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To: TXnMA
Try to teach someone how to make a Clovis point by only pointing and grunting.

Fracture propagation vector analysis doesn't translate well into "Ugh!"... Try it; I have...

I submit the following facts which demonstrate that spoken language is not necessary for learning complex tasks.

1. Helen Keller earned a college diploma without even the advantages of pointing and grunting.
2. Predatory felines and lycans learn to hunt mostly by watching the adults and imitating them. Of course, they have an instinctual predisposition toward hunting, but it must be learned.
3. Someone must have discovered how to make a Clovis point all by himself (or with the help of Divine inspiration) if we are to avoid an infinite regression. Thus it was done without linguistic instruction.

Not all thinking is done with words. Where do musical ideas come from? The ideas come first, then musicologists assign names to the forms.

61 posted on 04/16/2011 12:51:25 AM PDT by ARepublicanForAllReasons (Borders, laws and language are what define us (USA) as a country. Let's guard them well.)
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To: ARepublicanForAllReasons
"3. Someone must have discovered how to make a Clovis point all by himself (or with the help of Divine inspiration) if we are to avoid an infinite regression. Thus it was done without linguistic instruction. "

The precise sequence of complex design decisions, and multiple specific, demanding processes involved make it highly unlikely that any individual did it "all by himself". I've sat around the campfire with several of the world's top experts ("masters", actually) -- and watched them fail -- spectacularly and repeatedly.

Every single flake removal (among hundreds) is "a walk along the edge of disaster". No one "gets it right" on the first -- or tenth -- attempt (even with verbal coaching and demonstration of each step).

And, once someone made one and held it in his hand -- how was the knowledge of that complex, ever-changing process sequence transfered to his successor?

You obviously have no concept of the extreme difficulty of the task -- or of what you are blathering.

65 posted on 04/16/2011 8:33:45 AM PDT by TXnMA (America's most Orwellian oxymoronic acronym: "DOJ"...)
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