by J C Ryan
While inspecting the perimeters, and arriving at the opening, Sean remarked, “This reminds me of the Battle of Thermopylae. In 480 BC, Leonidas, the king of Sparta, and three hundred of his warriors, in a place that looks a little like this, stopped a Persian army of one million men in their tracks for two days. Had they not been betrayed, they could very well have stopped them completely and made them go back home.”
“Those were the days.” Dylan sighed and smiled wryly. “Swords, spears, bows and arrows, blood, guts, and glory. What more can a soldier desire?”
Carter laughed. “Dylan, it almost sounds as if you were there!”
It was settled. This was the best place to set up the training camp.
Back home over coffee and more of Bly’s cake, it was apparent they were all excited about the plans. Ahote, who had experience with building log cabins, was appointed as the construction manager.
Sean arranged with six of his men to prepare themselves to relocate to Freydís for a few weeks to start the work. Initially, the construction team would be put up by Mackenzie and Bly until they had their first cabins ready at the base.
A target move-in date was set for ten to fourteen days from now. Within two months, the first trainees would arrive.
Carter and Mackenzie were delighted to find out that some of the EA training staff were married and had young children, some of them Liam and Beth’s age.
On the last night before James and company had to go back, Irene brought up the inevitable question. “What do we call this new place? Let’s be creative — not something like EA Camp Alpha, or the like.” She smiled.
Carter looked at his old friend. “Ahote, I remember Grandpa Will told me you were the one who named Freydís all those years ago. What do you think?”
“Hmm, well I’ll have to think about that . . .” Ahote murmured.
A long debate followed, but James’s fascination with the wolves of Freydís since the first day he met them must have influenced his chain of thought. “We called our rescue team ‘the Wolves of Freydís’. I suggest we stick to those magnificent creatures and call the place ‘Tala’, the Sioux word for wolf. How does that sound?”
Everyone went quiet. Mackenzie started grinning — anything to do with her wolf-friends had that effect on her. She smiled as she said, “Tala Camp or the Wolf Camp. I really like that.” She already had her hand up when she asked, “Shall we vote?”
James’s proposal won by a landslide, getting one hundred percent of the votes. There were no abstentions or dissent.
The mention of the wolves and seeing how Mackenzie interacted with them the day before must have reminded Irene about the many thoughts she’d had about this strange phenomenon. She was looking at Mackenzie and Carter when she started, “Is there a clear scientific explanation for the origins of human language? How did language develop in humans? Rather, I should ask, did it develop, or was it always there?”
Everyone stopped and looked at Carter.
“Professor?” Mackenzie asked with raised eyebrows.
“You are a receptive bunch of students!” Carter started laughing. “But this time, I might disappoint you. My knowledge is superficial. Liu should be here — I know she did some in-depth research on this subject a while ago.”
Dylan smiled. “Well, I will ask her when I see her again. But in the meantime, I’m pretty sure what you refer to as ‘superficial knowledge of the subject’ is still going to be much more than I know.”
The group went quiet again, waiting for Carter to start.
“Well, it is said to be one of the most controversial subjects you can imagine. The answer of how language came about as a human trait depends on whether you are listening to evolutionists or creationists.”
Mackenzie chuckled. “Well, we haven’t had one of those evolutionary discussions in a long time. I’m all ears.”
“The debate has been raging for centuries,” Carter continued. “The problem that scientists have is the lack of direct evidence, which makes for a lot of confusion and conjecture. There was even a time when this shortage of fact led many scholars to abandon the entire topic because it was regarded as 'unsuitable for serious study’.
“I’ve read somewhere that in the late eighteen hundreds, the Linguistic Society of Paris banned all debates on the subject. It was as if everyone agreed to that prohibition, and the subject sort of stayed off the agenda until late in the twentieth century. And despite a lot of scientific breakthroughs and new methods since the eighteen hundreds, it is still referred to by many as ‘the hardest problem in science.’”
“Keep on going,” Irene prodded when it looked like he was going to stop talking. She was enjoying every moment of it.
“Well, the two main schools of thought come from the continuity and discontinuity theorists.
“The continuity believers say ‘human language exhibits so much complexity that one cannot imagine it simply appearing from nothing in its final form; therefore, it must have evolved from earlier pre-linguistic systems among our primate ancestors.’
“The discontinuity theorists use that same argument to say ‘human language is a unique trait, which cannot be compared to anything found among non-humans, and must have appeared fairly suddenly during the course of human evolution.’
“Some say language is genetically encoded while others say it’s learned through social interaction. Noam Chomsky, a well-known American linguist, said something to the effect that some sort of mutation occurred in one individual about a hundred thousand years ago by chance, which suddenly created the language ability in perfect or near-perfect form.”
“Yeah, right!” Mackenzie started laughing but stopped abruptly. “Oops, not too many years ago I was one of those mutation by chance believers myself.”
Carter chuckled. “I told you way back then Will and I were going to make a creationist out of you.”
“Yes, I remember, and at the time, I thought ‘we’ll see about that’.” She laughed.
“But seriously now, what do you believe? How did we learn to speak?” Irene asked.
“I don’t think humans ever evolved into speaking creatures from non-speaking creatures. I believe we were created with the capability to speak. That’s obviously a very simplistic view of it because human language is an extraordinary thing. It’s complex and for the most part controlled by a set of in-built automated rules. Steven Pinker calls it ‘the language instinct’. I think it’s present from birth, and as we grow, we are influenced by the language of our parents, teachers, friends, et cetera.”
“That sounds fairly logical to me,” Mackenzie replied, while Irene and James nodded.
“But why are you interested in this, Irene? I get the idea you have something else on your mind,” Carter observed.
“It’s actually the wolves that got my mind into overdrive since the first time I met them. They made me wonder about humans and animals and communication. I always thought language is a human trait only, but since meeting the wolves, I’m not so sure anymore. It’s as if they somehow have a way to communicate with us — a language we don’t understand, but it’s definitely there.”
Mackenzie nodded. “Just look at Jeha and Liam. Sometimes that little dog looks like she understands everything Liam is saying, and at times I get the impression she knows exactly how to talk to Liam. I’ve read somewhere that even the average dog can learn 160 human words, and Border Collies, the sheepdog breed, can learn up to a thousand human words.”
“On the topic of dogs,” Sean added, “Dylan and I have experience working with war dogs on some of our missions. It’s mindboggling to see what those dogs are capable of. I’ve personally experienced that military war dogs can not only understand diverse commands but can follow a string of orders such as ‘search ahead, stay, watch.’ In some situations, the handlers fit the dogs with tiny earphones so that they can communicate with them when they are out of sight, which means they must understand specific words and sentences, not just the intonation of
our voices.”
“What bothers me is we don’t even know one word in dog language,” Mackenzie noted. “What do we miss by not being able to have conversations with the animals? I know animal vocal cords are not capable of producing human sounds and vice versa, but with computers these days, it must be possible to bridge that gap. Wouldn’t you think?”
“You’ve got a point there, Mackie,” Carter replied. “I’ve been thinking about that for years, in particular since I saw you and the wolves interact the first time and ever since. And . . .” he paused for a moment, “how can we ever forget how they practically told us you and Liam were alive, and not only that, they also told us about Beth? We just didn’t understand at the time when Keeva got pregnant it was the same time as Mackenzie discovered she was pregnant. And also why they gave Liam’s toys back to us.”
“Yes,” said Mackenzie, “and how they kept me company in my darkest moments in that hellhole. It was as if they really were there. I know psychologists will have a lot of mumbo jumbo about it, but for me their presence was real.”
The group was staring at each other for a while before Mackenzie continued. “What about primates? Like Kanzi, that bonobo ape capable of demonstrating his understanding of more than 3,000 English words. And not just single words but sentences with instructions or questions.”
“What about dolphins?” James said.
“Don’t even get me started on dolphins,” Mackenzie said, laughing.
“No, no hang on there. Don’t stop now. I want to hear about the dolphins,” James said as he leaned back in his chair.
“Okay, you asked for it,” she said with a big smile when everyone was looking at her to continue.
“So, do dolphins have a language? That’s a question I’ve been asking since I was a little girl. And here is my take on it.
“First, I don’t want to get bogged down in the academic definition of the word language. For me, the word ‘language’ just means a communication system. It could be verbal and non-verbal, sounds and gestures. So, I’m of the opinion that we humans don’t have a monopoly on language.
“Dolphins have a communications system; there is no doubt about it. The fact that we don’t understand it is not proof they don’t have a language. In fact, all animals and most living things have some sort of communications system. Just think about it. Even plants, like flowers, have a way of communicating with the bees when they are ready to be pollinated. The cells in our body communicate with each other. Just cut yourself with a knife, and a message goes from the wound to the brain, to the vocal cords and out comes the word ‘ouch!’ Without ‘the language of cells’, we wouldn’t have a body.
“For ages, people have tried to teach human language to animals—anything from dolphins, dogs, chimpanzees, gorillas, elephants, to parrots, and results have been remarkable. But scientists agree that only a human can fully learn a human language. To make their conclusion complete, I think they should have admitted that by the same token, humans are incapable of learning animal language.
"I mean, if ‘dolphin scientists’ were doing the same experiment on humans, they would probably conclude that no matter how smart humans seem to be, they just can’t learn how to swim like dolphins.”
James replied, “Well, when you put it like that . . .”
Everyone exploded in laughter.
Mackenzie continued. “So, I’m saying in the same way humans have a verbal and non-verbal communication system, animals have verbal or, to us, audible and inaudible communication systems. Audible sounds or what we call language is part of our communications system, but the sounds we make are not the entire communications system. Our smiles, hugs, laughs, frowns, handshakes, hand gestures, and movements, et cetera are all an integral part of our communications system.
“Animals also use vocalizations — barks, growls, whistles, creaks, chuffs, screams, squawks, pops, chirps, and others— for communication. They also incorporate gestures in their communications, like dogs baring their teeth or wagging their tails.
“Dolphins have been shown to use communicative methods such as vocalizations, physical contact, and postures to express their emotional state.
“Now hold onto your chairs,” Mackenzie said. “Scientists showed dolphins communicate emotions such as anger, frustration, contentment, affection, and others. And not only that, they also express information about their reproductive state, age, gender, and more.
“Furthermore, like many other animals, they can interpret each other’s behaviors and communicative signals and coordinate activities like feeding or just swimming together. In the town of Laguna, Brazil, dolphins have been communicating with fishermen to help them catch fish, they have saved people from drowning, and that famous story about the dolphin approaching a human diver and ‘asking’ him to help it remove the fishhook from its fin.
“Dolphins, just like humans, use physical contact for communication with each other — a gentle nuzzle, a playful bite, an aggressive bite, a soft petting with the pectoral fin, and much more. Signals to convey their frustration, threat, or anger include forceful bobbing of the head, gaping mouth, flared-out pectoral fins, and such.
“There are scientists, not all of them ready to admit it in public though, who believe that those chirps and whistles are in reality used to refer to things more than just general emotional states. They are adamant that dolphins can refer to objects in their environment, communicate about abstract concepts, refer to things in the past and the future, and best of all, learn and commit to memory the meanings of hundreds of thousands of ideas and link them to specific combinations of vocal patterns.
“They, those scientists, say the only stumbling block in the way of a major breakthrough is our inability to decipher their language. It’s as if the dolphins are holding out on us — waiting for us to ascend to their level.”
Mackenzie’s audience was gawking at her when she stopped talking.
“So, are you saying, Mackenzie, that dolphins have a human-like language, and the only issue is that we haven’t decoded it yet?”
Mackenzie nodded. “Yep, that’s what I believe.”
“Do you reckon we can bridge the gap and speak ‘dolphinese’ sometime soon?” Sean asked.
“I like that, ‘dolphinese’.” Mackenzie laughed. “I think it’s not too far away. Like I said before, with the use of computers, vast amounts of data can be collected, mapped, and interpreted. I think it’s just a matter of time.”
“Man, that would be great!” James exclaimed. “I’ve got a lot of questions for those dolphins.”
Chapter 19 -
Sounds-like
After their guests’ departure, early the next morning, Carter and Mackenzie settled down in the study to continue their research. Mackenzie got Liu on the phone and tried to convince her to take a break from the University and come up to Freydís for a visit.
Liu started hemming and hawing about taking off and missing lectures, et cetera, when Mackenzie’s face broke into a devious little smile. “Oh, did I forget to say Dylan is coming up again next week?”
The line went quiet for all of about two seconds before Liu replied, “Let me see what I can arrange. I’ll let you know before the end of the day.”
Mackenzie beamed. She didn’t even have to explain why Dylan was visiting again so soon — knowing that Dylan would be there was more than enough motivation for Liu. All Mackenzie had left to do was let Dylan know to pick Liu up on his way to Freydís.
“You are a crafty little devil, Mackie,” Carter smirked when she ended the call.
She just shrugged and grinned, replying, “I had to think of something to get her here without telling her too much over the phone.”
Carter shook his head and returned his mind to the library of the giants. He stared at the image created by the electron microscope from the original flimsy, metallic-looking sheets he and his team had smuggled out of Egypt on their last trip to the City of Lights.
He still had no idea what m
aterial the sheets were made of, and neither did he have any idea what language he was looking at.
Before Adam and Eve? It looks familiar . . . Semitic almost.
After a while, he was so deep in thought he didn’t even realize he was talking to himself in an audible voice. “Definitely Semitic, no doubt about that anymore.”
He was oblivious to the fact that Mackenzie was staring at him. She didn’t say anything. She had seen that look many times — he was about to figure something out.
“Aramaic. Some say it’s the language Adam and Eve spoke . . . . Aramaic is also Semitic.” His voice turned into muffled mumbling and then stopped completely.
Mackenzie got up and went to the kitchen to fetch them both a mug of espresso and a cookie. When she returned, she could swear he had not moved, blinked an eye, or even realized she was gone. She placed the coffee and cookie in front of him and returned to her desk, still watching him.
Another minute or so passed before Carter’s eyes moved as his olfactory senses made him aware of the aroma of the coffee drifting out of the mug in front of him, and he looked at her as if to ask where did this come from?
She smiled and waved her hand. His starry eyes focused on her, and suddenly he was back in the present. “Where were you for the past twenty minutes, my dear?” Mackenzie laughed.
“Amongst the giants.” He grinned. “Trying to get them to tell me what language they spoke and how I can understand it.”
“And?”
“Nah, no such luck. Maybe they are annoyed because I stole their library . . . but I told them I’ll return it soon.”
“I thought I heard you talking to them about Semitic, Aramaic, Adam, and Eve.”
“What?” He laughed. “Could you hear me talk to them?”
Mackenzie nodded. “Every word of it.”
