Experimental evidence for the co-evolution of hominin tool-making teaching and language

• DOI: 10.1038/ncomms7029
• Publication Date: 2015-01-13T20:53:04Z
• Authors: T. J. H. Morgan; N. T. Uomini; L. E. Rendell; L. Chouinard-Thuly; S. E. Street; H. M. Lewis; C. P. Cross; C. Evans; R. Kearney; I. de la Torre; A. Whiten; K. N. Laland
• Keywords: Acheulean; Symbolic communication; Hominidae

Hominin reliance on Oldowan stone tools—which appear from 2.5 mya and are believed to have been socially transmitted—has hypothesized led the evolution of teaching language. Here we present an experiment investigating efficacy transmission tool-making skills along chains adult human participants (N=184) using five different mechanisms. Across six measures, improves with teaching, particularly language, but not imitation or emulation. Our results support hypothesis that hominin generated selection for imply (i) low-fidelity social transmission, such as imitation/emulation, may contributed ~700,000 year stasis technocomplex, (ii) proto-language pre-requisites appearance Acheulean technology. This work supports a gradual simple symbolic communication preceding behavioural modernity by hundreds thousands years. might influenced language teaching. authors show suggesting