Preprint Human Origins and Language Origins 1
Human Origins and Language Origins 1: A polycentric scenario for biocultural niche expansion
To appear in PaleoAnthropology
https://paleoanthropology.org/ojs/index.php/paleo
Abstract
This article presents a gradualist perspective on material and symbolic niche construction and expansion that integrates data and theories from archaeology, biology, genetics, linguistics, neuroscience, psychology, and semiotics. Empirical evidence is reviewed from the broader archaeological inventory of material culture (lithics and bone artefacts, pigments, ornaments, other material signs) and from evidence for ecological niche expansion. The evidence supports an account centred on the polycentric and asynchronous emergence of symbolic practices across diverse human populations. The complex, multi-regional nature of human origins and language origins highlights the dynamic interplay between biological and cultural evolution. We reject monocausal explanations implicating a unique speciation event for symbolization and language and any theorization of language as an “add-on” in human evolution, stressing rather how the cognitive foundations of complex technical practices and symbolic practices co-evolved with the evolution of the human developmental niche. Our findings necessitate a re-evaluation of traditional theories of language origin and cognitive evolution, proposing a more integrative and nuanced understanding of the human evolutionarytrajectory, situated in an EvoDevoSocio perspective on human biocultural evolution.
Figure: Engravings on ochre and ostrich eggshells dated between 100 Ka and 58 Ka found at Middle Stone Age Southern African sites; a-b: Blombos Cave; c: Diepkloof shelter (modified after d’Errico and Henshilwood, 2011)
Reference
d’Errico, F., Sinha, C., Arbib, M.A., Gärdenfors, P., Heine, B., Kuteva, T., Nair, R. B. (in press) Human Origins and Language Origins 1: A polycentric scenario for biocultural niche expansion. PaleoAnthropology.