Power of speech and intellegence

What if in say, 15,000 B.C. vocal chords or anything like them ceased to form in humans, would our intellegence have seriously degenerated by now?

I have heard of many people born deaf with the ability to speak, I never have heard of anyone who was born with normal hearing but unable to speak. Does that happen? It takes more than just intellegence to speak I think. "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" to the contrary chimps would need more than superhuman intellegence that they don't have IOTL would they not to speak?
 
its certainly possible to be born Mute (or effectively so) ... also possible to be mute without being deaf

i suggest go wiki mute.

That Intellectual disabilities and Autism, are the most common causes (not counting Deafness, which is often more of a "don't know how to articulate") it doesn't mean they're the only causes ...

to be frank i'd consider your question discriminating against people with disabilities
 
If we had the full brain architecture for speech, we would develop sign language within a single generation, and history would march on.

Although not entirely analogous, look at the wiki article on Nicaraguan Sign Language to see how a bunch of deaf kids in the 1980s developed their own language with no outside help.

We might get set back for awhile however. Much of the knowledge of the older generation which could not be taught through physical observation would be lost. The next generation of kids would start out with a somewhat impoverished cultural background (things like mythology), but over time it would become enriched again.
 
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I don't think he intented to offend physically impaired people.

Our intelligence - and by intelligence I guess you're speaking about the ability to preserve and transmit information - wouldn't be severely degenerated. We would absolutely live in a different world (less advanced or not), but sign language would take the place of spoken language.
 
I don't think he intented to offend physically impaired people.

Yes, people need to chill out. This is actually an interesting question. The ability to share abstract concepts and transmit knowledge to subsequent generations thru language is essential to our humanity.

Full Language can be based on other systems (such as sign language), but these are secondary developments evolved to meet special cases within cultures where verbal comminication already existed. For many thousands of years before 15,000 BP human anatony had already been setting the the stage for vocal communication, which fully formed at least by the Late Paleolithic. If somehow fully modern modern vocal chords didn't evolve (or more improbably, were lost in a subqsequent ASB mutation striking all people) human success and further social evolution would be severely retarded. For one thing we could only communicate in daylight or around a fire. Regarding the "around the fire" thing, many paleoanthropologists would argue that one of the chief benefits of fire in cultural evolution was that it allowed people to sit around it late at night and communicate while doing other necessary tasks (make tools, cook, weave baskets, etc.). If we had to start using our hands for all this communication, this cozy arrangement wouldn't occur. We'd either communicate a lot less or make less stuff. Both would impact the speed with which human cultures gained sophistication.
 
its certainly possible to be born Mute (or effectively so) ... also possible to be mute without being deaf

i suggest go wiki mute.

That Intellectual disabilities and Autism, are the most common causes (not counting Deafness, which is often more of a "don't know how to articulate") it doesn't mean they're the only causes ...

to be frank i'd consider your question discriminating against people with disabilities

To be frank I consider your consideration harmfull to people with disabilities.
 
I don't think he intented to offend physically impaired people.

Our intelligence - and by intelligence I guess you're speaking about the ability to preserve and transmit information - wouldn't be severely degenerated. We would absolutely live in a different world (less advanced or not), but sign language would take the place of spoken language.

Just pure curiosity on my part. I can remember when PC stood for Public Commode. Maybe it still should:)
 
Yes, people need to chill out. This is actually an interesting question. The ability to share abstract concepts and transmit knowledge to subsequent generations thru language is essential to our humanity.

Full Language can be based on other systems (such as sign language), but these are secondary developments evolved to meet special cases within cultures where verbal comminication already existed. For many thousands of years before 15,000 BP human anatony had already been setting the the stage for vocal communication, which fully formed at least by the Late Paleolithic. If somehow fully modern modern vocal chords didn't evolve (or more improbably, were lost in a subqsequent ASB mutation striking all people) human success and further social evolution would be severely retarded. For one thing we could only communicate in daylight or around a fire. Regarding the "around the fire" thing, many paleoanthropologists would argue that one of the chief benefits of fire in cultural evolution was that it allowed people to sit around it late at night and communicate while doing other necessary tasks (make tools, cook, weave baskets, etc.). If we had to start using our hands for all this communication, this cozy arrangement wouldn't occur. We'd either communicate a lot less or make less stuff. Both would impact the speed with which human cultures gained sophistication.

I thought that by 15,000 B.C. most healthy people could speak at least as well as Native Americans could in 1492 A.D. So my mutation would really be something.
Are you saying they could not? I wanted a few thousand years of intellegent speech before the mutation and plenty of time afterwards for degeneration if it was going to happen at all. I thought 15,000 B.C. would qualify as a good POD for all that.
 
I'd assume people would have two sorts of language, often used in combination:

1. Sign languages, that would be as varied as spoken languages OTL.

2. Simple "code language" for when people can't see each other or have their hands full, using tongue clicks/trills, buzzing lips, and slapping one's arms/belly to make different sounds.
 

Rex Mundi

Banned
I thought that by 15,000 B.C. most healthy people could speak at least as well as Native Americans could in 1492 A.D. So my mutation would really be something.
Are you saying they could not? I wanted a few thousand years of intellegent speech before the mutation and plenty of time afterwards for degeneration if it was going to happen at all. I thought 15,000 B.C. would qualify as a good POD for all that.

What the hell are you saying? That Native Americans are inherently bad at speaking?
 
I thought that by 15,000 B.C. most healthy people could speak at least as well as Native Americans could in 1492 A.D. So my mutation would really be something.
Are you saying they could not? I wanted a few thousand years of intellegent speech before the mutation and plenty of time afterwards for degeneration if it was going to happen at all. I thought 15,000 B.C. would qualify as a good POD for all that.

Such a mutation striking and impacting all humans from 15,000 BC on is quite simply an ASBish mutation.
 
Right, at that point we'd already have a system of language(and something that any sign language could work from, or at least the idea of "this is how we express concepts and describe things) and some amount of abstract physical communication(IIRC this would be well after the development of visual art), so I could very easily see a nonverbal gestural and written language develop.
 
Perhaps (I'm no biologist) some sort of virus that attacks the throat and spreads throughout the human population with very high mortality rates. Carried by birds for example. The mutation might be the bodies response to it so that in a few generations all surviving humans are physically unable to speak.
 
Perhaps (I'm no biologist) some sort of virus that attacks the throat and spreads throughout the human population with very high mortality rates. Carried by birds for example. The mutation might be the bodies response to it so that in a few generations all surviving humans are physically unable to speak.

UH huh, and how does this spread to every human community throughout Africa and Eurasia?There is an advantage to speaking, so you can bet that the immune/lucky humans will dominate. This is 15,000BC, there's no easy transportation period, there's no agriculture for birds to interact with humans, there's not a single epidemic virus as they require concentrated populations of at least 500,000 to sustain themselves. By all means you can have one, but as soon as the disease burns out there's no reason why people can't reacquire speech.
 
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