Feel free to remove this, mods, if it's too tangential to modern science, but I thought the community might find this early nature vs. nurture hypothesis amusing
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
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If you are here asking: "Is this a science meme?"
Probably, yes. We use the Dawkins definition of meme: a replicating idea, not just an image macro with a fact on it. A good post here doesn't need to teach you something. It needs to make you ask something: who, what, where, when, and especially why or how.
Science isn't a filing cabinet of facts, it's a conversation. For example, a photo of an eel or other localized wildlife counts because most people never see one, and wonder is the first step of inquiry. A car meme counts if it makes you curious about what's under the bonnet. If you want to talk about something you noticed in the world, chances are someone else wants to talk about it too.
We moderate for vibe, not category. Pruning is light, especially where a post creates interesting discussion. Experimenting is encouraged.
See the pinned paper on Shitposting as Public Pedagogy if you want the academic case for why this works.
Apparently there's enough comments to convince me this was serious. Generations would invent language, but it's a tough ask for children to do it, and expect that it matches any existing langunge. Why cats and dogs are not called meowsers and woofers in a language I know is beyond me.
The Egyptian word for cat was “mau” so close enough
Cat in Mandarin is māo
Children have been documented to spontaneously invent language.
Thank you for link. Interesting. It did show language evolving/changing quickly. Any expectation that they would reinvent ASL or Aramaic independently would have been an absurd expectation.