Distributed Cognition & the Emergence of Language: Language as a New Medium to Transfer Meaning

Paleoanthropologists, archaeologists and other researchers concerned with the biological and cultural frame in which language developed during prehistory often disagree on various issues. What time periods are relevant? Which species were gifted with such or such cognitive or linguistic feature? How did biology and culture interact during the process? However, a general consensus does exist on the idea that the emergence of our communication system, or rather the emergence of its modern attributes, was accompanied by the appearance of other symbolic activities. Body ornaments, ritual burials, rock painting or carving, sea-crossings and others are often quoted i) as made possible by a sophisticated communication system or ii) sharing with it essential semiotic properties. Although scientists still debate about this, some of these activities, as symbolic engravings (d’Errico et al., 2001) or body ornaments, arguably started as soon as the birth of our species in Africa some 150,000 years ago (McBrearty & Brooks, 2000). On the other hand, some others only appeared after the so-called symbolic revolution 50,000 years ago (Klein, 1999), as it seems to be the case for rock-art. Sound explanations for such time discrepancies are still missing, and are needed to better sketch out the cultural development of Homo sapiens. The situation of earlier species is even more confused.