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Dinesh

Dinesh club

Posted: 26 Jul 2022

Taken: 25 Jul 2022

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How Language Began •
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Daniel Everett •

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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
There is a long history to icons in the history of our species. After indexes such as fossilised footprints, icons such as the Makapansgt manuport are the oldest signs we have evidence for -- ‘exactly as Peirce would have predicted.’ These existed before symbols, following the predictions of the semiotic progression. For moe than 3 million years visual icons have been collected by hominins, from Australopithiecaus to Homo sapiens. These icons suggest that the icon-possessor(s) quite possibly grasped a connection between form and meaning -- what the icon is a visual representation of. In this light, consider the two-by-three inch stone found in the Markapansgat cave in South Africa.

This pebble is much older than Homo, however. It was collected by none other than Australopithecus africanus. The manuport ( “carried by hand” ) stand out among the tools it was found among because it clearly is not a tool, but was brought to the cave from elsewhere, almost certainly because it resembled a human face. And it is a kind of stone different from that of the cave where it was found. This manuport indicates that the early as 3 million years ago early hominins recognised iconic properties in objects around them. Just as one perceives the serpentine iconic properties of tree roots in the Amazon, so the australopithicens of Markapansgat saw iconicity in a rock with two circular indentations above a grove running traverse to them. ~ Page 90
21 months ago. Edited 21 months ago.

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