Communicative capacities in Middle Pleistocene humans from the Sierra de Atapuerca in Spain

Martı́nez, Ignacio; Rosa, Manuel Megías; Quam, Rolf; Jarabo, Pilar; Lorenzo, Carlos; Bonmatí, Alejandro; Gómez‐Olivencia, Asier; Gràcia, Ana; Arsuaga, Juan Luís

doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2012.07.001

Cited by 58 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Interestingly, the Acheulian technocomplex coincides in timing with the evolution of a derived 217 middle ear anatomy in Homo that was more attuned to human speech frequencies 40,41 . Together, 218…”

Section: Text: 26mentioning

confidence: 93%

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The functional brain networks that underlie Early Stone Age tool manufacture

et al. 2017

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After 800,000 years of making simple Oldowan tools, early humans began manufacturing Acheulian handaxes around 1.75 million years ago. This advance is hypothesized to reflect an evolutionary change in hominin cognition and language abilities. We used a neuroarchaeology approach to investigate this hypothesis, recording brain activity using functional near-infrared spectroscopy as modern human participants learned to make Oldowan and Acheulian stone tools in either a verbal or nonverbal training context. Here we show that Acheulian tool production requires the integration of visual, auditory and sensorimotor information in the middle and superior temporal cortex, the guidance of visual working memory representations in the ventral precentral gyrus, and higher-order action planning via the supplementary motor area, activating a brain network that is also involved in modern piano playing. The right analogue to Broca’s area—which has linked tool manufacture and language in prior work1,2—was only engaged during verbal training. Acheulian toolmaking, therefore, may have more evolutionary ties to playing Mozart than quoting Shakespeare

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Section: Text: 26mentioning

confidence: 93%

“…The human brain has increased in absolute and relative size in the last 2-3 million years, 40 particularly the prefrontal and temporal cortices 3 . This increase in brain size undoubtedly 41 coincided with the evolution of the distinctive features of modern human cognition 4 .…”

Section: Text: 26mentioning

confidence: 99%

The functional brain networks that underlie Early Stone Age tool manufacture

et al. 2017

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“…The essential architecture and function of the auditory system, from the middle ear through cochlea and up to cortex via multiple brainstem waypoints, is shared with other mammals, and there is little evidence of any fundamental differences in human hearing from most other familiar mammals except that adult human hearing occupies a relatively low frequency range (roughly 20 Hz to 15 kHz), and many species go well beyond our upper limit of 20 kHz. Although much has been made recently of differences in the shape of the chimpanzee and human audiogram (Martinez et al, 2013), in an attempt to use the middle ear bones of extinct hominins to reconstruct the evolution of speech perception, I am skeptical of the relevance of these data for two reasons. The first is that the primary determinant of hearing range and acuity is the cochlea, not the outer or middle ears (Ruggero & Temchin, 2002).…”

Section: The Shared Foundationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Empirical approaches to the study of language evolution

2017

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The study of language evolution, and human cognitive evolution more generally, has often been ridiculed as unscientific, but in fact it differs little from many other disciplines that investigate past events, such as geology or cosmology. Well-crafted models of language evolution make numerous testable hypotheses, and if the principles of strong inference (simultaneous testing of multiple plausible hypotheses) are adopted, there is an increasing amount of relevant data allowing empirical evaluation of such models. The articles in this special issue provide a concise overview of current models of language evolution, emphasizing the testable predictions that they make, along with overviews of the many sources of data available to test them (emphasizing comparative, neural, and genetic data). The key challenge facing the study of language evolution is not a lack of data, but rather a weak commitment to hypothesistesting approaches and strong inference, exacerbated by the broad and highly interdisciplinary nature of the relevant data. This introduction offers an overview of the field, and a summary of what needed to evolve to provide our species with language-ready brains. It then briefly discusses different contemporary models of language evolution, followed by an overview of different sources of data to test these models. I conclude with my own multistage model of how different components of language could have evolved.

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“…Neandertals have robust necks, especially with respect to cervical spinous processes (19,32) 19,33,34). Moreover, their necks were not particularly short (19,32,35). Their clavicles are moderately long, but they scale to body mass in the same manner as other humans (36).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Temporal labyrinths of eastern Eurasian Pleistocene humans

Crevecœur

Liu

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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One of the morphological features that has been identified as uniquely derived for the western Eurasian Neandertals concerns the relative sizes and positions of their semicircular canals. In particular, they exhibit a relatively small anterior canal, a relatively larger lateral one, and a more inferior position of the posterior one relative to the lateral one. These discussions have not included full paleontological data on eastern Eurasian Pleistocene human temporal labyrinths, which have the potential to provide a broader context for assessing Pleistocene Homo trait polarities. We present the temporal labyrinths of four eastern Eurasian Pleistocene Homo, one each of Early (Lantian 1), Middle (Hexian 1), and Late (Xujiayao 15) Pleistocene archaic humans and one early modern human (Liujiang 1). The labyrinths of the two earlier specimens and the most recent one conform to the proportions seen among western early and recent modern humans, reinforcing the modern human pattern as generally ancestral for the genus Homo. The labyrinth of Xujiayao 15 is in the middle of the Neandertal variation and separate from the other samples. This eastern Eurasian labyrinthine dichotomy occurs in the context of none of the distinctive Neandertal external temporal or other cranial features. As such, it raises questions regarding possible cranial and postcranial morphological correlates of Homo labyrinthine variation, the use of individual "Neandertal" features for documenting population affinities, and the nature of late archaic human variation across Eurasia.cranium | China | petrous | cochlea

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Communicative capacities in Middle Pleistocene humans from the Sierra de Atapuerca in Spain

Cited by 58 publications

References 36 publications

The functional brain networks that underlie Early Stone Age tool manufacture

The functional brain networks that underlie Early Stone Age tool manufacture

Empirical approaches to the study of language evolution

Temporal labyrinths of eastern Eurasian Pleistocene humans

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