Teaching to make stone tools: new experimental evidence supporting a technological hypothesis for the origins of language

Abstract

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.

Semiotics and the Origin of Language in the Lower Palaeolithic

“…This is a semiotic perspective which then raises issues of the context of learning-is it shared intentionally through teaching (e.g. Morgan et al 2015;Lombao et al 2017) or learned individually by trial and error (Tennie et al 2016)? Wynn (1993):402) acknowledges that certain elaborated tools, like hand-axes, can be indexes of the hierarchical process of making the object and come to represent the maker.…”

“…We would add that the teaching of tool-making also involves the basic parent-offspring relationship of learning through physical proximity (intersubjectivity) and joint attention on a shared task (Studdert-Kennedy and Terrace 2017). Controlled experiments on learning to make stone tools provide more specific evidence that learning the nested hierarchical processes needed to make a hand-axe, such as alternate bifacial flaking, and edge and platform preparation (involving the non-dominant hand), requires teaching using language (speech and gesture) to minimise errors in transmission between expert and novice (Uomini and Meyer 2013;Putt et al 2014;Ruck 2014;Morgan et al 2015;Lombao et al 2017;Ruck and Uomini in press). Gärdenfors and Högberg (2017):196, table 1) outline a hierarchy of forms of intentional teaching and levels of joint attention and theory of mind between teacher and pupil.…”

The origins of gestures and language: history, current advances and proposed theories

“…Bickerton & Szathmáry, ), teaching [e.g. Laland, ; see also Uomini & Meyer, , Morgan et al ., , Lombao, Guardiola & Mosquera, and Cataldo, Migliano & Vinicius, for experimental evidence for coevolution of hominin tool‐making teaching and language], cooperative breeding, foraging/hunting and construction (e.g. Burkart, Hrdy & Van Schaik, ; Fitch, ; Tomasello, ; Van Schaik, ), gossip (e.g.…”

The archaeology of the social brain revisited: rethinking mind and material culture from a material engagement perspective

“…As a tool, ToM has been useful to investigate notions of identity, language and social transmission in the Palaeolithic (e.g. Cole, 2014;Lombao et al, 2017;Morgan et al, 2015;Shipton, 2019;Stade, 2017Stade, , 2020, but it is worth re-evaluating whether matching socalled 'ToM' abilities to elements of the material record is as straightforward as previously thought.…”