In Pro Per

By David Balabanian
     
      Homo Loquens
     
      Please don't read this article if you live in Kansas. You see, it's about ... evolution, specifically how our species got to the top of the heap, and the one skill that put and keeps us there. ¶ Somewhere you may have heard we owe it all to the opposable thumb. A nifty device, no doubt-hard to make semiconductors with a hoof or claw-but
      other primates have it too, and most of them are approaching extinction.
     
      At one time our supremacy was attributed to our highly differentiated physiognomy. We were, it was believed, the most complex creature ever to have evolved-or been designed (depending on your point of view). But the Human Genome Project put an end to all that, revealing the length of our DNA chain to be a quarter of what had been assumed, far shorter than a frog's, and barely twice that of a roundworm.
     
      Perhaps you're thinking it's the size of our brains that has made us the Lords and Ladies of Creation. But dolphins have a higher ratio of brain to body weight, and they can't figure out how to avoid tuna nets. Moreover, the fossil evidence indicates that the brains of Neanderthals were actually larger than ours; but you don't see them around launching space probes or even composing ring tones for cell phones.
     
      Their problem, it turns out, was that their heads joined their bodies in a way that kept their larynxes from moving. In short, they couldn't speak.
     
      There you have it, the thing that put us at the top of the food chain, the whole reason we're diners, not dinner: articulate speech, the only human quality. Properly, we should call ourselves Homo loquens (speakers), not Homo sapiens (thinkers).
     
      Many creatures think. Even protozoa think-perhaps not very profoundly, but well enough to have survived longer than we. What they can't do is cumulate knowledge from generation to generation and thereby increase in quantity. For that, one needs speech, in both its audible and solid (i.e., written) forms. Think-without using words, if you can-how little you would know if you had learned only what your parents and teachers could impart through gestures and grimaces.
      If speech is the only excellence our species possesses, then it follows that those members who speak for a living must stand pretty high in the evolutionary pileup-particularly those who speak for others. (Now you see why this article is in California Lawyer and not Scientific American.)
     
      Of course, special gifts carry special duties. Some members of our profession continually use their gift, dominating all conversations and thereby sparing others evolutionary embarrassment. Viewed in that light, what might seem like common rudeness is really philanthropy.
     
      With an understanding of the role of speech in the evolutionary scheme, there are many things you can do to advance it. Here are a few suggestions:
     
      n Celebrate the talent that makes us human by patronizing debate tournaments and spelling bees (no, yodeling and hog-calling contests don't count).
     
      n Help clarify what is really important about us by joining the fight against specism in athletics. Put a cheetah on the track with human runners, or a springbok in the high jump, and you'll see some records fall.
     
      n Encourage schools to stop doping the kids who constantly sound off and provide help instead to those who sit quietly in class.
     
      n Support candidates for public office who can deliver a speech without using a script, uttering a solecism, or mispronouncing common words such as nuclear.
     
      n Keep a supply of pebbles handy to pop into your mouth for oratorical exercises whenever time permits.
     
      Words, in a word, are what make us what we are. Treat them with reverence and speak as often, and as well, as you can.
     
      David Balabanian (david.balabanian@bingham.com) is a partner with Bingham McCutchen in San Francisco
     

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