Darwin-L Message Log 1:234 (September 1993)

Academic Discussion on the History and Theory of the Historical Sciences

This is one message from the Archives of Darwin-L (1993–1997), a professional discussion group on the history and theory of the historical sciences.

Note: Additional publications on evolution and the historical sciences by the Darwin-L list owner are available on SSRN.

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<1:234>From SOSLEWIS@ACS.EKU.EDU  Tue Sep 28 14:23:55 1993

Date: Tue, 28 Sep 1993 15:27:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: SOSLEWIS@ACS.EKU.EDU
Subject: Re: Heritability and cultural evolution
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

I am in agreement with Elihi M. Gerson up to a point. he says (1) people pretty
much tend to speak the language of their conquerors too, or at least their
children do. (...) Historically that may not be strictly  speaking true.
In the Andean area such as that around the community of Vicos they peones
spoke no Spanish. It was one of the triumphs of the Vicos project when these
people learned enough Spanish to communicate with officials without going
through the Mestizo group, which had exploited them for years through their
use of Spanish. See Jorge Isazza's Huasipungo for another account of this
type of thing. When the Greeks conquered Egypt, the man in the street did not
speak Greek but those in the court certainly did just as education Russians
used French and German and "cultured" Americans learned French even in the
backwaters of Kentucky, like Cassius Clay's daughters.
  Perhaps the only thing we could say about the inheritability of language is
that homo spaiens has the genetic potential for learning language when brain
size reaches cicra 75-cc. Perhaps some are looking for isomorphis models
between genes and cultural evolution and that may be difficult to prove.
  Ray, EKU

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