Chinese (Mandarin)

Spanish

English

Hindi

Arabic (Modern Standard)

Portuguese

Bengali

Russian

Japanese

Punjabi

German

Javanese

Malay

Telugu

Vietnamese

Korean

French

Marathi

Tamil

Urdu

Turkish

Italian

Chinese, Yue / Cantonese

Thai

Gujarati

Chinese, Jin

Chinese, Min Nan

Dari

Farsi

Polish

Pashto

Kannada

Chinese, Xiang

Malayalam

Sundanese

Hausa

Odia

Burmese

Chinese, Hakka

Ukrainian

Bihari, Bhojpuri

Tagalog

Yoruba

Bihari, Maithili

Uzbek

Sindhi

Amharic

Fula

Romanian

Oromo

Igbo

Azerbaijani

Chinese, Gan

Dutch

Kurdish, Central

Kurdish, Northern

Kurdish, Southern

Malagasy

Lahnda, Saraiki

Nepali

Sinhalese

Chittagonian

Zhuang

Khmer

Turkmen

Assamese

Madurese

Somali

Marwari

Bihari, Magahi

Haryanvi

Hungarian

Chhattisgarhi

Greek

Chewa

Dakhini

Akan, Twi

Akan, Fante

Kazakh

Chinese, Min Bei

Sylheti

Zulu

Czech

Kinyarwanda

Marwari, Dhundhari

Haitian Creole

Chinese, Min Dong

Ilocano

Quechua

Kirundi

Swedish

Hmong

Shona

Uyghur

Hiligaynon

Mossi

Xhosa

Belarusian

Balochi

Anthropology

<OpenstaxParagraph>
	Evidence from the material culture of hominins such as <OpenstaxEm>Homo habilis</OpenstaxEm> and <OpenstaxEm>Homo erectus</OpenstaxEm> is also used to speculate about the emergence of human language. Early hominins developed stone tool technologies and created stunning works of art. The production and use of such tools and artwork must have required a complex set of social and cognitive abilities. Those same types of social and cognitive skills are important to human language. It is possible that language emerged as part of a whole complex of material culture.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	Archaeological evidence and linguistic theory come together in a model suggesting that the invention of tools by early hominins was linked to the invention of language. Some linguistic theorists suggest that the evolutionary changes in brain structure that allowed for the development of tool use also support the emergence of language. Furthermore, the innovations of tools and language are entwined in a reciprocal relationship; evolutionary pressure to develop tools stimulated the development of language, and the development of language facilitated increasingly complex tool making and tool use.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	There are two theories to explain the connections between advances in tool use and language. The first rests on the assumption that tool making requires a considerable degree of cognitive planning. You cannot make a useful tool by just picking up a rock and randomly chipping away at it. Hominins like <OpenstaxEm>Homo habilis</OpenstaxEm> and <OpenstaxEm>Homo erectus</OpenstaxEm> must have known just what kind of rocks would work as base and chipper and how to execute a set of precise chips in a certain sequence to achieve a sharp blade without breaking the core. The mental processes important to this sort of planning are hypothesized to have also enabled hominins to do the sort of quick planning involved in the production of complex speech (Tallerman and Gibson 2011).
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	A second theory linking tool use and language emphasizes the importance of imitation in passing along the complex set of skills involved in tool making. Neuroscientist Michael <OpenstaxTerm>Arbib</OpenstaxTerm> suggests that the ability to imitate may have generated the first gestural language among hominins (2011). And he has developed a model to describe how imitation and tool making may have evolved together over time. About 2.5 million years ago, <OpenstaxEm>Homo habilis</OpenstaxEm> began making basic stone choppers, cores with flakes removed, used for butchering carcasses. Such choppers are called Oldowan tools, named after the site in Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania where they were first found. Arbib has theorized that the production of Oldowan tools required the ability for hominins to imitate each other’s actions. Simple imitation would make it possible for a learner to reproduce the actions of an accomplished tool maker through observation and mimicry. This ability to imitate is biologically rooted in the system of mirror neurons discussed earlier. As hominin brains acquired the ability of simple imitation involved in tool production, they might also become capable of the kind of gestural communication we see in apes today—not language, but a precursor to it. Investigate this diagram for more about <a href="https://openstax.org/r/researchgate">the evolution of language</a>.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	The array of action-oriented mirror neurons, tool innovation, and language all progressed together in hominin evolution. As tool technology developed, Homo erectus began making distinctive pear-shaped hand axes about 1.6 million years ago. A more intricate form of imitation would have been necessary to teach this sort of tool making to others, corresponding to the emergence of protolanguage. This protolanguage might have been a set of simple one-word utterances corresponding to concepts such as “yes,” “no,” “here,” or “there.”
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	We don’t have any hominin brains to examine, but remember that in the human brain, the system of mirror neurons is assumed to be situated near Broca’s area, which is associated with human speech. So very likely, protolanguage emerged in the same part of the brain as the ability to imitate. The explosion of innovations in tool making over the past 100,000 years is linked to the emergence of complex human language. While the development of mirror neurons and the ability to learn tool making required biological changes to the brain, Arbib argues that the last step, the emergence of language, was purely cultural.
</OpenstaxParagraph>

6.1.5 Hominin Material Culture

1 What Is Anthropology?

1.1 The Study of Humanity, or "Anthropology Is Vast"

1.1.1 The Heart of Anthropology: Central Narrative and Commitments

1.1.2 Central Commitment #1: Exploring Sociocultural Diversity

1.1.3 Central Commitment #2: Understanding How Societies Hold Together

1.1.4 Central Commitment #3: Examining the Interdependence of Humans and Nature

1.2 The Four-Field Approach: Four Approaches within the Guiding Narrative

1.2.1 Biological Anthropology

1.2.2 Archaeology

1.2.3 Cultural Anthropology

1.2.4 Linguistic Anthropology

1.2.5 How the Four Fields Work Together: The Example of Race

1.3 Overcoming Ethnocentrism

1.3.1 Enculturation and Ethnocentrism

1.3.2 Primitivism and Orientalism

1.4 Western Bias in Our Assumptions about Humanity

1.4.1 Primitivism and Orientalism in Popular Culture

1.4.2 The Bias of Backwardness

1.5 Holism, Anthropology’s Distinctive Approach

1.5.1 Society as an Integrated Whole

1.5.2 Sources of Contradiction, Conflict, and Change

1.6 Cross-Cultural Comparison and Cultural Relativism

1.6.1 Relativism Is Not “Anything Goes”

1.6.2 Morality, Activism, and Cultural Relativism

1.7 Reaching for an Insider’s Point of View

1.7.1 The Challenge of Representing Others

1.7.2 Collaborative Methods of Representation

1.7.3 Working across Cultures toward Common Goals

1.7.4 Suggested Readings

2 Methods: Cultural and Archaeological

2.1 Archaeological Research Methods

2.1.1 Archaeological Techniques

2.1.2 Archaeological Dating Methods

2.2 Conservation and Naturalism

2.2.1 Early Efforts

2.2.2 Salvage Anthropology

2.2.3 Museum Collections

2.2.4 Interpretation and Voice

2.3 Ethnography and Ethnology

2.3.1 The Development of Ethnography and Ethnology

2.3.2 Perspective and Interpretation in Ethnography

2.4 Participant Observation and Interviewing

2.4.1 Participant Observation

2.4.2 Interviewing Informants

2.4.3 Ethical Considerations

2.5 Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis

2.5.1 Differences between Quantitative and Qualitative Information

2.5.2 Modeling

2.5.3 The Science of Anthropology

2.6 Collections

2.6.1 Archives

2.6.2 Three-Dimensional Collections

2.6.3 Ownership

2.6.4 Suggested Readings

3 Culture Concept Theory: Theories of Cultural Change

3.1 The Homeyness of Culture

3.2 The Winkiness of Culture

3.3 The Elements of Culture

3.3.1 Culture Is What We Make

3.3.2 Culture Is What We Do

3.3.3 Culture Is What We Think

3.4 The Aggregates of Culture

3.4.1 Symbols

3.4.2 Ritual

3.4.3 Social Structure

3.5 Modes of Cultural Analysis

3.5.1 Evolution, Adaptation, and Historical Particularism

3.5.2 Functionalism

3.5.3 Structuralism

3.5.4 Ontology

3.6 The Paradoxes of Culture

3.6.1 Paradox 1: Culture Is Continuous, but It Changes

3.6.2 Paradox 2: Culture Is Bounded but Mobile

3.6.3 Paradox 3: Culture Is Consensual but Contested

3.6.4 Paradox 4: Culture Is Shared, but It Varies

3.6.5 Suggested Readings

4 Biological Evolution and Early Human Evidence

4.1 What Is Biological Anthropology?

4.1.1 Looking to the Deep Past

4.1.2 Exploring What It Means to Be Human

4.2 What’s in a Name? The Science of Taxonomy

4.2.1 Defining the Science of Taxonomy

4.2.2 Defining a Species

4.3 It’s All in the Genes! The Foundation of Evolution

4.3.1 The Units of Life

4.3.2 Gregor Mendel and the Laws of Heredity

4.3.3 Mendelian Inheritance in Humans

4.4 Evolution in Action: Past and Present

4.4.1 Early Evolutionists and the Fixity of Species

4.4.2 Charles Darwin’s Role in Changing Views of the Natural World

4.4.3 Understanding Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection

4.5 What Is a Primate?

4.5.1 What Is a Primate?

4.5.2 Primate Behavioral Variation

4.5.3 Explaining Primate Success

4.5.4 Primate Classification and Taxonomy

4.6 Origin of and Classification of Primates

4.6.1 Understanding Concepts of Time

4.6.2 Fossils and Dating Methods