How did we become a symbolic species? The question is of societal interest because different proposed answers have implications for how we understand ourselves – as citizens with political agency, or as subjects to be managed.
The most significant behavioural change during our African speciation is arguably the establishment of habitual use of red ochre at ~160 ka, roughly at the end of the process (Dapschauskas et al. 2022). For theoretical and empirical reasons, this was interpreted as a proxy of habitual, body-painted, group rituals, considered a necessary – possibly sufficient – condition for inferring symbolic culture, a domain of shared fictions. Predictions derived from two models of the evolution of group ritual were evaluated, somewhat inconclusively. I was a co-author to one, which arguably predicted their finding 27 years earlier. This independent interpretation of the ochre record may mark a paradigm shift in ‘origins’ research. Key to further constraining this interpretation will be whether a dialogue opens between the two, deeply divided wings of anthropology – evolutionary and ‘social’ (symbolic culture assumed).
The project's objective was to provoke and facilitate such dialogue, through three academic interventions addressing whether the uniformitarian principle might apply in the symbolic domain.
1/ An investigation and analysis of the ethnographic record of African hunter-gatherer ritual uses of red substances and associated beliefs. This required a pan-African synthesis.
The goals were: a/ to fill a knowledge gap, b/ identify differences and commonalities, c/see if a more conclusive evaluation of evolutionary models were possible.
2/ New insights on African hunter-gatherer cosmologies, through preliminary analysis of aspects of unpublished Hadza myths (Tanzania), drawing upon Elena Mouriki’s recordings, transcriptions, and translations from unfinished research. The focus concerns a supernatural being connected to game animals and women, with some striking correspondences (and differences) to a similar character in /Xam mythology (northern Cape).
3/ Synthesis across relevant aspects of the ethnographic, archaeological, and fossil records, engaging with models' predictions about how we became a symbolic species. A planned aspect of this synthesis was to address a technical issue raised by Dapschauskas and colleagues (concerning brain-size increase), used to make the judgement that their finding did not corroborate our temporal prediction.
At the end of the action, it is concluded that a limited application of the Uniformitarian Principle to the symbolic domain is justified. The main evidence comes from what African hunter-gatherers say about, and do with, red substances in ritual contexts. The dominant symbolic theme is a metaphoric relationship between women’s reproduction and men’s hunting, expressed as a form of ‘blood’ symbolism establishing rules of respect – that some things are sacred. Common ground that provides a ritual grammar in other ritualised contexts. This is consistent with a long tradition of social anthropological theorising, recast in evolutionary terms by the Female Cosmetic Coalitions hypothesis. It also offers the most parsimonious explanation for the shift from irregular to habitual use of red ochre, interpreted as the continent-wide stabilization of shared fictions, through the mechanism of group ritual.
