1) The observation of the running of the time
2) The concept of mind
3) The mind of the Paleolithic man
4) The concept of mental representation
5) The skill of mental representation of the Paleolithic man
6) The skill of symbolization and the Paleolithic man
7) The representation of the time in the Paleolithic
8) Conclusion
1) The observation of the running of the time
"at vigiles mundi magnum versatile templum
sol et luna suo lustrantes lumine circum
perdocuere homines annorum tempora verti
et certa ratione geri rem atque ordine certo"
(Titus Lucretius Caro, De rerum natura, V, 1436-1439)
There is no doubt that the man, observing the constant rebirth of things, has also immediately perceived the existence of a maturative climax beyond which the decline begins: therefore, the running of the time, an uncontrollable event.
With the appearance of writing, we find many myths, certainly stratified on ancient oral traditions, which tell about this. The most famous is perhaps that of Chronos, the fierce Titan, son of Gaea and Uranus, who mutilated and drove from the throne his father, and that in turn, having become a father, fearing the same fate at the hands of a son, began to devour the children conceived with Rhea (mythology says that Zeus, escaped with a ruse to the fate, then took revenge on him, imprisoning him in Tartarus, thus becoming in turn king of the gods
Discovering the link between change and time, and at the same time pondering on the fact that, due to the vicissitudes of existence itself, the elapsing of time was full of important events for him, man, by defining temporality as significant and definable, by distinguishing in thought and memory between past, present and future, has in a certain sense made time something that belongs to him.
Starting from the movement of the sun and the stars, and then from these careful observations on the unfolding of life around him, he began to think about time.
Thus, although time and movement do not coincide insofar as, in order to determine speed, we must already know time, nevertheless the "number of movement according to the before and after"" (Aristotle, Physica, VIII) has allowed man, in the observation of this implicit movement, the opportunity for a revelation of time as an eventuality of events in which a before and an after can be observed, whether it be an objectively measurable time or a lived time.
With this we are already in the field of the mental.
Therefore, the subjective-objective observation of natural rhythms [growth, development, death] on oneself interpreted as a psychophysical entity, and on one's similar, in the animal and vegetal kingdom; the observation of the rhythmic alternation of light and darkness, of seasonal climatic variations also regarding fruits and fauna; and, raising our eyes to the sky, at first amazed and curious, and then carefully inquiring, the observation of the succession of lunar phases, the rising and setting of the sun and the periodic disappearance and reappearance of the constellations, a motion then in a cyclical circular form always equal to itself, all this has generated in man the consciousness of time and its flow.
This, whether it is, as argued by Plato, an idea, then pre-existing to the man himself who thinks it (a kind of ultimate truth, pre-existing and existing independently of the thinker who will think it, to use an image taken from the psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion), whether it is a creation of the mind of man, of his"discursive reasoning", the Psyché, capable of a high rate of multiplicity, as argued by his passionate follower, Plotinus, supports in the Enneades ("The soul produces its acts one after the other, in an ever-changing succession: with a new act, it generates what comes after ... so the life of the soul, dissociating itself, occupies time ", Enneades, III, 7, paragraph 11), when he asserts that the soul is the principle of life and the origin of the various things in the world, so that time arises with it.
With reflection and awareness, it is presumable that the need to "stop" observations about this flowing, as vital information always available, aimed at reproduction (rhythms of the reproductive cycle, menstruation, pregnancy) and other aspects of survival (forecasting the changing climate of the seasons in relation to the need to use different types of housing, the gathering food as seasonal and local supply and availability, as well as the possibility of setting up a seasonal and diversified hunting of prey, of air, land and water.
Heidegger, theorizing on time, underlines that man meditates on the fact that time is always time for doing something, it is "time for...", that is, thought starting from human doing, not an abstract idea, since human existence is "time for doing something". The moment of one's own death, then, by giving finiteness to one's own time, sets the coordinates of the future and of the finiteness of time itself.
Therefore, the need to establish through precise references, exactly placed in the flow of time, the most appropriate moments for generation, migration, hunting, gathering and sowing, that is to say, to calendar and compute, making these references available at all times to oneself and to others.
Common sense and reason suggest that man has consequently felt the need to make these observations stable and available; in this way a big step from the subjective to the sharable as measurable is carried out.
Initially, it must have been a matter of observations on a biological time, a flow marked by present, past and future, almost immediately transmuted in a process of abstraction, in observations on the cycle of human life, based on a sense of identity, an indication of a consciousness that is time-based, permeated as it is by an intuition of transcendence in being, also made of regrets of the past and anxieties about the future, primordial origin of some concept of "human time", which is pertinent to the mental.
We know that every concept is the result of a process of abstraction, and then of an operation of categorization on the basis of relationships or characteristics in common.
It is very probable that immediately a functionality connected to worship rituals was inserted, they too sequences of acts with precise scanning, presumably linked electively to lunar rhythms (which establish the rhythm of the cyclic duration of the 28 days of the lunar month) and solar rhythms (annual rhythms with the cyclic succession of the seasons); all, starting, as we have said, from problems related to obtaining and disposing of food resources essential for survival and continuity of life, under the urgency of the occurrence, and then the impending, of death
Therefore, in the temporalisation of one's own and other people's lives, even the concept of number bursts into man's mind like an extraordinary thunderbolt; as Plato already noted: "...the observations of day and night, of months and periods of years, of equinoxes and solstices have provided the number, and have given reflection on time and research into the nature of the universe" (Timeus, 47a).
We are faced with a conceptualization of enormous extent: an immense field of observations and creativity opens up before man.
Just one example: from the discovery of the number to that of music, which has always been closely linked to it, as a science designed and structured according to the laws of number(see St.Augustin, De Musica and Confessiones, 11, and, after him, Ancius Manlius Torquatus Severinus Boetius, Consolatio, V), the step is short (think to the Timeus of Plato, 35b passim; moreover look at Aristotle, Physica, IV c 10-14 and then still, of the Christian period, Seneca , Epistolae morales, n. 88, 33; De brevitate vitae; and Sextus Empiricus, 19 Pyrrhoneioi hypotyposeis III, 136- 150; Adversus mathematicos X 3, 169-247, in which the universe is placed within a musical pattern).
Reason tells us, therefore, that the observation and conceptualization of time has probably prepared the way for all other types of observations and conceptualizations, as well as opening the way to transcendence, since man becomes aware of this dimension, and first of all of the divine through reflection on numerical relationships, beginning with the unfolding of time, in which the double tension is expressed, which produces movement: of the Prime Motor towards his creation, and of all the objects of creation towards him.
2) The mind concept
We have necessarily arrived at the concept of mind, and consequently we will have to deal with the symbol.
Ernest Jones asserts that "a concrete idea is symbolized when it is represented by another concrete idea which usually has a double relation to it: 1) an objective relation, inasmuch as the object or process possesses material attributes similar to those possessed by the symbolized idea; 2) a subjective relation inasmuch as the mental attitude toward it, is, in some aspects, similar to that toward the primary idea "(Jones, p 133 Theory of the symbolism).
At this point it will be functional to our research to premise a mention on the fundamental distinction between brain and mind, which, starting from a philosophical reflection dating back to Plato, has occupied in the last part of the century the debate within Neurosciences, which, with alternating vicissitudes, have long questioned the possible derivation of mental functions from those of the brain.
The philosophical and epistemological debate on the subject has been and is very hot, and has passed and passes through multiple positions.
It should be made clear in advance that, with regard to the question of the mind, the reference discipline rightfully belongs to Psychology; and that, among Psychologies, Psychoanalysis is particularly concerned with it, starting with S. Freud.
It should be immediately established the absolute differentiation between brain (whose study, made mostly of measurements, is the prerogative of Neuroscience), and mind, understood as a function that cannot be measured, and that is structured in the course and through relational processes.
It should also be pointed out that in many sciences related to the study of our origins, starting from Paleoanthropology, brain functions are not correctly seen by some people and used as the only valid reference for a global knowledge of man from the origins, so that most people tend to believe that the problem is limited to that of skeletal remains, privileging the concept of biological evolution, to the detriment of cultural evolution, which instead deals with the evolution of the mind.
What I mean to say is that the undoubted, important enrichments regarding the knowledge of the physical evolution of man, rightly limited to a part of the global discourse referring to Homo, therefore conforming to the methodological principle of the current epistemology, badly interpreted and worse used by many scholars of Prehistory, have put a serious brake on the investigation of the unavoidable problem of the relationships between organic and mental events; Moreover, they have considered them to be beyond to come in a hypothetical (but assumed as good) scale of the human evolution, consequently not investigating them in the man of the Paleolithic, indeed, not even daring to postulate them, perhaps fearing to be accused of too much fantasy and little scientificity.
In this way, science does not progress: instead of curiosity and deductions suggested by common sense and reason with respect to the existing "traces-documents" (obviously, we do not refer to documents written in the periods before writing), which alone are able to give us a picture of the situation at the time, are in evidence qualms and preconceived ideas about what from a point of view of physical evolution could be or not be, thus losing the opportunity to discover new things (almost always unexpected or "incredible").
It would then be desirable that all disciplines work side by side, integrating, without stopping at a purely biological and evolutionary vision of man in a restrictive deterrent sense.
Others have suggested alternative and more fruitful paths, as the psychiatrist Henry Ey, who indicated a way towards a relational and anthropological neurobiology, which does not deny the importance of the physical evolution of the brain, but considers man in the only possible way, not only as a body with physical potential, but in its bio-psycho-social essence.
3) The mind of the Paleolithic man
Therefore, the need arises to ask whether the man of 2,500,000 years ago possessed a mind or not.
Wanting to limit ourselves to considerations of anthropological nature, we observe that Homo Habilis presents, compared to the forms that have preceded him, a significant increase in cranial capacity, and then cortical areas that control the language, and associative areas related to symbolic functions (see Eccles, p 103 et seq.), then are hypothesized both consciousness and self-consciousness.
On the other hand, the testimonies that Homo has left us, mainly stone artifacts intentionally shaped with a project and a precise technique functional to the purpose, both utilitarian and not, that is art, are a vivid and irrefutable testimony of the mind, of its mental representations (art), and of their evolution.
Daniel C. Dennet, Daniel C. Dennet, philosopher (as he prefers to call himself) and scientist, director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, Massachusetts (U.S.A.), assimilates the mind to a computer program, in which learning and memory act as bases for the reprogramming of the brain in order to better address new problems:"The task of a mind is to produce future...A mind is, reduced to its essentials, a system capable of anticipation.... It digs into the present in search of clues, which it then refines with the help of materials preserved from the past, transforming them into anticipations of the future. And then it acts rationally on the basis of these anticipations"(Dennet, p 69).
This is a fundamental tactic from the point of view of evolution, which privileges those creations whose project has a phenotypic plasticity, since there is no complete project from birth, but ample opportunity to correct certain elements of the project as a result of events occurring at the time of practical verification.
In particular, Dennet observes how this process began with the Hominids, underlining the observation, by anthropologists, of an increase in intelligence correlated to the conception and use of tools.
Dennet observes that "not only the acknowledgment and the conservation of a tool (and still more its fabrication) demand intelligence; an instrument is also capable of conferring intelligence on those fortunate enough to possess it." ( ibid, p 115). Finally, the modifications, conveyed by language and images, in turn transfer to the genome. Therefore, what makes something a mind, is what it can do. Ergo, the men of the Paleolithic, the makers of the first tools, and of the first art, the first men appeared on the scene of the world, had a mind.
Therefore, we can postulate the existence of mind in Homo from the beginning.
Recently, we have discussed a lot about the "resonance of minds" in the course of social relations, and its transformative power, which has been exercised over time. " Connections between minds […] involve a dyadic form of resonance in which energy and information are free to flow across two brains. When such a process is in full activation, the vital feeling of connection is exhilarating. When interpersonal communication is 'fully engaged' - when the joining of minds is in full force - there is an overwhelming sense of immediacy, clarity, and authenticity. It is in these heightened moments of engagement, these dyadic states of resonance, that one can appreciate the power of relationships to nurture and to heal the mind." (Siegel, p. 337)
It will then be necessary to consider how the evolution of language plays an important role in the evolution of the human mind, but even in this case, it will not be useful nor diriment to reduce the problem to a debate on the development of the larynx and phonatory organs, as well as of the brain areas devoted to language or related to it, but we must obviously agree on what we consider "language", which, in agreement with Eccles, we will consider as a particular semiotic system.
The relationships between language and thought will then have to be evaluated, with the symbolic and representational transformations of created and used signs leading to language.
4) The concept of mental representation
The word model of representation "places languages in the definition...[of] semiotic systems, conventional or natural, that man uses to define/determine aspects or parts of reality, and that are used by men to exchange data about reality itself" (Vimercati, p 13).
The Freudian model, with the discourse on instincts, as stimuli internal to the organism, which have allowed the development of the nervous system in man, has contributed to an observation extraordinarily interesting on the anthropological plan, "as it shifts the evolutionary apex of man from the organic functions dear to paleoanthropology (acquisition of the upright position, transformation of the use of the hand, mouth, etc.) (Leroi-Gourhan, 1964-65) to the psychic ones, dominated by desire. An evolutionary shift from nature to culture"(Mancia, p 15).
Mental representation is a word that corresponds to image (from Latin imago, phantasm, appearance), mental reproduction of a perception that has already taken place, not present to our senses, whether it is an external, internal or imaginary object; it also indicates the content of the representation.In any case, it allows us to re-live the perceptual experience, even in absence of the object that constitutes the sensory stimulus.
Freud in his Metapsychology Freud in his Metapsychology distinguishes between thing-presentations and word-presentations. Thing-presentation (very close to mnestic traces) is visual, deriving from the sight of "things", while word-presentation is acoustic, originating from the perception of sounds.
Freud makes this distinction to clarify how thing-presentations are linked to the unconscious, while those of words are linked to the preconscious-conscious system. However, thing-presentation is more than a mnestic trace, as it is not a pure transcription of the event, but presupposes a reinvestment of it.
On the other hand, word-presentation is more complex, as the mnestic image, associating with verbalization, enters the area of consciousness.
Note that the conscious representation consists of both the thing- presentation and the word-presentation that corresponds to it, so it is more articulated than the unconscious thing-presentation.
5) The ability of mental representation of Paleolithic man
At this point we can ask ourselves what could have been the mental representation ability of Paleolithic man. In a lack of written documents, an answer to this question could be deduced from the observation of material manufactures.
In order to make the first tools, there is no doubt that our most far ancestor started from an idea, a mental project, probably the result of associations and further elaborations of observations in nature.
This representation obviously also had a content, probably, as an example, the shape-design embodying the idea of a tool, of which today we possess thousands of specimens, universally known (all people with a middle level of education are able to recognize a Paleolithic stone tool).
Except for the progresses deriving from the evolution of the technique, we do not see therefore a great gap between the ability of mental representation of the Paleolithic Man and ours of Homo technologicus of the III millennium.
6) The symbolization capacity and the Paleolithic man
We already know that in the man of 2.500.000 years ago there were associative areas, that is, brain regions linked to symbolic functions.
The symbol, which is within the order of the sign, is a specific sign that substitutes a real action.
We know that, in order to access symbolization, the faculty of language is not necessary, as laboratory research on chimpanzees has long shown.
A research by Joel Fagot (Neuroscience Research Center of Marseille, France), and Edward Wasserman and Michael E. Young (University of Iowa, U.S.A.), ("Journal of Experimental Psychology"), October 2001, concerning baboons (also belonging to the primate family, precisely to a branch that split from humans and apes about thirty million years ago), further demonstrated that the language faculty is not required to understand relationships between things and identify or describe them.
The baboons showed in the experiment glimmers of abstract intelligence, being able to select images on a computer screen, following an analogical reasoning of the type: "this corresponds to this".
If this is valid for our closest cousins, why shouldn't it be for us?
Moreover, for humans, especially at the beginning of social life, the ability to symbolize has been functional to the same social organization, as well as to a better development of survival strategies,
Presumably, at the beginning, numerical (quantitative) sequences, after having been expressed in some way at a verbal level (with sequential sounds and similar, probably, before the creation of more organized vocal sounds and in a more structured verbal language), were represented concretely (albo signanda lapillo, Romans used to say), with natural objects, which could be pieces of wood, or pebbles, or any other object available in quantity in nature, durable in time, not encumbering, possibly easily transportable, visually well clear; symbols, precisely.
Later, we can speculate that, for greater practicality of use (economy of space, easy portability and transmissibility, universality of understanding and learning), these sequences were recorded through something that represented them, presumably vertical dots or indentations etched on rigid material, such as stone, the first, most durable and consistent material available in nature.
The need to use a symbol could also be part of a problem of communication, a process made possible by a language, the symbol, or the sign itself in a broad sense, as a relationship between signifier and signified.
As such, it implements a transition from mental representation to material representation (the symbol used as a concrete object), therefore made common, socially shared and immediately understandable (which falls within the mental in the first instance, and then possibly cultural), if it is instrumental to the registration of time. In this case, the purpose becomes informative, therefore strictly knowable (cognitive), inextricably linked, as we said, to an urgent and primary problem of survival.
Such is probably the first motivation for the computational need and especially of its registration and public sharing.
7) The representation of the time in the Paleolithic
Evidences of the perception and computation of time in the Paleolithic have arrived to us in concrete form, as stone sculpture, lunar calendars on bone and star maps, engraved on rigid material like stone or bone or painted inside the caves.
The first to have the intuition of the existence, in the Upper Paleolithic, of calendars was Alexander Marshack, who in the 60's, as journalist charged by NASA to write a book on the history of Science, posed the problem of what could be the revealing element of the rise of the scientific component in
He became aware of the engraved bone of Ishango, becoming passionate about archaeological research, and, after careful and accurate studies, he identified and indicated as a key element in the history of the development of science by man the calendar, a tool that has evolved gradually and slowly through the ages, as evidenced by the well-known predynastic lunars of Egyptian civilization, until those Mesopotamian, Indian, Chinese and South America.
Its first investigation in this sense has regarded a handle of bone of 9,6 cm length, from Ishango, near the Rudolph Lake, Upper Nile, equatorial Africa, dated to 20.000 years ( it is part of the collections of the Museum des Sciences naturelles of Brussels, Belgium ). discovered in 1950 by the Belgian archaeologist Jean De Heinzel .
The bone, slightly curved, is engraved transversely and vertically on three sides, with 168 notches organized on five columns in groups and subgroups of signs.
Jean de Heinzelin in 1962 had provided a first interpretation, identifying in the first column the prime numbers between 10 and 20, in the second the concept of multiplication, in the third a sort of mathematical game based on addition and subtraction.
In any case, this object, very rich in internal combinations, still today has not been fully understood.
Marshack, in turn, postulating the interest of the Paleolithic man for the activities of daily life related to the flow of time, has considered it a calendar, in particular a lunar calendar.
After studying this first object related to time counting, he searched for others. At the Musée des Antiquités Nationales de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Paris, France, he made observations on a series of objects dated from the Aurignacian (30,000 B.C.) to the Magdalenian , in particular dwelling on a bone from the abri Blanchard, Castelmerle, Sergeac, Dordogne, 9.7 cm long, found by Louis Didon in 1911, engraved on a surface of 5.2 cm, with 69 notches of similar shape and sequence to the various phases of the moon .
He interpreted it as a lunar calendar covering a period of 2 1/4 months; having then found other notches (63, and 40 on the other side), thus a total of 172 marks, he deduced that it is the representation of 6 lunar months. Marshack argues that the counting was done several times, because it is found, observing them under the microscope, that the notches were engraved at different times with 24 tools of different types.
Later, he studied other lunar calendars, such as the engraved bone from the abri Lartet, Dordogne, Aurignacian of 30. 000 years ago, with circular engravings that he considers similar to the appearance of the moon in its various phases during a month; again, according to Marshack, the counting was repeated several times ; the pebble from Barma Grande (Italy, Perigordian, dated at 24,000 years), and a command stick from the Placard Cave (Charente, Magdalenian of 12,000 years ago).
Other studies followed, such as those for Kulna, Czechoslovakia, which has 46 notches in groups of three (15, 16 and 15), still related to the phases of the moon (half of the lunar month); that of Gontzi, Ukraine , with 114 notches on a continuous U-shaped line, grouped into four groups (this may be the notation related to four lunations); that of Cueto de la Mina, extended from March to October, perhaps related to observations on periods of gestation.
Always belonging to the Upper Paleolithic, it is not to be forgotten the incision on stone of the Venus of Laussel holding a horn or engraved bone, that could be one of the first evidences of recordings of the phases of the moon (see Filingeri, The most ancient known representation of the moon (Upper Paleolithic, Vara, Savona, Liguria, Italy), Paleolithic Art Magazine)
Recently, Michael Rappenglueck (Department of Mathematics and Computer Sciences of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet, Munchen of Bayer, Germany), on the basis of numerous proofs of various types, has identified in the great scene of Lascaux of m 2,75 with animals and the so-called "man with a beak face", a representation in which he identifies a shaman, who is facing the spirit of the bison, in relation with some constellations that, in the summer of 16,500 BC, passed over the meridian at midnight of the summer solstice (stars of the Summer Triangle, Deneb (Cygni alpha), Vega (Lyra alpha), Ercole (Her), Head of the Snake, Ofiucus and Virgin (Vir) and Altair (aigle alpha), in the Lascaux fresco represented by the eyes of the slain man, the bison and the bird on the staff. In addition, the rhinoceros would be composed by the constellationsPegasus (Peg), Andromeda (And), Triangle (Tri), Aries (Ari), and the horse from the constellation of the Lion (Leo).
Rappenglueck argues, supported by evidence from various ancient and modern disciplines, that the Lascaux fresco is revelatory of knowledge of an ancient cosmology, cosmogony, biology, psychology, and religion, which would demonstrate a high ideological and integrative power of Paleolithic man
BR>Further evidence of the interest in the flow of time and of the accuracy of astronomical observations is provided by the numerous megalithic astronomical observatories that have been preserved more or less intact up to us, starting with the great, important complex of Stonehenge, which, with the improvement of studies and computational instruments available, is increasingly proving to be a perfect and extremely complex astronomical observatory, as demonstrated by the astronomer Gerald S. Hawkins (Nature, 1963, and later in his book Stonehenge Decoded, 1965, New York, Doubleday).
In times still more remote, a trace of the interest of the man for the moon, the star that more than every other is apt, with the alternation of its clearly perceptible phases (both on a direct visual level, and under form of influences immediately verifiable, and essential for the same survival of the mankind), to show the cyclic flow of the time and the duration, reaches us from the Paleolithic, with a superb sculpture in stone,
Vara, San Pietro d'Olba, Savona Italia
Vara, San Pietro d'Olba, Savona Italia
8) Conclusion
Therefore, evidences in the artistic field, going back to the lower Paleolithic and gradually ahead in the time, both in the first form of art, the sculpture, and in the engraving and in the painting, show the immediate perception by Homo of the flow of the time, and his preoccupation to measure it, to fix it in the observation in stable form, to use it to the same ends of his own survival.
I would like to conclude by recalling some verses of Lucretius, who has been helping us to think for more than 2000 years:
"Primum animum dico, mentem quem saepe vocamus,
in quo consilium vitae regimenque locatum est,
esse hominis partem nilo minus ac manus, et pes,
atque oculi partes animantis totius extant."
(Lucretius, De rerum naturae, III, vv.94-97).
"I affirm that first the spirit, which we often call mind,
in which the advice and government of existence find their place,
is no less a part of man than the hand, and foot,
and eyes are part of the whole animate being.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
DENNET,D.C., (1996), La mente e le menti, Milano, Rizzoli, 1996
ECCLES, J.C., ( 1979), Il mistero uomo, Milano, Il saggiatore, 1981
GAIETTO, P., (1981). Prescultura e scultura preistorica, Genova, E.R.G.A.
JONES, E., (1938), Teoria del simbolismo, Roma, Astrolabio, 1972
MANCIA, M., (1994), Dall'Edipo al sogno. Modelli della mente nello sviluppo e nel transfert, Milano, Cortina
LUCRETIUS, De rerum natura
MARSHACK, A. (1970), "The roots of civilization", New York, McGraw-Hill Book Company
PLATO, Timeus
PLOTINUS, Enneades
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VIMERCATI, M., (2000), La sintesi prossima, Genova, Le Mani
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