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0:02
So, it gives me enormous pleasure to welcome Cedric Boeckx to his first ever CLE, talk. And in fact, I think Cedric said that he's never been to Edinburgh, which is terrible and he still hasn't. So, he's going to have to come back when the world is more normal. Cedric is Research Professor at the Catalan Institute for Advanced Studies and a member of both the Complex Systems Institute and the General Linguistics department at the University of Barcelona. I think Cedric's importance within
0:39
our field can't be overstated. And to me on what I think about Cedric, I think he represents a really new kind of pluralistic scholar of just the sort that we really need to tackle the big questions about the nature and origins of language. And that specie's not only a highly respected within Theoretical Linguistics with several important book-length works in minimalist syntax. But also very unusually, he's also dedicated, particularly his recent career to making substantive contributions to
1:13
the biological foundations of language. Now some of you may have heard the term bio linguistics. And for a lot of us, I think that term is very rarely used properly, right? So often when you see, see the term bio linguistics, what you're actually expecting is Theoretical Linguistics with very little biology in it. But Cedric has demonstrated by example, that it is possible to bring together in a substantive way the fields of theoretical linguistics,
1:43
neuroscience, genetics, and evolutionary biology. And do it in a way that enhances all of those fields. And as such, I really can't think of any better speaker to kick-off our new series of Edinburgh lectures in language evolution. So over to you, Cedric.
2:03
Thank you, Simon. Let me first share the screen and then I'll say a few words. Can I go ahead with sharing the screen? Yep. All right.
2:18
Let's see this.
2:26
That should do it. Thank you very, very much indeed, Simon, for a very generous introduction, I don't deserve so much. Thank you very much to everyone for joining. I recognise familiar faces. Pleased about that, but also unfamiliar faces. I do want to stress something Simon said, namely, feel free to interrupt. It's probably easier if I, you know, correct something that I'm not clear about during the talk than you having to wait until the very end. And if the question is too difficult,
3:10
do ask it to Simon and he'll answer it. Instead of me. I think he'll do a good job at this. So I thought, because it's my first talk to this wonderful group in Edinburgh, to pick, as a topic, in a certain sense, what I owe to the good folks in Edinburgh, which is the topic of self domestication. So this is something that Simon introduced me to, now, five years ago, I think. This is something that has driven my research in many ways. I'd like to share those ways in which I've come
3:54
to understand self-domestication and its relationship to, to, to language evolution. So... uhm, why doesn't it work? Okay, so let's start with a quote that I would like you to keep at the back of your mind. I think a close friend of mine pointed out that I keep talking about gradualism and shades of gradualism in pretty much every talk I give these days. And this is true because I think that there really is a case to be made for what looks like a more complicated story in
4:33
the case of language evolution. So John Hawks is right then stressing that our stories cannot be reduced to release very simple narratives. Some people got the message earlier than others. So Jim Hurford in actually his three books on language evolution do have the plural in origins in it. But he's exceptionally good in this. And I think we should try to use this more often. A question I'll be asking throughout the talk in various ways is, what's the relationship between this concept of
5:15
self domestication and language evolution? And perhaps more importantly, at least that first is, what do we mean, or what do I mean by self-domestication? I put in pictures of domesticated foxes. Not because they are going to play a major role in the talk just because they're cute and I thought, you know, it would be fine to have them. Right at the beginning, you can see actually a former graduate student of mine holding one of them. And they're iconic.
5:49
And they could tell us something about, you know, what may have happened in the process of language evolution or so. I'll, I'll try to convince you. A bit more of an outline, just to warn you mainly, that at some point in the talk, things will get more complicated. That is, I'll tell you that things are not as clear as we thought. They are not as dichotomous as we thought. And they are not as simple as we thought. In particular, they are not as simple as I used to think. And bear with me,
6:26
I'll try to convince you that this doesn't mean that things are hopeless or completely messy, just means that we have to be mindful of the degree of complexity that we see when we approach a certain topic that at first seems manageable. Like, for example, this relationship between self-domestication and language evolution. Turned out that the, the concept of self domestication is one that I think is more, is less transparent than I used to think even just a couple of years ago.
7:06
And I'll try to give you reasons why that's the case. All right. Here is perhaps what has driven my research for five years on thanks assignment, I became aware of a very good PhD dissertation by James Thomas on the topic ourselves domestication and language evolution. In, in the quote that you see on the slide, James makes very clear that there is a very interesting research programme to be had between people interested in cultural evolution, people interested in
7:46
the biological underpinnings of that process. And when I read that dissertation, I thought here's something for me. Here is something that I could do since I think I grew up in a linguistic tradition that focused on the biological underpinnings of, of language. But I want... I really wanted to try to get closer to the tradition of cultural evolution, which I thought was very relevant for the study of language evolution, but I didn't quite know how to do that. And thanks to Simon
8:21
I found the dissertation that told me here is a way. I'm not saying it's the only way, but here is certainly one way in which we can actually try to marry the different traditions, where we study the biological preconditions for cultural evolution to happen. Two more quotes just to keep us motivated to really show that these explanations go hand in hand. That is, it's clear, at least clear to me, that when we look at the biological dimension of language evolution we'll very quickly meet
9:03
the need to appeal to a cultural process. And so studying the biological underpinnings of language evolution means pretty much trying to pair the good things you can find in, in different traditions that have been kept apart artificially, I think for too long. And this leads me to then question certain statements that to this day remain, I think quite, quite standard in the field. So here's an illustration that I like very much taken from another paper by Simon,
9:43
this time with Tom Scott Phillips, showing how one could conceptualise the field of language evolution compared to language change. Scott Phillips replied to Martin's blog post a few year ago, pointed out that there are three scenarios that one might want to consider in the context of language evolution and related questions. One is the biological evolution of the capacity to acquire new languages. That's a very, in a certain sense, a very familiar and Chomskyian way of putting things,
10:19
at least to me, I'm not saying it was intended that way. But then there is a scenario which is the change from very simple systems, maybe with very little syntax, into a system that is characteristically linguistic. And then there is a third scenario, which is the change from one characteristically, characteristically linguistic system to another. All right? And like I said, this is a fairly standard way of putting things. But one that I'm not sure is useful anymore because they've come
10:54
to have doubts as to where I draw the line between these various scenarios. So there is the one that is very A line that is very often drawn, for example, by Martin has failed math between language change and language evolution. All right, and I can see the, the intention behind it. But then where do you draw the line between cultural evolution and pre adaptations that made that cultural evolution possible. Thinking of James Thomas's quote,
11:29
and do you also draw a line between a situation where it's clear that language was around and another situation where it's clear that language was not around, like the no language bit at the beginning. And the part that makes it most uncomfortable right now is precisely this one. That is, I don't know of a particular stage where I can confidently state there was no language. Right. Even though as I said, this may be the most familiar statement you can encounter. I'm not sure it's so easy to draw
12:05
the line in part because I think we have lost our innocent definition of what language was as it were, that we've come to realise that language is such a complex process that there were many, many dimensions of language that evolve over very, very long time. And as a result, it's very hard to say, oh, this is the time when language was around. I think that no longer makes a lot of sense. And so this picture, even though I liked it a lot, I think,
12:40
should be modified to have more arrows in them and perhaps fewer distinctions or lines in them. And I'll try to illustrate this in various ways. So here's another way of seeing the limitations of this. In a certain sense. When people think of cognitive phylogenies, like for example, language evolution, they still think of very discrete points at which yes you have it or no you don't, or yes, this species has it. And this species, or that species doesn't have it. I think that's wrong.
13:18
I think it's pleasing at first it's reassuring, but eventually it's wrong and it's much messier. So instead of having these binary branching trees that remind me of my days as a syntactician, we should actually adopt something like, you see on top of the red line, which has a much messier process where all the factors interact together. And you will see later in the talk why I think this matters. So I said, we've lost our innocent definition of language. We have lost our innocent definition
14:00
of modern human in a certain sense, or modern human language. And as a result, all of this leads me to say that this particular way of cutting the pie into several scenarios where researchers focus on one question as opposed to know is really outdated. The way I think I can put this best is by talking to you at least a little bit, about a case that I think many of you know, namely the situation of the Bengalese finches versus the white-rumped munias, that Kazuo Okanoya made very famous.
14:40
So here you have the white Bengalese finches and the white-rumped munias next to them. The reason I think this, this situation gained importance in the field of language evolution is thanks to Kazuo's effort to show that there is a difference between the song sung by the munia and the song sung by the Bengalese finch. The way he puts it in, is in terms of complexity of now doubts whether that's the right adjective for it. But basically there is a difference. There is a clear difference
15:24
between the song of the two species. One is in a certain sense, far more variable in its transition than the other. And I think for the purposes of this talk, this is the difference that, that matters. And what I think people focused on is precisely to understand this difference between say simple and more variable, or more complex. But I think there is another lesson to draw from the research of Okanoya and colleagues on, on the Bengalese finches versus the munias.
15:59
And that is that in a certain important sense, Okanoya already stressed the need for an explanation for this difference that involves two steps as opposed to one. So the story as traditionally told, is that you get a change in sound structure because of domestication. But when you go back to the actual argument by Okanoya, domestication is not the only factor that he implicates. In particular, he's very explicit that after domestication, the female birds started to
16:44
impose selectional pressures on the songs sung by the males. And this in part contributed to the establishment of the characteristic song sung by the Bengalese finch. So there was a two-step process that Okanoya argued for. I think we would do well to adapt also in our explanations or in our attempt to draw on the domestication literature for language evolution. So domestication is one important step, but not the only one leading to a phenotype that might be of interest to linguists, right?
17:28
So bearing this in mind now comes the complicated bit, right? Again, if you think it's too complicated, just do something in the chat and Simon will help me with that. So the research on, on domestication or self-domestication in the case of humans is, I think, intimately tied to the concept of the domestication syndrome. Because the domestication syndrome was the argument used by many to motivate the notion of self domestication in humans. Briefly put, the domestication syndrome
18:07
is this idea that domesticated species display a range of phenotypic characteristics that are associated with attained behaviour. And among those various characteristics, you find reduction of face eyes. You find different shapes of the cranium. You'll find all sorts of anatomical characteristics that people pointed out may actually relate to differences that you can see in the fossil record between specimens of our species and specimens of extinct relatives like the Neanderthals.
18:46
You have a drawing on the right that just asks you to use your imagination to try to see the domestication seen in modern humans, just like you see, for example, when you look at the dog compared to a wolf. All right? And that has been a driving factor so much so that it's very hard to find, I think a study on self domestication that doesn't appeal to the domestication syndrome as the key argument for it. Alright. And in part I am responsible for this,
19:20
so you can blame me for this as much as you want. And I'll try to use this talk to tell you where I got this wrong. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have made such a strong argument for it. And I'll try to explain this to you very briefly with not, you know. A very long argument, but actually a figure that allows you to focus on a bit. So it's a figure that's taken from the famous paper by Wilkins, Wrangham and Fitch talking about the domestication syndrome and arguing that one could explain
20:02
the domestication syndrome as a biological process. And that essentially is related to a reduced neural crest input in domesticated species. Now if you look at this drawing with me, you'll see that it starts from the top right. They talk about selection for tameness. Then there is an arrow talking about reduced neural crest input. And then there's a bunch of arrows. This is where the complicated part lights. On the one hand, there is an arrow that talks about the consequence of
20:37
reduced neural crest input for structures that are basically related to hormonal behaviours, like for example, the adrenal gland. Then it talks about reduced neural crest input to other structures that roughly have to do with the face. And then there is an arrow, rather shy arrow going towards brain sides. And what's clear is that Wilkins, Wrangham and Fitch want to distinguish between, as you see at the bottom, traits that were selected and traits that were unselected by-products. Okay?
21:17
This is, this is all relatively standard if you listen to someone talking about the domestication syndrome and that to some extent is the best explanation we have for it. All right.
21:30
But it's puzzling in some ways and it's wrong in some ways. And here's why. For one thing, that this drawing starts with selection of tameness. But it doesn't say where that selection comes from. So the arrow that leads to reduce neural crest input, that's supposed to be the explanation comes after the selected trait for tameness. In other words, there is no mechanism made clear here for how tameness was selected to begin with. That's one big problem for this kind of explanation.
22:12
The other big problem has to do with something we did in our work when we try to look for signatures of selection in the genomes of domesticated species. We were hoping to see a couple of things and one of the things we're hoping for to see was evidence for this reduced neural crest input. And to some extent we did find this, in a plus one study. But it came to us as a puzzle because we asked ourselves if selection was for tameness. And if the domestication syndrome is really
22:54
the output of unselected by-products, as you see at the bottom of this, how come we find evidence for selection for neural crest effects? If these are by-products, this was a very puzzling effect. We didn't dare to say it and make a big deal out of it in the paper. Um, but I think it's become to me a bigger challenge to understand why it is that we have right at the beginning of the schema, a selection for tameness that's actually unexplained by reduced neural crest input.
23:31
And so part of the work that I've done for now several years is try to understand what exactly is happening in the context in, in the very first stages of domestication. And it looked like here, the brain is very important. So various students of mine, but perhaps most forcefully, Tom O'Rourke has argued that there are certain changes related to classes of neurotransmitters. I won't bore you with them. That really make a very first step in the domestication process that essentially
24:11
before any sign of the domestication syndrome kicks in, tameness is already in place. And I think this is very important for several reasons. For one thing, it opens the possibility that there are animals that are in the process of domestication for which we don't find evidence for the domestication syndrome, but for which we could find evidence for tameness. Second thing is that the attention put on neurotransmitters, for example, puts the focus more on the brain,
24:48
then on anatomical parts like the face, for example. This is very important because when it comes to trying to actually explain the difference between the song of the munia versus the song of the Bengalese finch, I do not know of any good explanation that relies on the domestication syndrome to get that distinction between the song structure. But I do know, or rather we have proposed an explanation relies on tameness and the effect of neurotransmitters.
25:22
And I think it's the next slide very briefly in paper that should be out very soon. What we've tried to show is that when neurotransmitters go through a process of selection to essentially yield tameness in the animal. They also impact structures that are extremely important for song structure in birds, and in particular, the impact the basal ganglia. And they do so in at least two ways. If you want the animal to have a tamer, less fearful, less aggressive phenotype.
26:04
Then the basal ganglia is effected in two dimensions on the one hand and the glutamate effects, that is the main effect of transmitters bringing regression down is actually leading to less stereotypic... um I can't say this... a less sterot... um I can't say it. A less rigid behaviour. There you go. On the one hand. And that's driven by a certain part of the basal ganglia called the dorsal striatum. Then there is another part of the striatum that's devoted to motivation and reward.
26:49
And that's really what boosted by those changes in less fearful behaviour. And I recall a talk, at least by Simon, stressing perhaps the importance of reward in the context of self-domestication. And I think this is exactly right. In a certain sense. By becoming less fearful, there's a certain part of the brain that provides a boost in internal motivation to the animal that may actually be very important in trying to help us understand why the songs become more variable. It's, as it were,
27:30
the internal reward mechanism of the bird becoming hyperactive if you want. Likewise, the bird is less driven to a more rigid motor output. And that essentially yields the variable behaviour that you see in the Bengalese finches as opposed to the munias. So notice that this is happening independently of the aspects that fall under the domestication syndrome. It's all happening in the brain. And presumably it could happen in species that have not yet been
28:09
associated with domestication syndrome phenotypes and that I think is important for research. That hasn't happened yet, but hopefully will happen in the future. All right. More on the limitations of the domestication syndrome. Many people have pointed out that lots of domesticates don't display all the characteristics of the domestication syndrome. And I think this literature is quite good. And it's quite good and should be taken into account because usually
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the conclusion of this literature is therefore, the idea of domestication. Domestication is wrong because the domestication syndrome falls apart. And this is one message I want you to get. No dissociate domestication and domestication syndrome, as I told you, there's tameness to be explained first. And so even if you see someone telling you that the domestication syndrome doesn't hold, it tells you less about domestication than they are trying to tell you it does, alright?
29:17
Here's another thing that's very important, especially in the context of language evolution. People have pointed out that once a species is domesticated, its environment dramatically changes in many ways. That is, in ways that are not completely uniform across domesticated species. So for example, dogs clearly established a very close relationship with humans. They change their, if you want, social experience and hours, I guess. And people have pointed out that
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this enriched social experience is very often associated with brain size increase. So this is interesting because we have a domesticated species whose brain size is supposed to have decreased because of domestication, but actually increase because of a richer social environment with humans. And so people have been using dogs as an argument against the domestication syndrome because some expectations of it are not met. And I think it's wrong because it takes
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domestication to be just one thing, right? As opposed to several stages, each of which contributes to the phenotype failures. There were statements based I think on changes at the level of the brain. Then there were other anatomical changes, and then they were yet other changes that may not be characteristic of all domesticates, but may be characteristic of some. And this matters because when we ask, to what extent does the concept of domestication
31:00
apply to humans and matter for language evolution, we have to bear in mind that this concept has multiple meanings and multiple stages in each one of which could actually matter for language evolution as well, right? Yet another example of pretty much the same point people have pointed out. When you gather evidence from domesticated species, you can clearly see that subsequent processes of breathing in modern breeds actually hide the domestication syndrome, that is, it uncouples
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certain processes that are supposed to follow from the domestication syndrome. And I think this matters too because this shows that the range of evidence, our source of evidence to motivate domestication should actually be very mindful of this. Namely, the range of evidence we have access to may not be the very stages we are fundamentally interested in. We actually get data from modern breeds that may not actually correspond to what happened in the early stages of domestication.
32:21
And finally, I wanted to actually mention a very interesting article that came out, I think a year ago, showing some difficulties for the concept of self-domestication in, for humans and arguing for alternative explanations, in this case, self-control. And I think that the message I'd like to give to these authors, but also to you is that we should try to turn our 'ors' into 'ands'. That is we try to actually take on board the fact that each and every process we are talking
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about will actually consist of multiple stages. And each stage may actually correspond to a particular explanational factor. And I think it's wrong to just hit them against one another. It could be both. It could be that there was a stage of self-domestication first and self-control afterwards, but not necessarily in opposition. We have to realise. The explanations we're going to give will lead to conflict or apparent contradicts. Especially if we're not mindful of the pl...
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the pluralism of the concept with which we are working. And so domestication, It's one of them. Right? So to sum up, domestication, domestication syndrome, related but not identical. Right. And apologies if my earlier writings actually suggested that they were. All right. Let me see. How am I doing with time? I think I'm actually doing okay. But I'm just going to emphasise one last point about human evolution that matters in this context. Then I'll actually go back to Thomas's
34:22
dissertation because there is a point that I want to make. So I will skip a few slides. And between the point about human evolution I want to make is this is captured into two phylogenetic trees. You see that essentially talks about a distinction between modern humans, right, you can see here origin of modern humans, versus divergence of hominine lineages. And usually in the literature, people give you the impression or they give me the impression that it's one or the other.
34:58
That is, it's either present in modern humans or in the last common ancestor with these other nice guys, right? And I think that that's false. Again, we should realise that there was a huge amount of time between the origin of modern humans and the divergence of other hominins. In the simple message I want to give you is that in that huge amount of time, lots of cool things could have happened. Lots of cool things could have happened in the context of language evolution.
35:32
And I think that we should actually concentrate on this period of time that we perhaps understand least to try to see if in there we could actually recognise some stages that mattered, right? I've done this a bit. I've done this a bit. I'll just give you one flavour of this. So in collaboration with Martin Kuhlwilm, I spent a lot of time trying to collect all the relevant changes that could tease this apart from our closest relatives. So millions of differences in
36:19
the genomes between days and hours. And then I tried with students to try to plot this on a timeline. And what I got, it's something very surprising. I thought that they would all coincide in one period, which is roughly recent, say the origins of modern humans. And I was totally wrong in the sense that many changes in the coalesced around a specific period that corresponds to the origin of modern humans. But many cool changes also fell way before that took place roughly between
36:55
400 and 600 thousand years ago. To make a long story short, many of those changes turned out to be changes that we had thought were associated with self-domestication. In particular, the changes related to the neurotransmitters that I mentioned earlier really took place in the shaded window of 400 to 600 years. So there is really lots of things that we haven't yet explored before we became characteristically human, right? And if there was a lot of things
37:34
happening before we became characteristically human, think about the many things that could have happened before we got our characteristically linguistic capacity to go back to a quote from earlier. That is, just like the concept, characteristically linguistic, I think, has become problematic and we should ditch it. Likewise, the, the concept characteristically human is also very ill-defined. There are many, many stages in between. And each one could tell us something important about language.
38:11
So if you think, for example, that self-domestication may actually tell you something interesting, interesting about language, then think that this process and its impact on language took place before we acquired most of our modern anatomy, but after we diverged from other hominins. So that's the very interesting things. There will be lots of discoveries that don't correspond to, I think the possibilities that are currently entertaining the literature.
38:48
So I think this is very cool because it opens up lots of possibilities we haven't explored yet. Alright? Alright. So last point, back to Thomas, back to another quote that at first I thought was super motivating. Now I have doubts on. So Thomas's dissertation uses the relationship between self-domestication and language evolution to actually explore certain preconditions that he identified in the cultural evolution literature. And specifically in, as he puts it,
39:30
one prominent general account of language evolution, the iterated learning model, I think to this audience, I don't have to tell you what that is. But Thomas actually stressed that there were at least two important preconditions that, that matter in this case, and that you use self-domestication to, you know, to bear one is there has to be a traditional transmission of the communication system. So there has to be a learning process that's very important. And then there has to be
40:04
an aspect of social cognition that he related roughly to maybe aspects of theory of mind, but also the ability to guess other peoples' intentions - that's, I think very important. He said that you needed both for iterated learning paradigm to actually get started. All right. And he brought self-domestication to bear on these two processes in a way that I think is problematic. And I'll end this talk with, with these problems. One is that the two processes that Thomas appealed to were
40:45
actually in place way before the process of self-domestication happened. On the one hand, the learning process has already been, I think, clearly identified and compellingly identified in other hominins that we don't think were self domesticated. For example, it's clear to me at least that Neanderthals really had really were vocal learners just like we were. So that process cannot be attributed to self domestication. Then there is the other process of
41:22
cumulative culture and guessing people's intention that I think was also very much in place way before self-domestication happened. In particular, (it) can be shown that there were lots of cultural processes related to, for example, Toulouse and tool creation that must be dissociated from the period that corresponds to self-domestication. So if you think that these were preconditions for the iterated learning paradigm to come into place. I don't think that self-domestication
41:56
was the thing that brought them together. And because they were in place before, right, to think that this has implication for language evolution. Well, these processes had their impact before we got self-domesticated. So then the question becomes, Were there other things that self domestication affected or made possible that were not in place before? To gather feedback from me, I'm going to suggest something, or at least two things that I think correspond
42:34
more closely to the proper impact of self-domestication, or at least for the period 400, 600, thousand years ago that I've told you mattered in this, in this context. In here I drew inspiration from work by Limor and colleagues, who pointed out that there are certain aspects for which aspects of language and language learning for which the iterated learning paradigm is used for that can actually come about without certain characteristics of the iterated learning paradigm.
43:14
In particular, I think it's very interesting work she stressed two key factors, or at least so I understood, that make a difference and impact the profile of language being learned and use. One is multiple interaction partners and an expanding meaning space, right? And these two factors I think, are actually different for us compared to other hominins. So unlike vocal learning, unlike the process of guessing people's intentions, there are, I think, clear signs of a closer association between
43:57
the timing of self-domestication and these two factors. So there's now a few works showing that around 400 thousand years ago, we actually started doing something that I think no other hominins did. Namely we started trading long distance and opening up to outgroups in a way that I think doesn't quite, is not attested beforehand. And I think that this process could be related to the self-domestication, this opening up to towards outgroups and the establishment of long distance trading could
44:42
have impacted our mode of communication much more so than the origin of vocal learning or aspects, other aspects of social cognition. So I would put my money on, for example, the graph that you see at the bottom of the slides between around 400, 500, thousand years ago, we see an important turn over in Africa. Where long distance trading, that is relationships between if you want people that don't necessarily share the very same communication system, close communication system, is actually being
45:22
established, and I think this was important. All right, so one factor that I would relate more to self-domestication and its impact on language evolution would be this. The other one would be a change in the meaning space that I think has made it even into the popular literature. So for example, Hariri is right to emphasise this. We have dramatically expanded the range of things we can actually think about and talk about since the 300, 400, thousand years in particular,
45:57
we conceptualise things that are not visible, right? And I think this is something that has impacted our linguistic phenotype more so than vocal learning alone, or more so than a boost in theory of mind alone. And we try to understand when that happened and what impact it had on language evolution. It's clear that, for example, some of these manifestations of things, thinking about things that don't exist. Like for example, this mixture of a wolf. Sorry, a lion and the men took place after
46:44
the earliest process I think, of domestication, and could correspond to something that Okanoya suggested for the Bengalese finches, namely after the process of domestication, there was another round of selection. For another thing, in the case of the Bengalese finches, it was the female birds imposing certain selection pressures on the structures of the song. In our case, we know that after 300000 years ago, um the brain went through a series of changes where certain circuits were boosting.
47:24
For example, the cerebellum and the prefrontal cortex change their relationship, I think. And perhaps there we could find selection pressures for thinking about things we hadn't thought about before. Like for example, the one that you see on this slide. And so an expansion of the meanings space, and an expansion of trading and reaching outside one's local group could actually have contribute(d) to the linguistic phenotype as we know now, this would actually be an interesting research avenue
48:04
that I think the literature has not explored enough yet. All right, so I'll skip this to just tell you or remind you rather that you should remind me that whenever I offer a possible explanation, tell me that in a couple of years that explanation will become much more complex than I thought. That is remind me that when I confidently say X, that three years afterwards I'll say x was not one thing, but three things. And so even when I think I have gotten rid of explanations that were too simple,
48:45
remind me that mine will also be too simple at some point in the future. So thanks for your attention and I'm more than happy to take questions. Thanks so much, Cedric.
49:01
I'll stop sharing the screen.
49:10
Okay. Thank you so much. It's so refreshing to see a talk like revealing kind of the, the, the organic way in which this field is moving forward and also not be saying, this is the one answer. I really, really appreciate that now, we are, We, as I said before, we're hoping to take the first question from a student, which means we'll probably take a minute or two to wait for students to type hand in the chat. If you are a member of staff and you have question,
49:41
you can also type hand, but bracket (staff) after it, and then I can keep track on who's who's wanting to ask a question. So we'll just take a couple minutes for student questions, come in.
50:56
Okay. Annie do you want to ask the first question. Yes. Thanks for a really interesting talk. It's great to get these kind of big picture talks times. And this is mainly a clarification question I was thinking of asking whilst you were talking. I kept thinking that you're going to explain it, so then it was too late. So this might be because I'm not super familiar with some of this literature. But when you were talking about reduced neural crest input, what does that mean here?
51:30
Good question. I think that there has been recorded. No, I'll change my answer.
51:47
The non-official answer is that there's been a lot of hand waving around this concept by some people in the sense that it's very clear to some extent what it is. Namely there's been, if you want, a set. To put the (inaudible) of mutations in the genome that have a particular consequence, which is a decrease in the number of neural crest cells being produced and also a slowing down of how far these neural crest cells travel. So these neural crest cells are
52:26
embryonic cells that travel a very long way and essentially account for structures in the body like for example, in the, like the face or the, you know, the pigmentation in the paws and things like that. And people have put forward this explanation of a deficit in neural crest cells to explain why it is, for example, that you don't get as much melanin at the tip of the paws in domesticates or why the face is not as protruding in domesticates, and essentially is because the structures
53:11
that would have provided the basis for these final phenotypes just never made it there or didn't make it in as much an amount as in wild animals. So far, so good. Problem is that this explanation is also supposed to tell you why we became less aggressive. And that's because the neural crest cells also give rise to certain structures like the adrenal glands. What doesn't follow from this explanation is why smaller adrenal gland, for example, should make you less aggressive?
53:53
That I think is the explanation that if I tell you very quickly, yes, sort of makes sense, but if you start thinking about it more, it kind of doesn't. And so to go back to your question, the explanation of this decrease in production and migration of neural crest is simple to explain all the characteristics that are associated with the domestication syndrome, but I don't think that they actually do do that. It would've been nice if they did that, but they don't.
54:28
So another X that isn't one thing probably, lots of things. That's right. Yeah, I know that I bore people with this method, but it's really true. No, I mean, it's good to point out, so thanks for explaining. Thanks. (Inaudible). Yeah. Thank you. This was a really great talk. My question is a bit about, well, okay, so the self domestication syndrome hides this kind of interesting word inside which you didn't really mention, but it's really important that's the word SELF-domesticated.
55:05
So what would be the difference, or how do you see the difference between domestication syndrome and domesticated animals and also their lack of, or we perceive as complex, not the right word, but language. So what is the contribution of the self to self-domestication and how is that different in terms of, I don't know, social environment or the selection because yeah. Great question. Although I was hoping secretly no one would have noticed that I didn't stress the word self.
55:40
I wasn't counting on you attending and pointing this out to find difficult question. Of course, you wouldn't ask it otherwise. I think it's it's really complicated. I'm I'm torn in in giving my answer. The I could give you a quick and dirty answer, but then you will not like it. So I have to give you a fuller answer. The quick and dirty answer is, I think we could get rid of the word self.
56:16
Because I think that part of the problem in defining self domestication and its relationship to domestication is that we actually understand self-domestication as a concept better than we understand domestication. The concept of domestication is really hard. It's, it's not - sorry - but it's not one thing in that there are multiple ways of calling some animal domesticates. By contrast, there is a uniform way of defining what counts as a self domesticate, which is essentially one definition
57:01
that's been applied to humans and bonobos. These are the two animals that are supposed to have gone through a process of reduced reactive aggression without the influence of if you want a domesticator. That's what cells really tried to emphasise, right? But smart people like Gregor Larson who know a lot about domestication, have pointed that this concept of self domestication versus domestication actually is sort of an allusion to what Darwin said
57:41
between natural selection versus artificial selection. Where if you want the contrast would be domestication on the one hand and selective breeding on the other. Where selective breeding is really the influence of humans on other species. Suppose you make that distinction between domestication and selective breeding. Once you make that distinction, it becomes very difficult to distinguish between domestication in that contrast and self-domestication. Because both self domestication and
58:22
domestication end up emphasising an internal process that's taking place in the animal independently of human control. So the very first stages, for example, of domestication, where dogs become less fearful of their environment that happened to have humans in them. But in other words, self-domestication and domestication in that context end up emphasising the same thing, namely a reduction of reactive aggression that's independent of human influence.
59:04
So that's why I said, perhaps in that context. It's good to get rid of the notion 'self'. That's what I was trying to do in the talk but clearly unsuccessfully. Having said this and knowing you, you will come back and tell me something that is true. Namely, that things are yes, more complicated in the sense that at the end of the day, when you look at domesticated species, most of them, there's clearly an importance played by humans in their evolutionary history that, that,
59:53
you know, that we want to capture and contrast with the fact that there was no such influence, for example, in the bonobos or other species that someone else is working on right now. Right. And that, I think, it's something that I haven't successfully grasped. That is, I'm stuck between the desire to get rid of the difficulty of self and at the same time recognising that in some situations, humans clearly played a role. And in some not. So maybe one way or two
1:00:37
to think about different to question to ask is, what is the difference in the environment in which self-domestication, domesticated versus domesticated species develop and live. And so what kind of, you know, from survival pressures and social pressures to the actual environment that they're in. What kind of difference would bonobos and humans, and potentially other very interesting species, have to, foxes, cows, and chickens, have to any other domesticated animal? Yeah, that's correct.
1:01:16
I don't have a good answer to this, but I think it's the right way of framing the question. I wish I had a better atmosphere. But yeah, good point. I was trying to hide self in self-domestication.
1:01:35
Difficult. I'm sorry. Do you want to ask your question. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that very interesting talk. In some ways, my, um, my question follows on from what... was just saying. Maybe it does. And I'm just an opportunity to ask a question. I've been wanting to ask somebody for a long time. So the only choice. So it's about domestication. In the literatures in evolutionary social psychology, social cognition. They talk about the notion of social ecologies.
1:02:09
And they're studying phenomena like fairness, morality, reputation commitments, and so on. What's the link between your way of thinking about the question of domestication, psychologically, and the labels and terminology. I think there is a strong link between the two. I don't think it has been studied well or in depth, except maybe by Richard Wrangham who I think has done maybe some of the best work in that, in that domain, thinking of basically in part how self-domestication this time,
1:02:54
with the stress on self, impacted the establishment of, for example, moral codes, morality, sense of justice, things, a sense of an egalitarian isms, and things like that. There's a whole literature that's really been untapped in exploring this relationship between domestication and in those concepts. And I think that it would be good to try to see if we could shed light on these concepts. Also in conjunction with shedding light on language evolution.
1:03:44
I'll tell you why with one particular example. I recall reading now, decades ago, book called Wild Minds, that talks about three ways in which you could do comparative psychology. One way is you find something that's common among many species. Say, some aspects of the number sense, then their way. There are things that's not so common across species, but you can find species. They have them like vocal learning, for example, not widespread, but still you can.
1:04:22
And then there are things that in that book he defines as specifically human, right. And he talks about morality and language. And he devotes two separate chapters to that. I think there should be one chapter only. But that chapter has not been written yet. So that's very useful. Quick follow up. Is it plausible to that we might end up that self-domestication might be synonymous or closely synonymous with partner choice, with social pathologies, partner choice, social ecology.
1:05:05
I hesitate to say yes. I think it's no. In fact, I think that that issue, again, we'll have to be spread over many stages with important changes taking place before the process of self-domestication. See my reference here and in the talk was that insofar as we take other hominins, like the Neanderthals, not to be self-domesticated. We have to be mindful of what we attribute to domestication or self-domestication, because there are many things that were present before we
1:05:48
split from the Neanderthals that I think are relevant to explaining our condition. And then there are things that self- domestication brought about, right. And I think people usually say I, it's one or the other. I think it's both, we'll have to spread the explanation over multiple periods of evolution, some of which will be specific to ask the associated to self-domestication. Some not a you you look confused? No, No. Not confused - I'm just in a way, my question's
1:06:24
targeted another question which I still don't have an answer to and confused quite a few years, which is Seymor's question, What is self-domestication? Have a handle on what social ecologies are. I feel like I understand what that literature is saying. So I'm just trying to find a way into understanding what does it do it in language evolution? I think that that's actually an easier version, an easier question anymore. It's, the more is really annoying in, in a good sense of stressing self.
1:06:56
And that's, that's a hard one. Your question of what self-domestication is automatically - that I think has a plausibly simple answer, which is a reduction in reactive aggression. That's my one line. Now what follows from that will be big and complex and, and, and plural. But at least I can give an answer to your question, but I cannot give a satisfactory answer to Limor's question yet. Okay, Thanks. Jack in the chat was just asking the title of the Richard Wrangham book.
1:07:37
Good point. It's it's I skip to main slides. One is, it was precisely talking about this book called The Goodness paradox, I believe, by Richard Wrangham. And it was contrast. So there are two core reference works if people are interested in the self-domestication literature between, so there is Richard Wrangham on the goodness paradox. There is Brian Hare's on the survival of the friendliest, and these two guys don't actually agree on everything and
1:08:13
that's why these two books are particularly interesting. Richard's book is a favourite of mine because it shows that and is that there are two notions of aggression that are present in humans. In only one was reduced by self-domestication and crucially the other one was actually boosted in humans. And this actually is an important implication for actually Tom's question about morality. So that's the book.
1:08:48
X do want to ask your question?
1:08:57
Joint. Glad.
1:09:00
Hi.
1:09:04
It's actually fascinating facts. I was wondering, do we actually know that 1316 01:09:08,796.9999999995343 --> 01:09:12,569 Neanderthals were not self-domesticated?
1:09:12
And great question too. I, it looks like everyone's specialise in picking things that I on purpose didn't mention in the talk to make things at least not as not more complicated. And I got good point. And it's actually a crucial part of the argument, right? Because suppose, suppose Neanderthals were, self domesticated, then lots of things that I have mentioned, just would fall apart. So I have a vested interest in them not being self domesticated. Right. And then you're
1:09:52
going to say but how do you know? Right? See, I don't know you, but I already can guess the next question. And the answer to this is, well, in part, looking at their anatomy on the one hand, that if, if they were self-domesticated and we in part relate self-domestication to the domestication syndrome, then we don't see any manifestation of that in them. That's one thing. The other thing which I think is more compelling. Which is that if you look at the genomes that we have of
1:10:34
the Neanderthals, you don't find. I think any of the evidence that we have been able to relate to self-domestication, to self-domestication in their genomes. That is, all the changes that I mentioned about neurotransmitters for example, or in fact, some changes related to the neural crest. You don't find them in there. Of course, you could say, well maybe you haven't looked enough, or that could be. But as long as it's not, (Inaudible) we would need to rule out demonstrations of tameness
1:11:14
(Inaudible) This is correct and this is why I think it's so important to go beyond the domestication syndrome as THE, the metric for domestication. Because you need to actually show. So here's one thing you must show, namely when you study, for example, those mechanisms that we think are responsible for tameness, like neurotransmitter action or something. You need to show that their variance like that you find in the Neanderthals, lacked the effect we see in modern humans.
1:11:57
That is, I think the case. The evidence is not yet published, or at least not published in the slide. But I think it is the case that you can show that for some neurotransmitters, they don't have the dampening effect that we see in modern humans on certain structures yielding aggression like the hypothalamus, right? But, but this is extremely than for the argument and withstanding today. If if if I'm not able to answer your question well, the narrative that I told you it falls apart today.
1:12:39
Can I ask a follow-up question? Yes. Okay. Okay. So if it's more about so rather than focusing on, let's say, domestication syndrome and anatomical features of domestication. And if we want to take a step back and look at tameness or pro-social behaviour for that matter, then shouldn't we? Or can we then look at highly social species out there with what we would call It's a complex communication systems. I'm thinking dolphins, I'm thinking whales, not just elephants of, you know,
1:13:12
but rather there's many other highly social species with presumably very complex communication systems that we know very little about. Absolutely absolutely. So this indeed opens up the range of species you can look at and in fact should look, should look at if you don't, tie too intimately domestication and the domestication syndrome. I think that there really are lots of species out there to look into. So I mentioned one, not your favourite one. I'll let you work on that one.
1:13:50
But orangutans, for example, are very interesting in this respect because they are different populations on different islands of orangutans. In the more social ones have, the more complex, varied communication systems. And those actually show signs of selection for those neurotransmitters that we have associated with domestication. But they do not show as far as I know, signs of the domestication syndrome. Alright. And so these would be species that we should be on the lookout for.
1:14:29
That hasn't started yet, but that's and that's a consequence of this. Yeah, that's correct. All right. Thanks for the three big question. People who know me will be impressed by how long I've sat on my hands and not asked my own questions. I know. So I have a kind of specific question about domestication and then a request for you just to reflect on something more generally about linguistics, if I may. So I'll ask them both together and then you can take how much time you want on them.
1:15:09
But so the first one I'm wondering about, I was very pleased to see you talking about motivation and reward. And I, I think I am very happy to see that maybe coming to your orbit, something to think about. And I was wondering about whether you would agree that maybe we could move away from discussions about capacities like cognitive capacity for learning and, and more about motivation to, to attend to certain inputs. And I wonder if that helps, helps a bit here.
1:15:45
So I mean, the reason I I'm interested in that is the experiments that Kenny and I and ... with the baboons, where we showed that we could create an iterated learning experiment and they had systematic behaviour and so on. And far more complex than you might expect. And in those animals where they don't see that, you don't see that in the wild. And our argument there is that that's possible in the lab because we can construct a reward system for those animals.
1:16:21
That's the rewards, that specific behaviour basically, they have that kind of robotic food hopper that gives very reliable reward. So do you think that's a reasonable approach to say that these, these changes in process, reality, tameness, lack of aggression and so on, opener, capacities for reward for behaviours. So that's my, my first question and then the follow-up just to let you take either ignore or go into, is just bringing this all back to linguistics.
1:16:54
And it strikes me that part of the history of our field has been a tension between people like Jim Halford who've, who've wanted to talk about this mosaic theory he used to call it of, of language evolution and have a tendency, it's very interesting in linguists, and I think I include myself in this, of feeling that there has to be one thing that this sort of very atomic. View of language that is hard to think about it.
1:17:30
And I just wanted to y from your unique standpoint of having really been in both of these worlds, why you think that is and, and how we move forward from it. That's lovely. Lovely because I, so a warning. It's so lovely that I could be talking about this for hours so people can go disconnect. Okay, so I'll, I'll be short. For motivation, and how it relates, for example, to the notion of, of language capacity. So apart from skipping the Wrangham slide, I also skipped towards the end,
1:18:14
a slide I hade with, with L's thesis cover on it at the very end. That's part of the point I wanted to make that thanks to in large part L' thesis, I've come to realise the somewhat futile notion of capacity that I've been working with for, um, I'm embarrassed to say decades in that notions like motivations or, you know, the learning context as such, could actually structure cognitive biases in a way that I think I underestimated before. So that was the point I wanted to make and hopefully
1:19:00
I will get another opportunity at some point. But I think you're exactly right that the more we emphasise these concepts, the more we move away from very fixed static notion like capacity that, that I've been working with for, for a long time. And I think ... is largely responsible for making me think along these lines. The other question is, so I saw a comment somewhere, I think by Tom, where he was surprised that I indirectly called him Chomskyan. And when I was saying it's
1:19:41
a very Chomskyan way of saying things. And I think it's right to say that many of us, and many of those who don't necessarily call themselves Chomskyan, we're still stuck in this very unifactorial way of thinking about language and language evolution. And Jim Hereford was, was, I think, very unique in talking, for example, about the interrelationship between the language acquisition device and the arena of use in a very important essay early on. And that you can't really talk
1:20:22
about one without the other. And buried in this is pretty much this, that when you contrast, for example, language evolution and language change, I think at the back of people's minds, there is this contrast between one thing or the other. Like things are very clear. But I, I think that we under appreciate and underestimate the, the way in which these two concepts, the arena of use, and if you want, the biological precursors are interdefined actually. And I don't know why
1:21:03
the field has been stuck for so long, looking for one factor. But I see this even in the case of of domestication where we have a clear, I think, concrete example of a concept that could actually help us bridge the gap between different linguistic tradition. We still want to think of domestication, or self-domestication as one thing, right? So there is this, this remnant that I that I think we have to get rid of? I think basically it's a remnant of essentialism. It's not really of it.
1:21:45
It's very anti-Darwinian descent, it's very platonic. And, and I think we have to work hard to get rid of that. Cedric, thank you so much for you. Not only for your very fascinating course, but for for your very generous time and approach to questions. It's wonderful. Thank you very, very much for attending for the invitation. And hopefully I'll see you in in Edinburgh at some point. Yes. Well, we owe you. This time it will be whiskey. Is it really true that there is a whiskey? I don't know.
1:22:28
I don't know. We'll get you up here so you remember. All right. Take care. Thanks everyone.
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