Functional mapping and the greed for computational resources
When did our ancestors develop language and how? Two main approaches – the gradualist view vs. the saltationist/UG view – have addressed this pivotal question in rather different ways. I propose a third way – the functional view – that attempts to overcome the problems of the previous approaches. My proposal is based on the idea that the brain of Australopithecus Afarensis, probably the oldest specimen of human lineage, was equipped with a novel computational architecture. This allowed the implementation of recursive and functional behavioral algorithms – able to perform abstraction, multi-argument functions, embedding, etc. – but required more computational resources. The greed for computational resources, thus, caused having larger brains to become an evolutionary advantage in spite of their higher energy consumption.
