The gradual evolution of primitive spiritual animals. Having seen how the evolution of a primitive language of natural sentences in nomadic bands of hominids was both functional and possible, we conclude that its evolution was inevitable. It remains only to be seen what evidence there is for such a stage of evolution on earth. It is not obvious from fossils or artifacts when language first evolved, and so it will help, if we are clear about the traits we are looking for.

What makes primitive spiritual animals different from nomadic bands of hominids is the use of language to coordinate the members’ behavior in controlling conditions that affect the reproduction of the spiritual animal as a whole. Since the main relevant condition that could have be brought under control by a primitive language was acquiring free energy, coordinating behavior in hunting large animals was probably its original function. But the capacity to coordinate their behavior would have caused many other changes.

The leader’s plan for hunting behavior is only the simplest and most obvious use of language to coordinate behavior, but the capacity to share a common intention would also have changed the relations of members within spiritual animals. Nomadic bands of primates would acquire customs, but in spiritual animals, such habits and expectations would come to be mediated by the exchange of linguistic representations. Ways of behaving in certain situations would be named, and the capacity to refer to such roles would tie different practices together. Given the crucial role of the leader in guiding social level behavior, for example, there would be a special name for the member playing that role, and they might insist on customary behavior in other situations by referring to them as his instructions. Special words would evolve to describe kinship relations (though it the leader were the father of most of the children in the group, only the mother child relationship would need to be mentioned).

This is probably also the stage at which food-sharing evolved. The use of language to coordinate behavior made it possible to arrange for one group to wander around gathering vegetables while another group hunted animals, and then all meet again later at a specific location to share food. In the evolution of human beings, this division of labor was made along lines of gender. Thus, language use may have been responsible for the evolution of the unusually extreme sexual dimorphism between females and males, including perhaps the year-round sexual activity, frontal sexual intercourse, and the emotionally revealing facial expressions that transformed mating into a tighter social bond.

What is required to have the power of spiritual animals was not that a plan be distributed by the leader, but that everyone somehow share the same plan for social level behavior. That is the essence of the spiritual animal, for it includes both the social and the cultural aspect. And though it could also be accomplished without formal instructions from a leader, it is language that ties those two aspects together.

The combination of a verbal and nonverbal side in linguistic representations it what ties them together, for the verbal side is responsible for the social aspect and the nonverbal side is responsible for the cultural aspect. Since the nonverbal side consists of naturalistic images in the faculty of imagination, it is private. But the verbal side can be generated overtly, and its status as a public, observable object makes it possible for linguistic representations to serve as a structural cause for coordinating the members’ behavior. Without public linguistic interactions, it would not be possible to distribute a plan of social level behavior. The social aspect of the spiritual animal is the continual linguistic interactions among its members.

What enables linguistic interactions to provide a structural cause for social level behavior is that they are representations which can correspond to the world. The verbal side of linguistic representations is just a re-representation of representations in naturalistic imagination, for their function is to control the construction of naturalistic images in the listeners’ faculties of imagination. This public control of the images formed in imagination can induce in each brain a representation of the same state of affairs in the world. Each brain has object images for the same members and other objects in the local scene, and each brain combines them in the same way so that each corresponds to the same social level behavior of the whole. And this shared plan can coordinate their behavior, as we have seen, because each member recognizes a different one of the object images representing members as his own body and understands that the behavior predicated of it is how he must behave. This unique part-whole relationship is crucial, for it is essential to its function as a structural cause that each member of the spiritual animal see itself as a different part of the whole plan. But otherwise, the exchange of linguistic representations causes each brain to contain the same kind of nonverbal representation of their social level behavior as taking place in the same natural world. That is the cultural aspect of the spiritual animal. And since all such linguistic representations are (potentially) complete in each brain, the cultural aspect is as much a structure of the spiritual animal as a whole as the social aspect.

Evidence of such primitive spiritual animals (stage 8) depends on being able to distinguish them from nomadic bands of hominids, which are part of the radiation of primates (stage 7). There is good evidence that primates radiated into the grasslands around their arboreal homes in Africa 5 or even 10 million years ago, when large regions of forests were replaced by grasslands as the climate changed.

Bipedalism, the defining trait of hominids, is evident in the earliest fossil, know as “Lucy”, which dates back about 3.5 million years. With a brain the size of a gorilla, but a smaller body, she represents a species called Australopithecus afarensis. Apparently, there were also several other forms of Australopithecus at the time, such as africanus, robustus, and boisei, all of which were extinct by about 1.3 million years ago. (See Fisher, 1988.)

The greater facility at tool use that we expect to evolve in primates carrying clubs is evident in Homo habilis, which showed up about two million years ago. Habilis was still quite small, about three feet, the size of Australopithecus afarensis (judging by a fossil from 1.8 million years ago that was discovered in 1986). But Habilis is distinguished by evidence of greater use of stone tools. Whereas Australopithecus cracked pebbles, presumably to use as cutters and scrapers, Homo habilis made bi-facial stone tools (Acheulian culture), which could have been used for hunting animals. Some refinement of the primate structural imagination may have enabled them to use stones more effectively. Or perhaps it was the evolution of an opposable thumb.

There are two candidates for primitive spiritual animals in the archeological record, Homo erectus and archaic humans (such as Neanderthal Man, or Homo sapiens). Homo erectus evolved some 1.6 million years ago, about the time that Homo habilis became extinct (dated by fossils at 1.8 million years ago). But Homo erectus had become extinct by 250,000 years ago, about the time archaic humans evolved. It was Neanderthal Man, a species of archaic humans, that Cro Magnon Man replaced in Europe 35,000 years ago, not Homo erectus. It is agreed on all sides that Cro Magnon Man is our own species, and since that is, as we shall see, a later stage in the evolution of spiritual animals, the question is, Which species, Homo erectus or archaic humans, were the first spiritual animals (stage 8)?

Homo erectus had larger bodies than Homo habilis, within the modern body-height range, and their skulls indicate a relatively greater increase in brain size (1000cc on average, compared to about 500cc for Habilis).

There are two reasons for thinking that their larger brains gave Homo erectus the use of a primitive language.

First, Homo habilis became extinct about the time Homo erectus evolved, and the inherently greater power of spiritual animals would explain why nomadic bands of hominids became extinct.

Second, Homo erectus were the first species of this lineage to leave Africa and invade territories ranging from Europe to the Far East. This could be explained by the evolution of the use of natural sentences, because the increased capacity to coordinate behavior in hunting would have enabled them to acquire energy from larger animals, and that could have been what opened up those new habitats to them.

On the other hand, these facts can also be explained on the assumption that Homo erectus was just a late phase in the evolution of animal societies of hominids. We have seen that societies of non-primate animals can evolve instincts for more complex forms of social coordination using animal cries as signals, such as the wild dogs of Africa that are supposed to prey on ungulates by herding them into ambushes. Such an increase in their power to acquire free energy would explain both the extinction of Homo habilis in Africa and the ability of Homo erectus to migrate out of Africa. More sophisticated signs also explains two other facts that would be surprising, if Homo erectus could speak.

First, it would explain why there is no great change in their technology. The use of natural sentences should greatly improve their technology, because it would enable individuals to share their understanding of causal connections and accumulate culture based on tools. However, Homo erectus still used bi-facial stone tools, like Homo habilis. Even if they needed to control fire with them in order to invade colder climates, that is something that could be accomplished by simply carrying small fires with them.

Their lack of language would also explain why there is no evidence in Homo erectus of the changes in the larynx that seem to be required to generate the highly modulated types of sounds required for speech.

In archaic humans, such as Neanderthal Man, by contrast, the fossils and tools that remain indicate both kinds of changes, technological and physiological, as well as the fate of Homo erectus.

First, flint tools and hafted stones indicate that archaic humans had a more advanced (Mousterian) culture, as we would expect of animals with a greater understanding of causal connections.

There is also fossil evidence of changes in the larynx that suggest a much increased reliance on highly modulated sounds.

Moreover, if archaic humans did have a primitive language of natural sentences, their capacity to coordinate behavior could explain why Homo erectus became extinct about the time that Neanderthal Man and other species of archaic humans showed up. That is, Homo erectus were the societies of hominids on which archaic humans preyed, before they took up war against one another.

It seems likely, therefore, that Neanderthal Man (that is, archaic humans, or Homo sapiens) represents the primitive spiritual stage of evolution in the history of evolution on Earth.