Miyagawa Shigeru, Lesure Cora, Nóbrega Vitor A
Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States.
Center for Research and Development of Higher Education, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
Front Psychol. 2018 Feb 20;9:115. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00115. eCollection 2018.
Early modern humans developed mental capabilities that were immeasurably greater than those of non-human primates. We see this in the rapid innovation in tool making, the development of complex language, and the creation of sophisticated art forms, none of which we find in our closest relatives. While we can readily observe the results of this high-order cognitive capacity, it is difficult to see how it could have developed. We take up the topic of cave art and archeoacoustics, particularly the discovery that cave art is often closely connected to the acoustic properties of the cave chambers in which it is found. Apparently, early modern humans were able to detect the way sound reverberated in these chambers, and they painted artwork on surfaces that were acoustic "hot spots," i.e., suitable for generating echoes. We argue that cave art is a form of cross-modality information transfer, in which acoustic signals are transformed into symbolic visual representations. This form of information transfer across modalities is an instance of how the symbolic mind of early modern humans was taking shape into concrete, externalized language. We also suggest that the earliest rock art found in Africa may constitute one of the first fossilized proxies for the expression of full-fledged human linguistic behavior.
早期现代人类发展出了比非人类灵长类动物强大得多的心智能力。这体现在工具制造的迅速创新、复杂语言的发展以及复杂艺术形式的创造上，而这些在我们的近亲中都不存在。虽然我们可以轻易观察到这种高阶认知能力的结果，但却很难明白它是如何发展起来的。我们探讨洞穴艺术和考古声学的话题，特别是洞穴艺术往往与发现它的洞穴室的声学特性密切相关这一发现。显然，早期现代人类能够察觉到声音在这些洞穴室中的回响方式，并且他们在声学“热点”表面绘制艺术品，即适合产生回声的表面。我们认为洞穴艺术是一种跨模态信息传递形式，其中声学信号被转化为象征性的视觉表现。这种跨模态的信息传递形式是早期现代人类的象征性思维如何形成具体的、外在化语言的一个例子。我们还认为，在非洲发现的最早的岩石艺术可能构成了成熟人类语言行为表达的首批化石证据之一。
