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How the Brain Got Language – Towards a New Road Map
Edited by Michael A. Arbib
[Benjamins Current Topics 112] 2020
► pp. 256–271

Archaeology and the evolutionary neuroscience of language

The technological pedagogy hypothesis

| Emory University

Comparative approaches to language evolution are essential but cannot by themselves resolve the timing and context of evolutionary events since the last common ancestor with chimpanzees. Archaeology can help to fill this gap, but only if properly integrated with evolutionary theory and the ethnographic, ethological, and experimental analogies required to reconstruct the broader social, behavioral, and neurocognitive implications of ancient artifacts. The current contribution elaborates a technological pedagogy hypothesis of language origins by developing the concept of an evolving human technological niche and applying it to investigate two key transitions posited by Arbib’s Mirror System Hypothesis: (1) from complex action recognition and imitation to proto-language, and (2) from proto-language to language.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The human technological niche
  • 3.Stone tools and language evolution
    • 3.1Oldowan flake production
    • 3.2From complex action recognition and imitation to proto-language
    • 3.3Acheulean shaping
    • 3.4From proto-language to language
  • 4.Conclusion: Towards a new road map
  • References
Published online: 11 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.112.17sto
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