Paleoanthropology of Consciousness, Culture and Oral Language

Abstract

It is presented an updated version of my previous paleoanthropological inter-pretation of the available utilitarian and non-utilitarian Paleolithic finds (Messori 2016), aimed at establishing the earliest human developmental stages of consciousness, culture and oral language. The environmental transformations to which Earth has gone to meet from its formation to the Archean period of the Precambrian Era, during which the terrestrial proto-biological phenomenon develops, are briefly discussed. By following the quantum electrodynamic explanation of biological water it is assumed that the transition from organic to biological it would have happened during late Hadean with the formation of colloid lyophilized bubbles, dissipative systems embedded by anticipatory systems, at the phase boundary between chaotic and ordered (coherent) regimes, composed by perturbed prebiotic water maintained in a regime of oscillatory super-coherence by an endogenous electromagnetic field of suitable intensity and frequency, bounded by a selective electronic pump consisting of a semi-crystalline film of reducing water, and containing macromolecules such as proteins and amino acids, synthesized on a enantioselective basis. A brief recapitulation of the geological phases and biological events that characterized the ca. 1.5 billion years that stand between eukaryotic cells stabilization and genus Homo appearance is provided. By adopting a non-Darwinian approach, the biological phenomenon is described as an eco-systemic non-linear dissipative system embedded by super-complex anticipatory systems, at the phase boundary between chaotic and ordered (coherent) regimes, ruled by thermodynamics of non-equilibrium laws. By comparing utilitarian and non-utilitarian finds dating from Lower Paleolithic (ca. 2.7 - 2.4 mya to ca. 300 - 120 tya) with finds dating from Middle Paleolithic (ca. 300 - 120 to ca. 45 - 30 tya), it is assumed that the inner life (insight) of our distant ancestors underwent a slow process of psycho-relational and psycho-biological individuation (incubation and settling of a distinct and relatively autonomous neuro-psychological identity), that only recently (second half of Lower Paleolithic) led to the formation of the relatively autonomous and independent psychic complex called epigenetic function of the real, or consciousness, the essential requirement for there to be a fully established cultural production. The slow process that went from a musically established sound emission (second half of Lower Paleolithic), to a fully syntactical and semantics codification of a suitably emitted and articulated range of sounds, that through time became speech communication, namely oral language (first half of Middle Paleolithic), is discussed. The slow process to which oral language has gone from acquiring the power to re-create the world by naming it—semantic baptism—as an act of legitimation of reality (Upper Paleolithic), to becoming an instrument of power in the hands of the male gender (Neolithic), which thanks to it tames Nature and subjugates the generatrix power of women’s uterus (where the pneuma is transmuted into offspring by which the progeny is re-created) to the generatrix power of oro-larynx (where the pneuma is transmuted into speech by which the World is re-created), is also discussed.