if not defined by any racial, cultural,
gender, sexual, religious or philosophical parameters. One example: "to be or not to be
that is the question." You can get what Deepl would give you: in French "être ou ne pas
être, telle est la question." And the goal value of "to" repeated twice and negated the
second time is not translated (is "not to be" and "to not be" the same thing?). In German:
"Sein oder nicht sein, das ist hier die Frage." the loss of the goal or targeting meaning is
even worse. And in both cases, the value of the stressed "the" in italics and with a special
pronunciation that no actor would miss is of course lost. In French and German, it is as if
the original was "being or not being, that is the question" with no emphasis on "the" and a
loss of goal or targeting value with the two gerunds, if they are gerunds since they might
be present participles since we do not have one single element to differentiate them as
gerunds or present participles. I only took three languages that are remarkably close since
English is a 50-50 mixture as for its French or Germanic origins.

5. I think Simon Prentis could really enrich a symposium on the subject of teaching
foreign languages and translation. He surely would generate a deep discussion.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
VERSION FRANÇAISE
L'auteur n'est pas un phylogéniste du langage et malgré des idées
remarquablement intéressantes et le postulat a priori que toutes les langues peuvent tout
dire d'une manière ou d'une autre, il ignore les éléments suivants et c'est regrettable.
1- La langue n'est JAMAIS une simple suite de bruits, ni même de sons. Ce sont
des voyelles et des consonnes dès le départ. Les singes n'ont pas de langage, mais ils ont
des cris qui sont construits de la même manière que nos mots : des voyelles qui
permettent de prononcer des consonnes sur un schéma de base C-V-C.
2- La différence entre les "cris" des singes et les mots humains ne réside pas dans
la différence entre les architectures sonores ou vocales des items ou unités, mais dans le
fait que le langage humain a inventé la rotation des voyelles et des consonnes. Le cri de
base des singes que je connais est "boom" souvent doublé en "boom boom". C'est un
appel à l'attention avant que tout appel significatif puisse être prononcé (notez que seuls
les mâles sont concernés et les chercheurs qui ont étudié ces singes savent que les
femelles et les jeunes "parlent" quand ils sont ensemble, mais aucune étude n'a été faite

6. sur leur communication ou leur "langage" : le sexisme est à l'œuvre là). Vous pouvez voir,
et c'est vrai pour les langues humaines, qu’une syllabe est C-V-C avec la possibilité
d'avoir une consonne réduite à zéro. Si les singes que je connais avaient eu ou même
avaient dans le présent cette rotation des voyelles et des consonnes (cat, bat, mat, pat,
hat ; cut, cot ; cap, car, cam, cab, etc.) ils pourraient produire avec les moyens qu'ils ont
dans leurs cris au moins 125 cris ou plus, mais ils n'ont que six ou sept cris.
3- Question. Pourquoi les humains ont-ils développé cette rotation ? Parce qu'ils
étaient capables de prononcer ou d'articuler beaucoup plus de voyelles (pas tellement
plus, juste deux ou trois fois plus que les singes, parfois un peu plus si l'on tient compte
des légères variations phonétiques de chaque voyelle en fonction de leur environnement)
et de consonnes.
4- Question : Pourquoi Homo Sapiens (et probablement, bien que moins, les
Homininés plus anciens) ont-ils été capables de produire de nombreuses voyelles et
consonnes ? Parce que Homo Sapiens a développé certaines mutations qui lui ont permis
de devenir un coureur bipède rapide longue-distance (de fond), et ces mutations ont été
sélectionnées parce qu'elles ont donné à Homo Sapiens un grand avantage dans sa
chasse dans la savane, et elles ont eu un effet secondaire collatéral : elles ont étendu la
flexibilité et la puissance respiratoire, articulatoire, laryngée et glottale avec un niveau plus
élevé d'innervation contrôlée et gérée par la zone de Broca dans le cerveau qui est le
coordinateur de toutes les fonctions physiques et physiologiques du corps. C'est là que
Chomsky se trompe car il réécrit l'Ancien Testament de sa Bible. De nombreux linguistes
blancs ou européens font de même, et notez que si vous partez du Coran, vous obtenez le
même biais génétique.
5- Cela s'est produit lorsque l'Homo Sapiens a émergé de ses ancêtres précédents,
Homo Erectus, Homo Ergaster, et maintenant Homo Bodoensis. Les Néandertaliens et les
Denisovans descendent d’Homo Erectus respectivement en Europe (indirectement via
l'Homo Heidelbergensis) et en Asie (nous n'en savons pas plus). Homo Sapiens a été le
premier homininé, à être un coureur bipède longue-distance et cela s'est produit il y a 300
000 ans.
6- Toutes les références à la révolution cognitive ou culturelle, ou tout autre nom
qu’on lui donne, entre il y a 70.000 (Hariri) et 45.000 ans, proviennent de centres de
recherche et de chercheurs principalement blancs et européens ; c'est une façon d'éviter
de répondre à la simple question : d'où venaient ces Homo Sapiens et quelle
communication avaient-ils ? D'ailleurs, quelle communication avaient Homo Erectus et
tous ses descendants ? Lisez ce que Sally McBrearty a écrit et publié sur le sujet.
7- Vous pourriez alors éviter le mythe de la Tour de Babel, centré sur le
christianisme ou la Mésopotamie. Les trois grandes familles linguistiques du monde sont
le résultat de trois migrations à partir de l'Afrique NOIRE (principe que SEUL Greenberg a
accepté). Cet effacement de l'origine africaine noire de l'humanité est un pur et simple
racisme centré sur l'Europe, développé il y a longtemps et conçu linguistiquement par des
gens comme Humboldt et ses langues indo-germaniques.
8- En ne partant PAS de ces questions simples, vous vous laissez piéger par
l'approche sémitique de Chomsky (c'est-à-dire à la fois juive et islamique : les deux
religions sont d'accord sur ce point : le langage est une dotation divine, appelez-la
génétique pour paraître laïque). Il faut passer du bon sens à une approche
phylogénétique, mais pas la phylogénèse de la biologie. En fait, la phylogénèse de la

7. sociologie, de l'anthropologie, et la transférer à la linguistique : le langage est basé sur la
capacité du cerveau à discriminer des modèles dans ce que les sens fournissent au
cerveau et à s'en souvenir, c'est-à-dire à les identifier dans le cerveau en code cérébral.
La plupart des animaux qui ont une mémoire peuvent le faire. Mais l'homme étant capable
de développer le langage articulé que nous connaissons, il est capable de développer un
esprit (Bertrand Russell et le bouddhisme : concept de « mind » en anglais) et un langage,
c'est-à-dire que les groupes de consonnes et de voyelles deviennent des mots lorsqu'ils
sont attachés à des unités de code cérébral, et ensuite ce langage deviendra un langage
articulé en intégrant la situation de communication dans le langage lui-même, et cela
produira la syntaxe (notez que l’auteur ne considère pas les langues ergatives pour
lesquelles l'élément spatial nominal principal d'une proposition est l'objet direct qui est
soumis à ou dominé par l'élément temporel verbal, et l'agent n'est que secondaire, c'est-à-
dire qu'il n'est pas un agent actif direct), et ce après la première articulation (voyelles et
consonnes), et la deuxième articulation (catégorisation des éléments lexicaux comme
spatiaux ou temporels). Cette phylogénie générale est, en fait, développée dans les trois
grandes familles de langues : Les langues sémitiques ou afro-asiatiques à racine ; les
langues isolantes ou à caractères ; et les langues synthétiques-analytiques qui peuvent
être soit des langues turkiques agglutinantes, soit des langues indo-européennes et indo-
aryennes (et le sanskrit n'est l'ancêtre que des indo-aryennes : il y a une langue originelle
plus profonde qui était commune à tous ces peuples avant qu'ils ne quittent le plateau
iranien il y a environ 10-12 000 ans, peut-être un peu plus, mais après le pic de la période
glaciaire, et ces peuples sont arrivés sur ce plateau iranien et y sont restés il y a environ
45 000 ans, arrivant d'Afrique noire bien sûr.
9- Ma pratique avec des langues comme le français, l'anglais, l'allemand, le pali, et
quelques autres que je pratique en tant que linguiste comme le sumérien et le maya, est
que vous NE POUVEZ PAS traduire le sens d'une langue dans une autre langue aussi
facilement et fidèlement : il ne suffit pas d'être une femme noire pour pouvoir traduire la
poésie d'une poétesse noire : la traduction est une profession qui n'est pas et ne devrait
pas être limitée, voire définie par des paramètres raciaux, culturels, de genre, sexuels,
religieux ou philosophiques. Un exemple : "Être ou ne pas être, telle est la question". Vous
pouvez obtenir ce que Deepl vous donnerait : en français "être ou ne pas être, telle est la
question." Et la valeur de but de "to" répétée deux fois et niée la deuxième fois n'est pas
traduite (est-ce que "not to be" et "to not be" ont la même valeur ?). En allemand : " Sein
oder nicht sein, das ist hier die Frage. ", la perte du sens de but ou de visée est encore
pire. Et dans les deux cas, on perd bien sûr la valeur du " le " accentué, en italique et avec
une prononciation spéciale que ne manquerait aucun acteur. En français et en allemand,
c'est comme si l'original était “being or not being that is the question" sans accent sur "the"
et une perte de valeur de but ou de visée avec les deux gérondifs, si ce sont des gérondifs
puisqu'ils pourraient être des participes présents puisque nous n'avons pas un seul
élément pour les différencier comme gérondifs ou participes présents. Je n'ai pris que trois
langues qui sont remarquablement proches puisque l'anglais est une fusion 50-50 quant à
ses origines françaises ou germaniques.
Je pense que Simon Prentis pourrait vraiment enrichir un symposium sur le thème
de l'enseignement des langues étrangères et de la traduction. Il susciterait sûrement une
discussion approfondie.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

9. SIMON PRENTIS’S
RESPONSE
Cher Jacques
Merci pour votre longue réponse et votre critique rapide de mon livre posté sur
Amazon. Vous devez lire très vite ! Si vite, en fait, que je me demande si vous n'avez pas
en fait mal interprété certains de mes points clés. Permettez-moi de prendre les vôtres à
tour de rôle en guise de réponse :
1 - Que sont les voyelles et les consonnes, sinon des sons ? Ou même des bruits ?
Comme l'indique le mot chinois qui les désigne, les voyelles sont le "son originel" dont
dérive tout le langage, et les consonnes sont simplement les barrières qui permettent de
former des syllabes - les syllabes étant les éléments constitutifs des mots, qui forment la
base de la parole. Je ne comprends pas la distinction que vous faites.
2 - Ce que vous décrivez comme "la rotation des voyelles et des consonnes" est ce
que j'entends par un système digital. La seule différence entre le langage humain et la
communication animale est le fait que nous avons pris les sons holistiques (et/ou les
bruits) que nos premiers ancêtres devaient produire, et que nous avons progressivement
appris à les utiliser comme des "chiffres" - c'est-à-dire des unités interchangeables qui
peuvent ainsi permettre la formation d'un grand nombre de groupes de sons
systématiquement mnémotechniques que nous appelons des mots.
3 - Nous avons développé cette "rotation" parce que c'est un moyen plus efficace
de communiquer, d'un point de vue mathématique - tout comme l'ADN a développé un
système digital pour transmettre l'information. Cela n'a rien à voir avec le fait d'avoir plus
de voyelles. L'espagnol, comme le japonais, n'a que cinq voyelles. Les Pirahã et les
Rotokas n'en ont que trois, et se débrouillent très bien. Et comme vous devez le savoir, on
a découvert que les babouins étaient capables d'articuler au moins cinq voyelles
différentes : thetimes.co.uk/article/baboons-five-vowels-suggest-early-origins-of-language-
gxmx8nv6w
4- Je suis certainement d'accord avec vous pour dire que Chomsky a tort.
Complètement dans l'erreur. Cependant, si vous présentez la théorie du "coureur de la
savane" comme la raison pour laquelle les hominidés ont pu devenir plus productifs
vocalement, je dirais que nous sommes plus dans le domaine de la spéculation que dans
celui de la science. Nous ne pouvons pas le savoir. Tout ce que nous pouvons dire avec
certitude, c'est que le langage humain est digital par nature, et examiner les
considérations théoriques qui ont pu conduire à cela.
5 - La plus importante d'entre elles est l'amélioration spectaculaire de la
communication et du partage de l'information. Ce seul fait constitue un puissant motif

10. évolutif pour sélectionner des cerveaux adaptés à une meilleure reconnaissance des
formes et aux compétences de production orale nécessaires au développement du
langage. Question : pourquoi le cerveau humain s'est-il développé si rapidement au cours
des deux derniers millions d'années environ ? L'explication la plus parcimonieuse est
l'émergence du langage.
6- McBrearty : oui, en effet. Je ne suis certainement pas en désaccord.
7- Nous sommes sur la même longueur d'onde.
8- Mais mon cher Jacques, l'absurdité de l'argument de Chomsky est précisément
ce que je pointe du doigt. La seule différence avec ce que vous dites, c'est que mon
approche " phylogénique " est ancrée dans les mathématiques et l'efficacité des systèmes
digitaux - la méthode caractéristique de la nature pour traiter le transfert d'information, que
ce soit au niveau moléculaire, génétique ou linguistique. Quant au fait de ne pas discuter
des "langues" ergatives (qui sont difficiles à classer d'un point de vue puriste), mon intérêt
est d'élucider une base plausible pour l'origine de la parole, donc la façon dont nous avons
élaboré la syntaxe et la grammaire au fil du temps n'est pas de mon ressort.
9 - La question est plutôt la suivante : TOUTE langue peut-elle traduire le sens
facilement et fidèlement ? Mon point de vue fondamental, tel qu'il est exposé dans mon
livre, est que tout langage est une traduction - une traduction d'idées et de sentiments dont

11. nous ne pouvons prendre conscience qu'au moyen du langage, mais pour lesquels le
langage n'est jamais qu'un piètre substitut. Nous patinons tous sur la glace fine des
gémissements chorégraphiés, et toute tentative d'argumenter la supériorité ou l'unicité
d'une représentation unique est une course folle, une course dont la folie est la tâche
principale de mon livre.
Je vous remercie de votre invitation à votre symposium, qui semble intéressant - je
suis en principe intéressé à y participer. Je crains que mon français ne soit pas assez bon
pour me permettre de faire une présentation dans votre langue, mais si l'anglais (ou le
japonais) vous convient, je serais heureux d'envisager de le faire.
Avec mes meilleurs vœux,
Simon
MY TRANSLATION FOR
ENGLISH-SPEAKING
PEOPLE
Dear Jacques
Thank you for your long answer and your quick review of my book posted on
Amazon. You must read very quickly! So fast, in fact, that I wonder if you haven't actually
misinterpreted some of my key points. Let me take yours in turn by way of response:
1 - What are vowels and consonants, if not sounds? Or even noises? As the
Chinese word for them indicates, vowels are the "original sound" from which all language
is derived, and consonants are simply the barriers that allow us to form syllables –
syllables being the building blocks of words, which form the basis of speech. I don't
understand the distinction you are making.
2 - What you describe as "the rotation of vowels and consonants" is what I mean by
a digital system. The only difference between human language and animal communication
is the fact that we have taken the holistic sounds (and/or noises) that our early ancestors
had to produce, and gradually learned to use them as "digits" – that is, interchangeable
units that can thus enable the formation of a large number of systematically mnemonic
sound groups that we call words.
3 - We developed this "rotation" because it is a more efficient way to communicate,
from a mathematical point of view – just as DNA developed a digital system to transmit
information. It has nothing to do with having more vowels. Spanish, like Japanese, has
only five vowels. The Pirahã and Rotokas have only three, and they do very well. And as
you may know, baboons have been found to be able to articulate at least five different
vowels: thetimes.co.uk/article/baboons-five-vowels-suggest-early-origins-of-language-
gxmx8nv6w
4- I certainly agree with you that Chomsky is wrong. Completely wrong. However, if
you are presenting the "savanna runner" theory as the reason hominids may have become
more vocally productive, I would say we are more in the realm of speculation than science.

12. We can't know. All we can say with certainty is that human language is digital in nature
and examine the theoretical considerations that may have led to this.
5 - The most important of these is the dramatic improvement in communication and
information sharing. This fact alone is a powerful evolutionary motive for selecting brains
suited to better pattern recognition and oral production skills needed for language
development. Question: why did the human brain develop so rapidly over the last two
million years or so? The most parsimonious explanation is the emergence of language.
6- McBrearty: Yes, indeed. I certainly don't disagree.
7- We are on the same wavelength.
8- But my dear Jacques, the absurdity of Chomsky's argument is precisely what I
am pointing out. The only difference with what you say is that my "phylogenetic" approach
is rooted in mathematics and the efficiency of digital systems – nature's characteristic
method of dealing with the transfer of information, be it at the molecular, genetic, or
linguistic level. As for not discussing ergative "languages" (which are difficult to classify
from a purist point of view), my interest is in elucidating a plausible basis for the origin of
speech, so how we developed syntax and grammar overtime is not my concern.
9 - Rather, the question is this: Can ANY language translate meaning easily and
accurately? My basic point, as stated in my book, is that all language is a translation – a
translation of ideas and feelings that we can only become aware of through language, but
for which language is never more than a poor substitute. We are all skating on the thin ice
of choreographed moans, and any attempt to argue the superiority or uniqueness of a
single representation is a fool's errand, one whose madness is the main task of my book.
Thank you for your invitation to your symposium, which sounds interesting – I am in
principle interested in attending. I am afraid my French is not good enough to allow me to
make a presentation in your language, but if English (or Japanese) is convenient for you, I
would be happy to consider doing so.
With my best wishes,
Simon

13. RE: The review
Courriel de simon : RE: The review
02/11/21 12:53
simon
à : Jacques COULARDEAU
détails
de : simon,simon@prentis.net
date : mardi 02 novembre 2021 à 12:53
à : Jacques COULARDEAU
Dear Jacques
Let the future unwrap itself indeed. We can, however, nudge it in certain directions!
One point I remain curious about. You insist that the calls monkeys make are ‘just sounds’
– and I would agree. But you also claim that language is “vowels and consonants from the
very start”.
How do you understand the transition, then?
Simon

14. RE: The review
Courriel de Jacques COULARDEAU :
RE: The review
02/11/21 18:30
Jacques COULARDEAU
à : simon
détails
de : Jacques COULARDEAU,dondaine@orange.fr
date : mardi 02 novembre 2021 à 18:30
à : simon
Vowels and consonants are linguistic concepts. To have these concepts you need
to have developed mental conceptualization and that mental conceptualization can only
exist with language (Vygotsky proved a long time ago that conceptualization is a mental
procedure of growth or maturation, hence it has a phylogenetic architecture or
development trajectory). Monkeys may have some abstract-thinking power, but they have
no way to express it without the intercession of human beings which is not natural. In
nature, they only have calls that target immediate information and expect an immediate
response that is defensive if the call is about some danger, or simply listening if it is a call
for attention.
You cannot have the concept of a circle if you have not acquired or developed the
mathematical "definition" of what a circle is. A child of 5 might have the idea of roundness
and might be able to fit a cylindrical block into a round hole but he does not know what a
circle is and won't for still a few years. Piaget and many other psychologists insist on the
fact that the concept of the conservation of a certain volume of liquid when it is poured
from one glass into another glass that does not have the same shape as the first glass is
in no way "natural" because it can only be acquired at a certain age, and three might be
precocious. All teachers know that. there is an age for everything and if you have not
acquired what you are supposed to acquire at a certain age, then it is a lot more
complicated and difficult later on. Learning how to read at the age of 75 is very difficult.
learning how to read at the age of four, five, or six, is very easy. You need to have
developed the concept of phoneme and the concept of letter, or glyph, or syllabic sign, or
whatever entities the writing system you are using has developed.
The first person who developed this concept of mental conceptualization is Bertrand
Russell in his 1920 lectures in the USA; and he is also the first one who articulates it on
sensation-perception-discrimination in the brain, whereas conceptualization is in the mind
and requires language. A dog can discriminate between entities, beings, etc, but it cannot
conceptualize since it does not have language. That leads to the question about music or
painting. Is music a conceptualization of emotions? Is painting a conceptualization of the
entities it represents? There is no answer and if you ask the musician or the painter, then
you use language to get to something that is supposed to be before language and without
the intercession of language.
That's why I am very cautious with mathematics, and even more with physics,
because mathematical concepts are a language in themselves, and in physics, it is even
worse since the concepts are no concepts but theoretical hypothetical mental
constructions that have no value if cut off from the entities they are supposed to represent
and explain. The string theory is the best in that direction. it is a piece of a wave, but if it is
a wave it has no beginning and no end. Then they came to the idea that it has to be
circular so that it has no beginning and no end. But then what happens in the real world if
an electron is a string, a circular wave? And what is a circular wave, since all waves
before, like light waves, move along straight trajectories (are they straight by the way,

15. really straight in a systematic curved universe?), and yet it is able to avoid some obstacles,
and its unchangeable speed can be slowed down when it goes through an atmospheric
zone overloaded with many particles. ETC, and what happens to it if it falls into a black
hole? Mathemaétics is simple. Physics is another basket full of spiders.
You can and may develop a headache with all such ideas. Relax and listen to the
latest CD by Jakub Jiosef Orlinski, "Anima AEterna."
Jacques
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
8 rue de la Chaussée
63880 OLLIERGUES
mob: 07 88 84 22 57
bur: 09 64 04 91 66
dondaine@orange.fr
https://univ-paris1.academia.edu/JacquesCoulardeau
https://jacquescoulardeau.medium.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacques-coulardeau-22b680a/
RE: The review
Courriel de simon : RE: The review
02/11/21 19:11
simon
à : Jacques COULARDEAU
détails
de : simon,simon@prentis.net
date: mardi 02 novembre 2021 à 19:11
à : Jacques COULARDEAU
‘Physics is a basketful of spiders’. Nice. It certainly is!
With respect, though, you have dodged the question. How did we move on from analog
animal communication to digital human language? Answer, by combining an existing repertoire of
analog (holistic) sounds and using them in digital (discrete) combinations. Whether you call them
vowels and consonants is simply a question of nomenclature; the facts are indisputable. Why did

16. we do it? Because communication is exponentially more efficient that way, and the ability to share
detailed information initiates a paradigm shift in consciousness (and thus the key to the so-called
‘cognitive revolution’). And once you’re on that path, the evolutionary advantage intelligence over
strength is absolutely clear. And that is what we see in the fossil record: rapid brain growth (to the
point of making childbirth a life-threatening activity) and reduced muscular strength. You might like
this, which makes the point in terms comprehensible to the YouTube
generation: www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKdRlt6YL30
If not that, then what?
Simon
From: Jacques COULARDEAU
Sent: 05 November 2021 21:10
To: simon
Subject: Before uploading
Dear Simon,
Here is the file on your book and the discussion behind it and some images and
suggestions about a deeper approach to prehistory, provided we finally try to understand
women's spiritual and survival role in the full emergence of Homo Sapiens over the last
300,000 years.
And like all Jacques, I must hit the road but don't worry I will be back and "we shall
meet again" (Queen Elizabeth II)
Take care wherever you might be and do not get lost in translation.
Jacques
envoyé : 5 novembre 2021 à 23:30
de : simon <simon@prentis.net>
à : Jacques COULARDEAU
<dondaine@orange.fr>
objet : RE: Before uploading
Dear Jacques
When you say “before uploading” – to where, exactly? I note that you have not
asked my permission to use any of the material, or the photographs obtained from my own
website – and those of others. I mention this not because I am particularly concerned – it
is all in the public domain – but I believe it would have been a common courtesy to do so,
at the very least.
That aside, you are still dodging my question: how do you understand the process
of evolution from non-articulated analog communication to articulated human speech to
have taken place? Even assuming that the physiognomic changes you identify were
necessary before language could happen (a rather large assumption), it seems to me that
you are still in the same boat as Chomsky when you further assume that the key
component was “a brain able to construct a mind both producing and produced by
articulated language.” How and why would we have possibly have acquired one?
Given how little we actually know about how the brain works, certainly at the kind of
granular level necessary to understand what might actually have been required, I continue
to maintain that my analysis not only makes much more sense, but is considerably more
parsimonious in terms of the assumptions involved: ie that the key change required to

17. make speech possible was a (gradual, but nonetheless exponential) shift from analog to
digital communication, the benefits of which in terms of the capacity to share information
are sufficient on their own to explain the otherwise puzzlingly rapid growth of the human
brain compared to all other mammals.
What say you to that?
Simon
From: Jacques COULARDEAU
Sent: 06 November 2021 00:42
To: simon
Subject: RE: Before uploading
Dear Simon,
First of all, we are before uploading, meaning I have not uploaded yet, which means
you can ask questions and I can answer. I have just uploaded another piece of research:
Psycho-Linguistics in this Brave New World
https://jacquescoulardeau.medium.com/psycho-linguistics-in-this-brave-new-world-
ae8fcfaaa097
https://www.academia.edu/61071743/Psycho_Linguistics_in_this_Brave_New_World
https://www.slideshare.net/EditionsLaDondaine/psycholinguistics-in-this-brave-
new-world
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355945715_Psycho-
Linguistics_in_this_Brave_New_World - DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.22814.66881
ISAPL Bulletin XXV n. 1 October, 2021
This issue begins with Dr. J. Coulardeau’s, ISAPL Vice-President, ISAPL News, also in
French, calling for contrinutions to the 13th ISAPL International Congress and his contacts
with international institutions and persons and respective results. We also began
publishing the first ISAPL members’ papers, this time, Prof. I. Panasiuk’s paper
“Translation Process from the point of view of translation polyvariety” under the translation
didactics aspect, aimed at determining the translation process cognitive mechanisms, and
J. Lanier’s works review by Dr. J. Coulardeau, specifically, Lanier’s 2017 book, Dawn of
the New Everything, Encounters with Reality and Virtual Reality, his 2011 book, You Are
Not a Gadget: A Manifesto, and his 1994 CD, Instruments of Change. We finisg this issue
with a submission deadline extended, calling for texts, inspired by the discussions held
during the 12th ISAPL International Congress to Signo journal, n. 88, v. 47, 2022.
Publication Date: 2021
Publication Name: ISAPL Bulletin
Translation Studies, * Languages and Linguistics, * Virtual Reality (Computer Graphics), *
Foreign languages, * Jaron Lanier
There is my answer to WHERE
If anyone has an objection to using some pictures, they can always block them and
I will take them down, though I am referring to the fair use conditions (four as far as I
know) of the copyright laws in the USA. Most of the sites I am using are American. It is
courteous to ask not for permission since fair use is allowed by the law but to inform the
concerned persons, which I am doing as for you. And anyway the Internet tells me the
pictures that can be licensed, meaning they are not open to fair use or in the public
domain. I have published thousands of pages on the copyright laws and regulations in the

18. world, even since before the invention of the word in the 16th century under Bloody Mary. I
started my exploration and teaching of this lilberty with The Normans in England, hence
the 11th century.
As for the other question, you must understand it would take days to even come
close to opening the book where we could find the answer to the question the way you ask
it. A convention or a long seminar with only people vastly advanced in the subject might
come to something like the beginning of a hypothesis. True enough I am a little bit less
Jewish than Chomsky but not much. Yet never do I say the language even the ability to
speak is genetically inherited. It is developed from the genetic elements Homo Sapiens
developed to adapt to his hunting in the savanna and surviving with such a physical
handicap that I cannot imagine really how he did it. And then the question is survival. With
the present climate crisis, we will/shall/should see if they are still able to survive? Maybe a
few millions but certainly not the whole of humanity. We are only at the beginning of it and
we discover that the main causes of our problem are first cyclical in the earth phylogeny,
second mostly the result of our own development, starting with CO2 and hence
industrialization, and going on with methane and then cattle raising of any sort. To survive
we are going to be forced to stop eating meat, or what about lab-meat?
You seem though to ignore Neanderthal brain is/was bigger than ours and we must
not consider the size of the brain, but first of all the size of the grey matter of the brain in
connection with, and in proportion to the mass of the body. I just read a report on a female
diver working on whales and with whales who was protected and saved from a tiger shark:
two humpback whales took care of the woman and of the shark. They do not have an
articulated language of the human type, yet they have a "musical" communication that is
apparently very well built and is expressive though no one has so far even tried to crack it.
You in fact do not take into account the basic Darwinian principle: our organs, all organs in
all animals, and even in plants, are the result of the attempt to survive in a situation that is
always hostile, and to survive, mutations have to take place. They are absolutely
haphazard, but the selection is only the result of the advantages they give to the
individuals in the struggle to survive. And as Darwin said, it is women who select those
who are going to survive and spread their mutations to the community.
If women were finally taken into account we would understand that Neanderthals
had to disappear since the Neanderthal women who copulated with Homo Sapiens men
and gave birth to children were automatically integrated into the Homo Sapiens community
to provide for the child, and the proof is in us. If it had not happened like that our genes
would not have been dynamized by these new genetic elements that we are still carrying
and the Neanderthals would have benefitted from new genetic elements from us and they
would have been able to survive. We might have disappeared.
As soon as an animal is able to discriminate beings, colors, entities, etc, they have
the discriminatory competence of any brain that could lead to conceptualization, provided
they could develop an articulated language (that provides thousands of items and not a
dozen calls). But monkeys cannot do this. They can only manage to express themselves in
human terms when they are taught to use other ways to put names on things they cannot
naturally name: they use cubes, they use symbols, they can recognize numbers (Arabic
numbers. It was never tried with Maya numbers) and letters and can spell simple words
like cat, hardly beyond: try serendipity, which is the name of a hotel in Sigiriya, Sri Lanka.
And is it spelling or associating visual elements representing the sounds of the word?
Human language is not visual. It is auditory and it only became visual with writing which
was invented something like 6 or 7 thousand years ago. In Le Louvre there is supposed to
be a Babylonian tablet with cuneiforms elements though not the cuneiform writing system
that the Sumerians will develop. This tablet coming from Romania is dated back to 6,000
BCE. In the same way, Marshack studies some of the artifacts he found in pre-ice-age-
peak caves or even in Magdalenian caves with marks that he discovered were cyclical and

19. he identified them to lunar cycles. His male chauvinistic mistake. The number of days they
cover has nothing to do with eclipses, the only frightening events concerning the moon, but
with the menstrual cycle of women, which meant survival and expansion with a 50% death
rate before the age of 3. To develop all these elements to survive in an extremely hostile
universe with their extremely weak physical body, they had to use something else than
their physiological organs. They have to enter what Bertrand Russell perfectly identified:
sensations-perceptions-brain-code and then develop the virtual mind and the virtual
language and both led them to conceptualization and I dare say that the big migrations of
Homo Sapiens were not possible without that communication ability, and since Homo
Erectus migrated the same way, I wonder about what level of communication ability they
had. It is absurd science to imagine Hominins managed to survive for hundreds of
thousands of years, some even close to one million, and migrate all over the world without
having a communication ability, though they could not have articulated language since
they could not utter more than three vowels and maybe half a dozen consonants. If they
had had the rotation of vowels and consonants they could have had a lexicon of a few
hundred words enabling some communication with Humming as Stephen Mithen says and
body language. The brain is the consequence of the general evolution of the species and
not the condition to that evolution. Now stop being logical. That is good enough for
mathematics and physics, and just be realistic and wonder how between 13 and a
maximum of 29, women could bring three children to a full procreative life of 29 years
average, with a 50% death rate in infancy (plus the death of some delivering women, etc)
and an extra 25% in childhood and of course also after puberty and adulthood at the age
of 13. That means a pregnancy and delivery every 18 months. Then wonder how all these
children who had to be breastfed for one full year could be taken care of and by whom. Of
course not men. So what is the consequence on women, and why are 75% of the
handprints in the caves ALL OVER THE WORLD handprints of women and children, very
few men. And procreation is so important that it has to be ritualized in a way or another,
hence the artifacts Marshack studied: you have to know the menstrual cycle by heart to be
sure of the four or five days in every cycle when the woman is going to be fertile.
Archaeologists, most of them, are totally locked up in an unrealistic male-centered
approach of real survival and human life in those frighteningly difficult conditions. I have
spent now more than forty years on these questions and I am just starting to be heard here
and there, though not by the top mandarins in the top elitist universities in this world. That
is why the 21st century will be the Asian century, especially when you see the Americans
are not even able to keep their nuclear submarines safe as soon as they get down into the
water - of the South China Seas of course. 60% of the missiles they launched against
Syria ended down in the Mediterranean sea or anywhere on the ground because the
Russians were able to hack the commanding units of these missiles, and the missiles
themselves. Do you want to trust those technocratically scientifically distorted minds? We
have to be realistic to survive, and One-third of France's schools are back to mandatory
masks. I would not be surprised if a certain level of confinement was imposed for
Christmas and New Year. The sanitary pass will be compulsory up to July 31. That's
realistic. Either science is realistic, or it is doomed to be rejected, and that's when it
becomes dangerous.
You are bringing up some interesting questions but your method is for me upside
down. The development of the brain is the result of the survival evolution, and by the way,
we do not know the structure of the brain of Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo Erectus,
and emerging Hiomo Sapiens. Was the structure of the latter's brain the same as the
structure of our brain today? We cannot even answer this question. But we can see the
marks of his intelligence and communiocational power in his migrations, his burials, his
use of ochre, his weapon and tool production, his beads and so many things hundreds of
thousand years before the phantasmagoric cognitive revolution around 70,000 BCE. Even

20. Hariri, under fire from his colleagues, me among others, is now pushing this date back to
beyond 100,000 years which means before the last two migrations out of Black Africa.
And of course, ideas are not protected, only the formal expression into which you
way pour them. Yes I loot the work of so many, and I say so most of the time, but I work
from a set of hypothetical principles no one has used before me, including among linguists
and anthropologists. As for that Lévi-Strauss has it wrong when he says the language of
the stories is not important. Of course, it is and these stories should be studied in their
original languages of course. Lévi-Strauss is big enough to be wrong on an essential
element.
Good night. It is time to read some Stephen King before sinking into nightmares.
Take care
Jacques
envoyé : 6 novembre 2021 à 02:47
de : simon <simon@prentis.net>
à : Jacques COULARDEAU
<dondaine@orange.fr>
objet : RE: Before uploading
Dear Jacques
Re my question, I ask because I believe that my take on the question of how we
shifted to articulated language offers a clear and unambiguous solution to the problem that
has not been previously advanced. I have recently been in correspondence with Steven
Pinker, and he agrees with me. Rather than repeating myself, I would ask you to explain,
as simply as possible, what part of the argument advanced in my video (which simplifies
the reasoning as far as I dare) do you not agree with?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKdRlt6YL30
The idea that the human brain achieved its extraordinary rapid growth simply as an
adaption to tough environmental circumstances is not plausible without language for two
reasons: 1) why would we not see this in other species? and 2) how would we achieve it
whilst simultaneously losing muscle mass and physical strength without the ability to
cooperate with each other that only language could enable?
Simon
Courriel de Jacques COULARDEAU :
RE: Before uploading
06/11/21 09:33
Jacques COULARDEAU
à : simon
Dear Simon,
The answer is bipedalism that started with Lucy and that transformation took
several million years to be reached totally by Homo Sapiens who became a runner,
whereas Homo Erectus was a walker. If you go on with this question you will only have
one answer: Michio Kaku. The whole universe starting with Big Bang and probably before
was only devised (by whom) to be able to produce the Human species: anthropomorphic
creationism or teleology. That leads nowhere except to the string theory and then to
circular strings like snakes biting their tails. Even Hawking smiled at this approach

21. because it is stating there is some kind of destiny in the universe. Meditate his last words
in his time history: do we really need God?
The second element physicists do not capture is the acceleration of evolution in
Homo Sapiens, or better in Hominins. And once again the first step (proper word) is the
restructuring of the foot for bipedalism, walking first and then finally running. And it is this
running that determined IN WOMEN their narrowing hips, hence their premature birth-
giving, hence the dependence of children, hence the necessity of a collective child-raising
labor division, etc. Then collaboration and a collective organization became necessary,
hence communication. Once again the narrowing hips of Homo Sapiens women is unique
in cosmic history, at least that we know of. and that explains why all other species
including older extinct hominin species did not develop into beings similar to Homo
Sapiens. In a way Homo Erectus did but he became extinct in the process. Neanderthals
survive in us, and Denisovans survive in South East Asian and Melanesian Homo
Sapiens. Or in Tibet with one genetic mutation they recapture from Denisovans. And
apparently the same mutation, the same genetic element must be present (no one tested
the idea since for everyone Homo Sapiens in South America came from Siberia, the
preposterous theory continuing the absurd Clovis theory) in the Indians of the Andes who
lived at altitudes similar to those of Tibet.
Now I have a tremendous load of research and the best way is to program in time a
symposium on the subject, or a seminar, or some collective work to be published. I am all
for a collective expression of the debate, but my starting point is linguistic and not physical,
not even biological, certainly not genetic, but my approach is phylogenetic, so I am all for
phylogenetic psycholinguistics or psychomechanics along the line of the cognitive
phylogeny of the human species, along a line opened by Marshall McLuhan.
So have a good day and back to work
Take care
Jacques

22. Child of Darkness, South Africa,
at least 240,000 years ago
Ancient child’s bones deepen mystery of
enigmatic human relative
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/sc
ience/article/ancient-childs-bones-
deepen-mystery-of-enigmatic-human-
relative
Teeth and skull fragments found in th
e maze-like recesses of a South African cave fuel debate on how Homo naledi
lived—and whether it disposed of its dead.

24. Cro-Magnon's Language:
Emergence of Homo Sapiens,
Invention of Articulated
Language, Migrations out of
Africa – Kindle Edition
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU & Ivan
EVE
ASIN: B074DXJM5C US$ 8.00 € 6.81
Cromagnon's Come out, August 1, 2017
https://www.academia.edu/34097732/Cromagnons_Come_out_August_1_2017
https://www.slideshare.net/JacquesCoulardeau/cromagnons-come-out-august-1-
2017announcement
The volume is finally available at Amazon Kindle. It is the equivalent of 760 printed pages. All the
graphs, tables and pictures have been checked. None are cut off or amputated, though some
characters from some languages like Sanskrit have been replaced by small empty squares. But there
are very few of this and they have been systematically transliterated. I am absolutely available for any
remark, question, criticism or whatever from the readers. I start working on the second part of this
research: the psychogenetics of children or learners learning their first or second languages. The first
draft of the manuscript is ready after full examination and enrichment from Ivan Eve
Research Interests:
Archaeology, Anthropology, Languages and Linguistics, Phylogeny, out of Africa human dispersals,
and Invention of language
Finally published at Amazon’s Kindle Store as one volume of 546 pages (manuscript),
including 41 pages with 514 end notes. Equivalent to 760 pages in the Kindle edition.
CRO-MAGNON will make his COME-OUT on AUGUST 1, 2017.
ASIN: B074DXJM5C US$ 8.00 € 6.81
Here are the back cover summary, the table of contents and the presentation of the authors,
plus the introduction already published at https://www.academia.edu/33739390/Cro-
Magnons_Language
BACK COVER PRESENTATION
Cro-Magnon’s language is an ambitious project in phylogenic linguistics. The
objective is to go back to the shift from animal to human articulated language. Homo
Sapiens some 300,000 years ago, found himself endowed with mutations selected by his
being a long distance fast bipedal runner: a very low larynx; a complex articulating
apparatus; a sophisticated coordinating system bringing together diaphragm, breathing,
heartbeat, legs and general body posture. These three physiological improvements
permitted new linguistic possibilities: more consonants; more vowels; a brain able to
construct a mind both producing and produced by articulated language. This developed
the ability to conceptualize and develop abstract thinking.
The phylogeny of language from a purely linguistic and cognitive point of view
activates three articulations to generate human language: vowels and consonants; the

25. morphology of the word from root to stem and then frond; the syntactic structures of
utterances. This is based on the communicational syntax conveyed by the human
communicational situation that requires the power to conceptualize, both daily procedural
communication and inter/intra-generational cognitive and didactic communication.
Homo Sapiens evolved in Africa from previous hominins (Homo Faber or Homo
Ergaster) that already migrated out of Africa to the Middle East and Central Asia where
Neanderthals and Denisovans respectively evolved from them. The nest of this evolution is
debated due to recent archaeological discoveries, but the first migration was in Africa from
sub-Saharan Africa to Northern Africa. Then out of Africa.
I assume the migrations took place every time the phylogeny of language stabilized
on the basis of each articulation. The first migration was on the basis of the simple
consonant-vowel articulation producing root languages (all consonantal root languages).
The second migration on the basis of the morphological articulation produced stems
categorized as nouns or verbs, spatial or temporal. These languages are isolating
invariable-character languages. The third migration corresponded to the production of
fronds, words syntactically categorized as functional nominals and conjugated verbals
ready to build syntactic utterances. The communicational syntax was essential to build
discourse in root language and little by little was integrated in langue itself reducing the
extension and role of discourse, and in the last forms many categories integrated in words
are exteriorized outside the words as determiners, prepositions, auxiliaries, adverbs, thus
realizing in langue abstract systems of categorizing operations and forms.
These migrations lead us to three phylogenic linguistic families: consonantal root
languages; isolating invariable-character stem languages; and agglutinative or synthetic-
analytical frond languages. These languages spread in the world along with the
successive migrations of Homo Sapiens. The answer then to the question about Cro-
Magnon’s language is simple and clear: an agglutinative Turkic set of languages and
dialects we could call Old European languages to be replaced after the Ice Age by Indo-
European languages coming from the Iranian plateau and Mesopotamia.
Follow the detail of this exploration in this book, a life-time research and exploration
and the first stage of a vaster research. The next stage is the linguistic psychogenesis of
human children and language learners. That next stage will come soon. The final stage will
be the exploration of how acculturation-deculturation-acculturation is the very human
process of human civilization and corresponds to the Buddhist birth-death-rebirth vision
invented in the other branch of Indo-Iranian languages, viz. the Indo-Aryan languages that
migrated from the same nest as Indo-European languages but east instead of west.
Product Details
Format: Kindle
Print length: 760 pages
Publisher: Editions La Dondaine;
Publication Date: 30 juillet 2017)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC & Amazon Media EU SARL.
Language: English
ASIN: B074DXJM5C
https://www.amazon.com/Cro-Magnons-Language-Emergence-Articulated-Migrations-
ebook/dp/B074DXJM5C/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1501587743&sr=1-
1&keywords=Cromagnon%27s+Language

27. PALEOLITHIC WOMEN
FOR GENDERED LINGUISTIC
ANALYSIS
ALEXANDER MARSHACK – THE ROOTS OF CIVILIZATION – REVISED
AND AUGMENTED EDITION – 1991 – A REVIEW
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Nombre de pages de l'édition imprimée : 80 pages ; Éditions La Dondaine : 8 janvier
2020 ; Vendu par : Amazon Media EU S.à r.l. ; Langue : Anglais ; ASIN : B083P5XT6R ;
Synthèse vocale : Activée ; Word Wise : Activé ; Lecteur d’écran : Pris en charge ;
Composition améliorée : Activé .
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083P5XT6R/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Coulardeau&qid=15786
00468&s=digital-text&sr=1-1 Kindle $3.89
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B083P5XT6R/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Coulardeau&qid=1578
600508&s=digital-text&sr=1-1 Kindle Edition —
https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B083P5XT6R/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_fr_FR=%C3%85M%C3%85%
C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&keywords=Coulardeau&qid=1578600575&s=digital-text&sr=1-
1 Format Kindle EUR 3,50
Alexander Marshack's book was first written in 1968 and published soon after. The
present edition I have explored was entirely re-edited and upgraded by the author in 1991.
The research, and the fieldwork, for this book, were done essentially after the Second
World War at a time when new techniques and technology were emerging in
archaeological research. Marshack assumed what was available and used that the best he
could, and as such was able to bring Ice Age archaeology to a new level of understanding.
But we must not measure what he wrote and published with the criteria and parameters
we can use today in this field where technology and actual research have been speeding
up so fast over the last ten or twenty years that have brought up more than the previous
seventy years. Yet we have to assess Marshack’s work within the context of today’s
knowledge showing not what he missed, but what he could not know, hence centering our
evaluation on what he was able to do and he could have done with what he had at his
disposal.
What appears clearly today in the field of Paleolithic archaeology is that we need to
develop two levels of analysis that were systematically missing before. The first one is
linguistic. All these paleolithic paintings, engravings, and sculptures were associated with
some language, to be described, to be designated and to be used in what probably was
serious rituals. That language was in Europe a set of Turkic dialects that have been saved
today by becoming Basque.
But the next development needed today is to understand the social, and cultural
position of women in this society only guided by the need to survive and the need to
expand. Women were the key and center of this urgency. That's what Alexander Marshack
saw and was not able to exploit, explore, understand. And that's what this book is all
about.
[…]
Chapter EIGHT: Conclusion

28. I will only give a few points of further interest.
1- Homo Sapiens emerged in Black Africa 300,000 years ago from Homo Ergaster
that had evolved there, from Homo Erectus that had migrated to the whole of Asia and
Europe after migrating to Northern Africa. Homo Erectus evolved to Homo Heidelbergensis
in Europe and then this first descendant evolved into Homo Neanderthalensis. We know a
lot less about the Denisovans who evolved from Homo Erectus in Central Asia.
2- Homo Sapiens migrated out of Black Africa in three successive migrations that
corresponded to the phylogenic evolution of language in Black Africa, each migration
corresponding to the completion of the first articulation, then the second and finally the
third. These three migrations produced three vast language families that still exist: Semitic,
isolating and agglutinative/synthetic-analytical languages
3- Homo Sapiens came into existence when he came out of the forest and had to
become a fast-long-distance bipedal runner to hunt and survive in the savanna. This
caused the selection of mutations that enabled this emergence, and these mutations
provided Homo Sapiens with a respiratory, articulatory and coordinating physiology that
made him capable of developing articulated language starting with the rotation of vowels
and consonants.
4- This evolution requires a high level of long childcare that required women to take
over this responsibility that was crucial for the survival of the species and human
communities, and that gave these women a spiritual responsibility too that made them the
artists in the caves and outside, those responsible for various rituals, particularly the rituals
that supported the Triple Womanhood of impregnation-pregnancy-delivery, and both birth
and death.
5- The capital role of childbearing for both the survival and the expansion of the
species, and the very narrow window of fertility of women in their menstrual cycles
required the communities to observe this cycle and then to ritualized the impregnation of
women, probably under the ritual management of some women elite, to guarantee these
pregnancies to happen every 16-19 months but also with the necessary interbreeding to
avoid any inbreeding, interbreeding with other Homo Sapiens groups, but also with the
Neanderthals as long as they were around, or the Denisovans in Asia.
6- This gave rise to not one single goddess but to the Triple Goddess, at times
partly or dominantly masculinized after the development of agriculture that shifted these
societies from communities with hunting territories to communities attached to the land and
with some authority managing the work of everyone and the tilling of the soil. This Triple
Goddess should be studied in detail, but some elements of ternary structure can be found
in some notations and representations in this book, or beyond.
7- The book contains the proof that the Magdalenians were starting to develop
some real writing system with the case of the “P” sign attached to the Basque horse known
in Basque a Pottoka. But the numerous notations studied by Marshack may be connected
to the Lunar cycle though the only use of this cycle that would be the prediction of eclipses
is absent from such readings. They may also correspond to the observation of menstrual
cycles, and particularly the follow-up notations of the impregnation and the first months of
the pregnancy to make sure it was going to be successful till delivery. This reading is
essential to make sure the impregnation is successful and to make sure the first months of
the pregnancy are carefully looked after to avoid miscarriages.
8- Altogether this book was important in its time to counterbalance the excessive
sexualization and eroticization of Paleolithic societies by Leroi Gourhan for example, but it
did not follow the example of Lévi-Strauss he quotes to study the language of these
communities. It is difficult to do that when language is purely oral, and we have no trace of
it. I believe we could have a lot more traces if we looked for it precisely. The case of the
sign ”P” is typical of such possibilities. It is finally interesting to understand the tremendous
burden that has to be pushed aside in this field of research and that always intervenes in

29. the name of what we know as if no new knowledge was possible. Things are changing
very fast today, but we still have many obstacles on the road to a real understanding of the
emergence of Homo Sapiens.

30. Seven Paleolithic Venuses and one lion
intruder.