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http://hdl.handle.net/1885/42089
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| Title: | Pleistocene Exchange Networks as Evidence for the Evolution of Language |
| Authors: | Marwick, Ben |
| Date Created: | 2003 |
| Abstract: | Distances of raw-material transportation reflect how hominid groups gather and exchange information. Early hominids moved raw materials short distances, suggesting a home range size, social complexity and communication system similar to primates in equivalent environments. After about 1.0 million years ago there was a large increase in raw-material transfer distances, possibly a result of the emergence of the ability to pool information by using a protolanguage. Another increase in raw-material transfer occurred during the late Middle Stone Age in Africa (after about 130,000 years ago), suggesting the operation of exchange networks. Exchange networks require a communication system with syntax, the use of symbols in social contexts and the ability to express displacement, which are the features of human language. Taking the Neanderthals as a case study, biological evidence and the results of computer simulations of the evolution of language, I argue for a gradual rather than catastrophic emergence of language coinciding with the first evidence of exchange networks. |
| Type: | pjournal |
| Publication: | Cambridge Archaeological Journal |
| Editors: | Scarre, Chris |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/1885/42089 |
| Appears in Collections: | ePrints
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Files in This Item:
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| 2792-~9D.XSH | | 0Kb | Unknown | View/Open | | Marwick_2003_CAJ.pdf | | 528Kb | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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