NOAM CHOMSKY’S theory that the evolution of language provided the portal to all higher thought has taken another knock. A study of people with language difficulties suggests that mathematical skill evolved independently.
A team led by Rosemary Varley at the University of Sheffield, UK, studied three people with extensive damage to the brain’s left hemisphere, including language areas. Two could not speak at all, and the third only in fragmentary sentences. All were competent calculators, though, able to solve simple subtraction, division and multiplication problems (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0407470102).
The patients could not spot…
