Domestic Fire as Evidence for Language

Abstract

Human characteristics seem to have emerged gradually from the ape grade. The great apes have the preadaptations that parallel, in embryonic form, those of the human lineage—manipulating objects with hands, binocular color vision, cause-and-effect-oriented cognitive abilities—but they did not evolve along the hominid line (Tooby and DeVore 1987:211). ‘Ape-grade’ problem solving is not sharply distinguished from that of early hominids (Parker and Milbrath 1993:323). Lateralization, a precondition for human speech (Lancaster 1975:68–9) was attained very early, as seen by handedness in Oldowan tool making (Toth 1985). The human ability to manufacture and use tools, social complexity, the capacity to process information, and language are all linked and increased simultaneously since the initial divergence of hominids from the apes. Cooperative efforts of small human groups would have been an important factor in this trend (Gibson 1993). The key word in the evolution of human cognition and language is representation (Donald 1991:3), attained at the stage of “Homo depictor” (Hacking 1983). Thus human language is a symbolic representation of reality. Accordingly, the use of language in prehistory, untraceable on its own, was sought through symboling behavior which could perhaps be traced in the archaeological record. As we shall see, however, identifying clues for symbolic behavior prior to the Upper Paleolithic is problematic. A different approach will therefore be taken here: the attempt to identify the oldest activity reflected in the archaeological record which could not have been performed without language. Symboling behavior was sought in acts which involve the dual presence of signifier/signified, or a model. Art is the clearest symbol because an art object by definition represents something other than itself, be it the immediate subject model or a more abstract notion. All scholars seem to concur, then, that a fully evolved human language must have existed in the Upper Paleolithic (Marshack 1976; Goodenough 1981; Chase 1991). Art objects claimed to be older than the Upper Paleolithic (e.g., the Acheulean figurine in