Project description
Investigating the evolution of visual information encoding from the first signs to the advent of writing
Humans store information outside of their minds. This capacity for information encoding is reflected in symbols and written language, and it underlies artificial computing systems. It is a hallmark of human evolution. Traces of this capacity have "fossilized" in the archaeological record reaching back into the Paleolithic of c. 400 000 to 11 000 thousand years ago. The EVINE project (Evolution of Visual INformation Encoding) proposes to digitize large scale samples of paleolithic finds, and to compare their information encoding potential to ancient and modern writing. This enables us to pinpoint the transitions in information encoding from the first signs to the information age.
Objective
Language leaves no trace in the fossil record. However, an important component of the human language capacity, symbolic combinatoriality, might have “fossilized” after all. In the Paleolithic, hominins have embarked on their journey from Africa into the rest of the world. On their way, they have left artefacts which provide a window into their mind. Some of these bear early examples of visual information encoding: geometric signs. In the Middle Paleolithic, when Homo neanderthalensis roamed the landscape, evidence for geometric signs is scarce. It is not before the Middle Stone Age in Africa, typically associated with Homo sapiens, that the first systematic industries emerge. By the time Homo sapiens arrives in Central Europe – in the Upper Paleolithic – the practice of using stones, beads, bone fragments, and figurines as information carriers has become part of everyday life. In fact, the abundance of geometric signs in these assemblages is only gradually coming to light via large-scale collection efforts. This project proposes to marry the growing body of archaeological data with state-of-the-art tools from empirical linguistics to assess the Evolution of Visual Information Encoding (EVINE) in the human lineage. To this end, statistical measures based on information theory, quantitative linguistic laws, as well as classification algorithms need to be developed, and applied to sequences of paleolithic signs, ancient writing, and modern writing. Two core hypotheses are to be tested: First, paleolithic signs are statistically distinct from ancient and modern writing. Second, there was a combinatorial transition in the Upper Paleolithic of around 35 000 to 15 000 years ago. If the latter is verified, we would witness a major step towards modern visual information encoding – 10 000 years before the advent of ancient writing.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- humanitieslanguages and literaturegeneral language studies
- humanitieslanguages and literaturelinguistics
- humanitieshistory and archaeologyhistoryprehistory
- social scienceslaw
- social sciencessociologyanthropologyphysical anthropology
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Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
94032 Passau
Germany