Ornaments are the most common and ubiquitous art form of the Late Pleistocene. This fact suggests a common, fundamental function somewhat different to other kinds of Paleolithic art. While the capacity for artistic expression could be considerably older than the record of preserved art would suggest, beads signal a novel development in the efficiency and flexibility of visual communication technology. The Upper Paleolithic was a period of considerable regional differentiation in material culture, yet there is remarkable consistency (...) in the dominant shapes and sizes of Paleolithic beads over more than 25,000 years and across vast areas, even though they were made from diverse materials and, in the case of mollusc shells, diverse taxonomic families. Cultural and linguistic continuity cannot explain the meta-pattern. The evidence indicates that widespread adoption of beads of redundant form was not only about local and subregional communication of personal identity or group affinity, but also an expansion in the geographic scale of social networks. The conformity of the beads grew spontaneously and in a self-organizing manner from individuals’ interest in tapping into the network as a means for spreading social and environmental risk. (shrink)

Among the cultural innovations by which the Upper Palaeolithic period is characterized, those relating to burial practices furnish the possibility of evaluating the profound changes which differentiated this era from the Middle Palaeolithic. The graves of the Upper Palaeolithic offer us a sometimes very compelling glimpse of the complexity of the symbolic, cognitive and social environment of those peoples, as well as of the evolution and diversification over time and space of their rituals associated with death. This article considers (...) the set of burials discovered to date within the boundaries of Italy as particularly representative of these features. Numerous, diverse and well-endowed, they provide important information about the peoples of the Upper Palaeolithic and of the way they responded to death. These graves also represent a significant body of evidence for the debate on the degree to which Palaeolithic man can be considered culturally fully human and the extent to which he intentionally buried his dead. (shrink)

Among the cultural innovations by which the Upper Palaeolithic period is characterized, those relating to burial practices furnish the possibility of evaluating the profound changes which differentiated this era from the Middle Palaeolithic. The graves of the Upper Palaeolithic offer us a sometimes very compelling glimpse of the complexity of the symbolic, cognitive and social environment of those peoples, as well as of the evolution and diversification over time and space of their rituals associated with death. This article considers (...) the set of burials discovered to date within the boundaries of Italy as particularly representative of these features. Numerous, diverse and well-endowed, they provide important information about the peoples of the Upper Palaeolithic and of the way they responded to death. These graves also represent a significant body of evidence for the debate on the degree to which Palaeolithic man can be considered culturally fully human and the extent to which he intentionally buried his dead. (shrink)

The Upper Palaeolithic Revolution, sometimes called ‘the Creative Explosion’, is seen as the period when the forefathers of modern forager societies emerged. Similarly to the Industrial and Neolithic Revolutions, it represents a short time span when numerous inventions appeared and cultural changes occurred. The inventions were in the domain of technology, that is, shaping of new stone tool forms, longdistance exchange of raw materials, the use of bone, antler and ivory as well as rare minerals for the production of (...) domestic and ritual objects. Spatial analysis of ‘living floors’ indicates the presence of a kitchen area, sleeping grounds, storage facilities (in certain regions) and a discard zone. We can also detect a certain increase in social hierarchy and the presence of shamans. Body decorations indicate the appearance of personal individuality. Several hypotheses were offered as an explanation for the initiation of all these cultural changes often grouped under the term ‘modern behaviour’. It stands to reason that attributing the new successful technologies observed in the Eurasian Upper Palaeolithic to intrinsic social processes and economic innovations by local Middle Palaeolithic populations would need a better archaeological demonstration than that available today. For the time being, the emergence of Modern humans in sub-Saharan Africa, their socio-economic dynamism that caused their expansion through the Nile Valley into the Near East, and their migration along the ‘southern route’ of Asia as far as Australia, is the most plausible scenario though it still leaves much to be desired from future archaeological research. (shrink)

The Upper Palaeolithic Revolution, sometimes called ‘the Creative Explosion’, is seen as the period when the forefathers of modern forager societies emerged. Similarly to the Industrial and Neolithic Revolutions, it represents a short time span when numerous inventions appeared and cultural changes occurred. The inventions were in the domain of technology, that is, shaping of new stone tool forms, longdistance exchange of raw materials, the use of bone, antler and ivory as well as rare minerals for the production of (...) domestic and ritual objects. Spatial analysis of ‘living floors’ indicates the presence of a kitchen area, sleeping grounds, storage facilities (in certain regions) and a discard zone. We can also detect a certain increase in social hierarchy and the presence of shamans. Body decorations indicate the appearance of personal individuality. Several hypotheses were offered as an explanation for the initiation of all these cultural changes often grouped under the term ‘modern behaviour’. It stands to reason that attributing the new successful technologies observed in the Eurasian Upper Palaeolithic to intrinsic social processes and economic innovations by local Middle Palaeolithic populations would need a better archaeological demonstration than that available today. For the time being, the emergence of Modern humans in sub-Saharan Africa, their socio-economic dynamism that caused their expansion through the Nile Valley into the Near East, and their migration along the ‘southern route’ of Asia as far as Australia, is the most plausible scenario though it still leaves much to be desired from future archaeological research. (shrink)

Begining from the Paleolithic Period cultures, the Danube has hosted a society and a state. The Danube river, which is the source of life for the states living in the Danube basin, has become more strategic with the growth and spread of the states and has become the key to existence in these lands. The Danube, which was used only for drinking water and agricultural irrigation in the Middle Ages, has become the main tool of trade in time. (...) It has been replaced by modern boats, starting with the transportation made by backing up from the shore with horse-drawn carriages over the Danube. The process of sharing dominance in the waterway has been the main target in the management of the Danube. It is possible to evaluate the process of managing the navigation in the Danube in four periods. The first period is the period of bilateral agreements between 1792 and before; the second term, the commission period, which started with the Paris Peace Conference of 1856 and continued between the 1920s and the First World War, which was planned for a short time but whose mandate was extended several times; the third period, efforts to internationalize the Danube from 1920 to the Second World War; the fourth period is the internationalization process of the Danube. However, there is no legal document in which the Danube states, which have agreed for the management of navigation for centuries, have made an agreement on the prevention, control and disposal of ship-borne pollution. (shrink)

Informed by a provocative exhibition at the Louvre curated by the author, _The Severed Head_ unpacks artistic representations of severed heads from the Paleolithic period to the present. Surveying paintings, sculptures, and drawings, Julia Kristeva turns her famed critical eye to a study of the head as symbol and metaphor, as religious object and physical fact, further developing a critical theme in her work--_the power of horror_--and the potential for the face to provide an experience of the sacred. (...) Kristeva considers the head as icon, artifact, and locus of thought, seeking a keener understanding of the violence and desire that drives us to sever, and in some cases keep, such a potent object. Her study stretches all the way back to 6,000 B.C.E., with humans' early decoration and worship of skulls, and follows with the Medusa myth; the mandylion of Laon (a holy relic in which the face of a saint appears on a piece of cloth); the biblical story of John the Baptist and his counterpart, Salome; tales of the guillotine; modern murder mysteries; and even the rhetoric surrounding the fight for and against capital punishment. Kristeva interprets these "capital visions" through the lens of psychoanalysis, drawing infinite connections between their manifestation and sacred experience and very much affirming the possibility of the sacred, even in an era of "faceless" interaction. (shrink)

Has human nature been essentially the same since the evolution of Homo sapiens? If we could observe tribal forest dwellers from the Paleolithic period, would we notice more similarities than differences compared with contemporary men and women? Or has human nature itself undergone such radical changes over the course of evolution that we would have trouble finding anything in common with our distant ancestors? Political scientist Jeremy J. Millett tackles these tough questions and more in this sweeping overview (...) of society and human nature past, present, and future. Combining philosophy, political theory, and the evidence of evolution, Millett argues that people today are very different from human beings of the distant past. He notes research suggesting that our genetic natures have been changing since the dawn of our species. Hence, the human nature of the 21st century is not the same as that of the 100th century BCE. Nor will humans of some distant future era be the same as us. Both the continuously developing genetic basis of human nature and the many differences of environment and culture have produced and will continue to produce people unlike us. Millett examines successive periods of human development—tribal, feudal, maritime, urban, and today's emerging global society, showing in each case how distinctive human nature was in each time period. He concludes by projecting into the future, forecasting an age of "autonomous people" who have largely escaped the need for government and for whom cooperation is the norm. A work of great erudition and fascinating speculation, People Unlike Us raises profound questions about human nature and the future of our species. (shrink)

From a largely Western phenomenon, the “animal turn” has, in recent years, gone global. Animals and Human Society in Asia: Historical, Cultural and Ethical Perspectives is just such a timely product that testifies to this trend.But why Asia? The editors, in their very helpful overview essay, have from the outset justified the volume's focus on Asia and ensured that this is not simply a matter of lacuna filling. The reasons they set out include: the fact that Asia is the cradle (...) of early human settlement and animal domestication; Asia encompasses an extreme diversity of closely connected ecosystems and human cultures; Asia is the place where the world's major religions originated; and, as in other parts of the world, Asia's use of animals for food and other utilitarian purposes constitutes a prominent feature of its culture. All of these factors, they argue, made Asia a unique lab for the exploration of major developments in human civilization and the complexities of human-animal interactions.Based on these premises, the book is divided into four parts, each concentrating on areas that the editors consider to have paramount significance in world history: Part I, “Hunting and Domestication”; Part II “Animals as Food”; Part III “Animals at War”; and Part IV “Animals in Culture and Religion.” As many good works on animal studies do, the volume adopts a truly cross-disciplinary approach, uniting scholars from disciplines as diverse as archaeology, history, anthropology, art, religion, literature, and cultural studies. It too takes an interregional approach and covers a vast geographical area, stretching from the western edge of Asia in the Levant to Central Asia, where once roamed the horses of the nomadic pastoral tribes, to the other end of Asia, including India, China, and Japan. Temporally impressive as well, the work takes us from the deep history of the Paleolithic period up to the contemporary world, exploring the diverse roles that a wide range of animals—horses, donkeys, camels, elephants, tigers, and so forth—have played in Asia's rich and unique past and present.Strong in archaeology, Part I, “Hunting and Domestication,” responds to the much-called for “deep” or “coevolutionary” history of human-animal relations in recent years. The three chapters discuss, respectively, the roles that proboscideans have played in the diet and culture of early societies in Paleolithic China and beyond; the ways in which animals of all sizes have been increasingly integrated into the diet, daily uses, trade, and warfare in Holocene Negev; and the diversifying roles played by donkeys in the early Bronze Age in Southern Levant as a food source, a means of transport and in ritual sacrifices. Together, they demonstrate, with reference to telling archaeological evidence how the early societies in this region have been highly dependent upon the increasingly sophisticated interactions with and uses of mega-herbivores in the protracted and by no means clear-cut transition from hunting and herding towards the agricultural way of life, affirming the co-existing and co-constituting relations between humans and other animals in the deep past of Asia.The chapters in the section on “Animals at War” equally reveal the crucial roles that animals have played in the military sphere, as either a practical war technology or a show of military power. “Elephants in Mongol History” revisits the thesis of elephant-mounted troops in South and Southeast Asia as a barrier to Mongol expansion. Through its lively account of the pivotal battles in Mongolian history, especially that against India and China, it illustrates with great success the complex interactions between animals (especially elephants, horses, and humans), technology, and the geographical environment, which jointly exercised their influence on the outcome of warfare and degree of success of political rule. Turning away from the dynamic of warfare, the following two chapters explore the biopolitical question of the management of the horse as a bio-resource in the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria (1250–1517) and early Ming Dynasty China, respectively. The first one places its focus on the breeding, procurement, and feeding of the horse subjects in question, while the latter concentrates on the human organization of various resources for the upkeep of government horses—a conventional area of study called “horse administration” in the institutional history of the government in China.The last section, “Animals in Culture and Religion,” examines the changing images of apex predators, such as lions and tigers, in Buddhist perceptions from South Asia to East Asia; the cult of the Horse King in late Imperial China; and the significance of animal signs in Mongolian historiography. They represent an established approach in animal studies that seeks to understand different aspects of human culture through symbolic or metaphorical animals. Instead of treating the animals discussed as mere abstractions, which has been a frequent criticism of works that adopt this approach, the relations between the symbolic animals and their prototype in the natural world were attentively explored. The essay on the cult of the Horse King, for example, closely links the wax and wane of the cult since late imperial China with the changing use and subsequent disuse of the actual horses in agriculture, transportation, commerce, and quotidian life. Yet, classic as these essays on symbolic animals are, one does feel slightly unsatiated when coming to the end of this section, which also marks the end of this volume. Having been reminded early in the introductory essay that Asia was “a major site for the emergence of moral teachings and ethical guidance on the treatment of animals” and how this legacy “still affects the lives of billions of humans to this very day,” one feels naturally rather let down that no article in this volume directly addresses this vital ethical dimension, especially since it belongs to a series on “animal ethics.”Indeed, regarding the task of placing either the nonhuman animals or the ethical relations between humans and other animals center stage, the essays in this volume achieve only varying levels of success. Some authors exhibit a more acute awareness of what “animal studies” or “animal ethics” might entail epistemically and methodically and experiment by paying closer attention to the species-specific characteristics, experience, and agency of nonhuman animals in order to cast off the deified anthropocentrism previously ruled in humanist scholarship. However, others have made no such attempt. For example, in Part II of “Animals as Food,” an essay on the production and consumption of milk in contemporary China, albeit alert to the issue of health hazards to consumers, omits any consideration of the subject from the dairy cows’ perspective under the modern intensive farming system. Moreover, otherwise superb research on the tuna-fishing industry in Japan, with its insightful discussion of the nexus between knowledge economies and imperial politics, too passes over any discussion of the fate of the tuna, whether collectively as a group of living organisms containing 15 species or individually as animals with an embodied experience. One does ponder whether these essays would fit better in a volume on the cultural history of food or on the entwining history of knowledge production, economics, and politics, which conventionally position human interests at the center of research.Taken as a whole, this is an impressive volume that directs our attention to the hitherto understudied world of Asia in animal studies. The long durée, with its interdisciplinary and interregional approach, also most powerfully presents a past in Asia that could not have been the same without the participation of animals at every level, from everyday life to the shaping of cultural values, the construction of belief systems, the building of a national identity, and even the rise and fall of regimes. Scholars and students interested in expanding the frontier of our understanding of the world with a more inclusive “we” should find a wealth of interesting subjects on which to build further research. Finally, the volume also presents a fitting occasion for all scholars committed to animal studies to consider the grave challenge confronting the field that arose alongside its growing respectability and rapid expansion: Should it be oriented toward the destabilization of our previously anthropocentric conception of the world? Or should no such perimeter be imposed, as in this volume? The overall breadth and limitations of this volume leave one pondering this issue. (shrink)

Informed by a provocative exhibition at the Louvre curated by the author, _The Severed Head_ unpacks artistic representations of severed heads from the Paleolithic period to the present. Surveying paintings, sculptures, and drawings, Julia Kristeva turns her famed critical eye to a study of the head as symbol and metaphor, as religious object and physical fact, further developing a critical theme in her work-- _the power of horror_--and the potential for the face to provide an experience of the (...) sacred. Kristeva considers the head as icon, artifact, and locus of thought, seeking a keener understanding of the violence and desire that drives us to sever, and in some cases keep, such a potent object. Her study stretches all the way back to 6,000 B.C.E., with humans' early decoration and worship of skulls, and follows with the Medusa myth; the mandylion of Laon ; the biblical story of John the Baptist and his counterpart, Salome; tales of the guillotine; modern murder mysteries; and even the rhetoric surrounding the fight for and against capital punishment. Kristeva interprets these "capital visions" through the lens of psychoanalysis, drawing infinite connections between their manifestation and sacred experience and very much affirming the possibility of the sacred, even in an era of "faceless" interaction. (shrink)

Informed by a provocative exhibition at the Louvre curated by the author, _The Severed Head_ unpacks artistic representations of severed heads from the Paleolithic period to the present. Surveying paintings, sculptures, and drawings, Julia Kristeva turns her famed critical eye to a study of the head as symbol and metaphor, as religious object and physical fact, further developing a critical theme in her work-- _the power of horror_--and the potential for the face to provide an experience of the (...) sacred. Kristeva considers the head as icon, artifact, and locus of thought, seeking a keener understanding of the violence and desire that drives us to sever, and in some cases keep, such a potent object. Her study stretches all the way back to 6,000 B.C.E., with humans' early decoration and worship of skulls, and follows with the Medusa myth; the mandylion of Laon ; the biblical story of John the Baptist and his counterpart, Salome; tales of the guillotine; modern murder mysteries; and even the rhetoric surrounding the fight for and against capital punishment. Kristeva interprets these "capital visions" through the lens of psychoanalysis, drawing infinite connections between their manifestation and sacred experience and very much affirming the possibility of the sacred, even in an era of "faceless" interaction. (shrink)

Demography plays a large role in cultural evolution through its effects on the effective rate of innovation. If we assume that useful inventions are rare, then small isolated societies will have low rates of invention. In small populations, complex technology will tend to be lost as a result of random loss or incomplete transmission (the Tasmanian effect). Large populations have more inventors and are more resistant to loss by chance. If human populations can grow freely, then a population-technology-population positive feedback (...) should occur such that human societies reach a stable growth path on which the rate of growth of technology is limited by the rate of invention. This scenario fits the Holocene to a first approximation, but the late Pleistocene is a great puzzle. Large-brained hominins existed in Africa and west Eurasia for perhaps 50,000 years with, at best, slow rates of technical innovation. The most sophisticated societies of the last glacial period appear after 50,000 years ago and were apparently restricted to west and north-central Eurasia and North Africa. These patterns have no simple, commonly accepted explanation. We argue that increased high-frequency climate change around 70,000–50,000 years ago may have tipped the balance between humans and their competitor-predators, such as lions and wolves, in favor of humans. At the same time, technically sophisticated hunters would tend to overharvest their prey. Perhaps the ephemeral appearance of complex tools and symbolic artifacts in Africa after 00,000 years ago resulted from hunting inventions that allowed human populations to expand temporarily before prey overexploitation led to human population and technology collapse. Sustained human populations of moderate size using distinctively advanced Upper Paleolithic artifacts may have existed in west Eurasia because cold, continental northeastern Eurasia–Beringia acted as a protected reserve for prey populations. (shrink)

After we die, our persona may live on in the minds of the people we know well. Two essential elements of this process are mourning and acts of commemoration. These behaviors extend well beyond grief and must be cultivated deliberately by the survivors of the deceased individual. Those who are left behind have many ways of maintaining connections with their deceased, such as burials in places where the living are likely to return and visit. In this way, culturally defined places (...) often serve as metaphors of social association and shared experience. Humans are the only kind of animal that buries their dead, and this gesture is preserved in Paleolithic sites as early as 120,000 years ago. Though not the only method of honoring the dead in human cultures, the emergence of burial traditions in the Middle Paleolithic implies that both Neandertals and early anatomically modern humans had already begun to conceive of the individual as unique and irreplaceable. Claims of primitive mortuary behavior in earlier periods than the Middle Paleolithic fall short in that they lack any signs of positive social-spatial associations between the deceased and survivors. The archaeological evidence for burial behavior in the Middle Paleolithic provides the first clear translation of mourning into a stereotypical action. These burials therefore may represent the first ritualized bridge between the living and the deceased in human evolutionary history. (shrink)

This article reconsiders the early hominid ‘‘lithic niche’’ by examining the social implications of stone artifact making. I reject the idea that making tools for use is an adequate explanation of the elaborate artifact forms of the Lower Palaeolithic, or a sufficient cause for long-term trends in hominid technology. I then advance an alternative mechanism founded on the claim that competency in making stone artifacts requires extended learning, and that excellence in artifact making is attained only by highly skilled individuals (...) who have been taught and practiced for extensive periods. Consequently both competency and expertise in knapping comes at a high learning cost for both the individual learner and the social group to which they belong. Those high intrinsic costs of learning created contexts in which groups selected cost-reducing forms of social learning and teaching, and in which specialization could develop. Artifacts and their manufacturing processes probably acquired functions as social signals—as honest signals of valuable capacities. The magnification of these signals, through competition between knappers and through inspiring later craftspeople, may account for a substantial amount of the accumulated elaboration visible in the archaeological record. Consequently lithic artifacts operated as material symbols from an early time in hominid evolution. (shrink)

The Nobel Laureate Illya Prigogine compares the recent breakthroughs in human biology to the major changes that occurred when the Neolithic period succeeded the Paleolithic, 12,000 years ago. Although there is disagreement about the meaning of these changes, most opposing views recognize that a “major transformation” took place. Some interpret the recent breakthroughs in neuroscience as the first step toward “our posthuman future” whereas others see the consequences of these achievements as the end of humankind. Genomics and neuroscience (...) are the main fields that, at this point, give rise to such a debate, some authors stating that neuroscience raises even greater anthropological and ethical challenges than does genomics. This article focuses on neuroscience. Its main object is to critically assess these diverging opinions on the impact of neuroscience and to determine whether both sides are not telling us something important about ourselves and how neuroscience could enlighten healthcare ethics. (shrink)

The early Pleistocene hunt scene was instant: when an antelope jerked in the water edge, the first “drivers” of the hunt were already in motion; the moment of outburst after a long ambush lasted less than second. The sudden hunt movements were typical of every prey-abundant landscape since even earlier geological periods. The analysis of Laetoli footprints made by our evolutionary ancestors more than three millions years ago indicates that in a randomly chosen moment, the landscape was full of animals (...) of different species. The language used in the attack moment has to be agitative, only vowels in clausure between two consonants. During the process of further development, those consonants became more and more similar to delimitators, the borders where intrasemiotic realities translate extrasemiotic environment. Speech is an old Paleolithic tool for directing hunters to the useful positions. It was rather an instrument of a leader than grooming “clicks” of kin’s females. (shrink)

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the field of Paleolithic art was a source of intellectual ferment and innovative interpretation. This was in direct contrast to the first forty years immediately following the recognition of graphic representations in Upper Paleolithic contexts. In this early period, all “art,” from nineteenth-century impressionist landscapes to the Pleistocene painted bison of Altamira, was misguidedly viewed as “art for art's sake.” The only explanation required was the pursuit of aesthetic pleasure (...) and all that was needed was sufficient time to pursue artistic activities. (shrink)

There has been much debate regarding when modern human cognition arose. It was previously thought that the technocomplexes and artifacts associated with a particular timeframe during the Upper Paleolithic could provide a proxy for identifying the signature of modern cognition. It now appears that this approach has underestimated the complexity of human behavior on a number of different levels. As the artifacts, once thought to be confined to Europe 40,000 years ago onwards, can now be found in other parts (...) of the world well before this date, especially in South Africa, this suggests that modern cognition arose well before this period. Moreover, the variability of the archaeological record from the time when anatomically modern humans appeared 200,000 years ago suggests cognitive factors alone are unable to explain the obvious unevenness. In this article, it will be demonstrated how neuro-cognition can be assimilated with population dynamics and the transmission of information between individuals and groups that can provide important insights as to the nature and origins of modern human cognition. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that humans have specific abilities for cooperation and culture that evolved since their split with their last common ancestor with chimpanzees. Many uncertainties remain, however, about the exact moment in the human lineage when these abilities evolved. This article argues that cooperation and culture did not evolve in one step in the human lineage and that the capacity to stick to long-term and risky cooperative arrangements evolved before properly modern culture. I present evidence that Homo heidelbergensis (...) became increasingly able to secure contributions form others in two demanding Paleolithic public good games (PPGGs): cooperative feeding and cooperative breeding. I argue that the temptation to defect is high in these PPGGs and that the evolution of human cooperation in Homo heidelberngensis is best explained by the emergence of modern-like abilities for inhibitory control and goal maintenance. These executive functions are localized in the prefrontal cortex and allow humans to stick to social norms in the face of competing motivations. This scenario is consistent with data on brain evolution that indicate that the largest growth of the prefrontal cortex in human evolution occurred in Homo heidelbergensis and was followed by relative stasis in this part of the brain. One implication of this argument is that subsequent behavioral innovations, including the evolution of symbolism, art, and properly cumulative culture in modern Homo sapiens , are unlikely to be related to a reorganization of the prefrontal cortex, despite frequent claims to the contrary in the literature on the evolution of human culture and cognition. (shrink)

Beads and other ‘body ornaments’ are very widespread components of the archaeological record of early modern humans (Homo sapiens). They appear first in the Middle Stone Age in Africa, and somewhat later in the Early Upper Paleolithic of Eurasia. The manufacture and use of ornaments is widely considered to be evidence for significant developments in human cognition. In our view, the appearance of these objects represents the interaction of evolved cognitive capacities with changing social and demographic conditions. Body ornamentation (...) is a medium or technology for communication, particularly of socially-relevant information. The widespread adoption of beads and other discrete objects as media for communication implies changes in the complexity and stability of social messages, as well as the scale of social networks. The relatively sudden appearance of beads in the Paleolithic archaeological record coincides with genetic and archaeological evidence for expansion of human populations. We argue that these changes reflect expanding scales of social interaction and more complex social landscapes resulting from unprecedentedly large and internally differentiated human populations. (shrink)

Within paleoanthropology, the origin of behavioral modernity is a famous problem. Very large-brained hominins have lived for around half a million years, yet social lives resembling those known from the ethnographic record appeared perhaps 100,000 years ago. Why did it take 400,000 years for humans to start acting like humans? In this article, I argue that part of the solution is a transition in the economic foundations of cooperation from a relatively undemanding form, to one that imposed much more stress (...) on human motivational and cognitive mechanisms. The rich normative, ceremonial, and ideological lives of humans are a response to this economic revolution in forager lives; from one depending on immediate return mutualism to one depending on delayed and third-party reciprocation. (shrink)

The Paleolithic art interpretation is still a polemical subject. Nearly 300 caves covered with Paleolithic paintings have been discovered and more than 90% are located in Spain and in France. Surprisingly, more than half the painted illustrations are abstract patterns such as dots and lines. The high realism of naturalist figures also stands out. We will present the four groups of theories that have been formulated since the end of the XIXth century in order to interpret the (...) class='Hi'>Paleolithic art: the artistic theory from Lartet and Piette; the magical hunting theory from anthropologists such as Tylor and Frazer and archeologists like Breuil; the structuralist theory from Raphael, Leroi- Gourhan and Laming-Emperaire; and lastly the shamanist theory from Lewis-Williams and Clottes. We will also refer to the agglutinative theory gathering all of these from Ucko and Rosefeld. Afterwards I will offer my own thought. Paleolithic paintings are the expression the life led by every generation of the clan. The panels or the set of animals as much as the painted signs are their own History collection. (shrink)

1. The axis mundi and the Paleolithic topical. 2.- The Paleolithic goddesses and ovoid canon 3.- The hopscotch and sacred geometry. 4.- The heavenly spheres from Pythagoras to Ptolemy. The “matrioshka” model.Key words: Paleolithic cosmogony, sacred geometry, “matrioshka”, temple.

The article looks at Novi ecclesiastico-scholastici Annales (…), a periodical which is a significant resource in book culture research. The authors focus mainly on book distribution and propagation in Protestant communities during the last decade of the 18th century.

My article utilizes the insights of F. W. J. Schelling’s work on aesthetics to explain the unique appeal of cave painting for people of the Upper Paleolithic,focusing mostly on the caves of Chauvet and Lascaux. Schelling argues that the unique value of artistic practices comes in the way they reconcile agents withtheir deepest ontological contradictions, namely, the tension between biological necessity and human freedom. I argue that the cave paintings of Chauvet andLascaux fit well with Schelling’s approach and his (...) insight that art seeks to reveal the contradictory capacities of self-conscious beings in a state of fundamentalattunement rather than in discordance and disharmony. My contention is that in taking this approach, whereby aesthetic practices engender an intuition of theabsolute identity between nature and mind, we can better explain why the practice of cave painting endured for over twenty-thousand years as one common styleof artistic practice. (shrink)

The periodic table of the elements is one of the most powerful icons in science: a single document that captures the essence of chemistry in an elegant pattern. Indeed, nothing quite like it exists in biology or physics, or any other branch of science, for that matter. One sees periodic tables everywhere: in industrial labs, workshops, academic labs, and of course, lecture halls. It is sometimes said that chemistry has no deep ideas, unlike physics, which can boast quantum mechanics and (...) relativity, and biology, which has produced the theory of evolution. This view is mistaken, however, since there are in fact two big ideas in chemistry. They are chemical periodicity and chemical bonding, and they are deeply interconnected. The observation that certain elements prefer to combine with specific kinds of elements prompted early chemists to classify the elements in tables of chemical affinity. Later these tables would lead, somewhat indirectly, to the discovery of the periodic system, perhaps the biggest idea in the whole of chemistry. Indeed, periodic tables arose partly through the attempts by Dimitri Mendeleev and numerous others to make sense of the way in which particular elements enter into chemical bonding. (shrink)

The article by Titov S. “Whether “vinuses” of paleolith are evidence of ancient religiosity” provides a comprehensive analysis of existing theories on origin and use of archeological artifacts known as “vinuses” of paleolith. Using comparative analysis as a method of research the author traces a genesis of female image in times of upper paleolith and its origin and transforming. The author examines cases that prove evidence in favor of religious and magical use of “vinuses”. Moreover some religious and anthropological hypothesis (...) that explain the way of believes are expound and analyzed. (shrink)

While symbolic colour use has always played a conspicuous role in science research and education, the use of colour in historic diagrams remains a lacuna in the history of science. Investigating the colour use in diagrams often means uncovering a whole cosmology that is not otherwise explicit in the diagram itself. The periodic table is a salient and iconic example of non-mimetic colour use in science. Andreas von Antropoff's (1924) rectangular table of recurrent rainbow colours is famous, as are Alcindo (...) Flores Cabral's (1949) application of colour in his round snail form, using the RGB scheme, and Mazurs's (1967) pine tree system, consisting of warm and cold colours that he attributed to specific groups of elements—an attribution that we can relate back to humoralism and alchemy. From the first periodic tables in the 19th century, individual researchers have used different colour regimes. While standardization may play an obvious role in chemistry and its diagrams, all the more impressive is the anarchistic use of colour in the various diagrams which continue to be created. This article focuses on periodic tables in chemical journals and text books, and explores and compares the development of colour codes found in the few existing polychrome diagrams from the 1920s to the 1970s. (shrink)

A cultural change occurred roughly 40,000 years ago. For the first time, there was evidence of belief in unseen agents and an afterlife. Before this time, humans did not show widespread evidence of being able to think about objects, persons, and other agents that they had not been in close contact with. I argue that one can explain this transition by appealing to a population increase resulting in greater exoteric (inter-group) communication. The increase in exoteric communication triggered the actualization of (...) a dormant potential for greater syntactic computational power; specifically it triggered syntactic movement. Syntactic movement, in turn, made possible variable binding, which crucially figures into cognition by description, a naturalistic analogue of Russell’s knowledge by description. Cognition by description made possible the ability to conceive of things one had never experienced, such as mythological beings, places only visited by the dead, and so forth. The Amazonian Pirahã provide some corroboration for this hypothesis, since they exhibit the combination of traits here attributed to Middle Paleolithic individuals, namely exclusively esoteric (intra-group) communication, evident lack of syntactic movement, and a limitation to knowledge (cognition) by acquaintance. (shrink)

Parallels are often made between the culture of San hunter-gatherers of southern Africa and that of European Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. Despite different environmental conditions and lifestyles, the fact that both groups live by hunting provides a point of comparison that can afford insights into Ice Age art. Focusing on both groups' hunting relationships with prey animals can illuminate the intermeshing of human and animal traits in Upper Paleolithic art. We can now give a fairly precise account of the (...) cognitive and affective neurological mechanisms that facilitate hunting and that also have an impact on depicting animals. (shrink)

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 1-2, Page 112-134, June 2022.

There exists a venerable tradition of interdisciplinary research into the origins and development of Paleolithic cave painting. In recent years this research has begun to be inflected by rapid advances in measurement techniques that are delivering chronological data with unprecedented accuracy. Patterns are emerging from the accumulating evidence whose precise interpretation demands corresponding advances in theory. It seems that cave painting went through several transitions, beginning with the creation of simple lines, dots and disks, followed by hand stencils, then (...) by outlined figures, and finally by naturalistic figures. So far the most systematic evidence comes from Europe, although there are also indications that this sequence could be a universal pattern. The shamanic hypothesis provides a useful theoretical starting point because of its emphasis on the role of performance and phenomenology in the creative process. However, it still tends to reduce this sequence to mere stylistic and thematic changes that were external products of an already fully formed modern mind. Here I show how key insights from semiotics and material engagement theory can advance this explanatory framework to the extent that we become able to postdict the major transitions in the chronology of Paleolithic cave painting. An intriguing implication is that this is at the same time a chronology of cognitive changes, namely from a performative-phenomenological to a reflective-representational mind. (shrink)

This brief overview argues that the evidence of the images themselves, as well as their contexts, suggests that some Franco‐Cantabrian Upper Paleolithic cave art was, at least in part, intimately associated with various shamanic practices. Universal features of altered states of consciousness and the deep caves combined to create notions of a subterranean spirit‐world that became, amongst other ritual areas, the location of vision quests.

One characteristic of the transition from the Middle Paleolithic to the Upper Paleolithic in Europe was the emergence of representational charcoal drawings and engravings by Aurignacian and Gravettian artists. European Neanderthals never engaged in representational drawing during the Middle and Early Upper Paleolithic, a property that might reflect less developed visuomotor coordination. This article postulates a causal relationship between an evolved ability of anatomically modern humans to throw spears accurately while hunting and their ability to draw representational (...) images from working memory. Unlike Neanderthals, archaic and anatomically modern humans in sub-Saharan Africa adopted longer-range hunting practices using hand-cast spears as a compensation for the emergence of increasingly wary game. For Neanderthals, paleoclimatic fluctuations likely precluded consistent hunting of cold-adapted game, a property making game more approachable for close-range hunting with thrusting spears. As evidence of less historical wariness of humans, many of the species hunted by Neanderthals were eventually domesticated. Due to strong sources of natural selection on archaic and anatomically modern humans for effective hunting, the parietal cortex that integrates visual imagery and motor coordination expanded progressively, yielding the globular shape of the human cranium that is not evident in Neanderthals. To characterize how the cognitive properties employed for throwing spears and drawing line work are similar, the Upper Paleolithic drawings of animals in Chauvet cave, France, are discussed in the speculative context of how these artists engaged simultaneously in overt attention to guide their hand movements and covert attention to their mental images during the drawing process. (shrink)

Alexander Raven Thomson was a British fascist philosopher, active from 1932 to 1955. I outline Thomson’s Spenglerian views on civilization and decline. I argue that Thomson in his first book is an orthodox Spenglerian who accepts that decline is inevitable and thinks that it is morally required to destroy civilization in its final stages. I argue that this suffers from conceptual issues which may have caused Thomson’s change to a revised form of Spenglerianism, which is more authentically fascist. This authentically (...) fascist view is then seen to fall prey into the problem inherent in the very idea of permanent rebirth. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

The periodic table may be seen as the most successful example of inquiry in the history of science, both in terms of practical application and theoretic understanding. As such, it serves as a model for truth as it emerges from inquiry. This paper offers a sketch of a central moment in the history of chemistry that illustrates an intuitive metamathematical construction, a model of emerging truth. The MET, reflecting the structure the surrounds the periodic table, attempts to capture the salient (...) epistemological elements that warrant truth claims based on sets of models that are progressive in light of both empirical and theoretical advance seen over time. (shrink)