If anyone's curious about this domain and theories of human development associated with it, you may want to check out Jeremy Lent's "The Patterning Instinct".

If anyone's curious about this domain and theories of human development associated with it, you may want to check out Jeremy Lent's "The Patterning Instinct". Slowly reading through it right now, and coming across the OP cave painting piece was interesting. Some rough notes below. ---- Rough timelines & theories: Theories: - Aiello & Dunbar "gradual and early" language hypothesis, Pinker, Chomsky - Bill Noble & Iain Davidson - "sudden and recent" - Ray Jackendoff (1999) - blend the two above theories, reframe from whether hominids "had language" to "what elements of a language capacity" Timeline: - 8 million yrs ago - Great rift valley challenges, birth of mimetic culture (see above) - 2.5 million yrs ago - Olduvai - Homo habilis - 2 million yrs ago - transition from mimetic forms to early language/symbolics? - Jackendoff's development - development of mimetic language - 300k yrs ago - under Aiello/Dunbar "gradual and early" theory, we "crossed the Rubicon" to modern state just before anatomically modern humans - Jackendoff, we developed protolanguage - small nets of symbols - 40k years ago - upper paleolithic revolution - Noble&Davidson, arguing this was a "sudden and recent" revolution and explosion of symbols, since we had less artifacts before this period. - Jackendoff, modern language (giant net of symbols) # Ch. 3 - The rise of mythic consciousness ## Great Leap Forward Theory - lascoux cave paintings from 17k yrs ago - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux - [found recently] indonesian cave paintings from 44k yrs ago? - https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/786760790/44-000-year-old- https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/786760790/44-000-year-old- indonesian-cave-painting-is-rewriting-the-history-of-art - "great leap forward" theory (Jared Diamond) - If humans were anatomically modern 150k yrs ago, why did it take so long for the upper paleolithic revolution (40k yrs ago)? - "Why did it take so long for symbolic thinking to get going! This rather awkward question was first framed by archaeologist Colin Renfrew, who referred to it as the “sapient paradox“." ## Out of Africa - "The revolution that wasn't" theory (Sally McBrearty & Alison Brooks) - Contrary to "Great Leap Forward", argues things were slow and gradual. - "Out of Africa" theory / story, backed with some dna analysis - 70k yrs ago - humans expanded through africa, small contingent crossing red sea into arabia -> south asia -> australia