Homo heidelbergensis and the ceremonial origins of language
Gary B. Palmer
Jennifer Thompson
Jeffrey Parkin
Elizabeth Harmon
(Nevada, Las Vegas)
To be published in Masataka Yamaguchi, Dennis Tay and Ben Blount, Eds. Towards an
Integration of Language, Culture and Cognition. Palgrave MacMillan
September 9, 2012
3/3/16
Language originated as play, and the organs of speech were first trained in the singing
sport of idle hours.—The genesis of language is not to be sought in the prosaic, but in the
poetic side of life.—Otto Jespersen (1922:413, 433)
Introduction1
We propose that the first words and phrases to emerge in human language were song-like
evocations of mental imagery depicting the routines of daily life and the life crises of
proto speakers living in middle Pleistocene times between 600K ya and 130K ya.2 The
proto speakers belonged to a species of transitional humans known to science as Homo
heidelbergensis. According to this hypothesis, their proto language or languages
accompanied the rhythms, dances, gestures, postures and facial expressions of ceremonial
narratives that acted out imagery of events and fantasies in the middle Pleistocene.
Ceremony provided a social setting in which intersubjectivity was intensified with the
result that vocalizations and subsegments of vocalizations acquired shared meanings and
became conventionalized as verbal symbols and constructions. In spite of vast differences
between the culture of heidelbergensis and extant human cultures, recent findings in
cultural and cognitive linguistics may shed light on language genesis and the nature of
proto language. This rather hypothesis of ceremonial origins is developed within the
theory of cultural linguistics, a theory which synthesizes linguistic anthropology and
cognitive linguistics (Palmer 1996). As we outline the hypothesis in this introduction, we
will use the declarative mood and write in the simple past tense as though it were a
known fact that verbal language evolved according to our hypothesis. This will avoid a
great many instances of “would have,” “could have”, “might have,” and similar hedges.
Unless facts are supported by citations, the reader should remain aware that our depiction
of language emergence is actually an elaborate hypothesis which, in our view, accords
well with current knowledge of prehistory and language.
In support of the hypothesis, we cite evidence that peoples such as Homo erectus
and early heidelbergensis communicated with a range of vocalizations, as do
contemporary primates, and that the conceptual world of heidelbergensis was sufficiently
complex to support a way of life involving foraging, kinship relations, economic
exchanges, and ceremonial activities. We explain how concepts that were salient in
foraging proto cultures became linked to reproducible variants of vocalizations. It follows
that the assemblage of all such verbal symbolic linkages constituted proto speech, which
was blended with gesture into proto language. As language emerged concurrently across
multiple cognitive and cultural domains, it conferred overwhelming selective advantages
on individual speakers and small groups of kinsmen, with the eventual result that
hominine bodies and brains evolved to support fully human language and culture.
We propose that the genesis of symbols in middle-Pleistocene proto language
took place in dramaturgical settings such as collective ceremonies , which amplified
communications by encouraging vocal and gestural displays and mimesis. In ceremonial
settings, performers and observers enhanced their intersubjective understandings of the
ceremonial imagery by pointing, gesturing, and posing, and by monitoring the
communications and emotions of others. The intersubjectivity of ceremonial
communications and enactments conferred collective meaning on vocalizations and
gestures. By repetition, emergent symbols became entrenched and widely shared. The
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most adept participants acquired enhanced understandings of their environments and
social lives, constituting a new worldview, which was taken up by successive generations
generations. As their languacultures (Agar 1994) evolved very gradually in performances
and vocal exchanges, interlocutors acquired conceptual models that were more detailed,
accurate, general, or brightly profiled. The new models, at once both cognitive and
cultural, conferred selective advantages on individuals and foraging bands across a range
of social and utilitarian activities.
The salient cultural experiences that motivated dramaturgical performances in the
Middle Pleistocene included scavaging, gathering, and hunting, with their supporting
activities of tool-making and using. Archaic humans visited kin in neighboring bands and
exchanged foods and materials for tool-making (Marwick 2003). They formed task
groups, and allocated tasks by sex, age, and ability. They made fire, but did little cooking,
at least in the early Middle Pleistocene. Like other primates, they engaged in prestigeseeking behavior and mutual grooming that improved their chances of forming alliances
and coalitions, succeeding in economic exchanges, and mating. They fell sick and
doubtless attempted to heal one another. They cared for infants and demonstrated skills to
juveniles.3 Juveniles played with their siblings and cohort mates and pestered the adults.
The proto speakers fought with other bands of hominines and they avoided or fended off
such formidable predators as saber-tooth cats, leopards, lions, and giant hyenas. With
life’s daily challenges and activities came fatigue and rest, dreams and nightmares,
irritations, joys, rages, mutual affection, lust, jealousies, anticipations, satisfactions,
suspicions, fears, frustrations, disgust and disappointments. All these experiences and
emotions were shaped by heidelbergensis cultures in Europe and Africa. Their life
experiences, memories, and fantasies furnished the source material for ceremonial
mimetic performances, what Knight (1998:87) has called “fantasy-sharing
representational activity.”
This theory of language genesis explains how and why symbolic differentiation
occurred and how verbal and gestural signs and constructions were readily entrenched,
grammaticalized, and passed on to succeeding generations. It fills in gaps of cause and
motivation missing from scenarios such as the song theories of Jespersen (1922) and
Livingstone (1973); the naming theory of Haldane (1955); the call blending and play
theory of Hockett and Ascher (1964); the gesture theories of Hewes (1973, 1994), and
Yao (1989), Armstrong, Stokoe and Wilcox (1995), and King (1996); the “catastrophic”
theory of Bickerton (1995) and similar crystalization theory of Li (n.d.) and hierarchical
step theory of Johansson (n.d.); the social grooming theories of Dunbar (1998), Power
(1998), and Locke (1998); the rule of law theory of Knight (1998, 2009); the mirrorneuron theory of Arbib (2004), the mimetic theories of Zlatev (2008, n.d.), and Knight
(1998), and the adolescent performative theory of Locke and Bodin (2006).4 And it
explains why emergent proto language conferred selective advantages on speakers.5
Sinha (2004) theorized that the central problem in language origins is the genesis
of symbols, which is founded on intersubjectivity and normativity. We hold the same
view. This chapter can be viewed as an attempt to apply cognitive and cultural linguistic
theory to the genesis of language as a system of symbols.
Falk (2004) theorized that early hominin mothers were forced by the biology of
bipedal locomotion to place their relatively helpless infants on the ground while foraging
and preparing foods, thereby creating mutual separation anxiety, which stimulated infants
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to call out and mothers to produce soothing vocalizations. Thus, the motherese of early
hominins provided the scaffolding for the genesis of speech. Falk’s theory offers a
plausible explanation of selection for increasing frequency of affective communications.
It may also explain how early hominins gained the intersubjective abilities sufficient to
enable the subsequent development of speech, but it does not specify the conditions that
enabled and drove the evolution of symbolism and grammar, which we would construe
broadly to include constrastive phonology, morphology, phrase and sentence
constructions, and genres of speech such as narratives and jokes. Our story begins where
Falk’s leaves off.
1. Homo heidelbergensis
<Figure 1. Homo heidelbergensis sites >
< Figure 2. Homo heidelbergensis (Broken Hill, Kabwe, Zambia)>
Since we hold that proto language emerged from the attachment of vocalizations to
elements of mental imagery, it will be useful to sketch what is known of the bodies, lives
and cultures of proto speakers so that we can imagine what they imagined and reenacted
in ceremonies. The scientific name Homo heidelbergensis names a proposed hominine
species that lived in Africa, Europe, and Asia during a period beginning at 800K to 600K
ya and ending at 130K to 97K ya (Table 1).6 The group has also been called archaic
Homo sapiens and advanced Homo erectus (Klein 1989). It is thought that they evolved
from H. erectus or H. ergaster and that they are ancestral to both Neanderthals and
modern humans (Klein 1989; Campbell and Loy 2002).7 The heidelbergensis ancestors of
H. sapiens are believed to have lived in Africa, while those of neanderthalensis were in
Europe, where the climate became much more severe from about 200K ya.
Heidelbergensis populations throughout the Old World apparently underwent a
“demographic explosion” after 500K ya (Aguirre & Carbonell 2001:15; See also Aiello
1998).
Heidelbergensis is distinguished from previous hominines by large cranial
capacities averaging 1,283 cc, which is about 30 percent larger than H. erectus. The
cranial capacity of Bodo was 1300 cc, which falls well within the range of contemporary
adult humans. In Kabwe, the flexure of the base of the cranium approached the modern
angle, which suggests the possibility of speech (Figure 2). Heidelbergensis teeth were
smaller than those of H. erectus, but most of them still lacked any sign of a chin. The
African forms had large noses and broad faces, which were more protruding than those of
H. sapiens.
Heidelbergensis approached the height and weight of contemporary humans: up
to 6’1” tall (185 cm) and 165 lb (75 kg), but they were much more physically robust and
powerful. The large brain size and robust physique of heidelbergensis point to a diet rich
in meat and fat obtained by scavenging or hunting large animals such as elephants and
giant gelada baboons (Campbell and Loy 2002). At Bodo, Ethiopia at about 600K ya,
butchering and hunting tools were found with remains of hippos, baboons, and antelopes
(Kreger 2000). European bones and tools from about 500K ya indicate scavaging or
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hunting of elephants, rhinos, hippos, and smaller animals. By 250K ya they left evidence
of hunting mountain gazell, fallow deer, aurochs, and horses, selectively harvesting the
prime adults (Stiner 2002; Aguirre and Carbonell 2001). Wear of the anterior teeth
indicates a hard, abrasive diet that probably included roots, stems and seeds (deCastro et
al., 2003). Patterns of tooth wear suggest that females were eating more variable and
different foods than males and food processing was minimal (Perez-Perez et al. 1999).
<Figure 3(a). Late Acheulian hand axe from Kathu Pan, 600K ya (Klein 2009:
380, Fig 5.49)>
<Figure 3(b). Late Acheulian cleaver from Elandsfontein (Klein 2009: 381, Fig. 5.50)>
It is unclear whether heidelbergensis was prey for large carnivores, but cut marks
on the Bodo cranium show that it might have been defleshed with stone tools such as
those in Figure 3, so cannibalism may have occurred (White 1985, 1986).8 Most of the
Middle Pleistocene African sites with stone tools derive from the Acheulian tradition,
which was known for “spectacular” bifaced hand axes up to two feet in length. They are
pear-shaped with a cutting edge that is carefully flaked on both sides using a piece of
bone, wood, or antler (Figure 3, and Davidson 2002:183). The African Acheulians also
made cleavers, which are shaped like a modern ax head and were possibly used for
dismembering carcasses (Campbell and Loy 2002). Some African sites include artifacts
from the Lavallois tradition including scrapers, choppers, and tools with toothed or
notched edges. Kabweans made long, narrow stone picks. Spears have been found in
European sites. Heidelbergensis almost certainly used fire for cooking, warmth, and
protection from predators (Campbell and Loy 2002; Goren-Inbar et al. 2004). Tools and
fire must have figured prominently in middle pleistocene narratives.
Over the time span of heidelbergensis, there occurred two remarkable cultual
changes, as shown by evidence from six sites in East Africa (Marwick 2003). The
distances that raw materials for tools were transported increased from 15 to 100 km about
1 million years ago and increased again up to 340 km after 250K ya., even when closer
sources were at hand. Marwick theorized that the early increase indicates expanded home
ranges, but the later one argues for exchanges of stone materials between neighboring
groups of kinsmen. Larger home ranges would have required a simple topic-comment
protolanguage and face-to face negotiations (2003:68), while long distance transfers
presuppose more elaborate symbolic communications.
2. Skeletal evidence for heidelbergensis language
<Figure 4. Time line for development of vocal apparatus>
The weight of the evidence supports, if still somewhat weakly, the hypothesis that crucial
parts of the physical apparatus needed for speech emerged during the time of
heidelbergensis . The larynx had already descended in some common hominin ancestor,
thereby providing one of the prerequisites for the subsequent development of the pharynx
and lowered base of the tongue. Much later, quite possibly in the middle Pleistocene, the
base of the cranium became flexed, the hyoid descended and its structure became
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modern, the base of the tongue descended, and the two-chambered, right-angled,
supralaryngeal vocal tract developed. Sometime between 600K ya and 100K ya the
vertebral canal enlarged to accommodate the neurons that support fine control over
modulations of air pressure in the vocal tract (Laitman 1985:283; Martinez et al. 2008;
Nishimura et al. 2003; Ross, et al. 2004; MacLarnon and Hewitt 1999). It appears that
heidelbergensis was acquiring the vocal apparatus necessary for language.
Most germane to the question of speech capabilities is the study by Martinez, et
al. (2004) of the anatomy of the inner and outer ears of five heidelbergensis skulls from
Sima de los Huesos, dated prior to 350K ya. The anatomy suggests that heidelbergensis
heard a range of frequencies similar to those in the speech range of contemporary
humans.
3. Prelinguistic vocalization and the transition to protolanguage
Proto speakers did not simply wake up one fine Thursday morning in the Middle
Pleistocene and find themselves possessed of vowels and consonants, syllables,
morphemes, and proto words.9 To understand the emergence of speech, we need some
idea of the sound and organization of proto speech. Since we retain elements of the
primate call system in our screams, grunts and laughter, we can be sure the proto
speakers had a primate repertoire of calls (Burling 1993). They made other sounds as
well, such as lipsmacks, tongue smacks and teeth chatters (MacNeilage 1998;
MacNeilage & Davis 2000). Burling (1993) argued that speech is so different from the
call system that it could not be derived from it. Deacon (n.d., 1992) has suggested that the
primate call system was somehow released from selective pressure so that over many
generations it partially degenerated. Freed of tight constraints, the vocalizations of proto
humans became more flexible,varied, and increasingly subject to cortical control.10
Something similar may have occurred at about the same time with gesture, accounting for
the fact that infants produce symbolic gestures prior to speaking (Tomasello 2003).
3.1. Vocal symbolization and protosyntax in primates
For evidence of both proto syntax and vocal symbolism, we can consider primate
call systems.11 Újhelyi (1998: especially 178), and Újhelyi & Buk (2001) observed that
the long calls of monogamous territorial primates, i.e. gibbons, and of chimpanzees and
bonobos, contain meaningful sub-units that can be varied in sequence. It is not clear
whether different sequences have different meanings. Describing the elaborate calls of
gibbons, she noted that “acoustically different songs can be created by changing number,
type and position of elements (notes)” (1998:179). All produce coordinated calls,
sychronizing (gibbons and bonobos), calling in chorus (chimpanzees), and engaging in
male-female duets (bonobos).
What is the meaning of such calls? Apparently, gibbon song variants “mark
individual identity,” while chimpanzee pant-hoots mark the status of the caller (Újhelyi
1998:185). However, when chimpanzee males call together there is a tendency to match
the calls of the partner, so if there is “meaning” it may be the affection and comfort
experienced in good company. Újhelyi concluded that chorusing and dueting spread call
variants and standardized them, creating a “call pool” containing a large number of
variants “available for and usable by other group members” (1998:186).
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It seems likely that hominin proto speakers, like chimpanzees and bonobos, called
in chorus and in duets, leading to conventionalization of volcalizations. We cannot
conclude that the meanings of long calls were sharply defined, but it seems likely that
early heidelbergensis arrived already possessed of a rudimentary grammar. While early
humans were developing the speech system, the primate call system persisted, though
perhaps in reduced form (Burling 1993).12
A parsimonious explanation of proto grammar in human language would derive it
from primate syntax and/or grammar by proto grammaticalization, the use of shorter,
perhaps syllabic, forms obtained by reduction and the assignment of new meanings to
some of these. It is likely that proto syntax recruited elements of the long call system. An
alternative theory, contested by MacNeilage (1998a; 1998b:231-232), recruits syntax
from the region that supported the manual dexterity, sequencing, and analysis needed for
tool making.
3.2 Proto frames
Some researchers look to consonants and vowels or to syllables as elemental frames and
debate the importance of various precursors and neurological factors in producing them
(MacNeilage 1998; Greenburg 1998; Jürgens 1998; Menn 1998). Ohala (1998) argued
that the primary acoustic parameters are amplitude, periodicity, spectrum, and pitch, upon
which were later imposed syllables. Our interest in the topic begins when proto
consonants, vowels, and syllables acquired meanings or became combined and
assimilated into meaningful assemblages as morphemes.
One place to begin is to ask what the syllables of proto speech might have
sounded like. Would they be the most common syllable patterns found crosslinguistically in infant babbling, or in the first words of developing infants, or in the
larger vocabulary of adult speakers? MacNeilage and Davis (2000) determined the
frequency of CV (consonant-vowel) patterns in the babbling of six infants, the first words
of 10 infants, and in the words of 10 languages from six different language families.13
They found that three CV patterns and one CVC pattern occurred in each of these three
life stages with greater frequency than expected by chance. The CV patterns were (1)
labial stop consonant or labial nasal ([p], [b], [m]), followed by a central vowel , (2)
coronal stop consonant or coronal nasal ([t], [d], [n]) followed by a front vowel ([æ]), and
(3) dorsal stop consonant ([k], [g]), followed by a back vowel ([o]). The CVC pattern
consisted of a labial stop consonant followed by a vowel and terminating in a coronal
stop consonant. They characterized this fourth pattern as expressing a “’fronting’
tendency” (2000:528).
The findings of MacNeilage and Davis suggest that humans are born with motor
schemas for four types of syllables. They conjectured that these types originated in proto
language, because they occur in the proto language proposed by Bengtson and Ruhlen
from syllable distributions found in recorded languages (1994). While the evidence is
weak, the conjecture itself seems reasonable. The earliest forms may have acquired
meanings while still embedded in longer, unreduced, calls.
This small set of constraints can be used to create a surprising number of distinct
utterances. The rules generate eight CV and twelve CVC syllables, as in (1) and (2),
which we write as though preparing a reader in Heidelbergensian, omitting square
brackets and unfamiliar characters: “a” is a central vowel; “e” is a mid-front vowel ; “o”
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is a back vowel. Allowing the CV set to be affixes of a single type (prefix or suffix)
yields a lexicon of 8 x 12 = 96 words. Allowing the CV and CVC sets to be words, the
total lexicon reaches 116. Allowing two-word utterances without repetition or fixed word
order, produces an astounding phonological pool of 13,340 possible one and two-word
utterances, even without tapping the possibilities of word order, syllable reduplication,
syllable as prefix in one construction and suffix in another, vowel length, compounding,
stress, tone, or larger constructions. The number of conventional meanings conveyed
would be reduced by synonymy but expanded by polysemy, metonymy, and metaphor.
(1) CV syllables
ba, ma, pa, te, de, ne, ko, go
(2) CVC syllables
pet, ped, pat, pad, pot, pod, bet, bed, bat, bad, bot, bod
(3) CV-CVC terms
ba-pet, de-ped, do-ped, ma-pat, ne-pad, pa-pot, te-pod, ma-bod, …
When protospeakers began to attach meaning to such utterances, a large field of
variants was readily available for minimal expenditures of cognitive and phonological
effort.
4. Protosemantics
Given that development of hominin material culture proceeded with glacial slowness
over most of the past 2 million years, it is likely that contemporary brains operate very
much like ancestral ones in many respects. It is only in the past 60K years that evidence
of rapid cultural change appears in the archaeological record. It is likely that
heidelbergensis thought in some of the same ways that humans do today. Using the
terminology of cognitive linguistics, we would expect them to think with image schemas,
cognitive models, conceptual metaphors, conceptual metonymies, and conceptual
blending (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Lakoff 1987; Langacker 1987; Palmer 1996,
Fauconnier 2002).14 These thought processes operate in all fields of meaning (Tomasello
2003). Their specific content was embedded in the enduring ideas furnished by their
cultures. The influence of cognitive and cultural categories on grammar has been the
subject of much research over the past three decades.
The positive feedback loop is clear. As biological evolution enhanced the speed and
precision of proto languages, there was an acceleration of language-driven conventional
thought, which fostered the elaboration of adaptive cultural models, which conferred
adaptive advantages on the speakers of proto languages, thereby channeling further
biological evolution. In an effort to discern the semantic scaffolding available to
heidelbergensis in the genesis of speech, we will examine several concepts commonly
deployed by cognitive and cultural linguists and explain why they are pertinent to
understanding the emergence of language. The concepts are: Conceptual metaphors;
Polycentric conceptual networks; Spatial orientation; Action chains and scenarios;
Polysemy, morphology, and grammaticalization; Iconicity and phonological networks.
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4.1. Conceptual metaphors: MATING IS FORAGING (HUNTING OR GATHERING)
Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Lakoff (1987) demonstrated that much of language is
governed by conceptual metaphors that reflect bodily experiences and cultural models.
Heidelbergensis may have grasped the conceptual metaphor MATING IS FORAGING, which
derives from exchanges of subsistence goods between the sexes or between the families
of mated couples. It is common for young men in hunter-gatherer societies, such as the
!Kung San of the Kalahari desert, to do years of bride service by hunting for the family of
their wife. In !Kung folklore, women are meat animals hunted by men (Biesele 1986). In
the myths of hunter-gatherers in North America, it is common to find that heroes marry
large game animals such as deer, elk, and buffalo. Female characters in myth married
edible roots or salmon. In Ute mythology, carnivores are typically male and their wives
are typically herbivores or other edible creatures. In the marriage ceremonies of the Nez
Perce, the family of the groom brings game for the family of the bride, and the bride’s
family brings edible roots for the family of the groom. Based on Marwick’s (2003)
archaeological evidence for exchange in the Middle Pleistocene, we suggest that proto
linguistic heidelbergensis may have already possessed a cultural model of exchange in
which males provided game and females provided plant foods. Therefore, they may have
had some intuition of the conceptual metaphor MATING IS FORAGING that awaited only the
genesis of speech for its verbal expression.
4.2. Polycentric conceptual networks
Lakoff (1987) demonstrated that a noun classifier is a complex category that includes
mainly terms that belong to a common “domain of experience.” The balan classifier of
Dyirbal applies to the term for woman, terms for characters in the myth of the sun (a
female), and other entities that were similar in being hot, dangerous, or at least prickly.
Palmer and Woodman (1999) showed that a classifier may have multiple central concepts
linked to one another and to less central terms by similarity, elaboration, or metonymy.
They also made it explicit that the domain of experience which governs the classifier is a
cultural model, usually consisting of a small set of salient scenarios. For example, the
Shona classifier 3/4 centers around ancestors, rain making, medicine, and the domestic
activity of pounding grain in a mortar with a pestle. From just the pounding scenario, one
finds links to terms for long thin things, pounding, ground grain, repetition, irritation, and
noise, all of which take the same classifier prefix. Since classifiers are common in the
world’s languages, we think it likely that proto speakers had something similar. They
linked concepts to their central scenarios in networks of conceptual metonymy and
metaphor, which served as the semantic scaffolding for proto language.
4.3. The language of spatial orientation
Foragers may conceptualize orientational frames in terms of “absolute” coordinates, i.e.
in terms of macro scale cognitive maps of the landscape (Hallowell 1955; Haviland 1993,
1996; Levinson1996; Palmer 2007).15 One result is that a narrated event is always placed
in the same orientation relative to the landscape rather than being dragged and rotated
with the changing position of the narrator, even when the orientation is communicated by
gestures! This command of orientation with macro maps is essential to narrative mimetic
presentations, which may involve acting out the behavior of animals, hunters, and deities
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in ceremonials. Given the importance of spatial orientation in finding camp sites, useful
plants, and raw materials for tools, and in finding and following game, it is likely there
was a proto language of orientation and geography that was employed in ceremonials
depicting hunting.
Spatial cognitive maps are often tightly meshed with other cultural models. The
Chemehuevi Indians of the southern Colorado River had song cycles that narrated the
travels of mythical animals, such as Fox and Deer, to spiritual places in band territories
(Laird 1976). A similar pattern is found in Aboriginal cultures of Australia, where,
according to Malcolm (1996:159) “the moving and stopping narrative is a deep-seated
cultural organizing principle.” Movements from site to site, activity to activity, and event
to event structure songs, creation myths, and campfire stories told by both sexes. A cycle
may include a departure, a stay in a new place, and a return to the starting point. In
Aboriginal English, the schema surfaces in such seemingly eliptical expressions as “went
out”, “driving along”, “out in the bush”, and “coming back” (Malcolm and Sharifian
2002). It meshes with the hunting schema, which is narrated with terms such as
“chasing”, “catching”, “killing,” and “having a feed”.
One may imagine heidelbergensis as wandering continually to new territories, but
most movement probably took place in cycles within known territories, which became
invested with social memory and, perhaps, mythical imagery. For a speaker of Apache, a
place name evokes a moral; and full native knowledge of the landscape constitutes a
morality (Basso 1984). Similarly, for most Americans, the expression “New York Trade
Center” unfailingly evokes scenarios of global terrorism and revenge. Spatial knowledge,
whether schematic or rich in detail, is acquired in a socio-cultural context. The
interweaving of spatial and social knowledge produces a field of social metonymy
(Schieffelin 1976; Palmer 2007). The conceptual metonymy of space was readily
available to heidelbergensis for use in proto speech, because their territories were laden
with memories and mimetic history.
4.4. Action chains and scenarios
A clause such as he killed the elephant with a spear predicates what Langacker (2000:30)
calls a schematic action chain of AGENT --> INSTRUMENT --> THEME (OBJECT).16 Processes
caused by an explicit agent, force, or transfer of energy are said to receive an energetic
construal. Other clauses, such as the elephant died or the ice melted, construe a
participant as undergoing an “autonomous thematic process” in which there is no explicit
causation or transfer of energy from an agent to an instrument or theme. These processes
are said to receive an absolute construal. The distinction between energetic and absolute
construals corresponds roughly to the grammatical distinction between ergative and
absolutive cases that are found in many languages. It also corresponds roughly to the
Navajo hierarchy of energetic and mental potency (Witherspoon 1977; Palmer 1996) and
to hierarchies of empathy and animacy that organize the roles of nominal participants
(Langacker 1991:306-307; Comrie 1989:185).
It seems safe to assume that heidelbergensis recognized energetic and autonomous
processes, and that these were salient concepts which competed for grammatical status in
proto language. Furthermore, many of the events uppermost in the mind of any social
animal are scenarios of interaction. We can therefore assume that the distinction between
energetic and absolutive construal was social as well as mechanical. To the extent that
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heidelbergensis had intersubjective awareness and a theory of mind, the two types of
construal would be extended to take into account motives, intentions, and experiences.
Here we can agree with Bickerton (1998:351), who theorized that “the thematic roles of
event participants may have pre-existed language by several million years.” Aiello (1998)
and Armstrong, Stokoe and Wilcox (1995) relate the structure of language to the structure
of social interactions.
4.5. Morphology, polysemy, and grammaticalization
Studies of grammaticalization have revealed that nouns, verbs, or adjectives, which we
call substantive terms, may evolve into adpositions (prepositions or postpositions) or
affixes (prefixes or suffixes) (Hopper and Traugott 1993; Heine 1997). The changes
occur with repeated usages in contexts where the substantives contribute only
contextually salient elements of their fully specified meanings. Thus, the word for head
has evolved in many languages to mean an extremity such as the top of a vertical entity,
the most anterior point on a moving entity, or the end-point of a path schema. Most often,
several abstract senses are simultaneously available in a semantic network as related but
alternative meanings, and we say that the adposition or affix is polysemous (Brugman
1981; Lakoff 1987; Langacker 1991; Sandra and Rice 1995; Rice 2003).
Grammaticalized forms often acquire evaluative senses, probably through the process of
subjectification (Langacker 1990).
In theories of language genesis, it is common to posit a period of protolanguage
during which an utterance consisted of only a very small number of substantive terms--two or three in topic-comment relation according to Marwick (2003), three to five with
no interdependence beyond random linear concatenation according to Bickerton (1998).
We propose that even a simple two-word proto expression would have quickly
grammaticalized with frequent use. A simple morphology might have emerged within a
single generation. By grammaticalization, a verb meaning ‘want’ can evolve to a prefix
marking future tense, as happened in Swahili; a verb meaning ‘get’ can become a
possession marker and ultimately an existential, as happened in Chinese; and a noun
meaning ‘person’ can evolve to mean ‘we’, as happened in the Khoisan language !Xun
(Heine and Kuteva 2002). Perhaps it was the earliest phonologically reduced speech
environment with relational forms that selected for the ability to hear and produce
consonants, vowels, and syllables, thus accelerating the pace of speech. We should point
out here that our conclusions differ in one important respect from those of Heine and
Kuteva (2002), who proposed that protolanguage had no morphology. We also doubt that
proto language had only two word types---nouns and verbs---unless verbs include
attributives and other relational forms. We can agree with them that protolanguage had a
small vocabulary and that context played a central role in interpretation, as it does still.
We also agree that suprasegmental phenomena, such as tone, stress, and intonation
should also be considered as part of the evolving heidelbergensis communications
package.
4.6. Iconicity and phonological networks
If ko were a heidelbergensis proto word for some entity or action, then one could evoke
more of the entity or more intensive action by repeating it, or some portion of it, saying
koko, or even kko. Similarly, one could lengthen the vowel. Any simple iconic
10
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reduplicative morphology has the potential to double the vocabulary at a stroke. Tuggy
(2003) described the elaborate symbolic network of reduplication in Nahuatl. His study
shows that iconic morphology based on simple phonological transformations can greatly
expand vocabulary.
As one might expect, reduplication is an important morphological process in many
of the world’s languages. It commonly predicates plurality, size (augmentative or
diminutive), repetition, distribution, or intensity. Because augmentation and repetition are
often experienced as good or bad, reduplication often predicates evaluation. Some
languages commonly utilize several kinds of reduplication, and these are interwoven in
somewhat irregular and complex phonological and semantic networks. Proto speakers
would very likely have quickly begun using reduplication and building up a network of
terms loosely linked to one another by phonological similarities and by conceptual
similarities and metonymies.17
4.7. Summary of protosemantics
We have argued that a number of domain general cognitive capabilities together with the
cognition of space were very likely developing or well developed by heidelbergensis
times and available to serve as the semantic scaffolding for proto language. We now
consider the process by which the first verbal symbols were created in ceremonials that
featured mimetic performances and vocalizations.
5. Mimesis
< TABLE 2>
Jordan Zlatev, drawing on theories of Donald (2005) and Arbib (2005), has theorized that
language has its origins in mimesis and that “the key development toward language” was
a stage that involved “declarative pointing” and “iconic gestures (pantomime)” (2008:
18). Zlatev (n.d.) finds in mimesis the “grounds for intersubjectivity”, which we have
argued to be crucial in language genesis. Chris Knight (1998: 87, 88) connected mime,
song, and dance to the origins of speech, but where we place the emphasis on ceremonial
as an arena that intensifies intersubjective symbol production with meanings that touch a
broad spectrum of concerns in the middle Pleistocene, Knight presents a narrower
functionalist argument that ritual speech was used in “morally authoritative” enactments
that functioned to present group identities symbolized by deities, while mimetic
performance “drives selection pressures for subtle volitional control over emotionally
expressive vocalizations and linked gestural representations.”
Merlin Donald (1991:168) defined mimetic skill or mimesis as “the ability to
produce conscious, self-initiated, representational acts that are intentional but not
linguistic.” Mimesis is “rooted in kinematic imagination” and “the ability to model the
whole body, including its voluntary action systems” (Donald 1998:49).18 He included in
the concept of mimesis “tones of voice, facial expressions, eye movements, manual signs
and gestures, postural attitudes, [and] patterned whole-body movements of various sorts”
(1991:169). These are deployed in representational forms, including pantomime, reenactment and “ritualized group enactment” (Table 2). He noted that “long sequences of
these elements can express many aspects of the perceived world” (1991:169), including
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the communication of emotional states through facial and vocal mimesis. He recognized
the dependence of mimesis on joint attentional frames (though he did not use the
expression), such as is seen in a child’s ability to find the target of its mother’s gaze and
in pointing. Mimesis must depend on intersubjective skills in general, which include the
ability to participate in joint attention frames and to read intentions, which Tomasello
(2003) has proposed as the ability that distinguishes humans from other primates.
Children begin reading intentions at about one year of age.
In essence, mimesis is the representation of mental imagery through performance.
When performed by a group, mimesis may become ceremonial in which individuals play
various roles. For example, historic hunter-gatherer societies enact scenes of hunting and
celebrating a kill, girls and boys coming of age, supernatural curing in childbirth,
visitations by mythical animal deities, and shamanistic journeys. In Donald’s view, the
“quintessential mimetic skill” is rhythm, which required “the coordination of disparate
aspects and modalities of movement” (1999:186). He observed that mimesis “works on a
metaphorical principle, a principle of perceptual resemblance: the differentiation of event
classes is generally based on repeated exposures to the class of event, and episodic event
prototypes incorporate more and more instances” (1999:192). Pursuing this line a bit
further, he said mimetic representations of social events “could be seen as an idealized
template of those events” (1999:197). To this, we may add that what is communicated
may owe as much to metonymy, because mimetic presentations evoke imagery that is
connected by being part of the background scene. Donald theorized that the originator of
mimetic culture was H. erectus, but it was H. sapiens who made the transformation to the
succeeding stage of mythic culture supported by language. Curiously, Donald failed to
apply his theory directly to the genesis of linguistic symbols. But the connection had been
made a quarter century earlier by Earl Count in a comment on Hockett and Ascher
(1964:157). Count wrote “I am suggesting that phasia [i.e. language] reflects, on its
motor side, some coalescence of two communication-systems: vocalic and mimetic”
[brackets added; emphasis in original].
6. Ceremonies and the genesis of verbal symbols
In her argument that gossip was fundamental in the genesis of language, Camilla Power
(1998) asked “How does the listener know that the information is valuable?” In our
theory, the question becomes, “How does the listener know that a particular vocalization
provides information of a certain kind?” or “How does she recognize a verbal symbol
when she hears it?” A symbolic connection can only be made if image and vocalization
are presented in evocative connection together with a way to affirm mutual recognition of
a new symbol, such as mutually followed and directed gazes (Sinha 2004). Audiences of
multiple persons amplify the frequency of confirmations by gaze, vocalization, or gesture
and increase the number of people acquiring the same symbols. Vocalizations may be
uttered by one or more performers, or by members of an audience. New symbols may be
understood as representations, exaggerations, metaphors, metonymies, or conceptual
blends, depending on the context of presentation.
The human activity that gathered together all the necessary elements for this
emergence of symbolic speech was ceremonial, or perhaps proto ceremonial.
Hypothetically, there was dance and mimesis of animals. There was acting out of
12
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foraging trips, annual cycles of migration, mock captures between the sexes, and narrow
escapes from predators. There was rhythmic foot stamping, percussion on wood or bone,
chanting, humming, and hooting. Mimetic performances in ceremonials displayed
panoplies of emotion laden images and presented spectrums of vocalizations. Particular
representations evoked specific vocalizations, and vice versa, so that there was symbolic
differentiation. The constraints that influenced differentiation may have been iconic,
onomatopoetic, emotional, or postural. In general, they were probably initially soundsymbolic, though not necessarily obviously so. Armstrong, Stokoe and Wilcox (1995)
made iconic gestures an intermediate stage in their gestural theory of language origins.
However, Tomasello (2003:35) has pointed out that iconicity is not useful to children in
learning symbolic gestures. The first symbols produced in ceremonial contexts may have
been holophrases. They predicated all of whatever was most salient about complex
actions or scenes, but evolved to predicate only elements of meaning abstracted from
those scenes. Thus, a word acquired at the performance of an antelope dance might first
map to a holistic concept of antelope, but eventually evolve to mean particular antelope,
meat, fast runner, or dancing (cf. Tomasello 2003: 36-40; Armstrong, Stokoe and Wilcox
1995:234).
The expansion of intention reading that occurred at some unknown time in human
evolution accelerated symbolic genesis (Tomasello 2003). Monitoring of performance
activates mirror neurons, so that individuals who witness or hear mimetic performance
imagine themselves performing the same actions. Linkage of simultaneously activated
mirror neurons between visual, kinesthetic, and auditory regions of the brain would
support the emergence of symbolism in mimetic performance. When imagery is activated
simultaneously in different modes, future similar activations in one mode evoke
correlated images from another mode. Rizzolatti (1998:528) found different fields of
mirror neurons in F5 and Broca’s area governing gestures of the face and mouth, the
larynx, and the arms. He concluded that communication requires a mutual interplay of
facial gestures, “brachiomechanical gestures,” and vocalization (“sound gestures”). Arbib
(2005) argued from these findings that the remarkable human ability to imitate led to the
development of proto sign, which he defined as “a combinatorially open repertoire of
manual gestures” that emerged by a kind of distillation from pantomime. Proto sign
provided “the scaffolding for the emergence of protospeech” (2005: page). To explain the
poor correspondence between sign and speech, he proposed that the proto sign
scaffolding faded away. Of course, the theory that speech originated in gesture is not
new. It was proposed by Hewes (1973), Armstrong, Stokoe and Wilcox (1995) and
others. Our theory suggests that proto sign and proto speech evolved concurrently and
synergetically.
Ceremonial provided a crucible for the forging of symbols. Community members,
including infants and juveniles, participated in making the new symbolic connections. In
the common symbolic environment participants learned patterns of vocalization and
acquired shared meanings. Reiterative performances given in repeated ceremonials
provided reinforced new vocabulary and established conventional pronunciations and
meanings necessary to intergenerational continuity. Visiting with kindred bands for
economic exchanges and ceremonial participation provides opportunities for wider
sharing of emerging ceremonial language. Once established in ceremonials, new symbols
would be readily understood in non-ceremonial contexts in which listeners who were
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intersubjectively aware would compare meanings learned in ceremonies to suspected
intentions of speakers and make the necessary inferences.
In modern humans, it is adults who display the most elaborate grammar, yet it is
infants and children who are the best learners. Acquisition of language by infants seems
to require that they jointly attend to a field of reference with a more advanced speaker
(Nelson 1996; Tomasello 2003; Sinha 2004). Yet if there are no speakers, to what is an
infant to attend? The answer must be that the cultural milieu of the middle Pleistocene
somehow selected for intersubjective skills, which were useful in learning tool-making,
tool using, ritual participation, and other cooperative activities. Those who possessed
intersubjective skills became better producers of food, clothing, and shelter; they raised
healthier, more intelligent offspring; they gave better performances at ceremonials (which
were also attended by infants) and become more attractive mates; they provided more
encouragement to performers and developed closer interpersonal bonds; they cooperated
more responsively and efficiently in a variety of tasks. At the transition to speech, infants
and juveniles who inherited intersubjective skills could impute communicative intent to
vocalizations of others and calculate the received meanings of their own intentional
vocalizations. Once the new intersubjective skills applied to vocalizations were possessed
by a sufficient, but unknown, portion of the population, speech could blossom. Hence, is
it interesting that Locke and Bogin (2006:17) present convincing ethnographic evidence
to support their conclusion that much of the elaboration of speech can be attributed to
“the performative and creative nature of in-group verbal behavior in juvenility and
adolescence.”
This theory is not intended to displace all other theories of language origins.
Particularly plausible theories with causative explanations include those that base the
genesis of speech on motherese (Falk 2004), on grooming replacement (Dunbar 1998), or
on mimesis and/or performance (Zlatev 2008, n.d; Locke and Bogin 2006). Elements of
these complement the ceremonial theory. Speakers likely acquired some new symbols in
non-ceremonial contexts, but we think that ceremonials provided an evocative context in
which new symbols, constructions, and narrative conventions emerged, and symbols
created elsewhere could be shared, entrenched, and conventionalized.19
7. Song theories
Any sort of vocalization produced by actors or audiences in ceremonial performances
could have served as the phonological raw material for the creation of verbal symbols.
Nevertheless, our theory suggests that some of the earliest speech emerged as lyrics or
chants, so it is both instructive and entertaining to consider previous theories along these
lines. Otto Jespersen, writing in1922, phrased his theory of language genesis from song in
terms that caused his critics to accuse him of presenting a “romantic dream of a golden
age,” an accusation which he denied. Jespersen’s writings on song may have been the
swansong of 19th Century cultural evolutionary theory with its faith in human progress.
He argued that his theory was based on “a progressive movement from a very raw and
barbarous age to something better” (1922:434, footnote 1). Where we might speak dryly
of sexual selection, Jespersen was rhapsodic:
In primitive speech I hear the laughing cries of exultation when lads and lasses
vied with one another to attract the attention of the other sex, when everybody
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sang his merriest and danced his bravest to lure a pair of eyes to throw admiring
glances in his direction—Otto Jespersen (1922:434).
He said that our remote ancestors “in singing as nature prompted them ... were paving the
way for a language capable of rendering minute shades of thought” (1922:437).
Half a century later, Livingston (1973:26) proposed that language evolved from a
“learned, open signal system of territorial songs”. He reasoned that some further “specific
impetus” would have been required for language development. Once acquired by a few
groups, language would have acted as an isolating mechanism driving speciation.
Livingstone’s definition of song was vague and seemed to be based primarily on
variations in pitch, not the recitative song that Wescott (1973), in a critique of
Livingstone’s article, defined as melodic speech. Wescott also wrote this remarkable
passage:
My own guess is that the australopithecines were whistlers as well as practitioners
of such other nonvocal sound-making as hand-clapping, foot-stamping, and
drumming on their chests or on external objects; that the pithecanthropians added
humming, animal mimicry, and various forms of vocal play to this repertory; that
the Neandertalers further engaged in ritual chanting to placate spirits and ensure
success in hunting; and that early modern man capped these accomplishments
with the musical use of grammatical speech....So I accept austrolopithecine song
as melodic phonotation. But I doubt that hominid melodies became vocal till the
time of Peking man, syllabic till that of Mousterian man, or verbal till that of CroMagnon man (Wescott 1973:27).
Jespersen, Livingston and Wescott concerned themselves with the problem of
whether pre-humans had song, and whether language originated in song. None of them
saw the context in which songs were performed as part of the puzzle. The theory that we
offer here does not argue that language evolved from the neurological patterns that
support melody, because the evidence supports the independence of lyrics and melody
(Besson, M. et al. 1998; Steinke, Cuddy & Jakobson 2001; Sylvie et al. 2003; Peretz et al.
2004). Rather, we suggest that mimetic performances in ceremonials provided occasions
in which rhythms and emotions could provoke coordinated rhythmic and melodic
vocalizations, such as chanting and song. If repeated vocalizations were differentiated
and associated with particular mimetic images, proto speech was a result. Further
development involved obstructions of the airflow by adding new articulations of the lips
and tongue, by nasalizing, by expanding the range of vowels, by varying the intensity of
vocalization and the length and pitch of vowels, and by coordinating all of these. Perhaps
the rhythmic context of ceremonial favored the rhythms of syllable systems over long
calls. Syllable systems enabled the development of morphology through
grammaticalization. Jespersen and Bickerton were no doubt correct that good speakers
and singers were preferred by the opposite sex. As Bickerton (1998: 352) put it, “females
would surely have preferred mates whose communicative capacities so strikingly
outclassed those of other available partners.” Of course, the same could be said for male
preferences in mates. On this point, see the interesting review of the ethnography of
performative speech in Locke and Bogin (2006).
15
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8. Gradualists versus catastrophists
Most scholars who study language origins profess to be either gradualist or catastrophist.
Gradualists place the genesis of language very early, even as early as H. erectus. They see
incremental change leading eventually to the fluency of H. sapiens. Quiatt (2001:PAGE)
provides a good example of this view.
Leaving mutational theories out of account, current views of the transition to
modern language tend to assume a correspondingly early onset, with the
implication that cultural innovations anticipating those commonly associated with
the Upper Pleistocene in Europe---and like those, reflecting a society that has
begun to use language in a new way---must be rooted in the Middle Stone Age.
Some see very early origins. Aiello (1998:30-31) proposed that the conscious
control of vocalization began with H. ergaster, and that “fully developed modern human
language” originated with the expansion of brain size that began about 500K ya. Nichols
proposed that H. erectus was “in all probability carrying primitive languages which
continued to diversify and diverge for over a million years” (Nichols 1998:142). Burling
(2002:308) observed “If syntax can grow gradually in children throughout all the years of
childhood, it could surely have grown gradually over many hundreds of thousands or
even millions of years of phylogeny.”
Catastrophic evolution is probably more accurately, if less dramatically, described
as discontinuous or punctuated (Armstrong, Stokoe and Wilcox 1995:254).
Catastrophists place the main event sometime within the past 120K years. They argue
that the beginnings of language must coincide with anatomical modernity or, after 100K
ya, with the efflorescence of material symbolic culture seen in beads and red ocher, or
after 60K ya, with figurines, cave paintings, and more sophisticated and varied tool
industries. For example, Bickerton (1998:354) proposed that “a long period of stagnation
was followed by a cognitive explosion occurring only after the emergence of
anatomically modern humans in South Africa about 120,000 years BP”. Bickerton (1998)
was apparently unaware of the physical changes that were taking place in heidelbergensis
as early as 300K ya. As explained above, the skeletal evidence suggests that speech, or at
least some new kind of finely controlled vocalization, emerged about that time.
9. Conclusions
We propose that human speech originated with African H. heidelbergensis, who lived in
the Middle Pleistocene between 800K ya and 130Kya. Evidence from fossil skeletons
suggests that the vocal apparatus needed for speech was in place by about 300K ya. We
propose that the cognitive capabilities of H. heidelbergensis were basically similar to
those of H. sapiens in that heidelbergensis was a cultural being, capable of conceptual
metaphor, conceptual metonymy, conceptual blending, and iconic sound symbolism.
These conceptual figures provided the cognitive foundation for the salient scenarios and
cultural models formed in daily activities. The scenarios and cultural models were the
source of the images presented in mimetic performances, where they were linked with
differentiating vocalizations to form the verbal symbols of proto speech. Ceremonials
provided social contexts that supported the genesis, entrenchment and standardization of
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symbols. Enhanced intersubjectivity---including joint attention frames, intention reading,
shifting of spatial perspectives, and conceptual role substitutions---was essential to
symbol genesis. The mimetic performances involved vocalization by both performers and
audiences, who shared joint attentional frames and understood communicative intent.
Vocalizations were mapped to mimetic imagery by something akin to fast mapping that
we see in language development in children (Nelson 1996). Grammaticalization quickly
produced proto morphology, and consequently, proto grammar. All participants would
have benefited in practical ways from learning the enhanced models of their way of life
that were presented in ceremonials. Heeschen (2001:188) proposed that narrative has
adaptive value and that “language and aesthetic forms [i.e. narrative] probably
coevolved”. Symbols generated in other activities, such as care of infants and juveniles,
grooming, tool making, and hunting, could be shared and standardized in ceremonials.
Neighboring bands may have participated in joint ceremonials where they shared their
emerging proto language with kinsmen. Something about heidelbergensis culture
released the selective pressure favoring the old call system, freeing the neural control of
vocalization to develop longer phrasings, syllabic rhythms, and grammatical
constructions, thereby solving Burling’s (1993) paradox in which speech could not be
derived from the only vocal system available to archaic hominins, the call system. A
reasonable time line places fine control of the vocal apparatus at about 300K ya. We can
now imagine the specific mechanisms by which the genesis of language in the form of
narratives and song cycles could have taken place in the ceremonials of heidelbergensis.
Our hypothesis and the evidence for it support the more general theory of Sinha (2004)
that it is the emergence of symbolization that is central to the problem of the origin of
speech.
Notes
1
This chapter is a revision of a paper presented to a plenary session of the conference on
Language, Culture and Mind, Portsmouth, July 18-20, 2004. Elizabeth Harmon was then
Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nevada at Las
Vegas while completing her Ph.D. at Arizona State University at Tempe with a
specialization in the evolution of African hominins. Elizabeth passed away unexpectedly
and tragically in March, 2009. We wish to express our indelible sense of loss and our
gratitude for her generous participation in this project.
Thanks are due to Luz Pfister, Steve McCafferty, and Jan Oller for helpful comments
on the first draft. Special thanks to Roy Ogawa for his excellent suggestions and for
making his web site available for the longer manuscript and slide presentation.
2
The term language here designates an integrated complex of speech and gesture. The
term speech designates only the verbal or vocal part of language. It is often referred to as
vocal language. Proto speech refers to hypothetical transitional forms between primate
vocalizations and the speech of Homo sapiens.
3
We use the term juveniles rather than children, because it is likely that heidelbergensis
had no stage that could properly be called childhood. This stage, which is probably
unique to modern humans, lasts from weaning at about three years to the eruption of the
first molar at about six years. During this short stage the brain grows to about 90% of its
adult weight. For details, see Thompson and Nelson (2010).
17
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4
A list of obvious objections to many of these theories appears in Johansson, Zlatev, and
Gärdenfors (2006).
5
The term emergent is used throughout this paper in the sense defined by Sinha (n.d.) as
“the development of new properties and/or levels of organization of behavioral and
cognitive systems as a consequence of the operation or cooperation of simpler
processes.”
6
100K ya = 100,000 years ago.
7
But see Rightmire (1998) for a discussion of unresolved issues.
8
For a description of the Bodo cranium, see Rightmire (1996).
9
The irony is borrowed from Burling (2002).
10
See also the useful discussion in Foley (1997: 63-66).
11
By syntax, we mean only the ordered presentation of phonological forms without
regard to presence or absence of meaning. For meaningful constructions consisting of
symbols, we use the term grammar (Langacker 1987).
12
Together with calls and language, Burling (1993) also posited a third human system of
communication: the iconic system, which would underly such features as stress, rate of
speaking, and reduplication in language and direction, repetition, velocity, and spatial
configurations in gestures.
13
The six families and 10 languages (in parentheses) were Indo-European (English,
German, French, and Spanish), Uralic (Estonian), Afro-Asiatic (Hebrew), Austronesian
(New Zealand Maori), Quechuan (Quichua [sic]), Bantu (Swahili), and Japanese
(Japanese).
14
In conceptual blending, elements of concepts from two different domains are
“mapped” to a concept in a third domain. For example, conceptual blends from the
domains of machines and animate beings produced the concepts of the cyborg, the
computer Hal from the film 2001, and the robot dog Aibo from Sony. It is very likely
that spirits who blended and shifted between human and animal forms were mimed in
heidelbergensis ceremonies.
15
See Palmer (2007) for a discussion of types of cognitive maps used in orientation.
16
The term THEME also includes PATIENT (e.g. They melted), EXPERIENCER (e.g. I itch),
MOVER (e.g. It rose), and ZERO (e.g. She is tall) (Langacker 2000:30).
17
Other phonological symbolic networks pertaining to Spanish verbs and Salish color
terms are discussed in Bybee (1985) and Palmer (1996).
18
On the complex reflexivity of performance for an audience, see Palmer and Jankowiak
(1996). Merlin’s basic definition is useful, but the exclusions for the purpose of isolating
a pure mimesis are questionable. It is doubtful that even simple imitative acts performed
by a being capable of intersubjective thoughts are entirely devoid of intention to represent
images, whether to others or to oneself.
19
Co-author Parkin suggested that ceremonial gatherings would function to distribute
symbols created in other contexts.
18
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Table 1. Dates of some African Homo heidelbergensis a
Specimen
Years Ago
Bodo, Ethiopia
600K
Kathu Pan, South Africa
600K
Lake Ndutu, Tanzania
400K to 200K
Elandsfontein, South Africa
350K to 130K
Kabwe, Zambia
250K to 130K
Singa, Sudan
100K
a
Campbell and Loy (2002: 264), rounded to nearest 5K after adding 2K to time BP
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Table 2. Some representation forms in the mimetic mode a
Form
Intentional pointing (including gaze)
Demonstration
Reciprocal games
Self-demonstration
Play-acting
Rehearsal
Re-enactment
Pantomime
Gesture (solo, dyadic, or group)
Ritualized group action
a
Abbreviated from Donald (1998:62).
26