LECTURES IN BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES 



son. A son gets his genes from his parents and from no one 

 else, but he may get his symbols from any source he contacts, 

 whether older or younger, related or unrelated genetically. A 

 descendant is stuck with the genes he gets from his ancestors. 

 A symboling animal, in the following sense, is time free. A 

 grandfather cannot inherit genes from his grandson; he can 

 learn (culturally inherit) symbols from his grandson. 



Man's ability to symbol and to make and to use tools after 

 a fixed and set style has a basis in his body. Students of human 

 evolution used to think man acquired his present biological 

 shape before he got his ability to use tools and to symbol. We 

 now have direct evidence that the presumable Pleistocene an- 

 cestors of man made and used tools in the daily economy of 

 life before they developed a shape that most of us would rec- 

 ognize as near kin. The hard facts of the fossil record may be 

 interpreted to say that near-man gained one of his human-like 

 attributes, tool use, before he had his contemporary physi- 

 ognomy. 



The historical record of tool use is much clearer than the 

 record of the ability to symbol. We know we have it now; we 

 must infer how far back we can push it in the past. It is quite 

 possible that the history of tool use may tell us something about 

 the history of symboling. Kroeber, Pumphrey, and Haldane 

 (see Haldane, 1955) independently suggested the origin of sym- 

 boling probably was coincidental with the technological revolu- 

 tion of the Upper Paleolithic. During the Lower Paleolithic, 

 the patterns of tool manufacture were remarkably stable over 

 some 400,000 years. Starting with the Upper Paleolithic, say 

 35,000 B.C., there was great diversity in the patterns of tool 

 manufacture, along with regional styles of tool types, over rel- 

 atively short periods of time. This we know from archeology. 

 And from linguistics and ethnology, we know the natural his- 

 tory of symboling is characterized by comparatively rapid rates 

 of change. So it is plausible to assume that the symboling rev- 

 olution took place at the same time as the tool-making revolu- 

 tion of the Upper Paleolithic. 



Now, in order for us to make a jump between a communi- 

 cating animal and a symboling animal, I have to describe some 

 of the fossil skulls in a time sequence illustrating the phylogeny 



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