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Can Paleolithic stone artifacts serve as evidence for prehistoric language?

  • Ofer Bar-Yosef
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In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory
This chapter is in the book In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory

Abstract

In this paper a hypothesis is offered concerning the geographic distribution of a Paleolithic language. Two models are commonly used for explaining invention and spread of new techno-typologies: emergence in a core area (invention), and appearance simultaneously and independently in various places (diffusion). The spread of new techniques, tool types, and ideas assumes the existence of verbal communication. The current evidence indicating that a Mousterian industry with Levalloisian techniques was the “mother-culture” from which the Initial Upper Paleolithic emerged, may hint that an unknown but hypothetical language was the source of the Upper Paleolithic languages. This proposal is based on the common knowledge among today’s flintknappers that the learned skill of making stone tools is acquired not only through watching and mimicking the artisan’s gestures, but also through oral explanations that accompany the teaching process.

Abstract

In this paper a hypothesis is offered concerning the geographic distribution of a Paleolithic language. Two models are commonly used for explaining invention and spread of new techno-typologies: emergence in a core area (invention), and appearance simultaneously and independently in various places (diffusion). The spread of new techniques, tool types, and ideas assumes the existence of verbal communication. The current evidence indicating that a Mousterian industry with Levalloisian techniques was the “mother-culture” from which the Initial Upper Paleolithic emerged, may hint that an unknown but hypothetical language was the source of the Upper Paleolithic languages. This proposal is based on the common knowledge among today’s flintknappers that the learned skill of making stone tools is acquired not only through watching and mimicking the artisan’s gestures, but also through oral explanations that accompany the teaching process.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Foreword ix
  4. Acknowledgments xiii
  5. Photographs xv
  6. Works of Harold Crane Fleming xix
  7. Part I. African peoples
  8. Geography, selected Afro-Asiatic families, and Y chromosome lineage variation: An exploration in linguistics and phylogeography 3
  9. A dental anthropological hypothesis relating to the ethnogenesis, origin, and antiquity of the Afro-Asiatic language family: Peopling of the Eurafrican-South Asian triangle IV 17
  10. African weeks 25
  11. Part II. African languages – synchronic studies
  12. Gender distinction and affirmative copula clauses in Zargulla 39
  13. Riddling in Gidole 49
  14. Part III. African languages – Classification and prehistory
  15. Lexicostatistical comparison of Omotic languages 57
  16. The primary branches of Cushitic: Seriating the diagnostic sound change rules 149
  17. Erosion in Chadic 161
  18. On Kunama ukunkula 'elbow' and its proposed cognates in Nilo-Saharan languages 169
  19. The problem of pan-African roots 189
  20. Part IV. Languages of Eurasia, Oceania, and the Americas
  21. Some thoughts on the Proto-Indo-European cardinal numbers 213
  22. Some Old World experience of linguistic dating 223
  23. The languages of Northern Eurasia: Inference to the best explanation 241
  24. Slaying the Dragon across Eurasia 263
  25. Trombetti: The forefather of Indo-Pacific 287
  26. Otomanguean loan words in Proto-Uto-Aztecan maize vocabulary? 309
  27. Historical interpretations of geographical distributions of Amerind subfamilies 321
  28. Part V. Human origins, Language origins, and Proto-Sapiens language
  29. Current topics in human evolutionary genetics 343
  30. A wild 50,000-year ride 359
  31. Can Paleolithic stone artifacts serve as evidence for prehistoric language? 373
  32. The origin of language: Symbiosism and symbiomism 381
  33. Some speculations on the evolution of language, and the language of evolution 401
  34. The age of Mama and Papa 417
  35. The millennial persistence of Indo-European and Eurasiatic pronouns and the origin of nominals 439
  36. General index 465
  37. Index of languages and languages families 471
  38. Index of scholars discussed 475
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.145.28bar

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Foreword ix
  4. Acknowledgments xiii
  5. Photographs xv
  6. Works of Harold Crane Fleming xix
  7. Part I. African peoples
  8. Geography, selected Afro-Asiatic families, and Y chromosome lineage variation: An exploration in linguistics and phylogeography 3
  9. A dental anthropological hypothesis relating to the ethnogenesis, origin, and antiquity of the Afro-Asiatic language family: Peopling of the Eurafrican-South Asian triangle IV 17
  10. African weeks 25
  11. Part II. African languages – synchronic studies
  12. Gender distinction and affirmative copula clauses in Zargulla 39
  13. Riddling in Gidole 49
  14. Part III. African languages – Classification and prehistory
  15. Lexicostatistical comparison of Omotic languages 57
  16. The primary branches of Cushitic: Seriating the diagnostic sound change rules 149
  17. Erosion in Chadic 161
  18. On Kunama ukunkula 'elbow' and its proposed cognates in Nilo-Saharan languages 169
  19. The problem of pan-African roots 189
  20. Part IV. Languages of Eurasia, Oceania, and the Americas
  21. Some thoughts on the Proto-Indo-European cardinal numbers 213
  22. Some Old World experience of linguistic dating 223
  23. The languages of Northern Eurasia: Inference to the best explanation 241
  24. Slaying the Dragon across Eurasia 263
  25. Trombetti: The forefather of Indo-Pacific 287
  26. Otomanguean loan words in Proto-Uto-Aztecan maize vocabulary? 309
  27. Historical interpretations of geographical distributions of Amerind subfamilies 321
  28. Part V. Human origins, Language origins, and Proto-Sapiens language
  29. Current topics in human evolutionary genetics 343
  30. A wild 50,000-year ride 359
  31. Can Paleolithic stone artifacts serve as evidence for prehistoric language? 373
  32. The origin of language: Symbiosism and symbiomism 381
  33. Some speculations on the evolution of language, and the language of evolution 401
  34. The age of Mama and Papa 417
  35. The millennial persistence of Indo-European and Eurasiatic pronouns and the origin of nominals 439
  36. General index 465
  37. Index of languages and languages families 471
  38. Index of scholars discussed 475
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