Nullius in Verba

!Kung San are a group of people living in he Kalahari desert in Africa. They are more commonly known as the Bushmen. They are the group of people depicted in the movie “The Gods must be crazy”. They are also famous for their “click” language, meaning there are a lot of click sound (made by clicking the tongue) in their verbal language. The click sound is often written as an exclamation symbol as in !Kung.

In the book “The Language Instinct”, Steven Pinker mentioned a peculiar custom of !Kung San people. They believe that babies need to be taught and practiced to sit, stand, and walk. So they will carefully pile sand around the babies to prop them upright. And sure enough, the babies then would be able to sit upright after a certain period of time of practice. This observation further affirms their belief on teaching babies to sit. Because the risk of a baby not able to sit, stand, or walk is so great that they don’t dare to forgo the practice, and therefore never know that babies will grow naturally to progress upright posture and walking.

When I read the study, there is this funny image in my brain of babies being propped up by piles of sand. But then again, aren’t we also sometimes surrounded by many misconceptions and false beliefs just because we never dare or try to challenge ourselves?