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Antiquity Journal & archive Archaeologica Archaeology Archaeology Channel BAR Bronze Age Forum Discover Dogpile Eurekalert Google LiveScience Mirabilis.ca Nat Geographic PhysOrg Science Daily Science News Texas AM Yahoo Excerpt, or Link only? |
Thanks martin_fierro, and great graphic btw.
Quentin Atkinson? Sorry, but I just can't get fired up about ideas promulgated by anyone named Quentin. About 50,000 years ago -- the exact timeline is debated... They began to create cave art and bone artifacts and developed far more sophisticated hunting tools. Many experts argue that this unusual spurt in creative activity was likely caused by a key innovation: complex language, which enabled abstract thought. The work done by Dr. Atkinson supports this notion. His research is based on phonemes, distinct units of sound such as vowels, consonants and tones, and an idea borrowed from population genetics known as "the founder effect." Quentin's work doesn't support these claims, its part and parcel of it, breaks no new ground, and is (like linguistic theory in general) grandiose and sweeping conclusions based on superficial observations, and bearing an uncanny resemblance to the initial assumptions. This OTOH is something I quite like: To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.
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