Stone Age Humans Needed More Brain Power to Make Big Leap in Tool Design

[jess tauber]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101103171451.htm

So cutting-edge technology really was cutting edge technology? Anyone here care to comment about possible links to language? It is well known that flint knapping requires the capacity to associate the brightness or dullness of sounds produced during test-tapping, at different positions, of the knapping material with likelihood of conchoidal fracture and material texture- hit the stone the wrong way, at the wrong position, or with the wrong tool and you're out of business. Something perhaps akin to sound symbolism? Or 'bipartite constructions' with instrument/bodypart and pathway/position affixes and similarly organized longer ideophones? Other developed technologies probably also require the same sorts of knowledge, though with softer, wetter materials (that don't leave fossils).

Jess Tauber