The body as intelligent tool: the making and reading of trace and trace-derived forms in rock art

Biosemiotics and Religion: Theoretical Perspectives on Language, Society and the Supernatural

“…And yet, the learning aspect of language as something that only takes shape in the space between two or more individuals during a relatively brief period -brief relative to evolutionary time -confounds the logic of evolutionary development, even though evolution necessarily sets the stage. As Bickerton's (2014) iconoclastic work has shown, the biological changes involved must have been minutely incremental rather than dramatically adaptive within a matrix of gene flow, progressively involving 110 Theory, Culture & Society 39(1) more and more learning, and the flow of information back and forth, in those intensively social communities where it is now increasingly clear, from the evidence of other media -stone tools, the use of pigmentation and Paleolithic art -that symbols animated the conceptual landscape of collective social consciousness (Cain, 2006;Dobrez, 2018). Thinking about the development of language in terms primarily focused on cognitive ability does not adequately consider socio-semiotic ecology, and the way in which words and grammar fundamentally change the nature of relational communication apart from language in the environment at large.…”