In S.L. Hurley and N. Chater (Eds.), Perspectives on imitation: From cognitive neuroscience to social science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

On the Relation between
Language and (Mimetic) Culture

Introduction

What came first: language or culture? On the one hand, language seems to be woven into the very fabric of every human culture; and to such an extent that it is hard to imagine what human culture would be like without language. Indeed, most myths about the origin of humanity - whether religious or otherwise - seem to suggest that humans had language from the very beginning. On the other hand, what use would humans have for language if they didn't have something to talk about? Living in groups governed by highly intricate social interactions would seem to provide an endless amount of possible discussion material. Yet, many other primate species also live in complex social groups - but notably without the benefit of human-like language. Some sort of shared culture would seem to be a plausible additional component as a necessary pre-requisite for language.

Donald (this volume) argues for the latter scenario, proposing a "culture-first" theory in which the prior emergence of a mimetic adaptation provides scaffolding for the subsequent evolution of language. A set of domain-general cognitive skills is suggested to have evolved in early hominids, allowing rudimental knowledge sharing across individuals in a nonverbal manner. The selective advantage of such information exchange would then provide a pressure toward improving communication, leading to the emergence of language as an efficient system for sharing cultural knowledge. Although this perspective provides suggestions regarding a possible origin of language, it tells us little about the subsequent evolution of language to its current form. In this commentary, I will seek to put Donald's account in relief by discussing possible cognitive constraints that may help explain why language has evolved into the form it has today.


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