Around 50,000 years ago, the fossil record suddenly included symbolic things such as little sculptures, jewlry, and paintings. This led many mainstream paleoanthropologists to assume that this was the time when we became human, the time when we first developed a true lanquage. I frankly had a great deal of problem with this. For one thing, symbolic items may have been carved in wood or mud or some other medium which was not preserved. For another, to assume that a language could not flourish without symbolic art is very difficult to prove in any scientific way. An interesting thing happened with Neanderthals living near to Cro Magnon men (our presumed ancestors). The Neanderthal apparently saw the symbolic items, such as some of the beads which were created by Cro Magnon, and they copied them from the Cro Magnon. This to me idicates that art probably sprung from very smart hominids seeing it and then realizing that they too could create it. The first artists, like the first to create a new type of tool, merely showed the rest of humanity what was possible. But It is all very speculative. I just worry that someone will try to assert that Bigfoot could not have a language because they have no artifacts and in fact I have heard just that argument. I guess I just don't think it can be made logically. In fact it has come to pass that an old Neanderthal skeleton was found with a hyoid bone intact and it indicated that it could probably talk. Obviously, this didn't prove anything about humans but I think it did demonstrate that there was something missing in the correlation of art and language. Anyway, it is something to think about.
Posted on Jul 21, 2002, 10:00 PM from IP address 65.188.64.221