Early symbolism: cognitive evidence for language abilities Dasa Raimanova, Jean-Marie Hombert & Christophe Coupé Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage, CNRS a Université Lyon 2, Lyon, France dasaraimanova@hotmail.com In the archaeological field of the reconstruction of language emergence, the majority of scholars agree that the combination of art, ritual burials, jewels, highly sophisticated tools and techniques occurring together demonstrate the existence of a fully modern language and a "symbolic" mind. One view is to posit that all these manifestations appeared lately and suddenly at the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic some 50,000 years ago, during the so-called Cultural Explosion or Revolution (Klein 1999). According to this scenario, language and behavioural modernity would have emerged suddenly, tens of thousands of years after the emergence of our species Homo sapiens in East Africa. This model runs counter to the theory of a more gradual emergence of modern human behaviour and language (Appenzeller 1998), and debates abound about the existence of earlier manifestations of symbolism or technological development in Homo sapiens before the Cultural Revolution, or even in earlier hominids like Homo erectus or Homo neandertalensis. In addition to the scarcity of data, the main problem is of course that language and related behavioral abilities can only be deduced from indirect evidence, and that consequent possible misinterpretations of the data may lead to wrong conceptions about our ancestors. At the beginning of Upper Paleolithic, modern humans were already dispersed over a significant area of the world. According to the Cultural Revolution hypothesis, the appearance of art, ritual burials etc. nevertheless took place in a very short scale of time, which is difficult to explain given the distances between human populations spread over tens of millions of square kilometers. Such notions as geographical distribution of early traces of symbolism and language have therefore to be taken into account in parallel to their ancestry to clearly assess the possibility of one scenario or the other. Our objective is to revisit a number of discoveries which can be considered as clues of an early modern behavior and language. In addition to the degree of confidence which can be attributed to their relevance, we analyze their spatiotemporal distribution to investigate whether it can be best explained by i) a unique and sudden emergence of language and symbolism, ii) a slower and more gradual process, or iii) several cradles of emergence which could be regarded altogether as a polygenesis of human cultural innovations. Among the clues of modern behavior, the importance of pigments, and especially of red ochre, is pervasive all over Africa before the Upper Palaeolithic (Mithen, 1992, Dunbar et al., 1999), as examplified by the discovery of two 77,000 years old engraved pieces of ochre in the Blombos Cave (d’Errico & al. 2001), and is also attested in Australia (discovery of haematite pieces with ground facets and striations at the site named Malakunanja II) around 53,000 years ago (Roberts & al. 1994). The discovery of harpoons in South Africa more than 150,000 years ago, or the exploitation of maritime resources in Eritrea around 125,000 years ago (Walter & al. 2000) also imply a very ancient adaptation to the coastal environments. These bits of an early coastal culture can be further attested in the development of sea navigation (Coupé & Hombert 2002), which also took place before the Cultural Revolution attested in Europe or Near East. The question of early burials in this region and more generally in Homo sapiens or earlier species (Carbonell & al 2003) will therefore be carefully discussed, in order to judge whether or not a scenario can be promoted which consider that modern behaviors and language emerged differentially at different periods in different groups of human beings. Appenzeller T., 1998. Evolution or Revolution?, Science 258: 1451-1457 Carbonell, E., Mosquera, M., Ollé, Andreu, Rodriguez, Xosé, P., Sala, R., Vergès, J. M., Arsuaga, J. L., Bermudez de Castro, J. 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