IPHES, Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evoluciò Social, Zona educacional 4 (Edif. W3), Campus Sescelades URV, 43007, Tarragona, Spain.
Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Campus Catalunya, Avinguda de Catalunya, 35, 43002, Tarragona, Spain.
Sci Rep. 2017 Oct 31;7(1):14394. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-14322-y.
The relationship between lithic technology, learning and language is a topic of growing interest in human evolution studies, and has therefore been the subject of numerous scientific papers in recent years. To evaluate the role of language in the social transmission of lithic technology, we designed and developed an experimental protocol through which we compared the acquisition of knapping skills in thirty non-experts in the early stages of learning, by means of three mechanisms of social transmission: imitation-emulation, gestural communication, and verbal communication. All the apprentice knappers carried out the experimental task with blanks that were equal in shape and size, and were requested to replicate what the expert knapper was doing: the alternating method, a sufficiently simple, but systematic technique for detaching flakes from a core. We analysed each participant's actions, including those of the master knapper, the final products (flakes and cores), and the knapping sequences, by analysing the refits. Our results show that the apprentices improved their knapping skills in teaching conditions -both gestural and verbal communication-, and specially through the latter. In conclusion, our study supports the hypothesis of co-evolution between lithic technology and social learning, which could have favoured the emergence of verbal language.
石器技术、学习和语言之间的关系是人类进化研究中日益关注的话题，因此近年来已经成为众多科学论文的主题。为了评估语言在石器技术的社会传播中的作用，我们设计并开发了一个实验方案，通过该方案，我们比较了 30 名非专家在学习初期通过三种社会传播机制（模仿-模拟、手势交流和言语交流）获得打制石器技能的情况。所有学徒打制石器的人都使用形状和大小相同的毛坯进行实验任务，并要求他们复制专家打制石器的做法：交替法，一种从核心上分离石片的足够简单但系统的技术。我们通过分析重组，分析了每个参与者的动作，包括主打制石器人的动作、最终产品（石片和核心）和打制石器的顺序。我们的结果表明，学徒在教学条件下——包括手势和言语交流——特别是通过后者提高了他们的打制石器技能。总之，我们的研究支持了石器技术和社会学习共同进化的假设，这可能促进了语言的出现。
