ISBN:
9781139198707
Language:
English
Pages:
1 online resource (xiii, 194 pages)
Parallel Title:
Erscheint auch als
Parallel Title:
Erscheint auch als
DDC:
306.4
Keywords:
Sprache
;
Symbolic anthropology
;
Language and languages / Origin
;
Human evolution
;
Thought and thinking
;
Kognitive Entwicklung
;
Ethnologie
;
Kognitive Entwicklung
;
Ethnologie
Abstract:
Symbolic thought is what makes us human. Claude Lévi-Strauss stated that we can never know the genesis of symbolic thought, but in this powerful new study Alan Barnard argues that we can. Continuing the line of analysis initiated in Social Anthropology and Human Origins (Cambridge University Press, 2011), Genesis of Symbolic Thought applies ideas from social anthropology, old and new, to understand some of the areas also being explored in fields as diverse as archaeology, linguistics, genetics and neuroscience. Barnard aims to answer questions including: when and why did language come into being? What was the earliest religion? And what form did social organization take before humanity dispersed from the African continent? Rejecting the notion of hunter-gatherers as 'primitive', Barnard hails the great sophistication of the complex means of their linguistic and symbolic expression and places the possible origin of symbolic thought at as early as 130,000 years ago
Description / Table of Contents:
Stones, bones, ochre and beads -- Kinship, sociality and the symbolic order -- Ritual and religion -- The flowering of language -- Conquering the globe -- After symbolic thought: the Neolithic
Note:
Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015)
DOI:
10.1017/CBO9781139198707
URL:
Volltext
(URL des Erstveröffentlichers)
URL:
Volltext
(URL des Erstveröffentlichers)
URL:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139198707
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