I find it very unlikely that no-one before Boas had noticed that children learn the language of the linguistic community that is around them (and not the language of their genetic parents, where different). It seems to me a self-evident truth, and if others hadn't written it down, it was probably because it was self-evident to them too.
Of course. The difference is that by the turn of the century, anthropologists had knowledge about vastly different anthropological populations. While almost all (high racialist) anthropologists were impressed by anthropological variation, Boas was the first one to really insist on the common features across anthropological populations. Chomsky is right to see Boas as the first scientist to make this observation based on systematically collected data.
I find it very unlikely that no-one before Boas had noticed that children learn the language of the linguistic community that is around them (and not the language of their genetic parents, where different). It seems to me a self-evident truth, and if others hadn't written it down, it was probably because it was self-evident to them too.
Of course. The difference is that by the turn of the century, anthropologists had knowledge about vastly different anthropological populations. While almost all (high racialist) anthropologists were impressed by anthropological variation, Boas was the first one to really insist on the common features across anthropological populations. Chomsky is right to see Boas as the first scientist to make this observation based on systematically collected data.