Chapter 6. The emergence of language, art and symbolic thinking
-
João Zilhão
Abstract
There is a widespread understanding that the personal ornaments of the African Middle Stone Age and the animal and human figurines of the Aurignacian of southern Germany provide the earliest evidence of the possession of “modern” cognitive capabilities, ones that appeared for the first time in human evolution as a result of the speciation of Homo sapiens and that would explain its rapid expansion from Africa into Eurasia and the attendant extinction of coeval archaic humans (such as the Neandertals). The archaeological facts contradict this view, since there is abundant evidence for the existence of such “modern” capabilities in non-sapiens populations, and that language, “symbolic thinking” by definition, is probably as old as the human genus. Therefore, the explanation for the emergence of body ornamentation and figurative art must be sought not in the realm of cognition but in that of history, with demographic growth and the intensification of social interaction networks playing a primary role in the process.
Abstract
There is a widespread understanding that the personal ornaments of the African Middle Stone Age and the animal and human figurines of the Aurignacian of southern Germany provide the earliest evidence of the possession of “modern” cognitive capabilities, ones that appeared for the first time in human evolution as a result of the speciation of Homo sapiens and that would explain its rapid expansion from Africa into Eurasia and the attendant extinction of coeval archaic humans (such as the Neandertals). The archaeological facts contradict this view, since there is abundant evidence for the existence of such “modern” capabilities in non-sapiens populations, and that language, “symbolic thinking” by definition, is probably as old as the human genus. Therefore, the explanation for the emergence of body ornamentation and figurative art must be sought not in the realm of cognition but in that of history, with demographic growth and the intensification of social interaction networks playing a primary role in the process.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Editors’ introduction vii
- Acknowledgements xi
- Chapter 1. Pan symbolicus 1
- Chapter 2. The evolution and the rise of human language 13
- Chapter 3. The origin of symbolically mediated behaviour 49
- Chapter 4. Middle Stone Age engravings and their significance to the debate on the emergence of symbolic material culture 75
- Chapter 5. Complex cognition required for compound adhesive manufacture in the Middle Stone Age implies symbolic capacity 97
- Chapter 6. The emergence of language, art and symbolic thinking 111
- Chapter 7. The human major transition in relation to symbolic behaviour, including language, imagination, and spirituality 133
- Chapter 8. The living as symbols, the dead as symbols 141
- Chapter 9. Biology and mechanisms related to the dawn of language 163
- Chapter 10. The other middle-range theories 185
- Chapter 11. Metarepresentation, Homo religiosus , and Homo symbolicus 205
- Index 225
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Editors’ introduction vii
- Acknowledgements xi
- Chapter 1. Pan symbolicus 1
- Chapter 2. The evolution and the rise of human language 13
- Chapter 3. The origin of symbolically mediated behaviour 49
- Chapter 4. Middle Stone Age engravings and their significance to the debate on the emergence of symbolic material culture 75
- Chapter 5. Complex cognition required for compound adhesive manufacture in the Middle Stone Age implies symbolic capacity 97
- Chapter 6. The emergence of language, art and symbolic thinking 111
- Chapter 7. The human major transition in relation to symbolic behaviour, including language, imagination, and spirituality 133
- Chapter 8. The living as symbols, the dead as symbols 141
- Chapter 9. Biology and mechanisms related to the dawn of language 163
- Chapter 10. The other middle-range theories 185
- Chapter 11. Metarepresentation, Homo religiosus , and Homo symbolicus 205
- Index 225
