The Spirit in Human Evolution - Waldorf Research Institute

hominid species. This loss of specialization enables the muscles and other organs of the
mouth to have enormous flexibility in the embryonic and infant stages, due to their very
unformed nature.
As we have seen, the process of acquiring language in the young child actually
helps form and structure the unformed organs. This would not be possible to the
same extent if the muscles had largely predetermined functions. In the course of the
ontogenetic development of the child, the organs of the mouth transform themselves from
their primary functions of sucking, eating, drinking and so on. Such a transformation is
only possible where there is great plasticity and flexibility of function. This fact of human
evolution has long been known. It was most clearly expressed as long ago as the fourth
century when Gregory of Nyssa wrote in his Sermones de Creatione Homini:
Thus the Spirit created this arrangement like a musician in us. Without a doubt
we would never have benefited from this advantage if our lips had retained the
heavy burden of meeting the nutritional needs of the body. Yet the hands have
taken on this burden and freed the mouth in order that it could serve the needs
of speech. 57
The Hand Frees the Mouth
It was Andrè Leroi-Gourhan who first fully examined this phenomenon in
terms of modern anthropology in his seminal work La geste et la parole (Hand and Word:
The Evolution of Technology, Language and Art) in 1964. Leroi-Gourhan saw this as a
fundamental evolutionary trend in vertebrates. 58 He demonstrated a complex correlation
in the evolution of the major organs, the mechanical organization of the spine and the
limbs, the way the skull is attached to the spinal column, the teeth and mouth, the
hand and finally the brain. He describes an evolutionary trend towards the integration
of the two complementary “forward relationary fields,” that is to say the facial and
manual poles. He saw one trend towards an integration of these two fields, the face and
hands, leading to a freeing of both organs for higher functions. The other trend was the
development of the anterior limb extremities, the front feet or hands as advanced organs
of locomotion, as in the wings of birds or bats.
Animals belong more or less to one tendency or other. Cats, for example, use
their front paws not only for running but also for catching prey, whereas dogs have more
powerful jaws but cannot manipulate their front paws to the same extent.
Furthermore Leroi-Gourhan showed that it was the initial impetus of uprightness
that determined most of the characteristic features of human anatomy, including
manual dexterity, large brains and small mouths, the essential prerequisites of language.
Wolfgang Schad has subsequently shown that developments in the motor system always
preempt those in the central nervous system in evolution. 59 The trend then towards
encephalization, or relatively larger brains, was stimulated by developments in the limbs,
first the feet, then the hands and fingers. This trend was accompanied by a loss of “limb”
function of the head and in particular the mouth and lower jaw. As ever, we note that the
characteristics of one organ within an organism cannot change without a corresponding
adjustment throughout the entire organism.
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57
Quoted in Leroi-Gourhan, A., 1964, p 42.
58
Ibid., Chapter 2.
59
Schad, W., 1992.
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