Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-bt4hw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-31T11:44:52.857Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Making Tools and Making Sense: Complex, Intentional Behaviour in Human Evolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2009

Dietrich Stout  and
Thierry Chaminade
Dietrich Stout
Affiliation:
Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 31–34 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PY, UK; Email: dietrich.stout@ucl.ac.uk
Thierry Chaminade
Affiliation:
Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, INCM, UMR6193, CNRS - Aix-Marseille Université, 31 Chemin Joseph Aiguier, 13402 Marseille Cedex 20, France; Email: tchamina@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Stone tool-making is an ancient and prototypically human skill characterized by multiple levels of intentional organization. In a formal sense, it displays surprising similarities to the multi-level organization of human language. Recent functional brain imaging studies of stone tool-making similarly demonstrate overlap with neural circuits involved in language processing. These observations are consistent with the hypothesis that language and tool-making share key requirements for the construction of hierarchically structured action sequences and evolved together in a mutually reinforcing way.

Information

Type
Special Section: Steps to a ‘Neuroarchaeology’ of Mind, part 2
Information
Cambridge Archaeological Journal , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , February 2009 , pp. 85 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable