Un análisis computacional de las líneas prehistóricas: diseños geométricos y lenguaje

Abstract

Paleoanthropology and Archaeology have usually analyzed prehistoric remains from the perspective of the behavior those remains could be associated with –symbolic, technological, social, etc. As regards language, symbolic objects of the archaeological record have been considered to automatically indicate the existence of complex language in Prehistory. This paper brings a very different approach to the fore: to consider prehistoric remains from the perspective of the mental computational processes and capabilities required for their production. This approach is not concerned with the ‘semantics’ of the pieces –i.e. their alleged symbolic or representational nature–, but it is interested in the analysis of purely formal features revealing a language-like computational complexity. Starting from such a view, the paper analyzes (1) geometric designs from the Eurasian Middle and Lower Palaeolithic made by species like Homo neanderthalensis and perhaps Homo heidelbergensis, and (2) geometric designs from the African Middle Stone Age, made by Anatomically Modern Humans. The computational comparison between both types of designs makes it possible to infer the kind of language those species were endowed with.