If you're interested in recursion, I invite you to read anything by Edgar Allen Poe. He was a master of 'flexible object combination and nesting' - so much so that I have to really concentrate to comprehend his works.
First of all it pays to read the whole fascinating article. Second, 74,000 years ago was when Toba exploded leaving a crater 18 by 65 miles, and shrinking the human population to perhaps less than 10,000 breeding pairs. The article points out that 600,000 years ago hominids had the physical apparatus to make modern speech. However it took another 1/2 million years to develop the skills explained below in the article.
“On the other hand, artifacts signifying modern imagination, such as composite figurative arts, elaborate burials, bone needles with an eye, and construction of dwellings arose not earlier than 70,000 years ago. The half million-year-gap between the acquisition of the modern speech apparatus and modern imagination has baffled scientists for decades.”
After Toba, the ability to explain objects and their relationship may have had significant survival benefit. With sapiens few and far between, lengthening the time before the ability to learn this specific skill may have made it possible to teach it to more other sapiens. It appears the young can teach it to other young. The article suggests that this enabled cooperative hunting of large animals. It may also have led to sapiens outsurviving the Neanderthals.
OK … I just re-read “The Raven”, one of my favorites. I’m not sure what ‘flexible object combination and nesting’ means … if you can point out examples of it in “The Raven” or other POEtry, that would be very helpful.
Thanks
-NM