Journal :: Current Anthropology
2011
The Still Bay and Howiesons Poort, 77--59 ka
Current Anthropology 52(3):361--400, 2011
Variations in the material culture in Africa in the Late Pleistocene indicate that it was a period of rapid cultural change not previously observed in the Middle Stone Age. In southern Africa, two techno-traditions, the Still Bay and the Howiesons Poort, have raised interest ...MORE ⇓
Variations in the material culture in Africa in the Late Pleistocene indicate that it was a period of rapid cultural change not previously observed in the Middle Stone Age. In southern Africa, two techno-traditions, the Still Bay and the Howiesons Poort, have raised interest because ...
Automated dating of the worlds language families based on lexical similarity
Current Anthropology 52(6):841--875, 2011
This paper describes a computerized alternative to glottochronology for estimating elapsed time since parent languages diverged into daughter languages. The method, developed by the Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP) consortium, is different from ...
2010
Farming and language in island southeast Asia
Current Anthropology 51(2):223--256, 2010
Current portrayals of Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) over the past 5,000 years are dominated by discussion of the Austronesian farming/language dispersal, with associated linguistic replacement, genetic clines, Neolithic packages, and social transformations. The ...
The animal connection and human evolution
Current Anthropology 51(4):519--538, 2010
A suite of unique physical and behavioral characteristics distinguishes Homo sapiens from other mammals. Three diagnostic human behaviors played key roles in human evolution: tool making, symbolic behavior and language, and the domestication of plants and ...
From executive mechanisms underlying perception and action to the parallel processing of meaning
Current Anthropology 51(S1):S39--S54, 2010
The dominant conceptualization of working memory distinguishes mechanisms that handle auditory-verbal and visuospatial representations from central executive resources that control and guide them. A straightforward case can be made that executive mechanisms ...
The Phonological Loop
Current Anthropology 51(S1):S55--S65, 2010
The phonological loop-here referred to as a specialized auditory-vocal sensorimotor circuit connecting posterior temporal areas with the inferior parietal lobe (Brodmann's areas 40 and 39) and the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (Broca's region, Brodmann's areas 44 and 45)- ...
Making friends, making tools, and making symbols
Current Anthropology 51(S1):S89--S98, 2010
Using Peircian semiotics as an interpretive framework, I evaluate the archaeological evidence for the emergence of symbolism in hominin evolution. While this framework would predict a progression from icons to indexes to symbols, the archaeological record is ...
Imagination, Planning, and Working Memory
Current Anthropology 51(S1):S99--S110, 2010
Imagination (leading to planning, culture,theory of mind) is a powerful property of the human mind. This article will focus on the relation between imagination, planning, and language. Language is a systematic mapping between arbitrary forms in a medium and ...
2008
Primate vocalization, gesture, and the evolution of human languagePDF
Current Anthropology 49(6):1053--1076, 2008
The performance of language is multimodal, not confined to speech. Review of monkey and ape communication demonstrates greater flexibility in the use of hands and body than for vocalization. Nonetheless, the gestural repertoire of any group of nonhuman primates is ...
2007
The evolution of human speech
Current Anthropology 48(1):39--66, 2007
Human speech involves species-specific anatomy deriving from the descent of the tongue into the pharynx. The human tongue's shape and position yields the 1: 1 oral-to-pharyngeal proportions of the supralaryngeal vocal tract. Speech also requires a brain that can ...
The Evolution of Human Speech: Its Anatomical and Neural BasesPDF
Current Anthropology 48(1):39-66, 2007
Human speech involves species-specific anatomy deriving from the descent of the tongue into the pharynx. The human tongue's shape and position yields the 1:1 oral-to-pharyngeal proportions of the supralaryngeal vocal tract. Speech also requires a brain that can ...MORE ⇓
Human speech involves species-specific anatomy deriving from the descent of the tongue into the pharynx. The human tongue's shape and position yields the 1:1 oral-to-pharyngeal proportions of the supralaryngeal vocal tract. Speech also requires a brain that can ``reiterate''--freely reorder a finite set of motor gestures to form a potentially infinite number of words and sentences. The end points of the evolutionary process are clear. The chimpanzee lacks a supralaryngeal vocal tract capable of producing the ``quantal'' sounds which facilitate both speech production and perception and a brain that can reiterate the phonetic contrasts apparent in its fixed vocalizations. The traditional Broca-Wernicke brain-language theory is incorrect; neural circuits linking regions of the cortex with the basal ganglia and other subcortical structures regulate motor control, including speech production, as well as cognitive processes including syntax. The dating of the FOXP2 gene, which governs the embryonic development of these subcortical structures, provides an insight on the evolution of speech and language. The starting points for human speech and language were perhaps walking and running. However, fully human speech anatomy first appears in the fossil record in the Upper Paleolithic (about 50,000 years ago) and is absent in both Neanderthals and earlier humans.