techniki: Origin of language

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

The origin of language, its relationship with human evolution, and its consequences have been subjects of study for centuries. Scholars wishing to study the origins of language draw inferences from evidence such as the fossil record, archaeological evidence, and contemporary language diversity. They may also study language acquisition as well as comparisons between human language and systems of animal communication (particularly those of other primates). Many argue for the close relation between the origins of language and the origins of modern human behavior, but there is little agreement about the facts and implications of this connection. The shortage of direct, empirical evidence has ca…

Evidence: 45 • authority: 80

Origins of language: fossil and DNA evidence

Evidence: 45 • authority: 80

The Archaeological Evidence of Language Origins: States of Art

Evidence: — • authority: 92

Why it is easier to date Quaternary extinctions than human colonizations under conditions of overkill.. Faunal extinctions correlate with human colonization worldwide during the Quaternary, yet the extent to which human hunting drove these losses remains debated. Resolving these debates depends on accurately dating both human arrival and animal extinction events. Herein I present a simulated overkill scenario modeling interaction between a founding human population and a single prey species. The simulation evaluates expected age offsets, the differences between the actual and observed dates, for extinction and colonization as functions of sample size and human population growth rate. Result…

Evidence: — • authority: 92

Exceptional brain and ecological diversity in the earliest snakes.. Understanding the ecological origin of snakes has remained a century-old challenge 1,2 , hindered by an extremely sparse early fossil record and conflicting interpretations of fossil ecologies. Here we describe an exceptionally preserved Cretaceous fossil snake, Tametara mirim gen. et sp. nov., from Brazil, representing one of the earliest-diverging stem snakes. High-resolution micro-CT scans reveal unprecedented details of cranial nerves, inner ear and brain anatomy, enabling the most integrated reconstruction of stem snake neuroanatomy to date. Quantitative and qualitative endocast analyses demonstrate that Tametara had a…

Evidence: — • authority: 92

Brain structure and function in Homo naledi.. Endocasts are casts of the internal surface of skull bones created by the brain and surrounding tissues. These fossil phantoms provide the most direct evidence of the brains of extinct organisms, and are one of the many puzzle pieces that help paleoneurologists reconstruct brain evolution. The recent discovery of a small-brained, recently-extinct human species, Homo naledi, creates a timely opportunity to review what endocasts can and cannot tell us about ancient brains. We first review published evidence about the brain and behavior of H. naledi, including the suggestion that the species may have practiced mortuary behaviors over 230,000 years…

Evidence: — • authority: 80

The Origins of Open-Field Agriculture – The Archaeological Fieldwork Evidence

Evidence: — • authority: 88

Lemuriform Origins as Viewed from the Fossil Record. Fossils relevant to lemuriform origins are reviewed. Omanodon seems very close to the other early tooth-combed lemuriforms Karanisia, Wadilemur and Saharagalago, whereas Bugtilemur is rejected from the Lemuriformes. The Djebelemurinae, including Djebelemur and ‘Anchomomys’ milleri, are considered as stem lemuriforms preceding tooth comb differentiation; they are shown to be very distinct from European adapiforms. With tooth-combed lemuriforms present in Africa around 40 million years ago, and stem lemuriforms without tooth combs present on the same continent around 50–48 million years ago, a reasonable scenario can be proposed: tooth comb…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing. Human language is characterized by its cultural and historical diversity, with significant variations observed between cultures and across time. Human languages possess the properties of productivity and displacement, which enable the creation of an infinite number of sentences, and the ability to refer to objects, events, and ideas that are not immediately present in the discourse. The use of human language relies on social convention and is acquired through learning. A 20…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

The Philistines (Hebrew: פְּלִשְׁתִּים, romanized: Pəlištīm; LXX Koine Greek: Φυλιστιείμ, romanized: Phulistieím; Latin: Philistaei) were an ancient people who lived along the southern coast of Canaan during the Iron Age. Their territory was organized into a confederation of city-states known collectively as Philistia. They spoke the Philistine language, which is poorly attested, with debate ongoing among scholars as to whether the Philistines originally spoke an Indo-European language that gradually synthesized with the local Canaanite dialect continuum of the Northwest Semitic languages. There is evidence to suggest that the Philistine identity began developing through the arrival in Cana…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

AL 288-1, commonly known as Lucy or Dinkʼinesh (Amharic: ድንቅ ነሽ, romanized: dənqə näš, lit. 'you are marvellous'), is a collection of several hundred pieces of fossilized bone comprising 40% of the skeleton of a female of the hominin species Australopithecus afarensis. It was discovered in 1974 in Ethiopia, at Hadar, a site in the Awash Valley of the Afar Triangle by Donald Johanson, a paleoanthropologist of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Lucy is an early australopithecine and lived around 3.2 million years ago. The skeleton presents a small skull akin to that of non-hominin apes, plus evidence of a walking-gait that was bipedal and upright, akin to that of humans and other homini…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

A transitional fossil is any fossilized remains of a life form that exhibits traits common to both an ancestral group and its derived descendant group. This is especially important where the descendant group is sharply differentiated by gross anatomy and mode of living from the ancestral group. These fossils serve as a reminder that taxonomic divisions are human constructs that have been imposed in hindsight on a continuum of variation. Because of the incompleteness of the fossil record, there is usually no way to know exactly how close a transitional fossil is to the point of divergence. Therefore, it cannot be assumed that transitional fossils are direct ancestors of more recent groups, t…