Making Prehistoric Lines Speak: Inferring Language and Mental Computations from ‘Natural’ Lines of Parietal Art1
Víctor Manuel Longa Martínez · Philology · 2019
Abstract According to many archaeologists and paleoanthropologists, the presence of symbolism in the prehistoric archaeological record indicates complex language. Therefore, archaeological remains have usually been analyzed from the perspective of the behavior (in this case, symbolic) they could be associated with. This paper proposes a very different approach, arising from formal linguistics and mathematical theory of computation: to analyze archaeological remains from the perspective of the computational processes and capabilities required for their production. This approach is not concerned with the ‘semantics’ of the pieces (symbolism, etc.), but with the analysis of purely formal features revealing a language-like computational complexity. I will exemplify this approach through the computational analysis of representations of Upper Palaeolithic parietal art, concentrating on the use of ‘natural’ lines, i.e. lines preexisting in the rocks (cracks, fissures, etc.), which were used as anchorage points for many representations. This use of natural lines will be shown to reveal a high computational complexity.