Language is not essential for the cognitive processes that underlie thought

I’m not a neuroscience expert, but I do have a degree in philosophy. The Russell quote immediately struck me as misleading (especially without a citation). The author could show more integrity by including Russell’s full quote:

> Language serves not only to express thoughts, but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it. It is sometimes maintained that there can be no thought without language, but to this view I cannot assent: I hold that there can be thought, and even true and false belief, without language. But however that may be, it cannot be denied that all fairly elaborate thoughts require words.

> Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits by Bertrand Russell, Section: Part II: Language, Chapter I: The Uses of Language Quote Page 60, Simon and Schuster, New York.

Of course, that would contravene the popular narrative that philosophers are pompous idiots incapable of subtlety.

Is Russell aligned with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s statement, "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world."? Is he talking about how to communicate his world to others, or is he saying that without language internal reasoning is impossible?

Practically, I think the origins of fire-making abilities in humans tend to undermine that viewpoint. No other species is capable of reliably starting a fire with a few simple tools, yet the earliest archaeological evidence for fire (1 mya) could mean the ability predated complex linguistic capabilities. Observation and imitation could be enough for transmitting the skill from the first proto-human who successfully accomplished the task to others.

P.S. This is also why Homo sapiens should be renamed Homo ignis IMO.