Gesture and Speech Andre Leroi-Gourhan

KOC University Library
�II�W��II��I��II�I Gesture and Speech
ANDRE LEROI-GOURHAN
translatedfrom the French by Anna Bostock Berger
and introduced by Randall White
An OCTOBER Book
The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 1993 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
This work originally appeared in French under the tide Le Geste et faparole.
© 1964 by Editions Albin Michel, SA, 22, rue Huyghens, 75014, Paris. It was translated with the
support of a grant from the French Ministry of Culture
The translator wishes to thank David Fry of Shoreham, England, Dr. Margaret Varley of Oxford,
and Dr. Charles Njiokiktjien of Amsterdam for their generous help.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or
mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval)
without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book was sent in ITC Garamond by DEKR Corporation and was printed and bound in the
United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Leroi-Gourhan, Andre, 1911-1986
[Geste et la parole. English)
Gesture and speech / Andre Leroi-Gourhan ; translated from the
French by Anna Bostock Berger.
p. em.
"An October book."
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-262-12173-5
1. Communication. 2. Signs and symbols. 3. Human evolution.
4. Intellect. 5. Gesture. I. Title.
GN452.L47 1993
302.2-<ic20 92-34907
CIP
OCTOBER Books
Annette Michelson, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin Buchloh,
Hal Foster, Denis Hollier, and John Rajchman, editors
Broodthaers, edited by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh
AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism, edited by Douglas Crimp
Aberrations, by Jurgis Baltrusaitis
Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges Bataille, by Denis Hollier
Painting as Model, by Yve-Alain Bois
The Destruction of Tilted Arc: Documents, edited by.Clara Weyergraf-Serra and

Martha Buskirk
The Woman in Question, edited by Parveen Adams and Elizabeth Cowie
Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century,

by Jonathan Crary
The Subjectivity Effect in Western Literary Tradition: Essays toward the Release of
Shakespeare's Will , by Joel Fineman
Looking Awry: An Introduction toJacques Lacan through Popular Culture, by

Slavoj ZiZek
Cinema, Censorship, and the State: The Writings ofNagisa Oshima, by

Nagisa Oshima
The Optical Unconscious, by Rosalind E. Krauss
Gesture and Speech, by Andre Leroi-Gourhan

Contents
Introduction by Randall White xiii
I Technics and language
1 The Image of Ourselves 3

The Prescientific Period 4
The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 6
The Nineteenth Century 8
The History of the "Prehuman" 9
The Twentieth Century 13
After 1920 15
I
Today 18
The Criteria of Humanity 18
2 Brain and Hand 25

The Dynamic Organization of Animals 26
Bilateral Symmetry 27
The Vertebrates 28
The Evolution of the Anterior Field 31
From Fish to Human 36
Ichthyomorphism 37
Aerial Respiration and land Locomotion 39
Amphibiomorphism 41
Sauromorphism 45
Theromorphism 47
Theromorph Reptiles 48
viii Contents
Quadrupedal Mammals 50
Walking and Grasping 51
Pithecomorphism 55
General Thoughts on Evolution up to the Primates 58
3 Archanthropians and Palaeoanthropians 61

Anthropomorphism 61
The Anthropoids' Ancestor 63
The "Australanthropians" 64
Cranial Structure 65
The Archanthropians 69
The Palaeoanthropians 69
The Palaeoanthropian Skull 70
The Spreading of the Cortical Fan 74
The Middle Cortex 78
The Hominid Brain 83
Primitive Motor Function 84
Human Motor Function 85
The Language of Anthropoids 86
Zinjanthropus 89
Flaked Pebbles 90
The Australanthropian Stereotype 92
The Archanthropians 94
The Archanthropian Stereotype 95
The Palaeoanthropians 98
Evidence of Neanderthal Man's Intelligence 99
The Levalloiso-Mousterian Technical Prototype 99
Habitat and Clothing 102
Evidence of Intelligence of a Not Strictly Technical Nature 104
The "Bone Cult" 108
Burial Places 110
Other Evidence 111
The Language of "Prehominids" 112
4 The Neanthropians 117

The Physical Past and Future of Homo sapiens 117
The Skull of Homo sapiens 118
Graphic Profiles 119
Contents ix
The Evolution of Neanthropian Types 122

Physical Stocktaking 124
The Human of the Future 129
The Evolution of the Neanthropian Brain 130
Diversification and Tempo of Technical Evolution 132
The Stages of Technical Evolution 132
The Stone Industry 133
Diversification of Products 139
Diversification of Ethnic Groups 141
5 The Social Organism 145

The Biology of Societies 145
Technical, Economic, Social 147
The Primitive Group 149
The Territory 150
Technical Multivalence 153
Forms of Symbiosis 154
The Transition to an Agricultural Economy 157
Proto-stockbreeding 160
Proto-agriculture 161
Agriculture and Stockbreeding 163
Settled and Nomadic Groups 166
Social Classes 168
The Freeing of the Technician 168
Civilization 171
The Rise of Prometheus 173
The City 176
The Breakup of the City 179
The Present Time 183
6 Language Symbols 187

The Birth of Graphism 187
The Early Development of Graphism 190
The Spread of Symbols 192
Writing and the linearization of Symbols 200
Chinese Writing 204
Linear Graphism 209
x Contents
The Constriction of Thought 210

Beyond Writing: The Audiovisual 212
II Memory and Rhythms
7 The Freeing of Memory 219

Species and Ethnic Group 219
Instinct and Intelligence 221
Instinct and Freedom 224
Social Memory 227
Operational Memory 230
Mechanical Operational Sequences 231
Periodically Recurring or Exceptional Operational Sequences 234
Operational Behavior as a Whole 234
8 Gesture and Program 237

Elementary Analysis of the Gesture 238
The Intermeshing of Tools and the Motive Gesture 242
Handling 243
The Hand Acting through Direct Motor Function 243
The Hand Separated from Motor Function 245
Mechanical Program and Mechanical Memory 249
Evolution of Operations and of the Gesfure 251
Evolution of Operational Sequences 253
The Fate of the Hand 254
9 The Expanding Memory 257

Transmission of Programs 258
Oral Transmission 258
Early Written Transmission 259
Finding One's Way around a Text 261
Index Cards 263
Punched Cards and Electronic Memory 264
III Ethnic Symbols
10 Introduction to a Paleontology of Symbols 269

Aesthetic Behavior 271
Contents xi
Ethnic "Style" 276
11 The Body as the Source of Values and Rhythms 281

The Sensory Apparatus 282
Visceral Sensibility 283
Privation and Control 284
Muscular Sensibility 286
Taste 289
Gastronomy 289
Olfactory and Visual Gastronomy 291
The Sense of Smell 293
The Sense of Touch 295
Spatiotemporal Integration 296
12 Functional Aesthetics 299

Function and Form 302
Form and Material 306
Rhythms 309
13 The Symbols of Society 313

The Domestication of Time and Space 313
Time 315
Humanized Space 318
Social Space 322
Itinerant Space and Radial Space 325
Radial Space 327
Microcosm and Macrocosm 328
Antiquity 335
The Middle Ages 338
The Eighteenth Century 340
The Disintegration of the City 342
The Present-day City 346
The Symbols of Society 349
Dress 350
Attitudes and Language 355
Social Aesthetics and Figurative Life 359
14 The Language of Forms 363

The Origins and Early Development of Figurative Behavior 365
xii Contents
The Earliest Images 367

Figurative Rhythm 370
Graphic and Plastic Figuralism 371
Paleolithic Realism 375
The Nonfigurative 396
15 Imaginary Freedom and the Fate of Homo sapiens 401
Notes 409
Bibliography 415
Index 421
Introduction
RANDAll WHITE
My goal, in this brief introduction to the first English translation of Le Geste et

laparole, is to present AndreLeroi-Gourhan (1911-1986) posthumously to a broad
American scholarly audience, and through a work written thirty years ago. This might
seem a curious objective in that some of my American colleagues undoubtedly pre
sume, as did I until recently, that they have a thorough knowledge ofLeroi-Gourhan
and his work. This putative knowledge, however, is based primarily on the few frag
ments ofLeroi-Gourhan's massive oeuvre that have been published in English, nota
bly the English translation of his Prehistoire de l'art occidental (trivialized to
Treasures ofPrehistoric Art), published one year after Le Geste et laparole and rep
resenting a theoretical and methodological outgrowth from it.I
On the basis of this fragmentary and highly selective sample of his work,Leroi
Gourhan remains a paradox to some American scholars and merely a conventional
structuralist to others. That is, in the eyes of ecologically oriented American anthro
pologists of the 1970s,Leroi-Gourhan was viewed as an "art" researcher who sought
to know the unknowable or, worse yet, what they perceived as the evolutionarily
insignificant. The paradox arrives out of the recognition that Simultaneously Leroi
Gourhan's excavations at the 1l,000-year-old Magdalenian campsite of Pincevent
generated an unsurpassed knowledge of the technology and material organization
of an ancient people. It is the fault of the limited literature available in English, and
of monolingual scholarship, that this paradox, which does not exist inLe Geste et la
parole, has never truly been resolved for us Americans.
1. Notably in recent years Annette Michelson has undertaken the publication of translations of
two articles on cave art, but the work available in English remains totally nonrepresentative. It is
telling that Leroi-Gourhan's most widely cited English work is a 1968 Scientific American piece on
the evolution of Paleolithic art.
xiv Introduction
Those who view him as a rather conventional structuralist point to Treasures

ofPrehistoric Art and argue that he completely decontextualized and dehistoricized
visual representation in the Upper Paleolithic. He allegedly did this by treating
25,000 years of cave and portable art as if it were a unitary cultural phenomenon, and
then searching for structure within it. Proponents of this and the previously noted
"art as evolutionarily unimportant" perspective dutifully scoff at Leroi-Gourhan's
interpretation of complementary oppositions in cave art as reflective of a gender
based world view (for example, bison = male, horse = female). In jumping on this
conventional bandwagon, few authors know or choose to mention that Leroi-Gour
han completely abandoned this interpretation in the late 1970s.
The criticism that Leroi-Gourhan showed little concern for chronologically
and culturally contextualizing Paleolithic art is puzzling, particularly since much of
Treasures ofPrehistoric Art is dedicated to the construction of a style-based chro
nology of Paleolithic art. While this chronology is wholly problematic on a number
of grounds, it reflects a full awareness on Leroi-Gourhan's part of the need for chro
nological attribution of works before they could serve as a basis for analysis. Indeed
his excavations at Pincevent sought explicitly to expand our understanding of the
social and material existence of late Ice Age peole in the France of 11,000 years ago.
It is my premise here that Leroi-Gourhan was neither a formulaic structuralist
nor a paradox. These views of Leroi-Gourhan result from a certain hostility in Amer
ica to structuralism and an almost total ignorance of his preceding landmark works
in which he constructed a synthetic model of human thought, communication, and
action. Treasures ofPrehistoric Art and the excavations at Pincevent ought to be seen
merely as parallel logical consequences of an evolutionary theoretical model that is
thoroughly developed in Ie Ceste et faparole. One must therefore read this work in
order to grasp the theoretical foundation of what followed in Leroi-Gourhan's own
work, in French prehistoric archaeology in general, and in certain elements of post
structuralist theory (notably the emphasis on praxis).
But even before Ie Ceste et fa parole, Leroi-Gourhan's biography and bibli
ography were truly remarkable.2 No French prehistorian before him (and few if any
since) was so broadly trained and practiced in ethnology, physical anthropology,
archaeology, and linguistics. In 1929 he became a voluntary librarian in the newly
reorganized Musee d'Ethnographie de Trocadero, under the directorship of Paul
Rivet who chose to dedicate his chair to "the Ethnology of Modern and Fossil
2. Much of the biographical detail presented here has been derived from Gilles Gaucher's 1987
biographical article in the special issue of the Bulletin de fa SodetePrebistoriques Franftlise84(10-
12):302-315.
Introduction xv
Humans."3 Thus Leroi-Gourhan was present during the dynamic transformation of

the old Trocadero Museum into the Musee de l'Homme (officially in 1937) and was
apparently heavily influenced by the experience. Even as an adjunct volunteer he was
given responsibility for the Far East and for the Arctic.
His first degree (1931) was in Russian, followed by another in Chinese (1933).
He then studied for the "Certificat d'Ethnologie," a program established by Marcel
Mauss and Paul Rivet in 1927. This put him in contact with the great names of French
ethnology, including Marcel Griaule, Michel Leiris, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Jacques
Soustelle. An extended period of research in the Department of Ethnology at the Brit
ish Museum in 1933-34 reaffirme d a previously unfulfilled interest in technology:
"This prolonged immersion in English museums, with exposure to Egyptian sculp
ture, Chinese ceramics, oriental carpets and steam engines crystallized all of my
latent tendencies."4 By the time his first two books were published in 1936, he had
already begun to collect data on technology around the world. Both of these books,
Bestiarie du bronze chinois and La Civilization du renne, reveal his interest in tech
niques and material culture as cultural expressions every bit as meaningful as lin
guistic utterances.
In the same year Leroi-Gourhan headed to Japan on a two-year ethnological
research and collecting mission. This research, which included work among the
Ainu, was truncated by the impending hostilities that would ultimately lead to the
outbreak of war. Nevertheless, it was during this mission that Leroi-Gourhan under
took his first archaeological excavations. Upon his return to France, he was made a
member of the newly formed Centre National de la Recherche SCientifique (CNRS).
Between 1940 and 1945 he prepared and published one of his most important works,
Evolution et techniques, which remains virtually unknown in America. This enor
mous work, published in two volumes (L'Homme et la matiere in 1943 and Milieu
et techniques in 1945), is a systematic and enduring cross-cultural synthesis of human
technology.
In 1944 he finished his These de lettres, Archeologie du Pacifique Nord (pub
lished in 1945). His complementary thesis was entitled Documentspour l'art com
pare de l'Eurasie septentrionale. This work sensitized him to a lack of cross-cultural
correspondence between form and meaning in material representation. He was thus
led to distinguish explicitly in his analysis of Paleolithic art between recurrent asso
ciations of certain symbols, on the one hand, and the ideology behind the repre-
3. Quoted in Gaucher, op. cit., p. 303.

4. Ibid.
xvi Introduction
sentations, on the other. For him this ideology (or meaning) was probably
unknowable and was specific to time period and place. This critical distinction
between knowable formal patterning and unknowable meaning of constituent sym
bols has, in my opinion, been ignored by most ofLeroi-Gourhan's English-speaking
critics who have not had access to the detailed theoretical statements presented in
Le Geste et fa parole.
In 1946 Rivet, now director of the Musee de l'Homme, namedLeroi-Gourhan
assistant director of the museum. Shortly thereafter· another young ethnologist,
Claude Levi-Strauss, would be named as the other assistant director. WhUe Levi
Strauss would gain worldwide recognition for applying a linguistic-structuralist
model to sociocultural phenomena,Leroi-Gourhan would do the same for material
culture.
Leroi-Gourhan's responsibUities involved the teaching of ethnographic tech
niques and museology. While, he argued, ethnology was doable in France, it was
mostly usurped by other disciplines. As a result he emphasized palethnologie and
established archaeological field training for students, notably at Arey-sur-Cure, a rich
locality ofMousterian and early Upper Paleolithic occupations. In this context he was
a champion of broad-scale excavations that treated archaeological sites as spatially
complex human occupations. He was among the first in Western Europe to ask eth
nological questions of archaeological Sites, and such questions could not be
answered by old pick-and-shovel techniques. A major theme of his teaching was that
even the most concrete aspects of technology contributed to more general ethno
graphic understanding. In other words, the analysis of items of technology is tied
directly to an understanding of social structures and belief systems.
At the same time as the above endeavors, Leroi-Gourhan was exploring yet
another domain relevant to an evolutionary understanding of human action and
communication. In 1954 he defended a thesis entitled Les Traces d'equilibre meca
nique du crane des vertebres terrestres (Patterns of mechanical equilibrium in ter
restrial mammals), finally published thirty years later. This very. original work served
as the basis for much of the first part of Le Geste et faparole in whichLeroi-Gourhan
argues that early hominid increase in brain volume was driven by structural changes
associated with bipedalism. This part of the present volume must be understood as
a critique of those who see brain evolution as an independent prime mover. In
essence, bipedalism stimulated an entire suite of evolutionary developments:
changes in brain size and organization that had evolutionary implications for lan
guage and cognition; release of the face from feeding and manipulative functions,
Introduction xvii
thereby allowing structural specializations for speech; freeing of the forelimbs from
locomotor functions, thereby allowing them to be used in tool production.
Thus by the 1950s5 Leroi-Gourhan had constructed
• a sophisticated theory of hominid biocultural evolution;

• a profound and systematic understanding of the complex range of known
human technologies;
• a strong commitment to technology as the point of access for understand
ing human cultures and to technical activities (both past and present) as instru
mental, communicative, symbolic, and culturally constructed;
• a skepticism conce�ning our ability to understand the meaning of specific
ancient representations;
• a strong immersion in French structuralist thinking;
• a view of "art" based in a sophisticated understanding of cultural aesthetics
(indeed Leroi-Gourhan systematically talked of representation and seldom used
the term "art");
• a set of meticulous methods for excavating and studying the prehistoric
record.
In retrospect these intertwined aspects of Leroi-Gourhan's own thought and action

seem to imply a systematic attempt by a brilliant mind to assemble all the compo
nents necessary to a kind of "unified theory" of human biocultural evolution. Le
Geste et fa parole, published in 1964, was the realization of that attempt.
Having established the trajectory and intellectual context that led to Ie Geste et
fa parole, I wish now to explore in detail the originality and prescience of Leroi
Gourhan's contribution to asocial scientific and evolutionary understanding of tech
nology and of symbolic representation. lwill then conclude with a balanced assess
ment of the general strengths and weaknesses of Gesture and Speech and some
warnings about sections of the present volume that are empirically outdated,
although these are remarkably few.
For most English-language readers the concept of "gesture" will seem a curi
ous one to emphasize. It should probably be glossed as "material action," as it refers
5. During this decade Leroi-Gourhan's thinking on the subject of cave art may have been influ
enced by the ideas ofthe art historian Max Raphael, as well as by those ofAnnette Laming-Emperaire
with whom he worked closely at the Musee de I 'Homme (see Max Raphael, Prehiston'c Cave Paint
ings, New York: Pantheon, 1945; and Annette Laming-Emperaire, La Signification de l'art rupestre
pateolithique, Paris: Picard, 1962).
xviii Introduction
explicitly to the manual creation of a material culture that is extracorporal. Gesture

paralleled speech as a form of expression of mind and language. This notion of ges
ture is closely linked to a key theoretical and methodological concept, that of the
chaine operatoire, or "operational sequence." Leroi-Gourhan makes it clear that
apart from humans the behavior of many animals is characterized by such deeply
embedded operational sequences. But only with humans do we see these opera
tional �equences take material form and become more-or-Iess permanent constit
uents of the human environment.
For Leroi-Gourhan such operational sequences constitute the building blocks
of technology, indeed of culture. They are culturally or ethnically conditioned and
highly structured but through repetition and conditioning at a young age become
more-or-Iess subconscious. Whether these operational sequences structure the fab
rication of stone tools, the manufacture of personal ornaments, or the creation of
painted and engraved underground sanctuaries, they are the focus of analysis. For
archaeologists they represent an accessible entry to social organization and cos
mology. But these operational sequences often remain unverbalized and unrecog
nized by those who practice them. That is why Leroi-Gourhan can claim to have
recognized basic binary oppositions in the organization/structure of painted caves
while explicitly stating that the meaning of specific images remains unknown and
probably unknowable.
Because operational sequences are culturally/ethnically derived, they are the
fundamental basis for what ethnologists, archaeologists, and art historians recognize
as "style":
The technical life of the hunter, and later of the farmer and the artisan,
involves a large number of sequences that correspond to the many
actions needed for their material survival. These sequences are empir
ical, borrowed from a collective tradition that one generation passes
down to the next. Their principal trait, for all the unity of their broad out
lines and their extension over vast polyethnic territories, is their strongly
marked local and individual character. (infra: 253)
In American archaeology over the past twenty years, there has been Significant con
cern with the concept of style which, while generally recognized as expressive of
social identity, has been viewed in juxtaposition to function. Had these American
scholars had access to this notion of operational sequences, this intellectual dead
end might well have been avoided.
Introduction xix
The focus on operational sequences in the analysis of human material culture

of the past 2.5 million years serves, for Leroi-Gourhan, as an important guage of cog
nitive evolution. As he points out, the most complex operational sequences observ
able in the tools of the earliest members of our genus at the end of the Pliocene are
no more complex·than those observable among modern apes. Change in opera
tional complexity over the succeeding 2.45 million years seems to occur at the pain
fully slow rate of biological evolution.
Shortly after 50,000 years ago something new and revolutionary occurred
which Leroi-Gourhan terms "the origin of graphism." Not only does this change
reveal that a cognitive threshold had been crossed, but graphism itself-what he con
ceives as a "language of forms"-had profound implications for the subsequent cul
tural evolution of humanity. It rendered possible the externalization of memory and
hence mythological narrative. The complex but fundamental relationship between
language and graphism is one of the more provocative recognitions of Gesture and
Speech:
Figurative behavior cannot be dissociated from language: It forms part of

the same human aptitude, that of reflecting reality in verbal or gestural
symbols or in material form as figures.Just as the emergence of language
is connected with that of hand tools, figurative representation cannot be
separated from the common source from which all making and all rep
resentation spring. Therefore we should not be surprised to discover a
close parallelism in paleontological development and, in particular, to
note a swift and profound change in materials at the moment Homo sa
piens emerges from the last Palaeoanthropian stage. (infra: 363)
In 1964 there may have been those who scoffed at the future predicted in Ges
ture and Speech, specifically the continued trend toward the externalization of cul
tural memory. However, technological developments in computer technology over
the past thirty years have exceeded even Leroi-Gourhan's predictions. As with his
example of the invention of the printing press, computer technology began with a
focus on words and numbers. But in the same way that images found their way onto
the printed page in the eighteenth century, computer image technology now dom
inates much of the computer industry (as well as our lives), confirming, as Leroi
Gourhan explicitly observed, that language and graphism can never be mutually
exclusive.
In most of Leroi-Gourhan's publications on prehistoric art, he appears to take
more or less on faith that Paleolithic art (more frequently the terms "representation"
xx Introduction
and "graphism" are employed) and religion are fundamentally linked. Although one
might be inclined to view this as received convention passed down from the Abbe
Breuil, Leroi-Gourhan's predecessor as the dean of Paleolithic art studies, Leroi
Gourhan renders explicit in Gesture and Speech his theoretical reasons for linking
the two phenomena:
the reason why art is so closely connected with religion is that graphic
expression restores to language the dimension of the inexpressible-the
possibility of multiplying the dimensions of a fact in instantly accessible
visual symbols. The basic link between art and religion is emotional, yet
not in a vague sense. It has to do with mastering a mode of expression
that restores humans to their true place in a cosmos whose center they
occupy without trying to pierce it by an intellectual process . . .. (infra:
200)
He even notes provocatively (infra: 196) that modern advertiSing, like religion,
"appeals to deep, infraverbal, states of mental behavior."
One of the more profound recognitions of this book is that the human species
by virtue of expressive actions, both verbal and material, has been transcended by
artificially and materially constructed ethnic or cultural entities that are in many ways
the eqUivalent of biological species. For Leroi-Gourhan,
The whole of our evolution has been oriented toward placing outside
ourselves what in the rest of the animal world is achieved inside by spe
cies adaptation. The most striking material fact is certainly the "freeing"
of tools, but the fundamental fact is really the freeing of the word and our
unique ability to transfer our memory to a social organism outside our
selves. (infra: 235)
The SOciocultural diviSions that make a particular technical operation

typically New Caledonian in terms of both the method and the tools
employed have Simply taken the place of the psychozoological diviSions
that make certain operations and a certain physical apparatus typical of
particular species of animals. (infra: 237)
Clearly, when Leroi-Gourhan speaks of a paleontology of language, of figura

tive behavior, and of material expression, it is a multivocal use of the term. On the
one hand, his work on cranial equilibrium in vertebrates is literally paleontological,
and is used to emphasize the critical importance of bipedalism for evolutionary
Introduction xxi
changes that followed. When it comes to tools or visual representations, operational

sequences are viewed metaphorically as the bones of the extinct societies or ethnies,
which, as we saw above, suggest a human version of species defined, not by genetic
barriers, but by barriers constructed oflinguistic, material, and figurative expression.
Finally, it seems probable (if unverified) that certain so-called poststructuralist
works such as Michel Foucault's Archaeology ofKnowledge and Pierre Bourdieu's
Outline ofa Theory ofPractice were influenced at least indirectly by Leroi-Gourhan's
paleontological approach and emphasis on human action, respectively. We know for
certain thatJacques Derrida in his Grammatology acknowledges an intellectual debt
to Leroi-Gourhan.
Obviously a work that is thirty years old will have flaws and anachronisms.
Moreover any work that claims to be scientific should be, to some considerable
extent, empirically falsifiable. The reader should simply be aware of a few problem
areas in this otherwise remarkable and historically important work.
First, in the years since 1964 there has been increasing awareness that a view
of the evolution of graphism based in a single region such as Franco-Cantabria can
not be extended to the world at large. The inclusion of a wider sample of early rep
resentational evidence, much of which was known in the 1960s, casts doubt, for
example, on Leroi-Gourhan's position that the earliest graphism took abstract or
rhythmic forms. He paid no attention to the remarkable animal sculptures in ivory
from south German sites that are as old as, or older than, the Chfttelperronian objects
from Arcy-sur-Cure.
Second, if in 1964 Homo sapiens sapiens was still viewed as emerging about
35,000 years ago (and probably in Europe and the Near East), this is no longer the
case. Fossil remains of the oldest known anatomically modem humans are to be
found in Africa and are dated to about 100,000 years ago. Nevertheless, there is vir
tually no evidence prior to 40,000 years ago for graphic representation. Thus there
is an emerging scholarly consensus that the first graphic representation, personal
ornaments, and so on, do not directly coincide with the biolOgical emergence of
Homo sapiens sapiens.
Third, the reader should be cautioned that Le Geste et fa parole was written
before the important discovery and recognition of Homo habilis in Africa, not to
mention many other important discoveries such as that of the Australopithecus
known as Lucy. Thus the overall taxonomic deSCription is somewhat outdated, even
obsolete.
Fourth, Leroi-Gourhan's chronology of the evolution of visual representation
has been much criticized for being based on subjective evaluations of simplicity
xxii Introduction
(= oldest) and complexity (= most recent). With recent developments in the dating
of both objects and paintings, it has become apparent that "crude" and "sophisti
cated" images existed contemporaneously.
Fifth, Leroi-Gourhan's attribution of signs as either male or female has been
rejected by most scholars, including Leroi-Gourhan. By the end of his life he was ever
more firm in the position that the meaning content of the signs themselves was prob
ably unknowable, or at least remained to be demonstrated.6
As long as these limitations, resulting from a thirty-year gestation, are kept in
mind, Gesture and Speech is an enduring, original, and profound exploration of
human biological, cognitive, technological, social, and symbolic evolution.
Department of Anthropology
New York University
6. See, for example, A Leroi-Gourhan, 1982, The Dawn ofEuropean Art (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press ).
I Technics and Language
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1 The Image of Ourselves
The search for human origins has been a basic concern for generations of
human society from the earliest times. This desire to recover our aspect from the
murky depths of the past has generally been satisfied at modest cost, and it remains
so even today. Although peoples of modern culture are quite as anxious as their
ancestors to discover whence they have come, for want of knowing whither they are
going, a few brief allusions to the epoch of great apes will usually suffice to reassure
most of them.
The need to discover our beginnings is so powerful that curiosity alone cannot
be the motive. Many students of prehistory are very personally involved with their
science; it is perhaps the discipline that has the most amateurs, one that some feel
can be pursued without any special qualifications. When confronted with archaeo
logical finds, almost all of us have a sense of returning to our past, and few, if given
the opportunity; will,resist the temptation to delve into the recesses of the earth like
a child taking a toy to pieces. The quest for our mysterious origins, a quest with com
plex motivations, must surely have begun very early, for we know that toward the
end of his long history, late Neanderthal man had already begun to gather fossils and
oddly shaped stones. Although we can scarcely imagine Neanderthal man as having
the same concerns as a prehistorian of today, no great effort is required to discern
the same feelings, intact though still as vague, beneath the scientific shell of todav's
scholar.
To think oneself immune from the powerful need to return to the sources of
humanity would be sheer vanity, but our analysis of those sources becomes possibly
more lucid, and certainly more rewarding, if we seek to discover not only whence
we have come but also where we stand today and perhaps whither we are going. The
splendid upsurge of paleontology in recent years has produced an enormous
amount of writing; there can scarcely be a reader to whom the Coelacanth's pawlike
4 Technics and Language
fin, say, remains a mystery. Among these there are less numerous works that have
struck out in the opposite direction by trying to integrate our presence in our long
prehistory. The interest aroused by writings about the slow ascent of humankind and
of human intelligence shows to what an extent prehistory meets our deep need to
confirm our place in space and time (see chapters 1 1 and 12). I believe that the only
real Significance of prehistory, whether resting on religious metaphysics or mate
rialist dialectics, is that it situates the peoples of the future in their present as well as
in their most distant past. Were this not so, prehistory would be, explicitly or implic
itly, no more than the substitution of a scientific myth for the countless religious
myths that dispose of the problem of our origins in a few words; or else it might be
seen as a kind of epic poem narrating the prestigious adventures of heroes who were
not humans. That is why, before embarking on a study of the geological relationship
between techniques and language, it may be of some use to ask how the peoples at
different times in history saw the human being that they were.
The Prescientijic Period

We cannot tell how Cro-Magnon man imagined his own reality, but we have
hundreds of myths borrowed from the most widely varying races, from the Eskimos
to the Dogons. We have the great mythologies of the civilizations of the Mediterra
nean, Asia, and America, the works of the theologians and philosophers of antiquity
and the Middle Ages, as well as those of preseventeenth-century European, Arab,
and Chinese travelers. The image of humankind that emerges from them all is so
coherent that a global analysis seems possible. At any rate it would help us to become
aware of the changes that have taken place up to our own time in our perception of
our own reality.
It is quite difficult for us today to conceive of a science of humankind which
cannot draw upon geology, paleontology, or evolutionary theory but for which
humans exist in an as yet unexplored universe and in a setting that is relatively time
less. In such a view variation means metamorphosis, emergence means spontaneous
creation, and the concepts at which we now arrive by spreading existence over a time
scale must be accepted as fantastic and determined by space alone. To the medieval
mind Pithecanthropus would have come as no surprise; the medieval world would
have accepted the ape-man as it accepted the dog-headed man, the unipede, and the
unicorn. Early sixteenth-century maps, particularly of America, are still peopled by
cynocephali walking like humans or by headless human bodies with eyes, nose, and
The Image of Ourselves 5
mouth on their chests: an example is the map drawn in 1513 for the Turkish admiral
Piri Reis, probably modeled on one belonging to Christopher Columbus.
The idea of change as a process was not positively formulable because all
change was attributed to a god's or a hero's fiat. Philosophers could indeed glimpse
the frontiers of fable within their own narrow experience-anthropological explo
rations have led them to define the human as the central being of the living world
but their vision was essentially ethnocentric. Ethnocentrism is in fact what best
defines the prescientific vision of the human being. In many human groups "men"
is the only word that the members use to designate their ethnic group. The iden
tification of the ethnic group with a kind of ideal ego combining all the qualities of
goodness and beauty has as its counterpart a tendency to believe that outside one's
familiar world lies another inhabited by monstrous creatures whose appearance and
habits represent the utmost in ugliness and evil. The same attitude is found in the
prescientific period vis-a-vis the monkey, the civilized human's monstrous antithesis.
This explains quite well the curious interchangeability of demons, unknown peo
ples, and monkeys in geographical imagery before the sixteenth century. The atti
tude we have described was to be directly transposed into eighteenth-century
anthropology, where it gave rise, on the one hand, to attempts to provide a scientific
justification for racial prejudice and, on the other hand, to human paleontology.
Instead of considering all peoples to be identical in essence and placing them at the
end of an evolutionary line, as we have learned to do, prescientific thinkers regarded
as truly human only those who constituted their own ethnic nucleus, beyond which,
in ever-widening circles, came beings of lesser humanity subject to more and more
extravagant hybridizations.
The use of myths to resolve the problem of creation, lack of perception of the
immense depth of time, ethnocentrism, and belief in a mystery world wherein the
limits of the natural and the supernatural are lost within geographical confines char
acterize not only the Eskimo's and the Australian aborigine's but also the medieval
explorer's image of humankind-an image variable beyond all biological reason in
space but stable in a time without any depth. The popular sixteenth-century Chinese
novel Si Yeu Ki, or Voyage to the West, by Wu Cheng-en, in which ethnocentrism and
our interchangeability with our monstrous twin are superimposed on one another,
clearly illustrates this view. The traveling priest San Ts'ang, accompanied by his dis
ciples-the king of the monkeys, a boar with a man's body, and a fish in human
shape-crosses the world in search of a mountain on top of which dwells the Bud
dha. In a series of long, stereotyped episodes the heroes travel through countries
whose inhabitants are modeled on the Chinese but whose woods and hills are
haunted by monsters, practically all of which are humanized animals. Ethnocentric

superimposition of the Chinese world upon the human communities visited is com
bined with the monstrously dual nature of the imaginary inhabitants of unknown
lands, while the travelers themselves assume dual form in the persons of a Chinese
priest and three animals particularly rich in obscure symbolism-the monkey, the
pig, and the fish.
Exploration of terrestrial space was to modify this image earlier than explo
ration of time. In the sixteenth century the monsters gradually began to disappear.
The discovery of an ever-widening universe peopled by beings of different colors
and customs, yet all undeniably human-savage or civilized, but designed on the
same model-gradually introduced a rational image of humans. At the same moment
in history the time scale too began to acquire a certain depth: The knowledge that
Atnerican savages used stone weapons led to comparisons being made with our own
prehistoric tools, and the idea of our material evolution, until then extremely vague,
began to be rationally accepted. The sixteenth century with its "collections of curi
osities" anticipated our own museums of natural history and ethnography. Most of
the objects brought home at that time were weapons, items of clothing, or precious
objects and did not diffe r fundamentally from the trophies of ancient times.
All works on prehistory make some mention, however cursorily, of the fore
runners of that science. The Roman Lucretius with his five verses on the ages of stone
and of metals! and Michele Mercati with his assertion, in the late sixteenth-century
Metalloteca, of the human and very ancient origin of knapped stones, occupy an emi
nent place. But it must be emphasized that the paleontological problem as it appears
to us was completely foreign to the minds of these precursors, whose view was basic
ally the same as that of the primitives. By the time of the Renaissance the field had
widened; ethnocentrism had changed its form and had begun to tend toward a hier
archization of human values which later was to lead to racism. Nevertheless, the new
world still reflected the ancient separation. The barbarians had changed-the hyper
borean monsters were becoming more and more questionable, but much of the
basic image remained blurred.
The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

We now come to' a point where the natural sciences are about to become exact.
Comparative anatomy is beginning to develop and the problems that are the food
and drink of the human sciences to this day are rapidly taking shape. The naturalist
movement of the seventeenth and especially of the eighteenth centuries was com-
parable to the development of astronomy in the sixteenth: A vast area of universal

organization is revealed in its marvelous architecture and immediately, for socio
logical reasons, begins to challenge the very foundations of religious philosophy.
The encyclopedic passion of the late eighteenth century originated in the study of
the natural sciences. Concern with the nature of humans of course is more than just
an episode in the rationalist movement that was to sweep away traditional civiliza
tion. Yet it is interesting to note that within the general movement, the ideas were
always ahead of the facts and that the consequences of our zoological origins had
already been drawn more than a century before the discovery of the first human
fossil.
On the basis of very sketchy evidence, the eighteenth century established a
whole system of thought within which we are still operating today. In the thirty-six
majestic volumes of his Natural History, written between 1749 and 1788 (the year of
his death), Georges Buffon brings up within a mass of still shaky documentation the
two problems that were to inflame nineteenth-century thought: Our zoological
nature and the immense antiquity of geological eras. Buffon's personal contribution
must be viewed as part of a broader scientific movement. The period teemed with
works such as N. de Maillet's, published in 1755,2 in which the author, proceeding
on the strength of an astronomic, geological, and evolutionist theory somewhat
short on documentary rigor, assigns the earth an age of several hundred thousand
years. The battle of evolution was already joined on several fronts, although those
fronts were not to intersect before the midnineteenth century, when geology, com
parative anatomy, and ethnography converged with sociology. In 1735 the Swede
Carl Linnaeus in his classification of living beings definitively established the zoo
logical pOSition of humans, who thenceforth became a species, Homo sapiens, the
final stage in a series culminating in the primates. Paleontology at that stage was just
barely implicit. Fifty more years had to pass before the logical order of living species
found its counterpart in the chronological series of fossils, but from that moment
onward, monkey and human were linked. The idea of a sequence of species came
into existence, and although its logical consequence-the idea of our progressive
emergence from among the primates-had not yet been clearly formulated, the
image of the human being at the end of the eighteenth century was already strikingly
close to that of our own.
The idea of zoological continuity was quickly accepted. In 1764 Louis Dau
benton published a paper on "the position of the occipital foramen in humans and
in animals," the first publication by far to deal with the question of erect posture. In
1775 the German zoologist]ohann Friedrich Blumenbach propounded the anthro-
pology of races in De generis humani varietate nativa. Finally, in 1789 the English
man Gilbert White published a work on "the regular gradation of man and animals."
Thus by the century's end the stage was fully set for the great casting-off of chains that
was to follow. Humans were clearly seen in the variety of races and in their zoological
proximity to the higher m ammals. Only the restitution of depth to human time was
still to come. Geology had already prepared the ground. Although the prescientific
image of humans was a thing of the past, the dizzy descent into the depths of time
had barely begun and paleontology was not yet born.
The Nineteenth Century

In 1800 the English naturalist John Frere published the results of an obser
vation recorded in 1797 according to which chipped flint implements found in asso
ciation with animal remains were to be attributed to the presence of humans in
epochs far preceding the present. It was not until 1872 that John Evans drew atten
tion to this observation, which at the time had gone unnoticed. To say that the nine
teenth century merely reaped what the eighteenth had sown would be unjust. The
works of Georges Cuvier, of Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and of Jean Baptiste
Lamarck, as well as Jacques Boucher de Perthes' epic work and the abundant crop
of anthropologists emerging everywhere in Europe, provided a corpus of science,
each new discovery adding another element until a synthesis pivoted on Charles Dar
win's evolutionism was finally reached at the end of the century. When Darwin's The
Origin ofSpecies was published in 1859, it bore little relation to the barely nascent
science of prehistory. Rather, it marked the conclusion of the movement begun by
Buffon. like the eighteenth-century naturalists, Darwin-himself a naturalist, not a
prehistorian or an anthropologist-grew from the subsoil of stratigraphic geology,
paleontology, and contemporary zoology, for in the last analysis, whether seen as the
consequence of evolution or as its culmination, humans can only be understood as
part of a terrestrial totality. With Darwin, the encyclopedists' thirst was quenched
once and for all, and although the edifice of evolutionism has been extended in
depth there is no denying that since his time its essential content has developed but
little. The conventional wisdom reflected this truth when it associated Darwin's
name, mistakenly but revealingly, with the idea that "the human being is descended
from the monkey." At the end of the nirieteenth century, when prehistory as a hobby
for amateurs was in its heyday, when the earth was yielding up the first skulls ofNean
derthal man and Pithecanthropus, the image of the human was that of the simian
ancestor slowly improved upon over the ages. As an image it ideally complemented
that of the eighteenth century, when scholars had not yet dared to go beyond the view
of the human as first cousin of the primates.
A dense fabric of differences has sprung up around this central idea of our zoo
logical origin. Paleontology, anthropology, prehistory, and evolutionism in all its
forms served to justify attitudes whose roots lay elsewhere. Because the problem of
our origins is common to religion and to natural science-because by demonstrat
ing the truth of the one, we have hoped to demolish the other-t!Je "monkey" issue
has tended to hold the center of the stage. Today it can hardly be doubted that the
motivations involved lay outside the field of scientific inquiry. With the passage of
time these wrangles have come to seem rather sterile. There is surely more profit
to be derived from trying to find out how, through · successive discoveries and
hypotheses, the present image of humankind came to be formed.
The History of the "Prehuman"

Faced with facts for which any previous reference is lacking, our minds are
helpless. It is true to say that human fossils were seen and interpreted with the eyes
each period lent to its paleontologists. Since this is particularly striking in the case
of the earliest finds, an attempt to review the main stages of interpretation in human
paleontology may be of some value. Prehistorians before 1850 already had a con
siderable array of theoretical elements at their disposal. They knew that the earth was
extremely ancient and that human life itself went back a very long time and had been
marked by major geological upheavals. Proofof the existence of European man in
the age of the reindeer and the elephant had already been produced, excavations in
alluvial deposits and caves havin g begun toward 1810. The geological character of
our past was �ready being taken for granted by some scholarsjP-France, Belgium,
and England. We can go still further and say that not even Lamarckian evolutionism
and the certainty of our proximity to the monkey were recently acquired; indeed one
of the finest Neanderthalian skulls had already been exhumed from the breccia of
a cave at Gibraltar in 1848. As early as 1833, in the Engis cave in Belgium, Philippe
Charles Schmerling discovered the remains of a Neanderthal child, but this fossil
became recognizable as such only after the discovery of a sufficient number ofNean
derthalians and, in particular, of the child's skull ofLa Quina. The same was to some
extent true of the Gibraltar man: If this fossil had consisted of a brainpan alone, it
would probably have known greater success; the face, at a time when the myth of
Anthropopithecus was being constructed, was incomprehensible. Jean Louis Quatre
fages and Jules Hamy give an exact deSCription of the fossil but attach no importance
to it. Their concern with constructing the "race of Canstadt" on the basis of some
highly questionable skull fragments closed their eyes to the real nature of Nean
derthal man himself. But nothing was ready for establishing a connection between
evolutionism and the available fossil records. The image of the primitive human does
not appear to have been other than that ofHomo sapiens, clad in the skins of animals
he had hunted, applying his penetrating intelligence to fashioning in storie the weap
ons needed for his primitive economy. In the Discourse on the Origin ofInequality
(1775), Jean-Jacques Rousseau was one of the first to outline a "cerebralist" theory
of human evolution. By imitating animals and by reasoning, the "natural man,"
endowed with all the present human attributes but starting from scratch in terms of
technical equipment, gradually invents everything within the technical and social
order that will lead him to the present-day world. This picture, extraordinarily sim
plistic in its form, remarkably well employed to demonstrate the point that material
progress is a blind alley, still survives, bereft of any trace of philosophical genius, in
lowbrow works of popularization or prehistorical fiction of our day. In Rousseau's
time the human mind was in no way ready to admit that the flints might have been
knapped by a kind of semi-monkey.3
The next period falls between 1856, the date of the Neanderthal discovery, and
1880. The scientific atmosphere had changed completely. A chronological classifi
cation distinguishing the Paleolithic from the Neolithic etas was available to pre
historians. Within the Paleolithic, there was a Mammoth Age before the Reindeer
Age. Above all, the myth of the ape-ancestor had taken shape, for the repercussions
of Darwinian evolutionism upon scientific thought had been far stronger than those
of Lamarck's theories. Besides, there were the fossils. The unfortunate Neanderthal
man, broken into bits by workmen, owed to his natural resistance the preservation
of a brainpan which proved to be the turning point in human paleontology.
Exhumed in 1856, it was already recognized by H. Schaaffhausen in 1858 as evidence
of the existence of primitive man. Ten years later, in 1866, Belgium supplied the man
dible of La Naulette, which Quatrefages and Hamy introduced as part of their "race
of Canstadt" in 1882.
Science was thenceforth in possession ofthe properties ofthe human ancestor,
definable as a primitive being, stooping, flat-skulled, with prominent orbital crests
and a receding chin. Linnaeus, Cuvier, and Darwin converge at last and the image of
the ape-man comes into clear focus; he has a name, or even two, since in 1873
Gabriel de Mortillet was hesitating whether to call him Anthropopithecus or
Homosimian.
An attempt to reconstruct the circumstances i n which the remains of two

authentic Neanderthalians engendered the legend of the ape-human is worth mak
ing. These remains included the only parts that could lend themselves directly to a
comparison with monkeys: the orbits, the low cranial dome, the receding chin. Had
Neanderthal man been exhumed intact, or had the Gibraltar skull not been found
twenty years too soon, human paleontology might perhaps have resisted the pow
erful tug toward the monkey. But with the fossil records as they were, the interpre
tation was inevitable. The most serious and most persistent error was that of drawing
a straight line linking Homo sapiens, via the Neanderthalians, with the impressive
anthropoid foursome of modern times-the gorilla, the chimpanzee, the orangutan,
and the gibbon. We shall return to this aspect of the problem further along.
Around 1880 humans were believed to be descended from the monkey via
Anthropopithecus, of whom Neanderthal man provided what was thought to be a
likely image. Scholars were not too sure where to situate the geological moment of
our emergence; the most perceptive among them agreed that knapped or fire-crazed
flints had existed at the very heart of the Cenozoic era, in the Miocene and Pliocene
periods. If we consider that the discovery of Zinjanthropus in Tanganyika in 1959
established the presence of a toolmaking being not readily describable as human at
the confines of the Cenozoic era, we realize that, here again, a great insight was
founded upon false or nonexistent records; for the mistake lay in misinterpreting the
characteristics of present-day monkeys, not in assuming the existence of very prim
itive human forms.
Not all scholars adopted the same attitude toward the matter. Paul Topinard in
1876 still found the image of a profoundly simian Neanderthal man difficult to accept
and, taking up one of the ideas on atavism current at that time, vaguely suggested that
the famous fossil might have belonged to a Mammoth Age survivor of the fabulous
Cenozoic ancestors. Elsewhere every possible effort was made to find other rep
resentatives of the primitive race among already known fossils. In the Crania ethnica
of 1873, Quatrefages and Hamy lumped the fossils of Neanderthal and La Naulette
together with all sorts offragments of present-day humans, such as the first mandible
ofArey-sur-Cure or the human remains of Canstadt, Egisheim, and Gourdan, to form
an artificial "race of Canstadt" so flexible that very few fossil records, provided they
were small and fragmentary enough, could not be fitted into it. This attitude is par
ticularly interesting because the two great anthropologists lacked neither compe
tence nor intellectual honesty: What they lacked were the basic elements for
establishing a critical apparatus.
These subde variations in the attitudes of different scholars are worth noting.
G. de Mortillet with his Anthropopithecus (whose various races he goes so far as to
name) pleads the cause of the ape-ancestor without producing any fossil as proof.
He agrees to recognize a semi-monkey in Neanderthal man but is perturbed by his
rather too human implements and invents an oudandish explanation based on ata
vism, according to which the skull itself belongs to a throwback to an earlier age (this
attitude has reappeared periodically to this day). Hamy and Quatrefages literally
dilute Neanderthal man by mixing him up in the "race of Canstadt" with the bric-a
brac of every human fragment they imagine to be a fossil. The hardly surprising
result of this is that according to them Neanderthal man has kept reemerging ata
vistically down to the present day. The French anthropologists' tendency at this time
seems to have been toward excessive generalization, whereas Thomas Huxley and
W. King in Great Britain and Schaaffhausen in Germany, though they did not escape
the general trend toward the simian theory, seem to have had a more correct idea
of Neanderthal man's real place in the scheme of things.
The next twenty years brought lillie change. The Gibraltar skull slumbered on
in the London collection where it had found refuge after being briefly recognized
by George Busk in 1879; silence continued to reign on this subject. At Spy in Belgium
in 1886, parts of a Neanderthal skull were at last found that allowed a practically com
plete reconstitution to be made but were not sufficient to identify its precise pOSition
on the vertebral column or to establish how prognathous it was. The major event of
the period was the discovery of Pithecanthropus, the final avatar of G. de Mortillet's
Anthropopithecus, by the Dutch scholar Eugene Dubois inJava in 1891. Truth to tell,
this newcomer consisted yet again only of a brainpan, a few teeth, and a femur, but
the demonstration was fauldess: His forehead receded more than Neanderthal
man's, his orbital ridges formed a veritable yizor, and so yet another link was added
to the chain that bound the human to the chimpanzee. As for the femur, it was so
perfecdy human as to be almost embarrassing; a great deal of research was needed
in order to detect a few discrete hints of an ability to climb. Our eyes see only what
they are prepared to see, and the time had not yet come to understand what it is that
radically separates the human lineage from that of the anthropoids. Already the pos
sibility of reconstituting Pithecanthropus' appearance was envisaged, and indeed a
life-sized plaster portrait was shown at the universal exhibition of 1900 (figure 3).
Although full of errors in points of detail, this reconstitution actually offers a sil
houette of our human ancestor that differs lillie, roughly speaking, from that
accepted today: The forehead is very low, the chin recedes strongly, the general look
is wild-but, for all that, the posture is almost erect. What is unlikely is the position
ofthe skull upon the neck, the shape ofthe hand, the length of the arm, and the weird
compromise between a human foot and that of an orangutan so that our ancestor
seems to be standing on something very much like two lobster claws. A few hairs on
the chest, a fig leaf, two nondescript implements made from deer antlers, and a line
in the middle of a flat forehead complete the portrait of the missing link at the thresh
old of the twentieth century. For a long time yet paleontology remained caught in
the compromise betweenHomo sapiens and the anthropoid ape, and to this very day
not only does the image of the ape-human reign supreme in popular literature, but
a kind of nostalgia for the primate ancestor can be detected in certain highly scientific
works.
The Twentieth Century

The first years of the twentieth century were marked by the greatest series of
finds of the primitive human ever made. At an extraordinarily rapid rate, the earth
yielded up the Mauer jawbone and the skeletons of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, Le Mous
tier, La Ferrassie, La Quina, and Krapina. Human paleontology became a science, and
prehistory, in its turn, advanced conSiderably. A fairly detailed chronological frame
work from the Acheulian to the Magdalenian was now available. Climatic variations
were better known, and the geologists' chronology asserted an order of magnitude
of thousands of years even for the more recent period, a claim that was to be proved
acceptable by later developments. Anatomical anthropology, vigorously advanced
from the midnineteenth century by Paul Broca and his successors, reached its zenith,
and the controversies that accompanied the sharing out of the fossils among the
world's experts were, with some exceptions, more courteous than those of the pre
ceding generation. The image of Pithecanthropus progressed no further. The aus
tralopithecine revolution of the 1940s and 1950s had to take place before the way to
a solution of the problem of the missing link was open at last. Neanderthal man, on
the other hand, took on an almost familiar look; Neanderthalians were being found
all over the place, sometimes in a fairly good state of preservation, young men and
old, women and children, and various European laboratories vied with one another
in the skill of fitting together the minute fragments ofwhich the finest samples were,
alas, made up. In 1911-1913 Marcellin Boule published a fundamental work on the
man ofLa Chapelle-aux-Saints which encompassed the problem of Neanderthal man
as a whole. Looking back from the vantage point of today on the work of the great
human paleontologists at the beginning of the century, we cannot but be struck by
the scientific rigor of their analyses and the pertinence with which they defined, in
relation both to ourselves and to monkeys, the ancient forms of humanity known to
them. The monkeys, it is true, troubled the serenity of their studies. If we glance at
the pictures with which these works are illustrated, if we reread the morphological
analyses they contain, we realize what tricks monkeys have played with scholars over
the ages. Rooted as it was in the unchallengeable eighteenth-century idea of our
closeness to the great primates, human paleontology was quite incapable of envis
aging any solution other than one that lay between the monkeys it knew and Homo
sapiens. To look at the fossils objectively became almost impossible. Indeed one
might almost say that to look at them at all became pointless, for to a certain extent
they could only hamper the search for the perfect midway solution. This explains
why the p4enomenon of 1870, when Hamy produced his description of the Arcy-sur
Cure jawbone considered a priori as belonging to Neanderthal man, continued to
occur each time it came to describing Pithecanthropus or Neanderthal man: Scholars
could see in what respects he differed from ourselves and resembled a monkey, but
much more time had to elapse before it dawned on them that the supposedly simian
characteristics might be no more than the reflection of a common origin so remote
that the comparison became meaningless. The period of extremely rigorous ana
tomical description we are speaking of was tinged with something like regret that
the evidence failed to bear out the midway solution. This is particularly clear in the
matter of the foot, which ought to have a slightly more prehensUe big toe (or rather,
thumb); the femur, which ought to be incurved; the arm, which ought to hang down
a little more, the thumb, which ought to be short, the spine, which ought to bend
forward, and, above all, the OCcipital foramen, which ought to occupy a position half
way between the gorilla's and our own.
All too often the reconstitutions of the time tended to bestialize the Palaeoan
thropians: The idea of "inevitable prognathism" won through because that was the
way skull fragments were reassembled or drawings or photographs rearranged. The
paleontologists are hardly to be blamed. With the theories current at the time, the
faces of the incomplete fossils discovered later (Broken Hill, Steinheim, Saccopas
tore, Monte Circeo) were quite simply unimaginable. The convenient shelving of the
Gibraltar skull with its normal face-to-cranium ratio clearly shows the irresistible ten
dency of fossils to follow the image they are invited to illustrate. The only fossil in
which the relationship between the skull and the face was intact was also the only
one that refused to fit into the pattern of "normal" evolution.
To be fair, we ought not to overlook the fact that even today there exist only
a few fossils of which the skull was not found broken, incomplete, or deformed.
Some degree of interpretation is therefore unavoidable. The reconstitutions of Sin-
anthropus o r Pithecanthropus were mosaics made u p o f fragments taken from dif

ferent individuals; facts as fundamental as the position of the head upon the vertebral
column or the length or prognathism of the face were still a matter for hypothesis.
Human paleontology succeeded in exorcising the ape-ancestor only very recently,
when by dint of finding older and older fossils in a better and better state of pre
servation it was obliged at last to bow to the evidence. Admittedly our venerable
ancestor had a small brain and a large face, but he walked upright and the propor
tions of his limbs were those that we know of humans. Between 1900 and 1920 that
recognition still lay far ahead and the Neanderthalian image was to be given sculp
tural form, no longer in plasterlike Dubois' Pithecanthropus but in fine stone, loom
ing like a colossus on the esplanade in front of the museum at Les Eyzies to celebrate
the sum of erroneous traditions of a century and a half of scientific struggle.
4fter 1920
From 1920 onward the theater of the primitive human shifts once more to the
pithecanthropine stage. Through the combined efforts of Davidson Black, Wen
Chung Pei, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Abbe Henri Breuil, and Franz Weidenreich,
the discoveries of Peking man in the cave of Choukoutien were to give fresh impetus
to our knowledge about the earliest humans. Doctrinal positions had changed con
Siderably since the end of the nineteenth century, and human paleontology now
shared its favors between defenders of the faith and champions of atheistic evolu
tionism. The wrangles that had done so much to promote, but also to deviate,
research in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were dying down amid general
indifference, although .their traces were to live on into the present time in certain
ideas accepted in the heat of battle and never since revised. What seems to have
struck scholars most forcibly toward 1930, when a considerable body of documen
tation on the Peking Sinanthropians began to be available, was the almost startling
contrast between these cousins of Pithecanthropus, who corresponded perfectly to
the ideal ape-human, and the presence among their vestiges of hearth ash and of a
stone industrywhich, it had to be admitted, was really quite highly developed. Some
accepted this fact, others took up an attitude that was to resurface on other occasions
and that might be described as the theory of the "hunter of Sinanthropians" or of
"Homo presapiens." This attitude, which was widely held in the years 1930 to 1950,
consists in suggesting that the bones are indeed those of a being halfway between
human and ape but the industry and the fire connote the presence of a much more
highly developed being for whom the unfortunate Sinanthropus was merely a prey.
We shall revert to the deep causes of this attitude, already held by Jacques Boucher
de Perthes, in other early chapters of this volume. The same phenomenon recurred
when, upon discovering the Austra!opithecinae in 1924 and thereafter, some schol
ars looked for their possible hunters, when some thought that the man of Broken
Hill might have been killed in a recent period, and when for some time there were
hesitations in conceding to the African cousins of Pithecanthropus-the Atlanthro
pians ofTernifine discovered in 1954 an industry ofknapped flint implements as fine
as those that accompanied their remains in the deposit
Even quite recently an Italian prehistorian, P. Leonardi, came forward with the
suggestion of a "true hominid living in the same epoch [as Zinjanthropus] . . . and
remaining unknown."
Less formally the Anthropopithecus hypothesis was being replaced by that of
an elusive hominid with a human intelligence, arriving no one knew whence in a
world where various prehominids still lingered. This particular aberration of what
was already a modern science was unfortunately encouraged by the scientific hoax
which kept Piltdown man within the field of hypothesis for almost fifty years. Every
one knows that in 1909 an English forger arranged for the learned world's discovery
and acceptance, together with a few Acheulian flints, of disparate pieces of a modern
man's skull and an equally recent chimpanzee's jawbone. Painful because of the loss
of time it entailed and because of the regrettable lines it caused certain scholars to
write, the Piltdown hoax provides the clearest confirmation of everything we have
said in the preceding pages on the subject of the ape-ancestor myth. The finest
experts recognized without hesitation that the touched-up fragments of the com
posite Piltdown creature were fragments of a human skull and a chimpanzee's jaw
bone. Some of them left it at that, but the majority, prudent caveats notwithstanding,
were prepared to accept the hypothesis that an ape's jawbone could be attached to
a human skull, so what Cuvier would have regarded as anatomical heresy served for
a long time to underpin the "Homopresapiens" hypothesis. Once again, the point at
issue was neither incompetence nor lack of good faith. Such a view of the ancestor
reflects the thinking of an entire epoch, from which the paleontologist is not exempt.
The word "presapiens" came at its appointed hour, when the ape-ancestor had not
yet been completely eliminated (chimpanzee's jawbone), when increasingly thor
ough knowledge of ancient industries allowed a human intelligence to our precur
sors dating back as" far as the Acheulian (human skull), when the presence of
extremely primitive fossils (Pithecanthropians) showed that at the back of the late
Cenozoic stage had lived beings to whom it was almost indecent to ascribe an indus-
The Image oj Ourselves 17
try as developed as theirs. The only way out pointed toward an ancestor whose con
dition was still close to the simian but who, under the convexity of his skull, might
already have possessed a brain that ensured him the best of futures in the modern
world. The Piltdown Eoanthropus even had the honor of being bracketed together
with two fossils of more solid status, the skulls of Swanscombe and of Fontechavade.
It is difficult at this point to knowwhat to think, not of the authenticity ofthose fossils
but of their real characteristics, for both are fragmentary to such a degree and lack
such essential parts that it might be best to wait before saying anything at all for fear
of suffering the same misadventure as Hamy, who associated the jawbone ofLa Nau
lette with human remains subsequently found to be far more recent. The case of the
Piltdown man could demonstrate the possibility and the danger of taking the oppo
site course.
To sum up, one might say that in 1950 the image of the primitive human was
undergOing a far-reaching transformation. As in all times of change the various posi
tions were not always very clear-cut, and the finest scholars were sometimes torn
between contradictory hypotheses. The old trend continued to persist, and the
reconstitutions of Sinanthropians or of the new series of Pithecanthropians found in
Java from 1934 on were inspired by the old ape-ancestor idea. However, some Nean
derthalians had been discovered in good enough condition for the base of the skull
not to have to be assembled in a laboratory. As far back as in 1921 it had been estab
lished that the man of Broken Hill could not have had the ape-ancestor's half-bowed
posture because his OCCipital foramen indicated complete erectness. At the time this
characteristic had caused much perplexity. In the end the fossil had Simply been reju
venated by some who considered it (as Topinard had done with Neanderthal man
in 1875) to be a sort of throwback of a prehuman skull on a man's body. Some had
gone so far as to draw attention to the striking contrast with the half-bowed posture
of the Neanderthalians, a posture that in fact had only been the product of the evo
lutionist idea in the minds of those who had reconstituted the remains.
The caveats entered concerning this fossil whose skull testified to erect posture
are highly Significant. W. P. Pycraft tried to demonstrate that the pelvis corresponded
to half-bowed posture. Other authors, faced with the unambiguously human char
acter of the pelvis and femurs, tried to argue that they did not belong to the same
skeleton as the skull. Marcellin Boule (and H. V. Vallois, who went along with him
on this issue) adopted a slightly different position by suggesting that Rhodesian man
might have lingered on in the present-day world and ended up by walking upright
like Homo sapiens. Not until Giuseppe Sergi was able to study fossils with an intact
skull base following the discovery of the Saccopastore skull in Italy in 1939 did the
central idea that prehumans already walked upright begin gradually to be accepted.
The same discovery in relation to the Austra!opithecinae of South Africa was to suf
fice at long last for the image of the ape-human to undergo substantial change.
Today
At the time of writing, research on humans is dominated by the Austra!opi
thecus clan, which first made a discrete appearance upon the scene when Raymond
A Dart discovered a child's skull at Taung in South Africa. Since then finds have mul
tiplied on the African continent until the discovery in Kenya in 1959 of the remains
of the Zinjanthrope, a large Australopithecinian accompanied by his stone imple
ments. These discoveries have had a profound effect upon the manner of consid
ering the problem of human origin. They create an image that would have been
completely disconcerting to the encyclopedists: Gabriel de Mortillet's Anthropopi
thecus is now known, but he has nothing in common with the original model.He is,
with all the anatomical consequences that this implies, a man with a very small brain,
not a superanthropoid with a large brainpan. In chapter 3 it will be seen to what
extent this finding necessitates a revision of the concept of the human being; for
when Louis Leakey with his Zinjanthrope confirmed that a being built basically like
ourselves, walking upright and knapping flints, existed in the Villafranchian period,
he contributed far more than Dubois did with his Pithecanthropus: He prOvided the
means of overcoming a line of thought that had persisted without weakening
throughout the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century.
The Criteria ofHumanity

A little more than a century after the discovery of the Gibraltar skull, what piC
ture can we form that will meet all criteria common to all humans and their ances
tors? The first and most important criterion is erect posture: As we have seen, it was
also the last to be accepted. This meant that for several generations the problem of
human origin was posed upon a false premise. All known fossils, inclUding the
oddest among them such as Austra!opithecus, show humans to have had erect pos
ture. Two further criteria are corollaries of the first: They are a short face and a free
hand during locomotion. Not until the last few years, bringing as they did the dis
covery of the pelvis and femurs ofAustra!opithecus, did it become possible to under-
stand the connection between erect posture and a short face. The search for this
connection forms the subject of the third chapter of this volume. Facial proportions
are reflected in the characteristics of the teeth, and it is this which may one day make
it possible to pick up the traces of Australopithecus' ancestors. A few years ago the
newspapers were full of the Oreopithecus of Monte Bamboli in Tuscany, going so far
as to dub him "the man aged two million years." This fossil's dental characteristics
suggest a shorter face than a monkey's.
Freedom of the hand almost necessarily implies a technical activity different
from that of apes, and a hand that is free during locomotion, together with a shon
face and the absence of fangs, commands the use of artificial organs, that is, of imple
ments. Erect posture, short face, free hand during locomotion, and possession of
movable implements-those are truly the fundamental criteria of humanity. The list
includes none of the characteristics peculiar to monkeys and makes the midway form
of human, so dear to pre-1950 theoreticians, completely unthinkable.
The fact that my list does not include a large brain may be thought surprising.
Of course it is difficult to asSign preeminence to any particular characteristic, since
in the development of species everything is interlinked, but I believe that there can
be no doubt that to some extent cerebral development is a secondary criterion. Once
humanity has been achieved, the brain plays a decisive role in the development of
human societies. In terms of strict evolution it is undoubtedly a correlative of erect
posture and not, as was thought for a long time, primordial.
The situation of the human, in the broadest sense, thus appears to be condi
tioned by erect posture. The phenomenon would seem incomprehensible were it
not one of the solutions to a biological problem as old as the vertebrates themselves,
that of the relationship between the face as bearer of the organs of nourishment
and the forelimb as an organ not only of locomotion but also of prehension. Back
bone, face, and hand (even in the form of a fin) were indissolubly linked from the
very beginning. This astounding paleontological adventure forms the subject of
chapter 2.
The situation created by erect human posture certainly represents a stage along
the road that leads from the fish to Homo sapiens, but it in no way implies that the
monkey was a staging post along that road. It is conceivable that monkeys and
humans had a common source, but as soon as erect posture was established there
was no more monkey in humans and, consequently, no half-human. The conditions
created by erect human posture had consequences in terms of neuropsychological
development; this meant that the development of the human brain was something
other than just an increase in volume. In the development of the brain the relation
ship between face and hand remained as close as ever: Tools for the hand, language
for the face, are twin poles of the same apparatus. This is discussed in chapter 3.
Homo sapiens represents the last known stage of hominid evolution and also
the first in which the constraints of zoological evolution had been overcome and left
immeasurably far behind. The new conditions for development offered to tools and
language form the framework of chapters 4 through 6, which complete the first part
of this work.
The second part is devoted to the development of the body social, which forms
the prolongation of the anatomical body. In Homo sapiens divisions into species and
races have been submerged by divisions into ethnic groups, whose physiology is
founded upon the group's collective memory. The gradual substitution of social
memory for the biological instinctual apparatus is discussed in chapter 7, its effects
upon the evolution of technics in chapter 8, and its consequences for the evolution
of language transmission in chapter 9.
The third part, which deals with values and rhythms, is an essay in aesthetic
paleontology and ethnology. In it I have attempted to gather together the elements
necessary for a study of certain facts that normally escape systematic investigation.
The sets of values that give every human group a personality of its own at each
moment of its history are discussed in chapter 10. A classification of forms of aes
thetic expression must necessarily be arbitrary, since it is in the very nature of art to
touch upon many spheres at once. Nevertheless, it seems possible to distinguish
between certain progressively more organized stages. Accordingly chapters 11 and
12 are devoted in turn to physiological aesthetics (much of this forming part of ani
mal behavior) and to functional aesthetics, which relate principally to manual action
in technical activities. Chapter 12 tackles the subject of the humanization of social
behaVior, one of the problems that, together with that of instinct, have sustained the
comparative study of animal and human societies. The subject is considered in turn
from the point of view of humanization of time and space and from that of the sym
bolic organization of the body social. Lastly, art-a human activity whose paleon
tology is supported by extensive evidence-forms the subject of chapter 14.
The final chapter is taken up, by way of conclusion, with the consideration of
the human adventure. Its two principal themes are the balance, unique in the living
world, achieved between the individual and the body social which is the individual's
indefinitely perfectible extension in action, and the future considered as the exten
sion of the paleontological trajectory.
The Image oj Ourselves 21
It may be felt that a work that calls to witness all the main spheres of the human
sciences must lack harmony. While writing it, I have been only too aware of its weak
nesses and imperfections, and its vulnerability on that score has certainly not
escaped me. But how, without invoking paleontology and language, technics and art,
was one to show that our uniquely organized mammalian body is enclosed and
extended by a social body whose properties are such that zoology no longer plays
any part in its material development?
A place should perhaps have been set aside for psychoanalysis. The myth of the
ape-ancestor has roots in the twilight oftime (figure 1). Its emergence in the eigh
teenth century coincided with the moment when the fantastic cohort of clawed and
hairy monsters, ofwild men with wolves' heads or fishes' bodies, was just beginning
to withdraw from the scene. Column capitals and bestiaries, comic strips, and fair
ground monsters suggest an image of the human that belongs to depth psychology;
when all is said and done, it is an image not altogether foreign to that proposed by
the paleontologists. The anthropoid (figure 2) came next, soon to be followed by the
rather imprecise image of Anthropopithecus standing on the threshold of his cave
(figures 3 and 5). It is a scholarly myth that in our day still gives satisfaction to the
educated but also has its popular counterpart in the abOminable snowman (figure
4) and in the Tarzan ofthe comic strip and the neighborhood picture house-Tarzan,
the ideal primitive · man, handsome like the ancestor dreamed up by Boucher de
Perthes but freed from the connotations of an apelike nature by the presence of his
friend the chimpanzee . . .
1. Fourteenth-century stained-glass window in the church of Saint Ouen at Rouen. Demon

leaving the body ofa woman possessed. Note the demon's "humanized monkey" look: the
jutting eyebrows, wide nostrils and snoutlike nose, clawed hands, and simian big toe. An
elongated object is held in his left hand.
2. Orangutan ofBorneo, according to Beckmann, 1 718. Note the humanoid appearance.

The lowforehead, wide nose, muzzle-shaped lips, and opposable big toe are stereotypical
characteristics ofthe ape-human.
3. Pithecanthropus as reconstructed by'Duboisfor the Paris Exhibition of 1900. Thejutting
orbits, wide nose, lipsforming a muzzle, excessively long arms, opposable big toe, and ill
defined objects held in the hands indicate that the image of the ape-ancestor had evolved
but little in the space ofsix centuries.
4.The abominable snowman, from Radar, 1954. Exceptfor the length ofthe arms, which
incidentally is inconsistent with erectposture, the resemblance to thefourteenth-century
window is striking.
5.The man ofLes Eyzies, who dominates the sanctum ofhumanpaleontology and contin
uestofurnish massive evidence ofall the mistakes made by that science and of our thou
sand-year-old ape-ancestor complex.
2 Brain and Hand
So it was thanks to the manner in which

our bodies are organized that our mind,
like a musician, struck the note of lan
guage within us and we became capable
of speech. Ibis privilege would surely
never have been ours ifour lips had been
required topeiform the onerous and dif
ficult task ofprocuring nourishmentfor
our bodies. But our hands took over that
(
task, releasing our mouthsfor the service
ofspeech.
--Gregory of Nyssa, Treatise on the

Creation ofMan, A.D. 379
There is little we can add to this quotation except perhaps by commenting in

the language of the twentieth century upon what was already evident sixteen
hundred years ago. Though it arrives at the same conclusion by a different path from
Gregory of Nyssa's, paleontology too speaks in terms of "release," of liberation.
Within a perspective which starts with fish in the Paleozoic era and ends with the
human in the Quaternary period, it is as though we were witnessing a series of suc
cessive liberations: that of the whole body from the liquid element, that of the head
from the ground, that of the hand from the requirements of locomotion, and finally
that of the brain from the facial mask. That this impression is an artificial one is
obvious, for by concentrating on a few selected fossils we create a very incomplete
picture of evolution. But if there is one truth against which no convincing demon
stration has ever been produced, it is that the world grows more mature with each
succeeding age and that our choice of pertinent forms illuminates a long, steadily
ascending path upon which each "liberation" took place at an increasingly accel
erated rate.
The pertinent forms in this sequence are those that, at each stage of the process,
achieve the most perfect balance-from the triple point of view of nutrition, loco
motion, and the organs of responsiveness-between mobility and capacity for sur
vival, fundamental characteristics of species selected to demonstrate the progression
of the living world. The biological advantages of changelessness can be demon
strated just as readily, the geological longevity of the jellyfish or the oyster offering
positive support, but the point of evolutionism is not so much to sing the praises of
slow-motion development as to relate the living world, explicidy or otherwise, to the
modern human. Leaving aside any attempt to find a philosophical meaning in evo
lution, leaving aside even the assumption implicit in "transformism," itis thus normal
and sCientifically sound to observe to what a striking degree the urge to conquer time
and space, our dominant trait, is also characteristic of all the witnesses selected to
illustrate the ascent of the human being.
It is possible to regard mobility as the significant feature of evolution toward
the human state. PaleontologiSts have not been unaware of this. It came more spon
taneously to them to characterize humans by their intelligence than by their mobility,
and the first concern of their theories has been with the preeminence of the brain.
This has often falsified their interpretation of fossils, especially from the primates
onward. The conquest of air-breathing, the release from crawling, and the achieve
ment of bipedalism are topics that have been studied thoroughly for the past half
century; nevertheless, it is worth noting that barely ten years ago the idea of a quad
ruped possessed of a human brain would have been accepted almost more readily
than that of a biped as cerebrally backward as Australopithecus. The "cerebral" view
of evolution now appears mistaken, and there would seem to be sufficient docu
mentation to demonstrate that the brain was not the cause of developments in loco
motory adaptation but their benefiCiary. This is why locomotion will be considered
here as the determining factor of biological evolution, just as in part III it will be seen
as the determining factor of modern social evolution.
The Dynamic Organization ofAnimals

Animals differ from plants in that their nourishment involves the intake of food
in units that must be mechanically processed before any assimilative chemical pro
cess takes place. In other words, nutrition in animals is to a conSiderably greater
Brain and Hand 27
degree than in plants connected with the search for food and therefore involves the
use of mobile capturing organs and of a detection mechanism.
Despite its generally mobile character the animal world has from the outset
included a significant number of species that, without adopting the purely chemical
nutritional processes of plants, have adapted themselves to capturing food while
remaining immobile. There are thus two types of dynamiC organization of animal
species, one in which the body is constructed on a radially symmetrical pattern and
one in which the symmetry of the body is bilateral.
Among the invertebrates, the sponges and the coelenterates (hydras, sea anem
ones, polyps) offer perfect examples of an organization in which the part played by
locomotion is nil and in which the system is organized on a radial pattern. However,
in certain other orders-worms, molluscs, echinoderms, or crustaceans--the
sedentary habit of the adults is a secondary phenomenon, and the adoption of that
way of life suggests that their evolutionary path is completely different from that of
mobile species. For the purposes of our argument, these forms, which have devel
oped into what is considered to be the lower animal world, are of interest only by
way of comparison. They do, however, demonstrate at the lowest level of the living
world what in a finalistic view would be described as a choice between two possi
bilities. This apparent choice is constant and justifies the expression "branching
development" used by paleontologists to describe the diversification of living
beings.
Bilateral organization, on the other hand, is directly relevant to our argument
since, by a series of successive consequences, it is this form of organization that has
led to the human being.
Bilateral Symmetry
The design whereby the entire organism is placed behind the aperture for
ingesting food is to be found in the most mobile of the protozoans, and except in
sponges and coelenterates, it is the normal design of animal bodies. The anterior
polarity of the mouth and of the organs of prehension of mobile animals is so
obvious a biological and mechanical fact that to dwell upon it would be ridiculous,
except perhaps in order to stress that it is this fact and no other that represents the
fundamental precondition for evolution toward higher life forms.
Mobility implies that for purposes of nourishment the organs that ensure ori
entation, adjustment of pOSition, and the coordination of the organs of food capture
with those of food preparation must also be situated in front of the body. From the
first acquisition of mobility to the present time, the general structure of an animal
whether insect, fish, or mammal-has not changed. The polarization of certain
organs has thus led to the formation of the arlteriorfield within which the complex
operations of animals with bilateral symmetry take place.
The Vertebrates
Having turned our back upon the radially constructed animals and selected
those whose symmetrical organization is determined by the axis of movement, we
must now take leave of the invertebrates as a whole and consider the development
of animals with an internal skeleton.
The first appearance of vertebrates-ostracoderm fish (figure 6), still lacking
a jaw, which illustrate vertebrate organization in its oldest and most schematic
form-dates back to the middle of the Paleozoic era (Silurian and Devonian peri
ods). Already, as in the fish of today, their body is divided into two parts, the anterior
forming a solid bony box and the posterior part articulated by wide scales and end
ing in a tail. The locomotory part is built round a fibrous longitudinal axis, the noto
chord, along which runs the spinal cord from which are derived nerves that control
the contractions of groups of muscles arranged in bilateral series to form the ani
mal's sides and protected by the flexible armor of the scales. The locomotory appa-
6 Ostracodennfish ofthe Scottish Devonian, from Traquair.

Brain and Hand 29
ratus, here at its very simplest, is constituted by two bands of muscles whose alternate
contractions activate the propulsive tail.
The head is a flat box formed of imbricated plates, pierced with orifices, within
which all the elements of the anterior field--organs of prehension, ingestion, and
responsiveness and the whole nervous apparatus that operates them-are com
bined. There are no jaws; the mouth is an opening shaped like a sucker, whose
periphery is equipped with electric organs. The functions of prehension and food'
ingestion are thus performed by very different means than in later vertebrates, and
the mechanical role of the cranium is still limited. But the brain box already houses
the fragile nervous apparatus that controls the organs sensitive to light, vibrations,
taste, and smell, grouped at the extremity of the spinal cord. This node of specialized
nerve cells is already the center of operations from which fibers not only spread out
to the sense organs but also control and coordinate the system as a whole.
Between the brain box and the body, at the boundary between the anterior
field and the part concerned with locomotion, is a pectoral fin or articulated paddle.
All the elements necessary for the analysis of vertebrates as far as the human being
are already there: a rigid cranial box framing the mouth and protecting the brain,
locomotory organs closely connected with me base of the skull, and the anterior
limb located somewhere between the two.
The ostracodermi offer a picture of a vertebrate that borders on the schematic,
both because they lived at a time close to the vertebrates' earliest beginnings and
because they belonged to the category of organisms whose evolution at any moment
proceeds in directions other than the one that interests us. Like the lampreys or hag
fish of today, to which they are related, the ostracodermi, fish with suckers, have a
structure that has never been subjected to certain selective factors. The situation is
altogether different with the elasmobranchs (sharks and rays), bony fish, and dip
noans (and coelacanths), which, as far back as in the Devonian period, were already
jawed vertebrates and showed a great variety of combinations.
With the help of embryology as much as of fossils, paleontologists have estab
lished that the mandible of vertebrates must derive from one of the arches that sup
port the gills. The exact process which, from the Devonian onward, culminated in
the emergence of fish with an articulated jaw has not been completely elucidated,
but it is certain that from that time on the skull of vertebrates acquired a new and
most important function, that of serving as a support for the jaws. After that, the
mechanical constraints of locomotion and those of operating the jaws were to dom
inate cranial development as a whole.
As early as in the Devonian period, when jawless fish were in their heyday,
these three orders--elasmobranchs, bony fish, and dipnoans--represented an
obvious point of departure toward higher forms. Certain types already were modern
fish, both phylogenetically and functionally, and the ancestors of the coelacanths and
the modern lungfishes already show features that foreshadow adaptation to life on
land.
The foregoing pages, which merely summarize a set of long-established facts
to be found in any work on human evolution, are included in the present work only
because they demonstrate an important point. The whole animal kingdom was
divided from its earliest beginnings into a relatively limited number of functional
types, the choice (not always completely clear-cut) being between sessile and mobile
habits or between radial and bilateral symmetry. From the point of view of "biolog
ical success," both tracks have led to equally striking results: Jellyfish have survived
without variation for several hundreds of millions of years, while the mobile animals,
through the vertebrates, have provided the stages needed to attain intelligence. The
winners in this endless race, the jellyfish and the human, stand at the two extremes
of adaptation. Between them lie the millions of species that constitute the "tree" of
terrestrial genealogy. These lines of functional evolution have become a common
place: Who does not know the example of the shark, the ichthyosaurus, and the por
poise (a fish, a reptile, and a mammal) which, by adaptation to the aquatic medium,
came to have the same external form? The facts ofmechanical adaptation are normal;
for example, in dental organization there are many cases where animals as disparate
as the hare, the horse, and the ox have molars of similar mechanical structure. If this
phenomenon, described as "convergence," were adopted as the basis for a taxon
omy, the result would be very different from the phyletic "tree," but many of the
branches would be common to both.
This functional convergence can operate for an entire order, even among
mammals, as with the marsupials of Australia, which include false carnivores, false
ruminants, and false rodents. It can operate for isolated forms and result in extraor
dinary resemblances. I need only cite the example of the Proterotheriidae of the
South American Miocene, which followed the same specialization line of speciali
zation as the Equidae and produced lineages of false hipparions and false horses with
a surprising functional resemblance to real ones.
Biology ascribes change in species, at least in summary, to the combined effects
of heredity and natural selection. In addition the cumulative effect of adaptations to
the environment leads in time to an increasingly efficient organization ofthe nervous
system. The move from the aquatic to the terrestrial environment and the emer-
Brain and Hand 31
gence, toward the end of the Mesozoic era, of homoiothermy that offered consid
erably greater possibilities of adaptation to birds and mammals than to cold-blooded
animals, renewed the register to which functional adaptation could be applied. The
nervous system was the most obvious beneficiary of this evolution, to which it gives
an extraorganic dimension, since it leads eventually to the human brain. This end
result, which was possible for one lineage only, would be inconceivable unless we
assumed the existence of favorable conditions, fairly generalized at first, and then,
nearer to the present time, increasingly restricted. Thus the point of departure was
from a very broad and very deep biological base, and only by ignoring the millions
of species that took but little advantage of successive sets of favorable conditions can
we speak of our lineage. The first and most important of those conditiohs, as we have
just seen, was the constitution of the anterior field, a development that affected most
animal species and all vertebrates.
The Evolution of the Anterior Field

The second favorable condition, which is evident in a large number of animal
species, is the division of the anterior field of responsiveness into two complemen
tary areas, one governed by actions of the head and the other by those of the forelimb
or, more precisely, by actions of the facial organs and of the extremity of the forelimb,
respectively. The anterior field thus has a facial pole and a manual pole, which act
in close relationship to perform the most elaborate technical operations.
The pOSition of the forelimb between the cephalic and locomotory parts of the
body is functionally somewhat ambiguous. In both the Arthropoda and the verte
brates, the anterior organ of locomotion can, to varying degrees, serve for the cap
ture and preparation of food. The fact is particularly clear in decapod crustaceans
such as the crab, where the first pair oflegs, developed into claws, serves to grip and
p
break up the prey. Examples of a bi olar anterior field are fairly common among the
arthropods. But in the vertebrates they are very numerous indeed, and their signif
icance is particularly great.
Independently from any taxonomic division into classes and orders, the ver
tebrate world can be divided into two functional groups, that in which the forelimb
is used almost exclUSively for locomotion and that in which it intervenes more or
less actively in the anterior field of responsiveness (figure 7).
Such a division is already foreshadowed in fish. In the majority of surface or
deep-water species, the pectoral fins are associated solely with locomotion, acting
as organs of orientation or slow movement. In species that live near the bottom, on
�l\
�...,
\(�":r�''J;'{1
rf
..
c '�" ...., �
f
7. Examples of two types ofanteriorfields. Left column: Almost exclusivelyfacial. (a) Fast
swimmingjisb (tuna), (b) longflying bird (Bassan gannet), (c) walking mammal (gazelle).
Right column: Facial and manual combined. (d) Deep-sea.fish (gurnard), (e) bird ofprey
(brown owD, (f) grasping omnivore (bear). .
Brain and Hand 33
the other hand, the pectorals are often direcdy associated with the search for food,
either by acting like fans to stir up mud and uncover gobbets of food, as with the
tench, or by turning into "legs" or barbels rich in taste buds that explore the bed
while supporting the fish as though on crutches, as with the gurnard. In amphibians
and reptiles the forelimb plays a very limited role, although in some species it helps
to hold the food down on the ground or to clear the mouth of unwanted or ill-tasting
fragments.
In birds the situation is given a special twist by the adaptation of the forelimb
to flight. The Opisthocomus or hoatzin of tropical America is the only modem exam
ple of a bird with a "hand" used for climbing-and even here, this peculiar feature
is confined to the young of the species. Thus in birds there is no question of the for
elimb intervening in the anterior field of responsiveness, although in many species
the back limb is used to grip the prey or, as with the weaver bird, to perform certain
nest-building operations. The case of birds is of interest because it proves that the
possibility of intervention by the "hand" not only exists in a limited number of zoo
logical groups on the direct line of evolution from the crossopterygian fish via mon
keys to humans but is even to some extent independent from any specific anatomical
area. In the case of the bird's foot, as in that of the elephant's trunk, it is more a matter
of functional reality than of zoological predisposition.
The situation of mammals is direcdy connected with the subject matter of this
book and needs to be discussed in greater detail. There appear to be two broad
groups of more or less homogeneous composition, the first including primates,
insectivores, edentates and bats, rodents, cetaceans, and carnivores, and the second
comprising the very large assemblage of ungulates, which includes all hoofed mam
mals from the elephant to the horse, pig, and ox.
A similar separation can be made from a functional point of view: The first
group includes species with a varied diet (carnivores, frugivores, or omnivores) and
oriented essentially toward "fleshy" food, whether animal or vegetable; the great
majority of ungulates, on the other hand, are eaters of foods rich in cellulose.
If we attempt a separation between species in which the forelimb plays a role
in the anterior field of responsiveness and those in which that role is slight or non
existent, we are again left with two main groups: on the one hand, the first of the
groups described above (with the exception of the cetaceans), where cases of such
involvement are numerous, and, on the other hand, the ungulates and cetaceans,
where there are no cases of such a kind. And finally, from the viewpoint that concerns
us most, bipolarity of the anterior field, though widely distributed, is confined to only
eleven of the twenty-six orders constituting the whole category of placental mam-
mals. In each of the eleven orders that show bipolarity, a new distinction has to be
drawn according to what are sometimes considerable differences of degree. As will
be seen further on, while it is among these mammals that coordination of the facial
and manual fields is most highly developed, such coordination is far from being
present--or present to the same degree-in every group: Neither edentates nor bats
offer noteworthy examples, except for fish-eating bats and frugivorous flying foxes
whose back limbs can, as in birds, be used for gripping food. In the insectivores, a
very archaic group, the extent of the hand's intervention is very variable. It may be
practically nil, as in the tenrec of Madagascar, very slight, as in the mole, or again very
considerable, as in the tree shrews, whose taxonomic inclusion among insectivores
or primates is still under discussion. Carnivores too show different degrees of man
ual intervention, although in practically all species the hand intervenes in the ante
rior field of responsiveness to some extent. In the Canidae and Hyaenidae the
involvement is slight because of the great importance of the adaptation of the limb
extremities to rapid movement over long distances; in the Mustelidae, the Viverridae,
the Procyonidae, the Ursidae, and the Felidae, on the other hand, the participation
of the hand can reach a degree fairly close to that observed in primates. The rac
coon's manual abilities, for example, are so great that in some tests it can compete
with certain monkeys .
. Within the order of the Rodents, the functional apparatus varies conSiderably.
It is here that we find the most striking contrasts in the sense with which we are par
ticularly concerned. Certain forms within the suborder of the Hystricomorpha, such
as the capybara of tropical America or the guinea pig, show only traces of manual
intervention, while the Sciuromorpha (squirrels or rats) include many species
where, as in some carnivores, the role of the hand is almost as important as in certain
y
monke s. It should be noted that in carnivores, insectivores, and rodents alike, the
species with the most pronounced manual intervention are also those whose for
elimb often exercises a gripping action during locomotion, whether it be on the
ground or in trees.
The characteristic just described is still more striking in the primates, all known
forms of which show a highly developed connection between the forelimb and the
anterior field of responsiveness. This connection is, however, a matter of degree, the
action of the colobus monkey's hand not being the same, from either the anatomical
or the neuropsychological point of view, as the gorilla's. It will be seen further on
that the 'World of monkeys is as varied as that of rodents and that this variety offers
some insight into the mechanism whereby the human has become the only living
species in which a far-reaching connection between the facial and manual poles is
Brain and Hand 35
achieved without the forelimb intervening in locomotion. Before we turn to the

effects of the fundamental connection between head and forelimb, we must briefly
consider the case of the ungulates which, having struck out in a different direction
from ourselves and having developed much further than ourselves in their loco
motory adaptation, never showed any association of the hand with the facial organs.
The passage that follows, taken yet again from Gregory of Nyssa's Treatise on the Cre
ation ofMan, might have been written about them:
Yet it is above all for the sake of speech that nature has added hands to
our body. If man had been deprived of hands, his facial parts, like those
of the quadrupeds, would have been fashioned to enable him to feed
himself: His face would have been elongated in shape, narrow in the
region of the nostrils, with lips protuberant, horny, hard, and thick for the
purpose of plucking grass; the tongue between his teeth would be very
different from what it is, fleshy, resistant, and rough, so as to crush his
food together with the teeth; it would be moist, capable of allowing food
to flow down its sides, like those of dogs or other flesh-eating animals,
which allow food to flow through the interstices between their teeth. If
our body had no hands, how could the articulated voice form inside it?
The parts around the mouth would not be so constituted as to meet the
requirements of speech. In such a case man would have had to bleat,
bark, neigh, low like the oxen, or cry like the ass, or roar as the wild ani
mals do.
This is exactly what contemporary paleontology and zoology demonstrate in the case
of the ungulates: Absence of the hand's intervention is in fact compensated by an
extremely varied facial specialization. Not only are very complex forms found in the
dental organization of, say, the horse or the elephant, but also other facial organs
show considerable structural diversity, which to some extent makes up for the fore
limb's deficiency. The greatest development is observed in organs concerned with
grasping or defense that directly replace the hand or the canines. Suffice it to men
tion the extensible lips of the manatee, the trunk of many living or fossil species from
the tapir to the elephant, the horns on the snout of which the rhinoceros is the last
possessor in the modern world, the canines transformed into tusks or the horns or
antlers of ruminants.
Gregory of Nyssa's explanation cannot of course be taken literally. The remark
able thing about it is that at the end of the fourth century A.D. a philosopher should
have sensed so distinctly the relationship between speech and hand. We should note
too that he does not see this relationship as the commonplace one whereby the hand
participates in speech through gesticulation but as an organic one, manual expertise
corresponding to the degree of freedom of operation of the facial organs thus made
available for speech.
The conclusion that can be drawn from the foregoing is that while a paleon
tology based solely upon anatomical and chronological observations is valuable in
that it establishes the broad lines of evolution, there is also value to be found in a
different approach to biological facts that also takes account of behavior. In fact the
two approaches are mutually complementary; that is what I have tried to demon
strate thus far. Research in the direction we are pursuing here results in a history of
functional mechanisms whose very widespread occurrence in the living world can
alone explain, against a background of more and more relevant adaptive variations,
the emergence of a human form still deeply rooted in the animal world and
obViously similar to those mammals that at a later stage adopted the most highly
developed forms of integration of the two poles of the anterior field.
From Fish to Human

Having acknowledged the leading role played in the development of verte
brates by variations in the balance between the two poles of the anterior field, we
can proceed to a more detailed study of the forms taken by those animals that
achieved the highest levels of technical integration in the course of the whole history
of living organisms. In other words, against the background of the vast documen
tation assembled by study of the paleontology and biology of vertebrates we can
attempt to sketch out a functional paleontology. To do this, we must include within
a single perspective the main functional elements of each of the types that succeeded
one another over the ages. For purposes of convenience the number of these ele
ments may be reduced to five. The first pertains to the constraints of locomotion
to the mechanical organization ofthe vertebral column and the limbs. This element
is indissociable from those that follow because the organs of motion are the driving
gear of the way of life. The second element is the suspension of the skull. Because
of the skull's topographical location, this is the most sensitive element of the func
tional apparatus; this fact has been empirically understo ()d since the very beginnings
of paleontology, Daubenton's celebrated study on the position of the OCCipital for
amen in vertebrates having inaugurated a long series of works around the central
theme of the suspension of the skull. The next element is dentition, whose con
nection with the way oflife can be readily understood ifwe take into account the role
Brain and Hand 37
played by the teeth in defense and in capturing and preparing food. The fourth ele
ment is the hand, or at any rate the extremity of the forelimb, and its possible inte
gration with the technical field. Lastly, the fifth element is the brain, whose role as
coordinator is obviously a primordial one but which functionallyappears as the "ten
ant" of the rest of the body. This situation of the brain, which could be described as
subordinate to the edifice as a whole, has been noted and recorded many times with
out its significance being wholly clarified. It is common knowledge that the skulls of
functional types that closely resemble one another-such as the theriodont reptiles
of the early Mesozoic era, the carnivores of the early Cenozoic, and the carnivores
of the Quaternary periods-have housed increasingly developed brains, the earliest
being scarcely larger than the spinal cord. This Simple fact may suffice for the present
to establish that there is no special relationship between the evolution of the brain
and that of the body which that brain controls. Yet, as we have shown in chapter 1,
it was the contrary idea that dominated our image of the primitive human for a
century.
Isolated study of each of the elements that forms part of the composition of
vertebrates can afford only a very incomplete understanding of functional evolution.
Their integration, on the other hand, reestablishes a zoological order in a number
of major categories that characterize functional states. Following both chronological
order and the systematic order of the natural sciences, we shall examine succeSSively
(figure 8) and in relation to the characteristics we have selected the major stages of
ichthyomorphism, amphibiorilorphism, sauromorphism, theromorphism, pitheco
morphism, and anthropomorphism4 which correspond, respectively, to the stable
way of life in an aquatic medium, the first liberation from that medium, the freeing
of the head, the acquisition of erect quadrupedal locomotion, the acquisition of the
seated posture, and finally that of erect posture.5
Ichthyomorphism
The dynamic organization of fish has not varied since the emergence of the first
jawed fish in the Devonian period. The fish achieves locomotion essentially by lateral
strokes determined by the action of opposing muscles supported by the vertebral
axis. This apparatus propels the cephalic extremity, with which it is closely inte
grated, and is completed by fins which, as far back as in the middle of the Paleozoic
era, already corresponded in number and position to those of fish existing today.
The frame of the cephalic extremity is a bony case that has the triple role of
supporting the teeth, proViding a base for the insertion of the mandibular muscles,
c:
d
.� : () :
8. Differentjunctional types. Left �column:

Cranial structure related toposture and denti
tion. Middle column: Hand. Right column: Grasping posture. (a) Ichthyomorph-suspen
sian in an aquatic medium, no cervical mobility, long homodont tooth row; (b)
amphibomorph-crawling on the belly, lateral mobility ofthe head, long homodont tooth
row; (c) sauromorph-crawlingpartially offthe ground, free neck, tooth row in thefront
half ofthe skull; (d) grasping theromorph-occasionallyfree hand, heterodont tooth row;
(e) pithecomorph--handfree when seated, opposable thumb, backpart of the skullfreed
by the vertebral column; CD anthropomorph-hands completelyfree, erectposture,
mechanical disengagement of the convexity of the skull.
Brain and Hand 39
and protecting the organs of responsiveness. To this cranial box are attached the
mandible, the hyoidian bones that support the gills, and the bones of the pectoral
girdle that carries the skeleton of the forelimb. The cephalic bloc is rigidly integrated
with the body by groups of muscles; the vertebral axis acts not as a support but simply
conducts the extremity of the spinal cord into the skull where it forms a minute brain
suspended within the vault. All the elements to be borrowed in the evolution ofland
vertebrates are already there, but they will have to undergo a complete mechanical
overhaul in order to adapt to life on land.
Aerial Respiration and Land Locomotion

The transition to life on land is generally presented as a simple and unique phe
nomenon affecting certain fish that became amphibian and thus came to form the
slender root of the hugely branched genealogical tree of land vertebrates. In reality
zoologists are familiar with numerous fish belonging to a variety of groups that by
dint of some mechanism or other, manage to assimilate atmospheric oxygen direcdy.
Quite a few zoologists even regard the swim bladder as a retrogressed lung. At any
rate the existence of a functional relationship between those two organs is an estab
lished fact. Aerial respiration is necessary to species living in shallow and poorly oxy
genated waters, and the link between the acquisition of means to escape asphyxia
and of locomotion in search of water on muddy ground is fairly obvious. Like bilat
eral symmetry or the choice between prehension and exclusive locomotion, aerial
respiration and land locomotion represent a chOice, this time between adaptation
exclusively to the aquatic medium and adaptation to life on land. To this choice, many
species have responded in different ways, one of which is that of the amphibious
quadruped.
There have been other solutions, several of them surviving until the present
time, for example, the eel which can absorb oxygen through its skin, the Indian
climbing perch (Anabas) with its modified bronchial chambers, and the lungfish
whose swim bladder is a true lung. The number of true fish that offer examples of
partial adaptation to aerial respiration is so great that respiration, rather than the
locomotion peculiar to quadrupeds, may safely be considered the decisive factor.
Land locomotion itself is accomplished in different ways. It may be simple
crawling, as with the eel, and the movements involved may not be different from
those of swimming. It may take the form of displacement using one side of the body.
All fish resort to this form of movement spontaneously when taken out of the water.
But in some species, such as the climbing perch, it may involve covering a consid
erable distance in the same direction. The case of the crossopterygians, and more
especially of the coelacanth, seems to me to represent a' real adaptation to displace
ment using the sides of the body (figure 9). In these species the fin is supported by
a lobe that resembles a short nonarticulated limb. Besides the two pectoral and two
ventral fins (which correspond to the limbs of quadrupeds), there are three further
lobed fins, one on each side of the tail and one at its extremity so that the animal
when lying on either of its sides has five points of support for purposes of loco
motion. The coelacanth, near the base of most genealogical trees of higher animal
forms, in reality only illustrates an exceptional system of locomotion, and its limbs
bear only the inevitable minimum of relation to those of the quadrupeds' possible
ancestors. For all the intrinsic interest of the extraordinary survivor that is the Lati
meria, it would be unwise to see the starting point of human genealogy in a group
of fish that resolved the problem of land locomotion in a manner completely dif
ferent from that of quadrupeds.
Brain and Hand 41
I 11/
9. The latimeria, a coelacanthJound in 1938. Thefins are mounted on short limbs like
those oj early quadrupeds (I to N), but segments Vand VI suggests a recumbent mode oj
locomotion unrelated to thefurther evolution ojquadrupeds.
It is among the crossopterygians with their cylindrical bodies that we should

seek the origin of amphibians, insofar as we can hope to find a particular ancestor
for so general a feature as choosing to live on land. The second part of the Paleozoic
era-the Devonian, Carboniferous, and Permian periods-saw the emergence of
the land vertebrate. The problem of monophyletism may in fact be a false one, for
whatever explanation we choose, only one trend, that toward life on land, is per
ceptible. The response really does not seem to have been unique. Numerous partial
solutions still exist today, such as those of the climbing perch (Anabas), the mud
skipper (Periophthalmus), the Australian lungfish (Ceradotus), the newts, the frogs,
and the toads. These give a picture of possible transitions from true fish to reptile,
but the picture is multidimensional and made up of phyletically disparate elements.
Amphibiomorphism
The amphibian solution is still only a halfway house-one might almost call it
provisional. The vertebrates that have adopted it remain tied to the aquatic medium
because of their damp skin and their reproductive mechanism, and cannot stay away
from it for long. However, we find that in the earliest amphibians the major mechan
ical problems have already been resolved more than just in outline. The land ver
tebrates are already set upon a definitive path.
The first amphibians whose body structure we can reconstitute go back to the
Carboniferous period. Their general appearance is reminiscent of that of our newts
or salamanders. The caudal axis serves as a motor in swimming, and four meager
limbs assist locomotion on the ground. The pectoral girdle still connects with the
skull so that the mobility of the head is practically nil, but the elements of the skeleton
of all later vertebrates are already present: The pelvis is so constituted as to allow
walking, the bones of the arms and legs are the same as ours, and the hands and feet
have five digits.
The cranial structure is particularly interesting. The transition from water to
land involves new mechanical stresses because the head is no longer supported in
a dense medium; instead, it is cantilevered at the end of the body. In fish, suspension
in an aquatic medium means the absence of vertical flexional stresses on the head.
The mechanical factors that intervene in the design of the skull are limited to the
action of the mandible (tractional stress of the masticatory muscles) and to the exis
tence of an upper maxillary support system that absorbs mandibular stresses. Upon
transition to terrestrial life, the effect of suspension of the head, exercised upon the
back of the skull, is added to this mechanical traction and support mechanism.
Mechanical balance is achieved by way of an increasingly economical integration of
the three types of stresses (figure 10).
Weight is now exerted upon a lever that runs from the tip of the muzzle (pros
thion) to the point at which the skull articulates with the backbone (basion). The
skull is kept horizontal by the set of muscles and ligaments that pull on the upper
part of the nape of the neck (external inion), following an inion-basion lever arm
that counterbalances the effect of weight. The reconciliation of mandibular and sus
pensional stresses is a thread that runs through the entire cranial evolution ofall ver
tebrates, including humans. Dentition and posture are closely linked from the outset.
Paleontologists were quick to realize that vertical posture and a short face were the
essential characteristics of the human being, but the functional link that explains
these two characteristics has not as yet been clearly identified. That is why I consider
it essential to go back to the origins of the vertebrates.
The amphibian skull supplies only a sketchy oudine of a solution, but it is a
highly Significant one. The earliest amphibian cranium is still very close to that of a
fish (figures 11 and 12). Nevertheless, the shoulder is already detached and the iniac
suspension has become effective. Crawling on the ground imposes a curious con
straint in that the mandible has not sufficient room for grasping; in species where
the limbs do not yet raise the head from the ground the upper jaw is raised together
Brain and Hand 43
1L
10. Mechanical construction ofa vertebrate's skull. I: The skull is divided by a quadrila
teralfigure into afacial and cerebral half along the line C'-C" '. The center is situated
behind the last of the teeth halfway along the line P-B (prosthion-basion). The vertebral
column is articulated upon the basion andprovides the main supportfor the skull. The
cervical ligament is inserted in the external inion I andprovides a means offlexible sus
pension. The temporal and masseter muscles are hooked to the ascendingpart ofthe man
dible, with C" as thefront boundary. II: The line E-Cforms the basefor the absorption of
pressures on the teeth, the roots ofthe upper canines barely touching this line. The "pair of
compasses" in the center (E-C-O represents the mechanical stresses that determine the
development ofthe skull. In the case shown (a carnivore ofthe early Cenozoic era), the
entire convexity ofthe skull is mechanically locked. The symphisian (P-D-O andjugal
(P-C' " -0 "compasses" represent the stresses imposed by the lower tooth row. Theyplay an
important role in the constitution ofthe lines ofresistance ofthe base of the skull and the
base i-B. In the case shown, all the angles equal 120 degrees. Equiangularity is an archaic
trait; in more highly evolvedforms the opposing angles correspond to one another.
c'
12
13
c'
11-14. Stagesfrom swimming to quadrupedal offthe-ground locomotion infish, amphibi

ans, and reptiles during the Paleozoic era. Figure 11: Fish (Rhizodopsis) of the Carbonifer
ousPeriod. The structure is square; there are no suspension pOints. Mechanical stresses are
confined to mandibularpressures. Figure 12: Amphibian (Eogyrinus) ofthe Carboniferous
Period. The head is still connected with the scapular ossature and has very limited mobility,
but the structure is more elongated. Figure 13: Reptile (Seymouria) ofthe PermianPeriod.
Cervical mobility is morepronounced (i-B base still very short). The mandibular height is
reduced; the tootb row does not extendfartber back tban tbe center. Thisfunctional type is
close to tbat ofthepresent-day crocodile. Figure 14: Theromorpb reptile (Jonkeria) oftbe
Permian Period. Locomotion on limbs raisedfrom the ground has been acquired, and the
skull bas undergone many changes. The base J-B bas lengthened toform the lever arm
requiredfor suspension from tbe top oftbe vertebral column. The teetb are still of identical
shape but show differences in size that represent thefirst stage ofheterodonty.
Brain and Hand 45
with the entire calvarium,6 like the lid of a box. This transitional solution involves
iniac traction and promotes the head's mobility upon the trunk.
Hold your chin steady, open your mouth, and feel the muscles at the nape of
your neck come into play. Now you can imagine the mechanical state of the first
amphibians and the role it might have played, together with the evolution of the fore
limbs, in separating the shoulder and forming the neck. Indeed this structure was
soon to be left behind: Before the end of the Paleozoic era, the saurian solution, with
its much simpler mechanical balance, had already replaced it among the amphibians
themselves.
Sauromorphism
If we look for forms that illustrate steps in the evolution of mobility and an
increasingly rich and complex existence, the next stage is that of the "lizard," still tied
down to the ground by crawling but completely freed from the respiratory problems
of amphibians (figure 13). The saurian solution already existed in the Permian
period before the beginning of the Mesozoic era more than two hundred million
years ago. The sauromorphs were the first vertebrates completely to resolve the
problems of mechanical balance in a land environment.
Their vertebral column is markedly convex, its function in the vertical direc
tion being predominant over the lateral: It is no longer a bar whose lateral flexibility
controls locomotion through the effect of muscles that cause the body's axis to undu
late, but essentially a beam that serves as a base for the head and limbs. The latter
are still bent but capable of raising the body above the ground during locomotion
and the processes of capturing and swallowing. While it did not amount to complete
freedom from pure crawling, saurian quadrupedal locomotion determined certain
changes in the skull, as well as entailed considerable mobility of the shoulder and
the definitive separation of the head which now moved at the end of a real neck.
The sauromorph skull comprises the same elements as those of earlier ver
tebrates and indeed oflater ones up to our own time. The cranium in cylindroconical
section forms a kind of shell; the teeth are inserted along the edges in front, while
at the back the external inion marks the junction with the braincase. The latter con
tains the brain and is articulated through the basion with the backbone; it is sus
pended from its top and sides by bony bridges inside the cranial vault. It is important
to note that the volume of the cranial vault is not determined by the brain but by the
mechanical stresses of mandibular traction and suspension of the head. The position
of the brain, on the other hand, is determined by the basion because the end of the
vertebral axis coincides both with the extremity of the spinal cord and with the point
at which the skull is pivoted upon the body, while its volume is immaterial provided
it does not exceed that of the structure itself. This explains the fact that from the fish
to the dog, the ratio between the volumes of the face and of the cranial vault varies
but little (the proportions being determined by the tooth row-to-muscle ratio of the
mandible), whereas the volume of the brain increases considerably. The sauro
morph's braincase is thus suspended inside the cranium, and there is still a long way
to go before the braincase and a mechanically constrained cranial vault coincide
exactly.
Besides the cranium the land vertebrate's skull comprises the mandible and
the hyoid skeleton. Both of these are remnants of the gill mechanism of primitive
fish, the mandible from earliest times, the hyoid arch from the moment of the estab
lishment of aerial respiration. The hyoid skeleton is very important because it serves
as a bony attachment for the muscles that lower the jaw and move the tongue. The
amphibians, and especially the early reptiles, were the first to possess a structural
mechanism whose role in capturing, mastication, and deglutition via the mandible,
the tongue, and the pharynx would, as we shall presently see, culminate in the con
scious phonation of human speech.
The mechanical properties of the sauromorph reptile's cranial apparatus are
very striking. Basio-iniac suspension imposes a constant stress except when the ani
mal is at rest upon the ground. The cervical vertebrae have lengthened, and the base
of the skull, having become broader, serves as insertion for muscles that control
movement in all directions. A robust ligament attached to the occiput and the ver
tebrae raises the head elastically. The musculature of the mandible is powerful, cre
ating strong traction stresses that condition the proportions of the tooth row and
cranium. Thus a law of proportions, which will remain in force for all vertebrates
including humans, becomes apparent for the first time: The distance between pros
thion and basion (the front and back of the skull) is divided into two equal halves,
one dental and the other cerebral. The halfway mark between the prosthion and the
basion therefore corresponds to the last tubercle of the last tooth, and constitutes
the geometrical center of the cranial structure. Exceptions occur in certain types of
skull, for instance, in ruminants where the dental cranium is longer than the cerebral
one; the structural center has doubled as if an additional strip had been inserted
between the skull's two halves.
Thus the sauromorph condition represents the earliest stage of the basic struc
ture of land vertebrates. If we consider the extent to which the mechanism of the
Brain and Hand 47
human body remains subject to the same constraints, we realize that most of the jour
ney is already done: The vertebral axis acts as the main beam of the body's edifice,
the limbs have separate identities in a skeleton of definitive design, the extremities
have their five digits, the skull, suspended upon the basion, is raised by muscles and
ligaments attached to the inion, the tooth row controls the volume of the cranium
and its dimensions are also conditioned by the complex mechanism of the posterior
cranium. The full set of interactions is already in place. Only the brain, modest tenant
of the cranial cavity, plays a mechanically passive role. The apparatus that it will pres
entlyanimate is there at its disposal, but its role in the evolution of forms is not imme
diate or direct, making itself no doubt felt in the Darwinian selection of the fittest
forms but not, so far as we can see, providing any mechanical impetus. It is in this
sense that I regard the development of the brain as an element incidental to evo
lution in general. This in no way detracts from the well-established truth of the ner
vous system's evolution toward increasingly complex structures. Between the
evolution of the brain and that of the body there has been a dialogue from which
both sides have benefited. Evolution can of course be viewed as the triumph of the
brain, but it is a triumph subordinated to certain overriding mechanical realities. In
the progression of the brain and the body, at every stage the former is but a chapter
in the story of the latter's advances. We cannot cite a single example of a living animal
whose nervous system preceded the evolution of the body but there are many fos
sils to demonstrate the brain's step-by-step development within a frame acquired
long before.
Tberomorphism
Toward the end of the Permian period, before the end of the Paleozoic era, an
event of capital importance took place: Reptiles achieved quadrupedal locomotion,
and their limbs took on the appearance of those of the dog or elephant, that is to say,
of pillars carrying the body high above the ground. Conjointly with this, the cervical
vertebrae lengthened, and the neck became capable of moving the head within a rel
atively wide field. Once again, the advance was a step toward increased mobility, the
expansion of the operational field, and the occupation of greater space. That any
known species, or possibly even any known order, forms part of the human gene
alogical tree is uncertain and indeed unlikely. But the general tendency of all living
species to expand their sphere of activity inevitably passes through the same stages,
and it would not be difficult to describe comparable evolutionary stages in the world
of the invertebrates, which has no genealogical connection with humans whatever.
The theromorph stage is a major one from the double point of view of the evo
lution of the hand and that of the skull. Its development has been continual from the
end of the Paleozoic era to this day and encompasses not only a great number of rep
tiles now extinct but also the totality of mammals, both fossil and living, with the sole
exception of the anthropoid apes. For the sake of greater clarity we shall consider
the theromorphism of reptiles before that of quadrupedal mammals.
Tberomorpb Reptiles
The end of the Paleozoic and the beginning of the Mesozoic eras, between 200
and 150 million years ago, were the time ofthe emergence and development of ther
omorph reptiles (figure 14). They included no dinosaurian giants, the largest among
them being not much bigger than a wild boar, but their eVidence, preceding the ear
liest mammals by fiftY million years, is impressive. Their general appearance is one
with which the mammals have familiarized us: Their vertical limbs rest upon the tips
of their digits like the pig's or open out flat like those of the badger, whom they gen
erally rather resemble, so that it is easier to imagine them furry than scaly.
The most striking characteristic is their skull (figures 1 5 and 16). In a number
of them the general outline is that of a carnivorous mammal (figures 17 and 18): The
back of the cranium is powerfully constructed, a thick temporal arch suggests the
zygomatic arch of the mammals, the mandible resembles a dog's. Still more sur
prising are the teeth. Fish, amphibians, and reptiles had until then possessed-as
they generally still do-a dentition of the conodont and homodont type; that is to
say, their teeth were simple, conical, and all approximately identical with each other.
Theromorph reptiles also have conodont teeth, but their teeth are of different pro
portions, forming three groups like our incisors, canines, and molars. This differ
entiation suggests an elaborate mode of capturing, breaking up, and masticating
food, which is a characteristic of the higher vertebrates. The head's acquisition of an
appreciable field of movement is thus matched by an equally pronounced technical
specialization of the teeth. This fact might appear to represent a simple juxtaposition
15-18. Parallellism offunctional evolution ofthe skull oftheriodont reptiles (figures 15

and 16) and ofthe earliest carnivora (figures 17 and 18). Figure 15: Scylosaurus, Permian
Period, late Paleozoic Era. Figure 16: Cynognathus, TriassicPeriod, early Mesozoic era.
Figures 1 7 and 18: Vulpavus and Limnocyon, Eocene epoch, early Cenozoic era. Despite
p
the enormous time difference between the two zoological groups, their mechanical charac
teristics resemble each other because thejunctions are identical. Note, in particular, the
elongation of the tooth rows and their specialization into incisors, canines, premolars, and
molars. All angles are still ofthe same width. The shape oftbe skull is determined bypurely
mechanicalfactors, and tbe brain occupies only a smallpart ofthe cranium, espeCially in
tbe reptiles.
of progressive characteristics, but in reality the structure of the skull reveals a pro
found relationship between heterodonty and postural changes.
The skull obeys the fundamental law of equal division between the dental and
cerebral parts, but the length of the basilo-iniac lever has reached its maximum and
the back of the skull forms a wide area of insertion whose bony reinforcements abut
on the mandibular jOint, giving maximum resistance to the effects of forces exerted
by the mandible. The maxillodental apparatus has acquired a complex mechanical
structure that divides the lines of force between the front teeth (used to seize food)
and the cheek teeth (used to crush it). The roots of the canines at the front of the
head form the structure of the muzzle, and their alignment when the mouth opens
has repercussions on the whole architecture of the back of the skull. The geometrical
structure of the lower species has been succeeded by a complex mechanism, like
wise consistent in all its parts but so highly developed that the same principles of
design will eventually apply, with the necessary adaptation, to the human skull.
Reviewing the evolutionary development thus far, we see that crossopterygians
developed during the Devonian and Carboniferous periods, that the origins of
amphibians date back to the same time, and that the first sauromorphs originated in
the Permian period, as did the first theromorph reptiles. Thus the problem of the
evolution of the higher vertebrates' body structure was raised and resolved between
300 and 200 millions of years before our time. By the end of the Mesozoic era there
was practically nothing more to add: Yet mammals proper still loomed very far ahead
in the future. There is surely a parallel to be drawn between this situation and the
precocity with which the anthropoid apes freed their hand and achieved erect pos
ture long before their brain had reached the level of ours today. This supports the
hypothesis I have already defended, namely that the development of the nervous sys
tem follows in the wake of that of the body structure. Theriodont reptiles had the
bodies of carnivorous mammals, but their brain was still no larger than a fountain
pen cap suspended inside an edifice whose entire inner space would be filled, two
hundred million years later, by the brain of a dog.
Quadrupedal Mammals
In the essential aspects of their bodily structure, quadrupedal mammals do not
differ from theromorph reptiles. Indeed there can be little doubt that the latter were
the source from which they developed in a real new beginning. The first forms were
lowly creatures of the middle of the Mesozoic era, which took some hundred million
years to give rise to the flood tide of mammals in the Cenozoic era.
Brain and Hand 51
Walking and Grasping
If, leaving zoological systematics aside, we consider only the dynamic behavior
of mammals, we observe two major trends: In some mammals the hand plays a part
(which may be more or less important) in the operations that take place within the
anterior field of responsiveness, while in others the head alone is involved. This cre
ates a division between mammals that are exclusively walkers and those that are, at
least temporarily, graspers. These two functional groups correspond to a very far
reaching separation of anatomical and behavioral characteristics-a separation into
two worlds bound for different destinations, or, to put it differently, two separate
responses to a fundamental choice.
Walking mammals (figures 1 9 to 21) are herbivores. Their extremities are nar
rowly specialized for walking, and the architecture of their skull is common to all
forms. Many of them have organs peculiar to their species and derived from different
anatomical facial areas: the frontal horns of hollow-horned ruminants, deer, and
giraffes; the epidermal nasal horns of the rhinoceros; tusks; the canines and incisors
of the hippopotamus; the canines of Suidae (wild boar, warthog, pig deer), Tragu
lidae (musk deer), camels, and walruses; the incisors of elephants; the elephant's and
the tapir's trunk-shaped nasal appendages; the extensible lips of sirenians and
numerous herbivores.
Grasping mammals are omnivores or carnivores. Their extremities are
equipped with four or five functional digits, their forelimb is capable of grasping;
many can sit and so free their hands; their skull has the same architecture as ther
omorph reptiles, gradually modified by postural development; lastly, they have no
particular facial appendages. The exceptions are few in number but very character
istic, such as the elephant (figure 21) which is herbivorous but possesses a regular
"hand," and the dog (figures 22 to 24) which is carnivorous but has limbs specialized
for walking. In both cases the design of the skull follows the functional type of the
hand. The elephant is one of the rare herbivores to possess a tooth row of medium
length; the Canidae in general and the dog in particular are alone among the car
nivores in having a long tooth row. The elephant's skull is short and its design
unique, as indeed is the animal itself, being a "facial grasper." The dog's skull hardly
differs from that of herbivorous quadrupeds.
The most striking case is that of "rodents," which are divided into two groups,
one completely herbivorous (such as the hare) and with no prehensile capacity
whatever, the other omnivorous (such as the rat); in the latter, seated posture and
grasping play an important role.
Thus the study of mammals raises from the outset the problems of the hand
and the face and of the posture when grasping. In reality the three problems form
a single one, which has a bearing upon the design of the human body. Because their
history is so instructive, we shall briefly consider the walking theromorphs before
leaving them behind on the path assigned to them by evolution-a dead-end road
from the point of view of human development.
In the Eocene epoch, the first of the Tertiary period, some fifty or sixty million
years ago, there emerged a large number of mammals that are regarded as the ances
tor of orders still living today. Of modest size, like rabbits or sheep, they had widely
generalized characteristics-five digits at the extremities, rather unspecialized
crushing teeth, and a fairly uniform low and elongated shape. The separation into
graspers and walkers had already taken place, probably a long time earlier. Although
no true felines, true canids, true horses, nor rhinoceroses existed as yet, examination
of skeletons shows that these mammals were separated into the theromorphs' two
principal groups, and even the group of primates is already differentiated.
Walking mamnials, both fossil and modern, are characterized by their long
tooth row suitable for processing leafy plants. There is little doubt that at the origin
of this adaptation there were forms with a normal tooth row ending halfway between
prosthion and basion, the skull of walking mammals being constructed around a
geometrical center to which a second center has been added at the back of the
molars. The cranial appendages-horns or antlers-are integrated within the gen
eral mechanical system in accordance with designs that vary from one species to
another but always remain extraordinarily consistent. It is not the fashion today to
praise the ingenuity of nature, but when we analyze the mechanical solutions
reflected in the skulls of the horse, the deer, the camel, or the rhinoceros, we cannot
help being surprised by the way in which the same basic design provides answers
to so many dissimilar demands. The structure of the skull of graspirig mammals
abounds in astOnishing solutions in the accommodation of the brain and the canines,
19-21. Typical skulls of walking mammals with cranial appendages. In the stag (figure
19) a second center (C2) is established as a result ofa herbivorous diet, whichproduces an
elongatedjugal tooth row. Note the corresponding angles of the incisors (140 degrees) and
the molars (115 degrees) and the manner in which the lines ofsupport ofthe antlers
(Cl-X) have been borrowed as linesfor the absorption ofmandibularpresmres. tbe brain
occupies all the available space. tbe single-horned rhinoceros (figure 20) hasjugal teeth
only; an interestingphenomenon is that in contrast to the stag, it has horns that serve as
lines ofabsorption ofmandibularpresmres (E-C). tbe elephant (figure 22) also has no
canines and absorption is oriented toward the base of the tusks and ofthe trunk; thisfact
accountsfor the highly aberrant construction ofthe cranium.
Brain and Hand 53
IE:
,
"
C10 C '''!l.
24
22-24. Expansion ofthe brain in carnivores. Hyena (figure 22), setter dog (figure 23),
Pomeranian dog (figure 24). These three examples sbow that cerebral expansion is a sec
ondary phenomenon ascribable to medJanical stresses. The hyena's brain is minuscule,
and tbe empty space between it and the shell of the cranium isfilled with sinuses. In a dog
ofaverage size (figure 23) the brain almostfills the skull, with a large sinus occupying the
Brain and Hand 55
but it does not have to cope with the same problems as that of the walkers, where
there must be a compromise between a gigantic tooth row and the whole facial appa
ratus from which the skull has not yet been freed by the hand. In walking mammals,
where everything is concentrated in the cranial edifice, the variety and subtlety of
highly developed technical operations is reflected in great complexity of design.
In the graspers complexity is shared between the face and the hand. The gen
eral framework of the apparatus remains relatively simple. The five-digit hand, inher
ited from the amphibians of the Paleozoic era, has not undergone profound
elaboration like that of the ox or the horse. The shoulder maintains its lateral mobil
ity-the radius and cuneiform, instead of fusing with other bones, develop possi
bilities of supination; the skeleton as a whole develops toward greater flexibility of
movement. The cranial design of theromorph graspers, for the most part carnivores
or rodents, is balanced in a very simple manner: The law of division between cere
bral and dental cranium remains constant. Their organization, in the most highly
developed species, has reached the highest point compatible with quadrupedal
locomotion; in forms such as the beaver, the rat, or the raccoon the level of manip
ulative activity is very high.
Pithecomorphism
The zoological ladder as established by zoologists reflects not only clear-cut
differences between groups of animals but also links between them so that a little
of the quadruped can be recognized in the monkey and a little of the monkey in the
human. This approach, as we have seen in chapter 1, led to the evolutionary ideas
predating the birth of paleontology according to which the monkeys were a mor
phological halfway house between ourselves and the theropods. From the functional
point of view, four-handed animals as a whole constitute a very distinct group, as far
removed from quadrupeds as from bipeds, based on a unique postural apparatus
that allows alternately for grasping locomotion and for a more or less erect seated
posture. Such temporary freeing of the hand as exists in grasping theromorphs is
similar but functionally not identical. Monkeys and apes in fact are the only mammals
that possess constant grasping ability both during arboreal locomotion and when
frontal space. In tbe Pomeranian tbe cerebal and mecbanicalfactors bave been recon
ciled, and tbe lObole oftbe available space isfilled by tbe brain. The base oftbe skull and
tbePOSition of tbe basion remain uncbanged (quadrupedalposture), but tbefrontalpart
oftbe brain considerably overhangs tbefaCial bloc. Canine evolution illustrates tbe same
phenomena at tbe quadruped level as buman evolution at tbe level of bipeds.
.
manipulating objects while seated. All other tree mammals hang on more or less by
their claws instead of grasping the branches between the fingers and the opposable
thumb. Grasping occurs among rodents and carnivores, but this also is gripping with
claws.
These facts bring into focus the close connection between locomotion and
grasping. The latter depends upon the characteristics of the former. In monkeys both
the front and the hind "hands" are instruments of locomotion, but only the front
hand is a technical instrument. Locomotion using grasping distinguishes monkeys
among primates, just as bipedal locomotion characterizes the apes. Pithecomor
phism is therefore characterized principally by a postural liberation due to four
handed locomotion. The other characteristics, important though they are, are
corollaries.
The link that connects all the primates' characteristics with their locomotory
apparatus hardly needs to be brought out still more clearly. Nonetheless, we might
consider a series consisting of the hand of the colobus monkey, the guenon monkey,
the macaque, and the gorilla in order to realize that the development of increasingly
precise and efficient mechanisms for opposition of the digits corresponds to a form
of locomotion based more and more upon the hand's preeminence over the foot in
grasping operations, to a more and more erect seated posture, to a progressively
shorter tooth row (and face), to more and more complex manual operations, and to
a more and more highly developed brain.
This unity of functional characteristics is exactly reflected in the primates' cra
nial structure (figures 25 to 27). Remember that the fundamental connection
between skull and body skeleton is the basion or front rim of the OCCipital foramen.
Located at the back of the skull in theromorphs and all lower vertebrates, the occip
ital foramen of apes opens obliquely downward. This pOSition is the direct conse
quence of a postural ability that relies on the presence of a vertebral column capable
of adjustment to both a seated and a quadrupedal position. In the series of monkeys
and apes listed earlier, the pOSition of the OCCipital foramen is directly related to the
25-27. Evolution ofthe skull structure ofmonkeys. Colobus (figure 25), baboon (figure
26), orangutan (figure 27). The Colobus monkey, with its reduced thumb, is an "arboreal
quadruped"; 'the baboonpractices quadrupedal locomotion on land; and the orangutan
practices quadrimane locomotion in trees. In all three animals seatedposture is ofconsid
erable importance and is reflected in the position of the occipitalforamen (oblique at the
back ofthe skulO. The most importantfact is that the P-C'-Bframe has shiftedfrom the
convexity to theface. Note, as infigures 25, 26, and 27, the shift ofpoint C' to thepre
frontal bloc. The base ofthe skull becomes gradually integrated in line C'-B and corre-
Brain and Hand 57
sponds directly to the axis of mandibular stresses (figure 25b). As a result ofthis, the brain
(figure 26b) along the entire convexity isfree. It is, however, still constrained by the exter
nal inion (IE) and barred infront by the orbital bloc, which has become the keystone ofthe
facial structure.
degree of erectness in both positions, so the gorilla is as upright in the quadrupedal

position as the colobus monkey is when seated.
In all primates the relationship between the occipital foramen and vertebral
posture, though in itself a banal fact, entails a number of highly important conse
quences for the skull. The prosthion-basion base is conSiderably shortened; that is
to say, the tooth row and face are much shorter than in theromorphs. The basion
inion lever is lower down, and for the first time in the animal kingdom, the cranial
dome is partially freed from the stresses of cranial suspension. The connection
between this mechanical fact and the development of the brain will be seen in the
next chapter. While the cranial dome is thus freed from suspension stresses, the base
of the skull escapes from the traction stresses of the mandibular apparatus, and the
facial unit becomes independent of the cerebral part of the cranium. The facial part
is contained inside a triangle that connects the prosthion with the basion and with
the orbital ridge. This explains the compact osseous mass which, in primates, forms
a "visor" above the face. The disengagement of the cranial dome is thus achieved
from the back of the skull; the prefrontal area in all primates, as in the primitive
anthropoids, is locked in position by the eye sockets (the orbital bloc). In the next
chapter it will be seen how, in anthropoids, further restructuring of the facial edifice
brought about the gradual disappearance of the frontal visor and the frontal expan
sion of the cranial dome.
General Thoughts on Evolution up to the Primates

Whether their beliefs be metaphysical or rationalist, whatever explanations
they may offer, all evolutionists agree that the stream upon which we are borne for
ward is the stream of evolution. Like the giant dinosaur, the lichen, jellyfish, oyster,
and giant turtle are no more than spray from the central jet that gushes human-ward.
Supposing even that one chose to consider the categories of animals ranked behind
humans as representing only one evolutionary track (that leading toward intelli
gence, with others toward different, no less honorable heights), evolution toward
the human state is a fact, and we are entitled to select the links that illustrate it.
. Whether, as in Bergsonian or Teilhardian philosophy, evolution is seen as an
upsurge, a general striving for consciousness that ultimately led to Homo sapiens, or
(what comes to the same thing for the objects involved) as the play of determinism
producing living forms ever more adapted to the exploitation ofmatter, the behavior
of the mass from which the human has emerged remains the same. Beneath the
Brain and Hand 59
superstructure of explanations, the infrastructure of facts is reduced to the same

system.
The living world is characterized by the physical and chemical exploitation of
matter. Two modes of exploitation appear at the two extremes--one involving the
utilization of matter through direct confrontation of the exploited molecule by the
exploiting one, as with viruses, and the other being a hierarchical form of con
sumption that exploits inert matter via a chain of living organisms, as with the human
eating beefat the end of a long series ofeaters and eaten. The second mode is actually
identical with the first in that it ends in a confrontation of molecules inside the eater's
body. But the point is that, for a good billion years or so, certain living beings have
been engaged in a search for conscious contact.
The whole of evolution boils down to this search. All spirituality and all philo
sophical and scientific exploration are the end goal of the same search for contact,
which is governed by the mind. At all levels such contact is achieved through the two
coordinated structures of the body and the nervous system. For many evolutionists-
Teilhard de Chardin for one-the significant fact is the ever-increasing development
of the brain and its associated structures. Since the brain is ultimately the physical
seat of thought, and since it is in this area of evolution that the human being has been
most successful, there are formal grounds for believing that the increasing size and
complexity of the cerebral apparatus exactly reflect the steady progress made by liv
ing matter in its striving for conscious contact. We must recognize too that the body
and the nervous system form a single whole and that to separate them would be arti
ficial and arbitrary. Yet this petitio principii appears to provide only an incomplete
answer to the problems raised by the evidence at hand. The human being undoubt
edly constitutes a whole, but the human body and the manifestations of the human
mind have always been perceived as distinct. Our religions and philosophies have
been fed on this distinction. Whether the brain is the organ or the instrument of
thought makes no difference to the relationship between the body and the subtle
network of fibers that animate it. Materially, evolution is reflected in a double set of
facts: On one hand, the cumulative improvement of cerebral structures and, on the
other, the adaptation of bodily structures in accordance with rules directly related
to the physical constraints of this machine which is the living, moving organism. The
relationship between brain and body is one between the contained and the con
tainer. Every imaginable evolutionary interaction may occur between them, but con
tained and container cannot, by their very nature, be identified with each other.
Proof of this is provided by the historical sequence of the fossil records.
Mechanical systems like those of quadrupedal vertebrates crop up very early, ani-
mated by a very small brain. Once a specific mechanical solution has been reached
by a number of groups, each using its own means to reach it, we observe a gradual
enhancement of the brain and an improvement of the mechanical apparatus by a
series of adaptations in which the brain obviously plays a role, but as a determinant
of advantages in the natural selection of solutions rather than as a factor directly ori
enting physical adaptation. The evolutionary ceiling is reached when the volume of
the brain equals the whole of the space available to it. Each species then enters upon
the stage of its full achievement, which in many cases seems to correspond to a pro
longed standstill. That, at least, is the case with such groups as herbivorous mammals,
whose paths toward further mechanical adjustment appear to be blocked. In other
groups, however, the structure of the body remains capable of revolutionary adap
tations, and paleontologists have long recognized that it is the least specialized
groups that have produced forms with the most advanced cerebral features.
This aspect of evolution accentuates the close connection between the two
respective trends of the nervous system and of mechanical adaptation. In primates,
for example, the four-handed formula corresponds to an extreme specialization of
the body but is based upon the preservation of the pentadactyl limb of primitive ver
tebrates. This adaptation is in principle the same for all four-handed animals, but it
shows considerable internal variation between one species and another in terms of
behavior, active postures, and physical structure. Those whose body structure cor
responds to the greatest freeing of the hand are also those whose skull is capable of
containing the largest brain, for manual liberation and the reduction of stresses
exerted upon the cranial dome are two terms of the same mechanical equation. For
each species a cycle is established between its technical ability (its body) and its abil
ity to organize itself (its brain). Within this cycle, through economy of design, a way
opens up toward increasingly pertinent selective adaptation. Thus the chances of
evolutionary development are the greater, the better the body apparatus lends itself
to changes in behavior through the action of a more developed brain. In this sense
the brain does control evolution, but it remains ineluctably dependent upon the pos
sible range of selective adaptation of the body.
These are the reasons why, in considering evolution, I have chosen to focus
first on the mechanical conditions for development. The volume of verifiable facts
available in this area is not to be scorned. When the same consequences of mechan
ical stresses are found reflected in the same structural principles in a hundred spe
cies, it becomes possible to pinpoint certain conditions without which cerebral
evolution would remain an abstract phenomenon.
3 Archanthropians and Palaeoanthropians
Anthropomorphism
Nomenclatures always embody traces of the past, sometimes to their detri
ment. The nomenclature of human paleontology abounds in such traces; it is a fabric
of concepts which, in the course of time, have gradually become outmoded. Pithe
canthropians, Prehominids, Australopithecinae, are all labels hallowed by tradition
but whose etymology we should beware of accepting uncritically. More venerable
still, the expression "anthropomorphic" presupposes a link between the great apes
and humans. A legacy of the eighteenth century, it is the most questionable term, for
only a being that shares our erect posture and its multiple consequences can be said
to be truly anthropomorphic. Functionally as well as morphologically, anthropoid
apes are pithecomorphs.
The formula for anthropomorphism is in fact different from the formula for
monkeys and applies exclUSively to the anthropoid family. Its fundamental charac
teristic is skeletal adaptation to bipedal locomotion (figure 28). This is reflected in
a distinctive structure of the foot (the toes forming parallel radii, as in walking ver
tebrates), in certain structural details of the tarsus and the leg bones, and especially
in the modified pelvis upon which the full weight of the trunk is balanced. The spine
shows compensatory curves whose resultant is a vertical line. The forelimb is free,
and the hand has the same parts as a monkey's but differs quite appreciably in its
proportions and in what it can do. The head's essential characteristic is that it is bal
anced on top of the vertebral column.
This functional configuration is as different from that of monkeys as the mon
keys' is from that of the theromorphs. Monkeys share with certain theromorphs the
possibility of having a free hand when seated, but their opposable thumb and partly
freed cranial convexity make them radically different from beavers or bears. Anthro-
a
d
28. Hands andfeet ofprimates. (a) Lemur, (b) guenon monkey, (c) chimpanzee, (d)
human. The human hand is notfundamentally differentfrom that of otherprimates. Its
ability to grasp, like theirs, is due to an opposable thumb. Thefoot, however, is radically dif
ferentfrom a monkey's. A primary stage with an opposable big toe is conceivable, but the
two paths must have diverged very early, before the earliest known anthropoid stage.
Archanthropians and Palaeoanthropians 63
poids in turn share their seated posture and opposable thumb with monkeys, but
their bipedalism and the complete freeing of the convexity of the brain make them
so different from pithecomorphs that there is no more reason to bracket them
together than there would be to regard the chimpanzee as a kind ofhighly developed
raccoon.
The Anthropoids' Ancestor

Yet humankind's obsessive interest in the behavior of monkeys persists. A
chimpanzee, were it capable of thought, might feel something similar when it
watched a raccoon open a door or grab a pot of jam. The idea that just one more
touch would suffice to turn a chimpanzee into some kind of not-quite-human is dif
ficult to shed. Paleontology has demonstrated over and over again that no close link
can be established between the chimpanzee and ourselves, forcing us to abandon
the idea of a transitional Anthropopithecus and, a few years ago, to seek our origins
in the depths of the Tertiary period of the Cenozoic era when the great apes as now
understood could not have existed.
Hirzeler's research on Oreopithecus has confirmed the earlier intuitive idea
that apes with humanoid tendencies existed as early as in the Miocene epoch, that
is to say, the middle of the Tertiary period. As will be remembered, the discovery of
an almost complete Oreopithecus skeleton in 1958 produced some sensational head
lines in the world press ("Ten-million-year-oldAdam," etc.). It is hard to say what this
skeleton, sandwiched between two sheets of limestone and exceptionally difficult to
reconstitute, will eventually reveal. The proportions of the body, which can be
judged with a fair degree of certainty, are roughly those of a gibbon, with very long
arms, a very long hand, and relatively short legs. The animal has no tail. It is unlikely
to have been a terricoline one, as a remote ancestor of the anthropoids might be
expected to have been, but rather a tree-dwelling animal specializing in brachiations,
like the gibbon. This feature is of interest for two reasons: On the one hand, the gib
bon is the only monkey that uses bipedal locomotion when on the ground; on the
other hand, while doing so, it swings its arms backward in order to balance itself and
therefore cannot use them when erect. Until more is known, all that Oreopithecus
tells us is that in the middle of the Tertiary period of the Cenozoic era there existed
a primate with a relatively short face and with long arms that may have enabled it
briefly to stand erect.
Thus it might be thought that for thirty million years or so, between the middle
and late Tertiary, creatures resembling the gibbon may have gradually abandoned
tree-dwelling brachiation, have undergone shortening of the arm and modification

of the foot, acquired a vertebral column upon which the skull was balanced, and
achieved all this without going through the quadrupedal stage of modern anthro
poid apes. Such a process is by no means unlikely. It would lead more or less directly
to a creature resemblingAustralopithecus, but paleontological reality often outstrips
paleontological conjecture. So we should not be overhasty in forming a picture of
our true ancestor.
The "Australanthropians"
The discoveries ofDan, Robert Broom, and Leakey show that between the later
Tertiary and the beginning of the Quaternary, Africa was extensively populated by
bipeds who used tools and were much closer to the picture of our ideal ancestor than
any previously discovered "Pithecanthropians." They have been given various
names-Australopithecus, Plesianthropus, Paranthropus, Zinjanthropus-but are
often grouped under the family name ofAustralopithecinae, an inappropriate term
harking back to the still recent past when these bipeds were viewed as superior mon
keys. In this book they are referred to as Australanthropians.
If we ignore the tangle of hypotheses concerning them that have been offered
over the past thirty years and consider only the end results, particularly those
obtained in the past five years,* we find that the picture, although revolutionary, is
a perfectly consistent one.
These bipeds walked upright, had an arm of normal length, and made stereo
typed tools by lightly chipping the ends of pebbles. They were partly carnivorous.
This description, human to the point of banality, bears no relation to monkeys but
is just as applicable to Pithecanthropus as to Neanderthal man. The only important
difference, one of degree rather than substance, is the size of the brain which, inAus
tralopithecus, is incredibly small-small enough to cause some embarrassment to
the anatomist. We shall have occasion to revert to the question of the Australanthro
pian brain; consideration will here be confined to the principal features of the struc
ture of the body and, in particular, of the skull.
With regard to the skeleton, no complete specimen of which has as yet been
found, we possess numerous fragments obtained from a variety ofsites in Tanganyika
and South Africa. The most solidly established facts are that the pelvis and the femur,
the erect skeleton's key elements, do not differ in any fundamental respect from
*
Translator's note: It may be useful to remind the reader that Gesture andSpeech was first pub-
lished in 1964.
those of humans, and that the pelvis is so constituted as to support the abdominal
viscera from below, a fact that offers categorical proof of bipedalism and presup
poses a foot with a sole already well adapted to provide support for long periods.
The cranium suggests precisely the same conclusion because the occipital foramen
is located at the base. There are thus no_grounds for refusing Australopithecus a
place among the anthropoids.
Cranial Structure
The first impreSSion on examining the skull of Plesianthropus or Zinjanthro
pus (figures 30 and 36) is that it is the skull of an anthropoid ape, a gorilla, or a chim
panzee: It has the same very long face, the same visorlike orbital ridge, and the same
lack of a forehead. Closer study reveals enormously powerful development of the
premolars and molars, incisors and canines proportionally weaker than ours but
bearing no relation to those of monkeys, and a small braincase like a gorilla's but a
well-rounded descending nape like ours with the occipital foramen opening down
ward. In some specimens, including the famous OlduvaiZinjanthropus, a bony crest
like the gorilla's surmounts this minuscule box with its human contours, but instead
of rejoining the point of insertion of the cervical ligament, it breaks off, leaving a
wide, rounded area for the nape. No other relatively recent fossil gives such a strange
feeling, almost of embarrassment-an impression of being in the presence of a non
human rather than of a monkey turning into a human. This uneasy feeling is due to
the fact that the Australanthropians are really not so much humans with monkeys'
faces as humans with a braincase that defies humanity. We were prepared to accept
anything except to learn that it all began with the feet!
Close study of the structure of the Australanthropian skull is not an easy task,
for two reasons. The first is the condition of the fossils: Only one Plesianthropian
skull, other than that of Zinjanthrop� could be reconstituted sufficiently to allow
investigation from the mechanical point of view. The second is that the two above
mentioned skulls belong to individuals who were not fully adult, and their form is
therefore not definitive.
Their configuration does, however, reveal a fact of capital importance: With the
occipital foramen being situated below the cranium and not obliquely at its back
(figures 29 to 34), the base line between basion and prosthion is appreciably short
ened, and the size of the front teeth is reduced proportionally to the distance of the
foramen's displacement. In other words, the area lost through the disappearance of
prognathism equals the area gained at the base of the skull through the mechanical
C'
......,:::::::.::::.:.>
30
31
29-34. Evolution of the support structurefor thefront teeth (incisors and canines). Pres
sures developed on thefront teeth are absorbed inside thefacial bloc in the direction ofthe
orbital bloc and the basilar bloc (R). In the gorilla (figure 29) the orbital bloc, keystone of
Archantbropians and Palaeoantbropians 67
consequences of erect posture. To put it yet another way, an upright backbone means
a shorter anterior tooth row.
The postural development of monkeys had the consequence of partially
freeing the back of the skull from mechanical stresses by transferring the entire appa
ratus for the absorption of mandibular stresses to the facial bloc. The facial structure
of the oldest anthropoids is not very different from that of the higher apes, but the
back of the skull is completely disengaged. The convexity has been widened by about
60 degrees, which explains the rounded and very human look ofthe occipital region.
Thus Plesianthropus and Zinjantbropus meet the elementary conditions to
qualify as anthropoids: The facial bloc is a 'triangle constituted by basion, prosthion,
and orbital visor, as in monkeys, but the top angle tends to diminish, narrowing from
100 degrees in the orangutan, 90 degrees in the chimpanzee, and 75 degrees in the
gorilla to 60 degrees in Zinjantbropus, 55 degrees in Palaeoanthropians, and 45
degrees in Homo sapiens. The Australanthropian orbital bar is still locked, as in mon
keys, and the frontal part of the cranium remains very small: This was to be the last
obstacle to the emergence of the modern type. Thus the forward region of the skull
might be a monkey's were it not for the smaller anterior tooth row and, particularly,
the smaller canines in response to the mechanical freeing of the back of the skull;
the bearing length of the dental arch is in balance with the area occupied by the mus
cles of facial expression, especially the temporal lllUscles. The premolars and molars
are enormous, and the space available for the insertion of the temporal muscles in
the small cranial box is inadequate. Along the line at which they meet there is a bony
crest comparable to the gorilla's but restricted by the top of the cranial convexity. We
shall see further on that the situation has not yet lost any of its strangeness, for the
brain housed inside this cranium is no longer a monkey's but that of a toolmaking
the cranium, lies outside the axis ofabsorption, and balance is establishedalong the line
E2, inside the lower edge ofthe orbit and the cheekbones, which areflat andperpendicular
to the axis of the canines. In Zinjanthropus (figure 30) thefaCial structure is ofthe same
type but with narrower angles due to a shorter base, which in turn is due to erectposture.
In Palaeoanthropians (Broken Hill [figure 31J and La Ferrassie [figure 32]), the top ofthe
faCial structure has shifted toward the convexity (C'), and the diminished heaviness ofthe
face is reflected in the shift ofanteriorpressures directly into the orbital bloc. The space
between E1 and E3 isflat and inclined toward theforehead ridge. In Homo sapiens (New
Caledonian [figure 33), Europeanfemale with the third molar missing [figure 34J) the apex
C' has shiftedfarther back, and thefacial overhang means tbat the area ofabsorptionfor
thefront teeth is now in the cheekbones, which have assumed the corresponding angle of
inclination (caninefossa). 17Je orbital area shares the axis E3 with tbe cheekbones, and its
cbaracter as a prefrontal bar is gradually lost.
c'
36
/
,
'
._ ,
,
, ,
... .... ... �'

... ... ..r' 37
� �
35-40. Evolution ofthe support structurefor thejugal teeth. Reduction ofthe dental strnc
!Ure is reflected in a progressive narrowing ofthe angle C'from 75 degrees in the gorilla
to 40 degrees in the Europeanfimale. Balance ofpressures is established at between 90
and 100 degrees, but the manner in which it is achieved variesfrom one species to another.
In the gorilla (figure 35) and Zinjanthropus the axis ofthe roots ofthe molars appears to
be detennined by the anterior system and correspnods to El, the line ofsupport ofthe ca-
Archanthropians and Pa!aeoanthropians 69
being. Every piece of information we receive from early anthropoids forces us to

review our traditional ideas about our origins.
The Archanthropians
The fossils upon which theories had rested for two-thirds of a century were
thus relegated to the background by the Australanthropian revelation. Pithecan
thropus, Sinanthropus, Atlanthropus, the man of Mauer, all of whom had given rise
to innumerable syntheses, were now seen only as intermediate links . Zinjanthropus
conferred upon them a humanity so close to our own as to be almost banal. The
important issues once raised by the Sinanthropians with their knowledge of fire, the
Atlanthropians with their already elaborate tools, the Pithecanthropians with their
femurs almost like those of modern humans were suddenly resolved by the distance
of hundreds of thousands ofyears which the Australanthropians put between the ori
gins of the human being and these Archanthropian witnesses. Although the Archan
thropians still have a great deal to tell us, possibly of a surprising nature, th�re is
practically no possibility of their disproving the fundamental fact that they were
already the inheritors of a very long human past.
Yet their humanness remains disconcerting. Their face is enormous and their
braincase is appreciably smaller than ours. Their forehead is still, in enlarged form,
that of the Australanthropians, barred by a visorlike orbital ridge. Today they are no
longer seen as the half-monkeys we once believed them to have been, but their cra
nial anatomy offers a telling picture of the stages of humanization.
The Pa!aeoanthropians
The links that matter most in a chain are the first and the last. The most impor
tant thing we need to establish is where the long chain of the anthropoids begins and
how it links up with ourselves. It is the Palaeoanthropians, and particularly the Nean-
nine roots. In the Palaeoanthropians (figures 37 and 38) the axis E2 corresponds to the
lateral region of the cheekbones (pyramidal apophysis) so that the anterior support struc
ture (figures 31 and 32) and thejugal support structure are in balance. Since in Homo
sapiens (figures 39 and 40) the support structurefor the canines has shifted to the cheek
bones (figures 33 and 34), the tendency is toward the establishment ofa support area
increasingly detachedfrom tbefranta-orbital bloc and concentrated in tbe area ofthe
cheekbones. Thefemale lacking a back molar shown infigure 40 represents the peak of
cranial evolution achieved to date.
derthalians, that form the link nearest to us. It may be useful to recall here that all
classifications of this kind are somewhat arbitrary. Were we to have access to just
twenty complete fossils between the Zinjanthrope and ourselves, there would be no
question of Archanthropians or Palaeoanthropians but an unbroken progression
from stage 1 to stage 20. Despite variations among contemporary forms we cannot,
unless we insist upon clinging to certain outmoded concepts, find any significant
inconsistencies or duplications in the handful of fossils whose dates are
unchallengeable.
The old Palaeoanthropians are known to us only through a few skulls, most of
them very fragmentary; the only more or less complete ones are those from Stein
heim, Gibraltar, and Saccopastore I. The skull from Broken Hill in Rhodesia is not
precisely dated, but it reflects an archaic state rather similar to that of the early
Palaeoanthropians of Europe. Recent Palaeoanthropians are numerous, and several
complete skeletons are known. Intact skulls, on the other hand, are rare and the
majority have been reconstituted from very large numbers of fragments. Among
them there are types such as that of Skhul, already very close to Homo sapiens. In
Europe the best fossils are those of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, La Ferrassie, and Monte
Circeo.
There is no need, at any rate here, to inquire into the differences between the
structure of the Palaeoanthropian body and our own. Since the problem of more or
less erect posture no longer arises, such an inquiry would have little pOint-and
besides, with the available records it would hardly be feasible. Their cranial struc
ture, on the other hand, is of the greatest interest because it reveals the last stages
in the acquisition of the brain of Homo sapiens. To determine the exact form of the
Palaeoanthropian hand or foot, to discover the small details whose interpretation
may help to build up a hving portrait of Neanderthal man is of course a task of the
greatest interest from the scientific point of view, but it cannot offer a new solution
to the problem, for we know that a humanly constituted body existed long before
the evolution of the brain had been completed.
The Palaeoanthropian Skull

The classic portrait of Neanderthal man shows him with a low, wide skull, a
receding forehead, enormous orbital ridges overhanging large orbits in a massive
face, without pronounced cheekbones, the lips set very high, and the chin nonex
istent (figures 31, 37, and 41). A powerful nape maintains this rude edifice on top of
a thickset body mounted on a pair of broad feet. Give or take a few details around
the forehead or the chin, flatten the skull a little, and this robot portrait will match
every known specimen from the oldest to the most recent.
Unlike the Australanthropian, Neanderthal man is an anthropoid with a large
brain. The discovery of this fact greatly disconcerted the paleontological community
two generations ago. Indeed the volume of the braincase of recent Palaeoanthro
pians is no smaller than that of some races living today. However, as Boule and
R Anthony pointed out long ago, the relative proportions are not the same in Nean
derthal man as in ourselves. The Palaeoanthropian skull is dilated in its OCCipital part,
the forehead remaining narrow and low. This characteristic is self-explanatory if we
consider what has been said about postural evolution from the monkeys to the
humans. When the mixed anatomical system of primates with a seated posture
became established, it was the back of the skull that benefited from the breaking of
the link with the cranial case, but the effect of the transfer of the mandibular structure
into the facial bloc was to bar the forehead behind the orbital bloc. With anthropoids,
whose posture is erect, a considerable amount of space is gained as a result of what
is sometimes rather incorrectly described as the "coiling" of the brain round the
base. In Australanthropians this gain affects principally the occipital region and the
area of the temples. The design of the facial bloc is rather the same as in primates:
The forehead remains barred behind the orbits. Consequently the most important
paleontological problem remains that of the freeing of the forehead in Homo sapi
ens, a phenomenon correlated with a thoroughgoing reshaping of the face in the
course of which the forehead, the cheekbones, and the chin make their first appear
ance. This transformation is most clearly illustrated by Palaeoanthropian fossils.
If we compare the diagram representing, respectively, Zinjanthropus, Broken
Hill man, and La Ferrassie man, we are immediately struck by the progressive reduc
tion in the size of the facial bloc relative to the braincase. It is as though, starting at
the orbits, the face had begun to shrink and to be overthrust by an increasingly dom
inant braincase. This reduction in absolute prognathism is directly reflected in the
facial structure, the apex of which is located in the center of the orbital bloc in Zin
janthropus, at the junction of the orbits with the forehead in Broken Hill man, in the
middle of the forehead in La Ferrassie man, and almost behind the forehead in pres
ent-day man. The same development is attested by the gradual narrowing of the
angle formed by prosthion and basion, which reduces from 60 degrees in Zinjan
thropus to 45 degrees in modern man. It is also supported by the follOWing obser
vation: In the course of anthropoid evolution the supraorbital bloc progressively
72 Technics and l£lnguage
loses its function as the base of the facial structure diminishes in size until it dis
appears altogether, for instance, as may be seen in most females today. In short, it is
as though the brain had come gradually to occupy the anterior territories as these
became free from the mechanical stresses of the face.
One might claim the opposite by saying in more classical fashion that the fron
tal development of the brain determines the progressive reduction in the size of the
face. In my view, however, this puts the cart before the horse by subordinating a
mechanical effect to causes of cerebral growth, which are quite impossible to dem
onstrate. Indeed the contrary is proved by the fact that the most highly developed
Palaeoanthropians with their 1,600 cubic centimeter brains really do look like the
result of a mechanical compromise, the expansion occurring toward the back and
sides of the skull where stresses are nonexistent. If the brain really had the expansive
force it has been thought to possess, there would be no reason why the forehead
should not have developed much earlier, even over jutting orbital arches.
Other factors would seem to be responsible. We should recall that hetero
donty--or diversification of teeth into incisors, canines, premolars, and molars
appeared toward the end of the Paleozoic era at the same time as off-the-ground
quadrupedal posture. Let us recall too that from that moment onward the root of the
canine becomes one of the key elements of facial structure. Even in species such as
the horse, where the canine is almost completely regressed, it remains linked with
the general structure. In monkeys the root of the canine continues to play the same
role irrespective of the size of the crown of the tooth and forms a continuation of
the bony grooves that join the orbital bloc. In other words, the face is constructed
on four pillars (two formed by the first molars and two by the canines), with the key
located inside the supraorbital bloc. This design, as we have seen, is still present in
Australanthropians, but the shortening of the base due to the erect posture means
that the proportions of the root of the canines are appreciably reduced.
The process of adaptation of the cranial edifice continued slowly until the
emergence of the modem human. This development would normally be connected
with a corresponding postural one, as I implied earlier when speaking of a possible
adaptation of spinal curvatures. The principle of erect posture, now attested by
numerous fossils, however, is not in doubt.
The evolutionary process is once more apparent in the close connection
between the gradual shortening of the base supporting the cranial edifice, the dimin
ishing size of the tooth row, and the expansion of the brain, which spreads to those
areas that offer the least resistance (figures 29 to 41). Progressive reduction in the
size of the canine root is very pronounced in all dated Palaeoanthropians. In the case
41. Shortening ofthe skull base and expansion of the brain. Deer (a): In the ordinary
quadruped the base P-B occupies the whole length ofthe skull. Chimpanzee (b), Palaeoan
tbropian (c), Homo sapiens (d): The skull base becomes shorter as a result ofthe reduction
o/the dental arch; the mechanics of thefacial bloc require equal shortening ofP-C and
C-B.
of the La Ferrassie skull the size of the roots is already fairly close to that in races
existing today. Facial development from the Palaeoanthropians to the modern
human might thus be reflected in a steady reduction in the size of the roots of the
front teeth, a process that goes back to the Australanthropians. The consequences of
this regression are expressed in the three most important modifications that char
acterize the face of Homo sapiens: (1) The bone structure joining the front teeth to
the supraorbital visor becomes progressively thinner and the orbital ridge tends to
disappear, (2) the same phenomenon is mirrored in the mandible and the chin area
undergoes thoroughgoing changes culminating in the development of the chin, and
(3) the first molar becomes the base of the facial structure's most important pillar
and the malar bones transfer the main lines of force to behind the supraorbital ridge,
with the result that the cheekbones of the modern human are shaped very differently
from those of Palaeoanthropians.
It is interesting to note that this process is not yet fully completed in certain
primitive races such as Australian aborigines, whose orbital ridge is still fairly large.
It is an even more interesting fact that the brain does not occupy all the space left
available by facial evolution in many individuals of different races and that, as in the
lower mammals, the frontal sinuses form a kind of valve between the container,
mechanically conditioned by the teeth, and its contents, the brain. This offers yet
more proof of the nonexistence of the supposed effects of cerebral expansion.
Thus we see that the Palaeoanthropians were something quite different from
the nontypical and backward branch they have sometimes been thought to repre
sent. Although it cannot be established that all forms were the direct ancestors of
Homo sapiens (an idea that would be equally absurd in the case of Homo sapiens
today, since some of the races that belong to our species will surely disappear with
out ever contributing toward a "Homo postsapiens" of the future), it should be
obvious that by and large they must be seen as the root of the human races of today.
This is still more evident when, in assigning each dated specimen its chronological
place, we note the regular manner in which the Palaeoanthropians appear to have
evolved toward the modern human.
The Spreading ofthe Cortical Fan

We have just traced the long development ofhuman lineage, and have seen that
our descent from the monkey may now be considered highly doubtful. A hypo
thetical two-legged ancestor has to be imagined, this side of the divide separating
pithecomorphs from bipedal primates. Human characteristics cannot in fact be

reduced to those of monkeys because the whole evolution from fishes to the gorilla
shows that the factor of posture is fundamental: Monkeys--all monkeys--are char
acterized by mixed quadrupedal and seated posture and by the adaptation of their
feet to the conditions of life resulting therefrom; anthropoids, on the other hand,
have the fundamental characteristic of mixed bipedal and seated posture, to which
their foot in tum is closely adapted.
This difference in posture might be thought of secondary importance were it
not the source of essential differences between the two lineages of beings whose
hands are equipped with an opposable thumb. Anthropoids owe to their erect pos
ture not only the fact of having their hands free during locomotion but also that of
having a short face with small canines and a brain freed from the suspension stresses
of the bony case. Following a series of successive liberations, freeing of the brain had
already been achieved in the oldest remains, Australopithecus who, as we have seen,
,
would be more apdy named "Australanthropus." However far back we look for traces
of ape-humans, we come up with nothing but humans. But how extraordinary are
the oldest among them! From the feet to the base of the neck, there are no major
differences between them and the peoples of today; the body is already completely
human. It is surmounted by a head that is not the head of a monkey but one that has
the face of a not-yet-humanized being. The facial bloc, very large and flat, without a
forehead, is attached to a small, rounded cranial shell equipped with a bony ridge
to which the muscles of a gigantic jaw are connected. The brain that activates this
creature (so much more disconcerting than the banalAnthropopithecus dreamed up
by Gabriel de Mortillet) is larger than a gorilla's, though tiny in comparison with
ours, and weighs only half as much. Intelligence is not only a matter of brain volume
but also of the organization of the brain's various parts: A very large monkey brain,
equal in size to a human's, would still function only as a monkey's brain, more
efficiendy than a gorilla's because of the greater number of nerve cells it would con
tain but certainly not like a human's. Australopithecus did not have a monkey's brain
but-and it may be even more difficult to come to terms with this fact-a human
brain to match his extraordinary primitive face.
A detailed study of the brain of fossil man is not feasible, for obvious reasons,
but casts of his cranial cavity give us a picture of the brain enveloped in the meninges,
a picture clear enough to establish the proportions of the various parts and to visu
alize the main circumvolutions. Thus a paleontology of the brain is in some measure
possible, and has indeed been practiced repeatedly during the past half-century.
Many works have been written that tell us about the workings of the brains of
all kinds of animals, including ours. Our knowledge is as yet very imperfect, but we
do possess extensive and consistent data on the brain's surface area, the easiest to
explore by surgical or electrical means. This area includes much of the cerebral cor
tex, where the most important phenomena of responsiveness take place, and it is
precisely a picture of the cerebral cortex that endocranial casts of fossils supply.
Although there is no hope of establishing a complete picture of Australanthropian
mental activity, with the help of casts and of modern physiology we can reconstitute
a fairly consistent picture of what their cerebral apparatus could do.
We have already seen that the most important effect of the anthropoid skull's
being suspended at the top of a completely erect vertebral column was to isolate the
face mechanically from the back of the skull, a fact that resulted in lowering the iniac
bloc and determined the orientation of the basilar clivus. The most obvious con
sequence of this is the pronounced "coiling" of the brain, which becomes L-shaped.
This incurvation of the cerebral floor is geometrically conceivable only in conjunc
tion with a considerable enlargement of the circumference of the convexity of the
brain; in other words, the convexity opens up literally like a fan. This process does
not take place in a uniform manner (figure 42): The forehead is constricted in its pro
portions by the facial bloc, of which it forms the base; the prefrontal ridge does not
disappear until the emergence of Homo sapiens. The nape too is proportioned by
mechanical suspension stresses so that the increase in circumference is greater in
the center than at the extremities. The gain is equally great in the transversal direc
tion; from Australopithecus onward, erect posture has as its corollary an enlargement
of the area of the cranial convexity in the middle frontal-temporal-parietal region.
This process is gradual, and its various stages can be traced from the monkey to each
of the anthropoid forms. Up to the Palaeoanthropians the gain is constant and con
siderable, but from the Palaeoanthropians to Homo sapiens it appears to be very
slight. Since the cranial convexity corresponds in humans to the area actually occu
pied by the brain, we can say with certainty that the clearest manifestation of cerebral
development from the Australanthropians to the Palaeoanthropians is the increase
in the surface area of the cortex in the central frontal and parietal regions.
This fact leads to some critical conclusions. First, it proves that although the
evolution of the human body was completed very early, at the time ofZinjanthropus
that of the brain was only in its beginnings. Second, it shows that if we are looking
for differences between the minds of the great apes and the earliest humans, the
most marked contrasts will be found in the properties of the middle cortex.
'
70
42. Spreading of the corticalfan. In the hyena (a) the convexity of the skull is completely
barred In the other examples, stresses are at their maximum in thefrontal bloc and the
inion bloc (1). In the Pomeranian (b) the freeing ofthe convexity ofthe skull (shown in
black) is achieved exclusively through reduction oftheface and loss ofthe frontal bar, and
this entails loss ofsinuses and ofdental balance. Thefolding ofthe cerehralfloor is very
slight, as is the spreading of the temporal-parietal sector. In the Colobus monkey (c), the
gorilla (d), the Palaeoanthropian (e), and Homo sapiens (f) reduction ofthe base andpro
gressivefolding of tbe floor bave caused tbe middle sector, wbich corresponds to tbe volun
tary motorfunction cortex and to areas ofassociation, to open out more and more.
The Middle Cortex

Many works have been written about the middle cortex of the brain (figure 43)
of animals and humans, and in particular about the cortical areas which, in the higher
mammals and in humans, are situated to either side of the fissure of Rolando. In front
of this fissure are located the pyramidal fibers of projection (area 4), connected with
the motor function of different parts of the body, and behind it (areas 1 , 2, and 3) lie
fibers of sensory afference corresponding to the same parts. With the help of elec
trical exploration methods and neurosurgery it has been been possible to determine
with precision to what part of the body each group of cells relates-forming, as it
were, a neuromotor picture of the physical individual. This picture is an upside
down one, the fibers that concern the motor function of the head and forelimb being
situated near the cranial floor and those related to the feet near the convexity.
It is very important for our purpose to try to trace the development of the neu
romotor system from the quadrupeds onward, an exercise that will bring out some
essential points concerning the relationship between the animal world and
humailkind.
From the simplest system-the invertebrates, in whom the sensorimotor appa
ratus is limited to two chains of ganglions that animate the segments of the body and
an anterior nerve junction where the earliest responsiveness apparatus is orga
nized-the nervous system becomes progressively richer, both through an increase
in the number of connections with the body and through a growing number of pos
sibilities of coordinating the action of these multiple nerve controls from the site of
the brain. As iii the case of an electric or electronic device, this results in a greater
or lesser number ofconnecting wires (neurons) terminating in an integration device
whose possibilities are directly proportional to the number of connections. In
humans the number of within-brain and brain-body connections is around 14
billion.
The cerebral edifice began modestly enough with the lower invertebrates,. in
which each segment of the body lives separately and has only the essential minimum
of connections with the rest of the organism. This fundamental independence is still
considerable in worms. It subsists in vertebrates (a segment of an eel will jump
inside the frying pan, a headless duck will go on running for a few yards), but side
by side with it there will be connections to the cerebral system for all processes
directly or remotely related to activities of responsiveness. The first nervous systems
of vertebrates are still very simple and, as we have seen, occupy but little space inside
the skull. Their refinement (in the sense of an increasingly differentiated and con-
a
· ·
70 85
\�
·
·
·
·
·
e f
43. Brain ofa cat (a), a macaque monkey (b), a chimpanzee (c), Australanthropus (d), Sin
anthropus (e), Neanderthal man (f), Homo sapiens (g). Areas 1, 2, 3: somatomotor region;
area 4: voluntary motorfunction; areas 5, 6, 7, 8, 9: extrapyramidal motor region; areas
41, 42, 43: auditive region; area 44: verbal articulation region. Intracranial casts are not
very accurate in terms of detail, but in terms ofproportions it can be categorically stated
that thefOssil anthropoids are human.
scious use of organs) was the result of integrating devices being added to the existing
system to synthesize sensations and distribute images and responses. From animal
to humans the development proceeded roughly as though one brain were added on
top of another, each new formation bringing about the increasingly subtle cohesion
of all previous ones, which continued to perform their functions. The most recent
formation, which began to gain importance only with the mammals, was the neo
cortex, a device for motor and sensory integration that eventually developed into the
instrument of human intelligence. The functional structure of the cortex or neo
pallium of vertebrates has not yet been defined in detail, and there would be little
point here in going back to its origins. If our purpose is to show the continuity
between the neurological data and what has been said concerning the mechanical
development of the cranial apparatus of vertebrates, it will suffice if we begin with
already developed quadrupedal mammals.
In animals such as the horse, the pig, or the goat-walking quadrupeds whose
anterior field is essentially facial-the sensorimotor cortex is indiVidualized rather
clearly at the end of the fissure of Rolando, the participation of the forelimb being
practically nil in the horse, very slight in the pig, and more developed in the goat.
Exploration of the cortex in all three animals shows a well-differentiated represen
tation of the muzzle in the sensorimotor cortex. The forelimb, on the other hand, is
barely individualized by just a few points corresponding to the anterior surface of
the wrist. These animals' fine senses, their "intelligent" motor function, is therefore
confined to the area surrounding the buccal orifice, and their manual technicity to
some slight possibilities of holding something down or pushing something away
with the forefoot.
In carnivores, where manual participation is already pronounced, the senso
rimotor areas of the cortex are richer in fibers and the representation of different
parts of the body is more subtle. The rear part remains very sketchily represented,
coordination of movements in that area taking place at levels that do not involve con
sciousness, but the face and the two forelimbs are clearly distinct and quite subtly
organized. The cat in particular shows a high degree of separation, which is reflected
in the use it makes of its front paw in a large number of operations. This demon
strates the truth of a general fact that I have already mentioned more than once:
Unlike the walkers, all the graspers--even those a long way from the human end
point of the evolutionary process-possess the basic possibilities for technicity. In
carnivores the technical areas of the cortex are restricted by a very rigid mechanical
apparatus. The cortical "fan" is hardly opened out at all, but what there is may suffice
Archanthropians and Pa!aeoanthropians 81
to make us realize how far down the scale of the animal world the instrument of
human technicity was formed.
In cynomorph monkeys such as the macaque, the cortical fan is well spread out
and the primary sensorimotor triangle (areas 1 to 4) has been enrichedwith an extra
pyramidal premotor zone (area 6) which develops an additional degree of motor
integration. The picture of the corporeal instrument has become extremely detailed.
All parts of the body are distinctly represented in the cortex, in varying proportions
that are revealing of the motor organization of primates. Roughly two-thirds of the
cortical surface are occupied by cells of the face, the hand, and the foot. Almost a
quarter of the total surface is taken up entirely by neurons that control the tongue,
the larynx, the lips, the thumb, and the big toe (figure 44). With the chimpanzee and
the gorilla the situation is practically the same in kind but more developed in degree.
Because the number of cells is greater, each finger is represented separately,
whereas in cynomorphs the four fingers of the palm are integrated with each other.
The situation of the human, so far as the principal motor and premotor zones are
concerned, is not fundamentally different from that of anthropoid apes. At each stage,
evolution constructs a new brain on top of the preceding one. The higher quad
rupeds' motor strip is succeeded by the premotor triangle of the monkeys, and this
in turn is overtaken by new formations.
At the simian stage the situation is already quite remarkable. Anatomical cor
relation has resulted Simultaneously in the achievement of mixed posture (seated,
with quadrupedal locomotion) and the development of the middle part of the cranial
convexity. Unlike the brain of certain flesh-eating animals, that of primates has
reached the limits of its possible development and adheres closely to the cranial con
tours imposed by mechanical requirements. Although this has been at least implicitly
supposed in the past, the expansive force of the brain cannot have acted as the motive
force in the evolution of the skull. The number of nerve cells cannot increase before
the edifice has been enlarged. Even if we regard cerebral expansion and spatial
lmprovement of the skull as a single phenomenon, we have to acknowledge that the
brain followed the general movement but did not generate it.
Monkeys therefore have the brain that corresponds to the state of mechanical
freeing of their cranial convexity, that is, a brain whose sensorimotor cortex is
remarkably wide and allows a considerable degree of control, both separate and
coordinated, of the facial and manual apparatus. No one who has studied the behav
ior of the higher apes can seriously doubt that the reason why they cannot exercise
techniques in the human sense of the term is the equipment of their motor and pre-
44. Corticalpicture of voluntary motorfunction in (a) a macaque monkey (after WooLs-ey)

and (b) a human (after Penfield and Rasmussen). In the monkey note the importance of
the image ofthe hand andfoot, and especially ofthe thumb, as compared to theface. In
the human, note the reduction of thefoot and the tremendous importance ofthe hand and
the organs ofspeech (lowerpart oftheface, tongue, larynx). The macaque's brain is shown
inprofile, the human's in cross section.
motor cortex. Yet, impressive as the experiments in monkey behavior have been,
there is an unbridgeable gap between the action of a monkey using two bamboo rods
to climb on top of a box and grab a banana and the toolmaking action of Zinjan
thropus. The fact that beings as close to us as the chimpanzee should exhibit some
thing in the nature of a dawning elementary technicity is in no way surprising. It is
hardly more extraordinary than the traces of the rhinoceros that can be found in the
tapir, of the beaver in the squirrel, or of the badger in the bear. But the monkey did
not tum into the human any more than the rhinoceros turned into the tapir?
The Hominid Brain

Studies of endocranial casts ofAustralopithecus, Pithecanthropus, Neanderthal
man, and modem man reveal differences in the proportions of various parts. The
differences principally involve the frontal lobes. Apart from differences in volume
and in surface area, practically no variations other than such as might be found
between the brains of different present-day humans are to be seen in the middle and
OCcipital parts of the brain. The increase in the brain's total weight (which more than
doubled from Australopithecus to Homo sapiens) and the greater complexity of the
convolutions that add to the surface area of the cortex do certainly imply a very dif
ferent level of intellectual development at both ends of the evolutionary series, but
they db not a priori imply anything other than humanity. In other words, we find
from the outset that the brain of Zinjanthropus is shaped like the brain of a human,
not of a monkey, but that it is small and rather thickly folded, with proportionally very
small frontal lobes. Having recognized that the difference is one of degree rather
than of structure, we can interpret such facts as we know about the life of the forms
that preceded Homo sapiens within a human perspective. We should not, however,
imagine that our difficulties will be over once the monkey has been put firmly back
in its place and no longer appears as the starting point of a line on which the precise
position of the frontier of humanity is yet to be determined. As we say farewell to the
"missing link," the collection of men that emerges from the available fossil records
must raise doubts as to whether a single definition of "human being" is possible.
In chapter 1 we defined fossil "men" as possessing erect posture, a short face,
a free hand, and tools. The problem we need to resolve now is that of the organi
zation of the cerebral apparatus which distinguishes the human from the monkey in
the exercise of techniques. The discovery of Zinjanthropus has taught us that tech
nicity is present even in the most rudimentary of human forms. Detailed exploration
of the cerebral cortex of the modern human provides the elements for several
hypotheses on this score.
Primitive Motor Function

Like the brain of the higher mammals, the human brain has a primary motor
zone (area 4) above the ascending frontal convolutions along the fissure of Rolando,
a zone inside which groups of neurons controlling the face, the fingers of the hand,
the upper limbs, the trunk, and the lower limbs can be separately identified from the
base to the apex (figures 43 and 44). As in carnivores or monkeys this zone offers an
upside-down picture of the body mechanism of which it is the control panel. The
number of neurons allocated to each part of the body is proportional to the com
plexity of the operations it performs. In modern humans roughly 80 percent of area
4 is assigned to controlling the head and the upper limbs, which means that eight
tenths of the primary motor apparatus are required to control the two poles of the
anterior field. The tongue, lips, larynx, pharynx, and fingers alone account for almost
half of area 4.
While the quantitative differences between this and a monkey's brain are enor
mous, the relative proportions between the areas are almost the same. In monkeys
the facial organs and the hand account for one-half of the motor apparatus. The only
significant difference concerns the big toe, a fact that reflects the difference between
the method of locomotion of tree-dwelling primates and bipeds living on land. The
neural representation of the face and the hand is thus the same in human and mon
key; in other words, their respective brains reflect an activity shared equally between
the facial organs and the forelimb. In the monkey this sharing involves, on the one
hand, coordinated actions of food capture and preparation, attack and defense,
grooming and locomotion (hand), and mastication and deglutition (face), plus a few
hand gestures and some facial mimicry. In the modern human, as we know, the
respective shares are rather different: The hand predominates in coordinated actions
of grasping and preparing food, as well of attack and defense, but is no longer
involved in locomotion. Above all, the hand serves for making things, whereas the
face is the instrument of phonation organization as language.
These facts lead on to a number of general considerations. In terms of the pyra
midal organization of motor function, the solution for the anterior field is the same
in monkey and human. But it is not applied in the same way, and we have yet to
understand why humans use their hands for making and faces for speaking. More
important, all the evidence suggests that the formula for the pyramidal cortex was
Archantbropians and Pa!aeoantbropians 85
the same in Australanthropians, namely that in them (as in the macaque monkey or
in ourselves) hand and face played roles of roughly equal importance and were
mutually coordinated.
Another interesting fact is the contiguity of the respective zones of the face and
the hand in area 4 and their common topographical position. Hand actions are
closely coordinated with those of the anterior organs of the face. In the monkey this
link is primarily related to feeding and the same is, to a lesser extent, true of the
human, but in the latter case coordination between the face and the hand is equally
pronounced in the exercise of sp\=ech. This coordination, which is reflected in the
use of gesture as a commentary to speech, reappears in writing as the transcription
of vocally emitted sounds.
Simians and anthropoids thus possess the same primary motor cortex in which
all parts of the body are clearly represented, representation of the face and the hand
being dominant. The same representation, albeit less clearly marked, is found in the
cat and the dog, but there it is the ultimate integrative device of their brain structure,
which in the monkey is only the penultimate stage. Ifwe destroy the pyramidal motor
area in a cat or dog by surgical means, we find that the operating sequences instilled
by training disappear; the animal loses what it has learned. In the monkey, as we have
seen, a premotor prepyramidal area (area 6), acquired through early development
of the cortical fan, has been added to the front of the primary motor area: It is here,
in area 6, that integration takes place. The role of the pyramidal area is no longer
exclusive. The process is the same as with an electronic apparatus where, proceeding
on the basis of an earlier electronic device, we can increase the number of functions
by adding on further devices. We see how accurate the comparison is when, having
destroyed a monkey's pyramidal cortex, we find that its learning memory has sur
vived. The animal has retained what it has learned and is capable of adding to it. How
ever, the destruction of the premotor cortex (area 6), which constitutes the final
stage, does entail loss of what has been learned and serious difficulty in acquiring
new operating sequences. Thus the spreading of the cortical fan certainly signifies
an improvement of the neuronal apparatus, for a monkey's capacity for integration
is richer than a cat's or a dog's.
Human Motor Function

The irremediable lack of direct observations of fossil anthropoid brains
obliges us to pursue the argument in terms of the modern human. It will be seen
later on that a verification can be carried out with the help of products offossil man's
industry. Furthermore, since the organic unity of anthropoids has gradually come to
be an accepted fact, facts observed in the modern human must be considered appli
cable to reconstructions of the past. We are not trying to connect two different zoo
logical groups by looking for transitional stages but rather to compare different
chronological states of the same structure within the same zoological group, the
anthropoids. In preparation for what will be discussed in chapter 4, let us add that
we are concerned strictly with the middle area of the cortex, for the moment exclud
ing the frontal parts. The point at issue is therefore to demonstrate that technicity (to
the exclusion of other forms of intelligence, which will be considered later) was an
early anthropoid characteristic and that its character remained the same throughout
the family as a whole.
The motor part of the cortical apparatus of modern man (figure 43) consists
of the primary motor area (area 4) in front ofwhich, as in monkeys, lies the premotor
area (area 6). Still further in front is an additional area (area 8), whose structure is
midway between that of the premotor area and that of the frontal lobes, which have
no motor neurons. The fan has thus been spread to expose a new segment. Since the
quadrupeds, the integrative motor apparatus, which now comprises three stages, has
steadily expanded toward the front: Area 8 orients motor integration toward the non
motor frontal areas, which are very small in monkeys and whose development was
still far from complete in fossil man.
Around the motor "fan" are grouped various devices that are afferent to sen
sory impressions and ensure that such impressions are integrated in the neuromotor
apparatus. Visual impressions have their own zone (areas 17 to 19) in the OCcipital
lobes; somatic impressions (areas 1 , 2, and 3) occupy a strip parallel to area 4 at the
rear edge of the fissure of Rolando, its division corresponding to those of area 4. The
temporal region (areas 41 to 44), which is the center of the "coiling" movement of
the anthropoid brain and where for that reason the most important changes have
occurred, is of particular interest in that since Broca, its study has been related to the
problem of language.
The Language ofAnthropoids

The problem of language will be discussed in several of the later chapters; here
we will endeavor to obtain a certain amount of information-which we shall later
check against the facts-from data supplied by the anatomy of the brain, incomplete
though these data are.
The cortex of the junction between the frontal, parietal, and temporal regions
is composed of the lower parts of the motor and premotor areas (areas 4 and 6)
of those motor areas that concern the face and the hand (figure 45). In the forward
part the premotor area adjoins two zones of association. One zone lies at the foot of
the second frontal convolution (bottom of area 9) and relates to the motor centers
of the hand, while the other is situated at the foot of the third frontal convolution
(area 44) and comes into contact with the motor centers of the face.
At the back the motor strip controlling the face and hand is contiguous with
the corresponding parts of the somatic areas (1 and 2). Lower down and toward the
back it touches upon the areas of auditive association (41 and 42), and still further
back it is indirectly connected with the area of visual association (19). Since Broca's
discovery in 1861 that lesions of the lower part of the third frontal convolution deter-
a
b
,
\
,
,
,
I
---- .... ... ... -",
c
d
45. Speech in anthropoids. The area ofvoluntary motorjunction is shaded; the dots indi
cate P. Marie's quadrilateral area ofaphasiC lesions-anarthria (1), agraphia (2), word
deafness (3), word blindness (4)-in, respectively, Homo sapiens (a), a chimpanzee (b),
Australanthropus (c), and Sinanthropus (d). It will be seen that the monkey's hrain has no
sectors corresponding to areas of integration exceptfor auditive and visual recognition. In
Australanthropus and the Archanthropian, on the other hand, thepresence of centers of
speech integration is topographicallypossible.
mine loss of the power of speech, area 44 has been known as the speech center. Cor
tical topography has made great strides in the past hundred years, and the problem
of speech is now more broadly based than could be imagined by a neurological sci
ence still impregnated with phrenological ideas about the loci of the brain.s
The apparatus we have described forms the cortical framework for the modern
human's speech. Neurological experiments have demonstrated that the zones of
association that surround the motor cortex of the face and hand are jointly involved
in producing phonetic or graphic symbols. As Broca discovered, disorders of area
44, which adjoins the pyramidal cortex of the face, cause aphasia or inability to form
coherent phonetic symbols, while lesions of the auditive areas (41 and 42) cause
word deafness, or inability to identify the words one hears. The two zones that frame
the motor cells of the face--one being transitional to the prefrontal regiOns and the
other to the auditory system-are therefore directly involved in vocal language. But
it is perhaps more important for our purpose to identify the nature of the speech
disorders that involve the function of writing: Lesions of the lower part of the second
frontal convolution, which adjoins the motor areas of the hand, determine agraphia,
or inability to write, while lesions of the preoccipital visual area (19) cause alexia,
or inability to read. It goes without saying that these deficiencies are not concerned
with the ability to see and hear or to emit sounds but, rather, with lack of the intel
lectual capacity to express or comprehend vocal or graphic symbols.
These elements already offer a rudimentary paleontological view of language.
First of all, a distinction has to be drawn between the physical possibility of orga
nizing expressive sounds or gestures and the intellectual possibility of inventing
expressive symbols transformable into sounds or gestures. Symbols in turn must be
divided into those specifically linked with operations involving the manual field and
those not involving any manual operations.
If we consider the cortex of the higher apes, we see that areas 41 to 44 are
barely there at all. Instead of encompassing the cortical series 4, 6, 8, and 9 to 44, the
neuronal system practically stops at stage 8; this means that the equipment for artic
ulation and gesticulation is subhuman. The ability to hear symbols is also very largely
lacking. The middle cortex of the great apes, closely confined as it is between the
frontal and iniac blocs, is physically incapable of constituting a language.
With the disappearance of the iniac bar, however, the cortical fan can open out
wide, creating a topographical situation of benefit to the middle cortex as a whole.
Until the emergence of Homo sapiens the expansion of the prefrontal region
remains very limited, but the presence of verbal and gestural association areas is per
fectly conceivable from the Australanthropians onward. Bipedal posture and a free
hand automatically imply a brain equipped for speech and, consequently, a brain box
with a good deal of free space beneath its central convexity. We must, I believe, infer
that the physical potential for organizing sounds and gestures was already present
in the first known anthropoid. The question of the intellectual level of the language
ofZinjanthropus is one we shall revert to in another context later on, but the virtual
existence of language in the earliest hominids cannot be doubted.
Everything thus suggests that the opening out of the cortical fan in the higher
mammals occurred in four stages, each of which corresponded to a stage in postural
development. In the earliest stag� we find the first traces of a fine organization of
pyramidal motor cells, almost all connected with the motor function of the anterior
facial organs, at the edge of the central sulcus in walking quadrupeds. The second
stage is represented by grasping quadrupeds, in which the potential offered by
seated posture and temporary freeing of the hand is not accompanied by any mod
ification of the cranial suspensory apparatus. The motor cortical strip is already pres
ent in an organized form .and the hand is well individualized. The third stage is that
of monkeys, whose achievement of seated posture did entail a modified cranial sus
penSion, with the addition of a premotor strip to the pyramidal strip and highly dif
ferentiated manual operations. The fourth stage is that of the acquisition of
bipedalism accompanied by profound changes in cranial suspension and by the
freeing of the hand; the cortical fan is fully spread out and connects with centers affer
ent to the areas involving language.
Zinjanthropus
Perhaps the most important development for the science of fossil man was
Leakey's find on July 17, 1959, in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanganyika, ofZinjanthropus
boisei accompanied by very primitive but unmistakably human-made tools. This
event came several years after the finding of an Australopithecine pelvis in South
Africa. For two years it had been known that Australopithecus had walked upright,
and several scholars had put forward the view that his possession of tools was more
than probable. Leakey's find put an end to the myth of the ape-human, at any rate in
scientific circles. The world was obliged to accept the implications of the hitherto
unforeseen fact that the development of the human body had been completed by the
end of the Tertiary period of the Cenozoic era, even if the development of the human
mind had barely begun.
Zinjanthropus (and other Australopithecinae) made tools: For the first time in
the zoological series, this fact raised the question whether a species characteristic
derived from a sphere other than anatomical biology might have validity. The emer
gence of tools as a species characteristic marks the frontier between animal and
human, initiating a long transitional period during which sociology slowly took over
from zoology. At the Zinjanthropian stage tools appear simply as an anatomical con
sequence, the only solution possible for a being whose hands and teeth had become
completely useless as weapons and whose brain was so organized as to permit man
ual operations of a complex nature.
Raymond A Dart, whose discovery of the first Australopithecus in South Africa
in 1929 was followed by many other finds of these earliest known anthropians, had
studied the animal remains found together with them. He had reached the conclu
sion that Australopithecus was, unlike the ape, a hunter whose prey, in the south of
the African continent, seems to have consisted of small- or medium-sized antelopes,
quite frequently ofwild pigs and baboons, and occasionally of animals as large as the
zebra, the rhinoceros, and the hippopotamus and as dangerous as the panther.
Before the discovery of stone tools in strata containing fossil remains, Dart thought
that the Australopithecinae had used tools made of bone and particularly of the
humerus of antelopes, as hand axes. He invented the concept of an "osteodonto
keratic" industry by selecting those bone fragments that in his view were the most
characteristic. Today it seems fairly clear that this industry is for the most part for
tuitous in nature, but the possibility that large bones were used as hand axes, and
especially that the horns of animals were used as crushing tools, should certainly not
be dismissed.
The Zinjanthropus fossil of Olduvai was found surrounded by chipped peb
bles. These form part of an industry that had long been known in Africa under the
name of "pebble culture," found in horizons of the earliest Quaternary and very late
Tertiary periods of the Cenozoic era from the north to the south of Africa, and that
had already for some years been suspected of being the work of the
Australanthropians.
Flaked Pebbles
The products of the African pebble industry correspond to what may be imag
ined as being the first form distinct from the naturally occurring cobble. The earliest
products of human industry are not easy to recognize. Prehistorians have been grap
pling with this task since the 1860s. Tools are readily recognizable as soon as they
acquire a permanent form through secondary processing, but to distinguish
between a knapped stone and an unprocessed fragment is difficult. Clastic rocks such
as flint and quartzite, when subjected to a sharp impact, produce flakes with con
choidal partings, known as the "percussion bulb." To produce flakes of a desired
shape, the impact must be directed and applied with some force, which in most cases
presupposes a conscious act, but after the hundreds of millions of impacts exerted
on pebbles by undertow or falling water, some will look human-made through pure
chance. We may therefore say that although the presence of a "percussion bulb"
strongly suggests human intervention, the possibility remains that some ofthe flakes
that have been found were fashioned by nature. Thus students of prehistory were
seriously exercised toward the end ofthe nineteenth century by the problem of early
and middle Tertiary "eoliths."
Unless the samples have been deliberately or unconsciously selected, a col
lection of eoliths has this particularly striking characteristic that no morphological
consistency is perceptible, the forms being distributed in a completely random man
ner. The only morphological constants that can be observed are of a purely mechan
ical order-a matter of accidental thinness of the edge of a kidney stone, or of
indiscriminately projecting parts, or again, in the case of very long kidney stones, of
fractures caused by bending. If the earliest human industry had been such, the prob
lem could never have been cracked by scientific study of prehistory, and this earliest
evidence would have no value.
But the theory ofrandom impacts could have been thought up only by a scholar
who imagined primitive man as Gabriel de Mortillet imagined him-a kind of half
monkey entirely lacking in experience, playfully bidding for the title of First Man by
banging on stones with one of his newly freed hands while shielding his eyes with
the other. Restored to its proper biological and paleontological context, the problem
looks very different. At the close of the last chapter we arrived at the concept of tools
as being a "secretion" of the anthropoid's body and brain. Ifthat is so, then it is logical
that the standards of natural organs should be applied to such artificial organs: They
must exhibit constantly recurring forms, their nature must be fixed. The same rule
in fact applies to all products of human industry in historic times: There exists a ste
reotype of the knife, the ax, the plough, or the aircraft that is not only the product
of a coherent intelligence but is also integrated in a substance and a function (see
chapter 7). It may be objected that in the case of the stone industries, many products
have an irregular form because of random flaking. But prehistorians have avoided
this error, and each period is designated by its stereotype-biface, scraper, or burin.
We can, indeed we must, think of the earliest Anthropians as having an intelligence
inferior to our own, but we have no right to imagine their intelligence to have been
biologically incoherent. Either the earliest human-made tools are indistinguishable
from unprocessed stones or their forms are constantly recurring ones.
The Australanthr0pian Stereotype

That the flaked pebbles of the pebble culture (figure 46) do in fact correspond
to a stereotype is attested by a million objects. Their making presupposes two peb
bles, of which one serves as a h;unmer while the other receives the blows. The blow
is applied to one of the edges in a direction perpendicular to the surface, and breaks
off a flake that leaves a sharp edge. Two or three more blows will make the edge sin
uous and extend its length. Applied to only one surface of the pebble, the operation
results in a "chopper"; applied to both surfaces, in what is known as a "chopping
tool." Without dwelling on the possibly arbitrary implications of these terms as
regards the tool's purpose, we must note that the operation involves only one kind
of action, the simplest, that of striking the edge of the pebble at an angle of 90
degrees. One action producing one cutting edge represents the point beyond which
identification becomes impossible, which is why I believe it will be difficult to go
back much further than the Australanthropians in seeking the origins of human
industry. I reach this conclusion with some regret, for manual operations certainly
did not begin at the Australanthropian stage.
The choppers discovered together with Zinjanthropus and in innumerable
similar sites scattered across Africa tell us hat Australanthropians made chopping
edges by means of a single movement, that of simple percussion, the same gesture
as would serve to split a bone, crack a nut, or bludgeon an animal. In fact the Aus
tralanthropians found at Olduvai and elsewhere were surrounded by hundreds of
broken bones. Thus the first anthropoids' technicitywas ofan extremely Simple kind,
more or less in line with what we know about their brain. Yet it was certainly human,
and it seems consistent with the organism of the being whom it complemented. The
state it implies is one of technical consciousness to which, however, we must not
apply our own yardstick. It is undoubtedly less of a risk to see human technicity as
a simple zoological fact than it would be to credit Zinjanthropus with a system of
creative thought. The countless millennia during which his industry remained
unchanged--conditioned, as it were, by the shape of his skull-disproves the latter
hypothesis.
Study of the earliest anthropoids may well lead to a complete revision of our
views concerning human nature. In the first chapter of this book we demonstrated
b c
d e
46. Industry in thefirst stage. The operating sequence is confined to a single action (a)
used to produce a tool that developsfrom the chopper (b) to the rudimentary biface (e)
through the addition ofpoints of impact and thefashioning ofa tip (e, d).
that the image of our ancestor is an artificial one born in a context of ideological
struggle in the seventeenth century and devoid of any foundation in paleontology.
In the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, this image was contin
uously projected upon each newly discovered fossil in a systematic endeavor to
accentuate the contrast between the ape-human (Pithecanthropus) and Homo sapi
ens, "knowing human." This attitude, incidentally, was shared by rationalists and
believers alike. It remains essentially foreign to a human solution of the problem of
our origin, its object being to situate the "frontier of humanity," the "cerebral Rub
icon," the "search for Adam," somewhere along a line of progressively less and less
bestial creatures. The point at issue is, however, altogether different: Instead of a
"superbestiality" ending supposedly, no one quite knows how, in the acquisition of
the human "modicum of intelligence," the Australanthropian brings us face to face
with a humanity that is already achieved but unrecognizable and probably well short
of the "modicum of intelligence" we would grant to the monkey in order to be able
to regard it as our ancestor.
The Archanthropians
In chapter 2 we saw that allowing for some serious gaps, we know enough
about the Archanthropians to be able to visualize their physical appearance with
some accuracy. Their geographical distribution was very extensive. Traces have been
found, in chronological order, in Java (Pithecanthropus), Europe (Mauer man),
China (Sinanthropus), North Africa (Atlanthropus), and probably in East Africa (Afri
canthropus). Despite some anatomical differences all these fossils have so many
characteristics in common that they can be grouped under the general heading
"Archanthropians." So far as one can judge, their distribution in time is fairly con
sistent. Broadly speaking, they lived during the immensely long early Quaternary
period of the Cenozoic era, the Australanthropians in its Villafranchian part, and the
Palaeoanthropians in the middle Quaternary. Their physical appearance was human
in terms of stature and posture, but their skull, as we have seen, still looked very dif
ferent from ours. Their brain, although markedly more developed than the Austra
lanthropians', was still tightly barred in front by the orbital bloc. Its volume (1 ,000
cubic centimeters) was a little less than twice the Australanthropians' and roughly
two-thirds of the modem human's. Evidence of their intellectual attainments is
unfortunately very slight. Only Sinanthropians were discovered in their habitat, the
Atlanthropians being found near a spring, Mauer man in alluvial depOSits, andAfri
canthropus broken into small fragments in the sedimentary deposits of a lake. The
Asian Archanthropians' industry has not yet been fully investigated. The thousands
of tools found with Sinanthropians were fashioned from quartzy rock whose poor
quality makes it quite impossible to form an opinion of the makers' manufacturing
skills.
The tools of Pithecanthropians are likewise little known because the sites
where bone remains have been found are not habitats. A part of the industry dis
covered in Java can be attributed to them only by comparative methods. Those of
Atlanthropians, on the other hand, are well known and belong to a still somewhat
primitive stage of the Acheulian. No records of Maueranthropian or Africanthropian
industry have been found as yet. Thus the only solid point of reference is supplied
by the Atlanthropians of Terrifine, whose contribution, in a certain sense, is as rev
olutionary as that of the Australopithecinae. Until C. Arambourg's discovery of Atlan
thropian tools and mandibles in 1954, it was still possible to entertain illusions about
the Archanthropians' technical level: Sinanthropian tools were too poor in quality to
constitute a challenge to any hypothesis (althoughAbbe Breuil did point out that they
represent a higher technical level than their appearance suggested), and none of the
other fossils found was obViously related to any industry at all. Prehistorians and
paleontologists were extremely reluctant to admit, as unchallengeable factual evi
dence eventually forced them to do, that it was to the Archanthropians that most of
the industries of the Lower Paleolithic and, in particular, of the Acheulian had to be
ascribed. The evidence of the Atlanthropians who made hand axes and bifaces is
enough to make us accept the view that the anthropological nature of their contem
poraries in other parts ofAfrica and on the Old Continent was the same as theirs. But
even by itself, the industry discovered at Terrifine enables us to establish the char
acteristics of the Archanthropian industrial stereotype.
The Arcbantbropian Stereotype

The primitive ·process of working stone by perpendicular impacts, which had
produced the chopper, remained in use for roughing out hand axes and bifaces. It
was eventually supplemented by a second series of movements whereby the piece
ofstone intended to become a tool was struck in a direction no longer perpendicular
but tangential to its main axis (figure 47), an action that produced conSiderably
longer and thinner flakes already somewhat similar to those eventually used by the
Palaeoanthropians. Yet the number of forms of tools remained very small; they were
limited to flakes put to use without further processing and "core tools," namely hand
axes and bifaces. The development that took place betweenAustralopitbecus and the
l
\jJ
.
.
.
• ...L0
... . . .�
:f.
.:..;
d
47. Industry in the second stage. Theprimary sequence (a) has been enriched through the
addition ofa different type of impact (b). The tools, apartfrom flakes that can be used
unprocessed, are the hand ax (c) and the biface (d).
Archanthropians thus consisted in the acquisition of a second series of actions. This

was more than simply the addition of something new, for it implied a good deal of
foresight on the part of the individual performing the sequence of technical oper
ations. The Australanthropian making a chopper already had a mental picture of the
finished tool because the pebble chosen had to be of suitable shape. Nevertheless,
the range of possibilities was very wide, and the element of personal intervention
may have been only slight. In the case of the Atlanthropians the situation was already
very different: To make a hand ax one has to choose the point on the surface of a
lump ofstone at which to split off the large flakewhose cutting edge will be the blade
of the future tool. Furthermore a second operation has to be performed in order to
reduce the initial flake to a shape that must be preexistent in the maker's mind. The
same steps are obviously involved in the making of a biface, which presupposes a
judicious choice of the pebble or lump of stone from which the almond-shaped tool
will eventually be extracted.
Thus we see that the Archanthropians' intelligence was already highly com
plex, for their industry testifies to their use of two series of movements that had to
be combined in order to produce a stereotyped form from a deliberately chosen
lump of stone.
This observation raises some important issues. The early Paleolithic was a very
long period lasting at least three or four hundred thousand years. During this
immensely long period the evolution of industries was so slow that the same ste
reotype, with the addition of only a few new forms and a few refinements in execu
tion, was preserved all the way from the Abbevillian to the late Acheulian."If human
paleontology had more fossil records to work with, we might be able to measure the
extent of the Archanthropians' physical development. Records are unfortunately so
scarce that it is not yet possible today to relate the evolution of the skull (and con
sequently of the brain) to that of the millions of tools that have been found all over
the Old Continent. It is fairly obvious that the earliest Palaeoanthropians were the
direct successors of the last of the Archanthropians. Both fossil remains and tool finds
strongly suggest that tools and skeletons evolved synchronously. We might say that
with the Archanthropians, tools were still, to a large extent, a direct emanation of spe
cies behavior. Individual intelligence certainly played some part, but when we con
sider two bifaces of which one is Abbevillian and the other late Acheulian, we cannot
escape the conclusion that the phyletic series can have included only very few
Archanthropians of genius, for the industrial stereotype remained unchanged for
several hundreds of thousands of years. The Atlanthropians, Sinanthropians, and
Pithecanthropians would seem to meet quite closely the philosophers' rather vague
concept ofHomofaber. Throughout the greater part of our chronological existence

(for only a few instants of geological time still remained to be covered), human tech
nicity would thus seem to have been related more directly to zoology than to any
other science.
The Palaeoanthropians
The dividing line between the lower and middle Paleolithic is somewhat
blurred, as is that between Palaeoanthropians and Archanthropians. This is only nat
ural if we regard evolution as a gradual phenomenon. The number of Palaeoan
thropians known to us through fossil bone remains is relatively great, amounting to
more than a hundred. Their geographical spread is considerable. Remains have been
found in Belgium, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, the Crimea,
Turkestan, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, North Africa, Abyssinia, Rhodesia, and Java. More
over many of the fossils were found accompanied by an industry, and quite often they
were found in their habitat. The exact period of their existence is difficult to estab
lish, but we could suppose that it coincided roughly with the second part of the pen
ultimate interglacial period and the first part of the last Ice Age, very approximately
between two to three hundred thousand and about fifty thousand years before our
era. They thus existed for an incomparably shorter time than the Archanthropians,
a fact that is in line with the general acceleration to which human industries testify.
To plot a chronological curve of evolution as attested by the available records is not
an easy task, since the precise age of the specimens is still being debated by experts.
However, what we know about the earliest (Steinheim, Saccopastore) as well as the
most recent among them (Neanderthalians) allows us to suppose that the curve of
their evolution was a continuous extension of that of the Archanthropians. The
Palaeoanthropians have often been classified under the general designation ofNean
derthalians. I believe with Weidenreich and Sergi that this usage is inadmissible and
should be dropped. The term came into use as a result of a very common occurrence
in the natural SCiences, that of all subsequent fossil finds being subsumed under the
first one to become known, in this case Neanderthal man. Human paleontology was
at first unable to discern the differences within the series, and account was tak;en only
of the general aspect of the fossils. It is evident today that very great differences exist
between various "Neanderthalians" and that only the most recent West Eurasian
group actually corresponds to the common type, namely, the Neanderthal fossil. I
shall therefore describe as Neanderthalian only fossils generally associated with a
Mousterian industry, characterized by a physical type close to that of the La Chapelle-
Archanthropians and Palaeonthropians 99
aux-Saints man described by Boule and dating to somewhere around 100,000 to

50,000 years ago. These Neanderthalians are the only group for which a synthesis can
be attempted; they are the only ones for which we have several specimens whose
skeleton, habitat, and industry have been preserved and which offer enough ele
ments of comparison to characterize a major stage in the development of humanity
between the Archanthropians and Homo sapiens.
We saw earlier that the Neanderthalian skull represented the furthermost point
of archaic human development. The continuing presence of an orbital ridge gave it
a very peculiar cerebral morphology, with expansion occurring predominantly at the
back of the cranium. It is therefore the last attested state of a human brain in which
the prefrontal territories are still of relatively limited volume. Nevertheless, the
Neanderthalians' cerebral capacity was equivalent to or greater than our own aver
age capacity, a fact that greatly perplexed the paleontologists of the early twentieth
century. We have to recognize that leaving aside the detail (admittedly an important
one) of the smallness of the prefrontal areas, the brain of Neanderthal man largely
corresponded to ours, particularly in the number of cells in the middle cortex.
Evidence ofNeanderthal Man's Intelligence

A great many middle Paleolithic habitats have been excavated, and despite the
lamentably improvised character of most digs, a considerable amount of information
concerning the life of Neanderthal man is available. What must be regretted is that
almost without exception, the finest prehistorians devoted their skills to establishing
correct chronologies rather than to recording the innumerable details that would
have enriched our knowledge of the intellectual and social activities of the human
beings of that time. Even so, some records concerning their technical activities, their
habitat, and what has been classified as activities of a religious or aesthetic nature are
available to us, information about their technical life being by far the most abundant.
The Levalloiso-Mousterian Technical Prototype

In the middle Paleolithic, stone tools underwent a most important develop
ment. The Archanthropians of the preceding period had still, to a large extent,
obeyed the earliest tradition, and their tools--bifaces or hand axes--were still, like
the choppers of the Australopithecinae, extracted from a lump of stone; the cutting
edge of splinters obtained as by-products might or might not be put to use as a cut
ting blade. In the Acheulian the thinner edges of the bifaces produced by tangential
impact meant that flakes detached from the matrix were larger, wider, and finer and
could be employed for cutting. It was this development in the form of the biface that
gave rise to the technique described by prehistorians as "Levalloisian." The lump of
stone initially intended to become an almond-shaped tool became instead a source
of flakes of predetermined shape, and it was these flakes that were eventually used
as tools (figure 48). To achieve this result, the core had first to be roughed out into
a rudimentary biface, then prepared for the extraction of a flake, and finally subjected
to further successive extractions until it was used up. The preparation process could
be developed to a point where a single impact of the percussion tool upon the core
could at will produce a triangular point, a subcircular flake, or a long, narrow blade.
At the height of its evolution, which by the time of the Neanderthalians had long
been reached, the Levalloisian technique represented the most elaborate method
invented by humans for producing tools from flint. The tens of thousands of flakes,
used-up cores, and discards found on the sites oflarge workshops to which Palaeoan
thropians came to rough out their raw material provide us with a reasonably clear
idea of the level of technicity they had reached. To extract a triangular point, it was
necessary first to choose a lump of flint from which a core could be fashioned.
Although carefully selected, this lump, which was quite likely to be imperfect, had
to be placed in such a way that most of the imperfections could be eliminated in the
course of the ensuing preparatory work or relegated to areas from which they could
be eliminated later. Extraction of the point required at least six series of operations
performed in strict sequence, each series being conditional upon the others and pre
supposing a rigorous plan. In these operations the two series of actions acquired by
the Archanthropians were utilized and combined.
Another fact we should note is that the tool function had shifted from the mass
initially intended to constitute the tool to the flake derived from that mass. The Aus
tralopithecine stereotype had been gradually left behind; we shall see later that this
process is generally characteristic of the more developed industries. In other words,
from being the tool itself the lump of stone has become a source oftools (as we shall
see, an additional stage was to be introduced from the Upper Paleolithic onward).
The blade or flake would then no longer constitute the tool but would be divided
into sections proViding the starting point for the making of the tool proper. A further
aspect, that of the diversification of tools and their assignment to specific purposes,
will be examined in chapter 4. This diversification (in relation to earlier periods) was
already quite marked in Levalloiso-Mousterian times, with the proliferation of forms
of scrapers, points, knives, notching tools, and so forth, derived from flakes detached
Archanthropians ardi Pa!aeonthropians 101
a c
\
� ! ,.!
.
. . �
48. Industry in the third stage. Thefirst two series ofactions (a and b) have led to the
extraction ofa preparedflake (c). Thefirst and second series added together (d)produce a
strongly dissymmetrical bi/ace, the core (f)from which the Leval/oisflake (g) or a series of
laminarflakes (h) can be extracted. Laminarpreparation leads to the extracting ofthe
Leval/oispoint (i, j).
from cores. The Palaeoanthropian stone industry thus implies an already highly
developed technical intelligence. There is little reason to distinguish between the
Palaeoanthropian technician's attitude and that of any technician of a more recent
age-at any rate in strict terms of technical intelligence which presupposes a pyra
midal brain area and areas of association identical with ours, at least as far as area 8.
The records probably suggest a good deal more than that, but before we revert to
the question of Palaeoanthropian intelligence, we must tackle the problem of lan
guage. In Levalloiso-Mousterian times all major problems of the flint industry had
already been resolved, and it is directly from this stage that the evolution proceeded
until the emergence of metals. Seen in this light, Neanderthal man appears as some
thing very different from the last witness of the "Empire of the Anthropoids."
Available evidence concerning bone and wood industries is very scant. As
regards the former, it seems that few changes took place from the time of the Aus
tralopithecinae onward. All that is known for certain is that the Neanderthalians
sawed up deer antlers. On several occasions prehistorians have presented broken
or polished bone splinters as evidence of an industry supposedly based on the direct
use of natural splinters. They have even suggested that use was made of picks, coups
de pOing, or leatherworking tools made from the jawbones of bears, but this claim
will not stand up to close technological scrutiny. As for woodworking, the evidence
is indirect but precise: The absence of any tools made from fashioned bone, and con
sequently the extraordinary abundance of flint flakes bearing traces of use that indi
cate that they served for processing bone or wood, strongly suggest that
woodworking pJayed an important role. We can imagine the Palaeoanthropians
using spears comparable, for example, to those of Australian aborigines (figure 49).
Habitat and Clothing

Few observations have been made of the Mousterians' habitat, a fact all the
more regrettable as several hundred sites have been excavated, both in caves and in
the open. From the sparse observations that do exist it seems evident that the Nean
derthalians lived in huts. The disservice done to our picture of Paleolithic peoples
by the legend of their withdrawing to caves as soon as the cold began to bite can
never be sufficiently deplored. Caves are few and far between-in some regions
measuring millions ofsquare kilometers there are none at all-yet Palaeoanthropian
traces have been found all over Africa and western Eurasia. Even more to the point,
such observations as have been made show that the sites of industries discovered in
<> a b
<:::::>
c d e f
9 h
49. Levalloiso-Mousterian tools. The hi/ace (a) suroives; various other tools-Levalloisflake
(b), laminarflake (c), point (d)-have heen added to it. By-products of corepreparation
can hefashioned into other types ofpoints (e) or scrapers ro. Discard material can he used
to make.tools with serrated edges (g) or small scrapers (h).
the open were roughly circular, corresponding to the shape of huts that have dis
appeared. The interior organization of these huts, like that of the caves in which a
minority of Neanderthalians did live, is known from one or two finds made in the
West and in the U.S.S.R The domestic organization to which they testify is far from
developed: The Palaeoanthropians lived in a circle of a few meters' diameter, to the
edges of which they gradually pushed the remnants of the food they consumed, ani
mal bone fragments in particular. The domestic arrangements of Zinjanthropians
and Sinanthropians do not appear to have been very different.
On the other hand, we know that slaughtering and skinning techniques (figure
50) were as advanced as those of flintworking, which is not surprising ifwe bear in
mind that most tools were made for cutting and that stoneworking techniques are
closely associated with the purpose for which the tools are made. Marks left by cut
ting blades on animal bones indicate that animals were' skinned with the intention
of utilizing the skins. Moreover finds of paw bones or claws of furred carnivores such
as bears indicate that some skins, at least, were left with their claws illtact much like
our bedside rugs of today. From this it can readily be inferred that furs were used
as covering. There is no way of distinguishing between their being used as clothing
and as bedding, although the latter form of use is practically certain. It should not be
forgotten moreover that Palaeoanthropians were geographically very widespread
and that the way of life ofAfrican Palaeoanthropians was probably different from that
of Palaeoanthropians living in Western Europe, who, although we should not exag
gerate the rigors of the "Ice Age" climate, did nevertheless have to cover their bodies
against the elements. We do not know how hairy the Palaeoanthropians were and are
not even in a position to venture a hypothesis. What we do know is that as late as the
twentieth century, in a climate as inclement as that of Patagonia, the last Fuegians
lived naked, protected solely by an unprocessed animal skin used as an individual
draft screen.
Evidence ofIntelligence ofa Not Strictly Technical Nature

Pondering the nature of human intelligence is the most personal of problems.
Do we not exist only by virtue of our own awareness of existing? Traditional Church
doctrine, even when applied to evolutionism, can resolve the difficulty of the gradual
acquisition of human attributes by allowing that full humanity in the religious sense
was bestowed by the grace of God upon a hominid that had reached sufficient matu-
b
L c
d f
..
50. Bones that had been split tofacilitate extraction ofthe marrow have often been mis
takenfor tools (a and b); no traces of use are to be seen on such bones. Traces of cutting
with aJlint knife are, however, frequentlyfound on joints (c, d, e) and paw bones (f). Bone
fragments were often used as supports when sharpeningJlints and bear traces ofsuch
use (g).
rity. Trying to establish which link in the anthropoid chain it was that, through an act
of grace, became the first man then becomes poindess. Whoever showed some con
cerns of a religious or magical nature was already, by definition, a man. Odd as it may
seem, the traditional rationalist position is not very different from this except with
regard to the prime mover, which becomes a nameless, loosely defined evolutionary
force. As a result of their common cultural origins and their many efforts to reconcile
obviously irreconcilable opposites, the theists and the rationalists of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries inextricably superimposed Homo sapiens, man made in
the image of God, upon God himself Lillie was added to this view, well suited as it
was to the vagueness of the sparse material evidence, in the firstpart of the twentieth
century. Whe-n all is said and done, it was not unacceptable to either camp to have
a vague and enigmatic monkey at the start of the ascent leading to Homo sapiens, the
wise man, emerging into the full light of his intelligence by an act of God, through
determinism or through his own efforts.
But can the question not be formulated in such a way that, instead of involving
the dubious creature that allegedly stopped being a monkey to become our ancestor,
it will direcdy address the modern human? We perceive our intelligence as being a
single entity and our tools as the noble fruit of our thought, whereas the Australan
thropians, by contrast, seem to have possessed their tools in much the same way as
an animal has claws. They appear to have acquired them, not through some flash of
genius which, one fine day, led them to pick up a sharp-edged pebble and use it as
an extension of their fist (an infantile hypothesis well-beloved of many works of
popularization), but as if their brains and their bodies had gradually exuded them.
In a sense we may wonder whether techniques are basically really things of the intel
lect. Perhaps the distinction often drawn between the intellectual and the technical
actually reflects a paleontological reality? In the second part of this book a question
of the same order will arise in connection with the gradual transition from zoological
to ethnic grouping. The techniques of Australanthropians and Archanthropians
seem, in their very long development, to have obeyed the rhythm of biological evo
lution; chopper and biface seem to form part of the skeleton, to be literally "incor
porated" in the living organism. With the emergence of new intellectual possibilities,
techniques began a dizzying ascent, but the curves of their evolution followed the
lines ofphyletic evolution so closely that we must ask ourselves whether they are not
simply an extension of the general development of species.
If technicity is merely a zoological fact ascribable to the specific characteristics
of anthropoids, we are more readily able to understand the earliness of its first
appearance, the slowness of its early development, and from the moment when it
became cast in the intellectual mold ofHomo sapiens, its dominance over other char
acteristics. The reason why we find Palaeoanthropians so particularly engaging is that
in them we witness the first upsurge of new aptitudes of the brain that both coun
terbalance and stimulate technicity.
Activities of a nature not related to mere survival have been observed in pri
mates. Play-related and communicative behavior should be considered separately
because play and display represent a special form of survival behavior unconnected
with technicity. But we may legitimately ask ourselves what lies behind the action of
the chimpanzee tracing the oudine of its own shadow on a wall, the gorilla daubing
with excrement or, where these are made available, with paints, or endlessly making
and destroying sawdust patties. Such activities are not art or magic any more than
piling up crates in order to grab a banana is a technique, but they are an advance
signal of a development that will be observed again in anthropoids a good deal fur
ther along the line. The reflective intelligence which not only grasps the relationship
between different phenomena but is capable of externalizing a symbolic represen
tation of that relationship was the ultimate acquisition of the vertebrates. It cannot
be conceived of before the anthropoid stage, for it is the fruit of a cerebral orga
nization whose seed was sown at the time of the freeing of the hand and which came
into full flower with the emergence of Homo sapiens. Where this acquisition takes
the form of technicity, the faculties of reflection and the neurovegetative organiza
tion of the association areas of the cortex merge into one; where it is a matter of
"gratuitous" intellectual operations, the gradual development of the frontal and pre
frontal areas appears to have entailed a progressively growing faculty for symboli
zation. Archaeological evidence of such activity-which goes beyond technical
motor function-is elusive for the early Quaternary, but by the Palaeoanthropian
stage some archaeological evidence begins to become available. These activities, the
earliest of an aesthetic or religious character, can be classified in two groups as reac
tions to death and reactions to shapes of an unusual or unexpected kind. Prehistoric
records are very scanty. The most that remains of the activities of a once living human
group are some worked stones, bones, or pieces of mineral which for some reason
may have attracted the attention of the fossil human. Prehistorians must resign them
selves to doing without the evidence that would have been most significant-ges
tures, sounds, arrangements of objects-and be content with imperishable records
which in the majority of cases consist of discarded items such as lumps of flint from
which tools had already been extracted or osseous remains of bodies or meals. Bone
records have been used extensively in attempts to reconstitute the thinking of the
fossil human, and some results of such efforts have achieved classic status.
The "Bone Cult"

Extensive use has also been made of the frequency of occurrence of certain
parts of human or animal skeletons or the manner of their arrangement. Records in
this category can be classified under three main headings, those pertaining to the
bear cult, the skull cult, and the jaw cult, respectively.
The bear cult was deduced from much research in European caves containing
veritable boneyards ofcave bear remains. Some observers noticed that long bones
femurs, tibias, or humeri-often seemed to be laid along the walls of excavated sites
and also that animal skulls were generally found in corners, as though deliberately
placed there. The bear cult theory appeared to be confirmed when a Swiss prehis
torian, Emil Baechler, published his find (made at the Drachenloch in 1920) of
U chests" made of limestone slabs and filled with rows of bear skulls. Unfortunately,
only sketches made by the author long after the event were available as means of
ascertaining the precise nature of this extraordinary find, and Baechler's views have
been very vigorously challenged. Careful searches in other caves revealed that the
probable explanation for most of his observations was that bears settling down to
hibernate had made recesses in the clay floors by scratching. As a result of move
ments inside the cave, the long bones would naturally have been aligned along pas
sageways and would have tended to accumulate under vaulted sections of the cave
roof that protected them. Such skulls as did not aCCidentally roll into corners or end
up between two stones would certainly have been crushed and would no longer
exist. Not a great deal is heard about the bear cult today, except perhaps for a cave
in Austria where a bear skull appears to have been picked up from the floor and
placed in a recess, but there is no formal proof that this was done by a Neander
thalian. Although the act may legitimately be considered to betoken respect, it falls
far short of the intense bone worship that was once thought to have drawn Nean
derthal man into the caves.
The question of a skull cult arose in connection with the Sinanthropians. Dur
ing the excavation of the Choukoutien cave it was noticed that fragments of skulls
were found in certain sectors rather than others, and it was thought that skulls might
have been placed on top of stones deliberately for a purpose connected with wor
ship. The fact that such an idea should have caught on is surprising when we consider
Archantbropians and Pa!aeontbropians 109
the geological conditions of the dig, which was conducted in breccia almost 50
meters thick, often requiring to be loosened with explosives. It is surprising too
when we consider the fragmented state of the crushed and scattered bones found,
and still more surprising when we look in vain for any precise and detailed drawing,
made at the actual time of discovery, on which the interpretation of the position of
the remains might have been based. In prehistory, ideas resulting from the mulling
over of impressions that can no longer be verified come too often to be regarded as
certitudes.
The evidence is a little les� flimsy in the case of the Archanthropians and
Palaeoanthropians. A single set of facts has been observed in a fashion that, although
incomplete, may be considered Significant. When H. -co Blanc entered the cave of
Monte Circeo in 1939, the Neanderthalian skull he found was lying on the ground
apparently surrounded by a few stones, while some animal bones seemed to be
arranged in an intentional pattern near the walls. Here we have evidence that a Nean
derthal man's skull, minus its jawbone and separated from other parts of the skel
eton, was placed on the floor of a cave which, as the almost total absence of tools
suggests, was not a regularly frequented habitat.
. The jawbone cult has quite a different origin, being entirely a matter of statis
tics. It was noticed that jawbones were found with exceptional frequency-much
more frequently than brain boxes-among human vestiges from the Australopithe
cinae to the end of prehistory. By linking up this fact to certain parallel phenomena
in ethnography, particularly the fact that Melanesian women wear their deceased
husband's jawbone suspended from their necks, it was suggested that a jawbone cult
might be the explanation for the frequent occurrence of these fossils. It is surprising
that no serious attempt was made to verify whether there might not be other, less
metaphysical reasons for the jawbone's resistance to destruction.
As it happens, the mechanical and chemical destructibility of bones is related
to their shape and compactness: the jawbone, which as we saw in chaper 2 is the cra
nium's principal component, is particularly resistant. To verify this fact, I took four
homologous parts from the skeletons of wolves, hyenas, and foxes scattered in the
Mousterian strata ofArcy-sur-Cure, on the one hand, and ofPalaeoanthropians found
in Europe, on the other. In the case of the three batches of animal bones from Arcy
sur-Cure we know that we are dealing with remains of animals killed by hunters
mixed with those of animals that died in their lairs. These bone remnants found
in situ, intermingled with other fragments (broken by human hand) of bones of ani
mals commonly used as food (reindeer and horses), can hardly be suspected of per
taining to a cult. The percentages obtained are convincing:
Wolf + hyena + fox Palaeoanthropians

(Arey-sur-Cure) (Europe)
Teeth 7.1% 1.05%

Long bones 8.8 1.00
Upper jawbone 26 17.5
Mandible 54 62
So we must either believe, against all archaeological evidence, that the

Palaeoanthropians venerated the jawbones of foxes inside their earths or on scrap
heaps, or else we must accept the fact that the jawbone cult is an artifact produced
by imperfect experimentation and ought to be consigned to the realm of scientific
folklore.
To sum up, evidence of the so-called bone cult imputed to Palaeoanthropians
is so tenuous that it can really be reduced to just one fact-the presence of the Monte
Circeo skull on the cave floor. The fact is important and coincides with other evi
dence of early human thought reaching beyond simple material technicity. But it is
always a mistake to push evidence too far.
Burial Places
The practice of burying the dead is a Significant feature of concerns normally
associated with religiOUS sentiment. In the late nineteenth century the subject was
in fact one of those most hotly debated in pro- and antireligious polemics. It is dif
ficult to analyze the extent to which spirituality is implied in the funeral practices
even of still living peoples, but we may be sure that the development of such prac
tices corresponds to that of essentially human affectivity and that the symbolism of
interment became oriented toward the supernatural at a very early stage. This does
not, however, supply us with a key to what Palaeoanthropians thought about life after
death. Affectivity toward the dead belongs to the deepest levels of psychological
behaVior; even when, as in present-day societies, religious superstructures are crum
bling, burial practices lose none of their importance.
Unfortunately for the study of the Palaeoanthropian mind, observations of a
genuinely scientific nature are generally lacking. Such records as there are can be
divided into two groups. In the first, human bone remains occur in a broken state
and without any anatomical connection between them, much in the same way as
remains of animals used as food. It is hard to tell whether they represent traces of
cannibalism or of bodies abandoned on the ground after death and scattered by wild
animals. A few cases appear t o suggest the former, but the majority, from the Aus
tralanthropians to Neanderthal man, imply simple abandonment.
The second group covers recognized burial grounds. In a number of cases
bodies have been found lying full-length or bent at the waist in what are still iden
tifiable trenches. We may presume without great risk of error that all bodies ofwhich
at least part of the skull and several long bones belonging to the same individual have
been found were interred, for there is no example of a body having been preserved
at the entrance to a cave unless it was buried at the time of death.
The Palaeoanthropians then buried their dead--or, more precisely, it was the
Neanderthalians (the last of the Palaeoanthropians) that did so. No case of inhu
mation dating back to before the beginning of the last Ice Age appears to have been
discovered. We are therefore dealing with a practice whose origin hardly predates
the moment when the species assumed its present-day form. Although the Nean
derthalians' facial apparatus was still very archaic, their brain was large and its work
ings probably did not differ very much from ours.
Other Evidence
There is some evidence that Palaeoanthropians had an affective life of the same
order as that of Homo sapiens. The presence of red ocher in Mousterian strata has
been reported on a number of occasions. Coloring is not synonymous with art, and
we should once more beware of overinterpreting the data. But the importance of
ocher from that point onward and throughout the early stages of the existence of
Homo sapiens was to be so great that its use in Mousterian times cannot be consid
ered altogether devoid of significance.
In the particular case of Arey-sur-Cure, some fossil shells and nodulous lumps
of iron pyrites of extraneous origin were discovered in a late Mousterian layer (see
part II, figure 128). At El Guettar in southern Tunisia, a curious heap measuring
almost a meter across and consisting of globular lumps of limestone interspersed
with fragments of bone and flint were found in a developed Mousterian
environment.
If we survey the considerable literature that has sprung up around the subject
of the Palaeoanthropians' religious sentiments, the actual evidence is rather small.
The most striking feature is the lateness of certain important facts: Only in the very
last Palaeoanthropians does the capacity for symbolic thought begin to become
apparent. The Monte Circeo skull, a few burial places, a little ocher, a handful of curi
ous stones make up the thin halo of immateriality around the head of Neanderthal
man. Yet, flimsy as it may be, this halo is of capital importance because its appearance
coincided with the precise moment when the paleontological record shows that the
brain was about to attain its present level of development. Despite their enormous
orbital ridges, the Neanderthalians were not, as nineteenth-century evolutionists
imagined them to be, Anthropopithecinae escaped from the Tertiary. What is even
more important to acknowledge is that they actually represent a transition to our
own prehistory. Their industry, whose discoveries in some cases extended almost as
far as metallurgy, was transitional, and so was their status in what we regard as the
sphere of human thought proper.
It has taken us surprisingly long to recognize Neanderthal man's real place.
Every possible unconscious artifice was employed in order to deny that he was our
next-door neighbor, that we were his heirs: The most long-lived of these tricks, still
occasionally brought out today, consists in affirming that Homo sapiens was already
living at the time and the Neanderthalians were merely survivors in what was already
a "better" world. We can imagine the existence of considerable racial differences at
the time, perhaps of the order ofthose between Europeans andAustralian aborigines
today, but there is absolutely no point in reviving the hypothetical Homopresapiens
. whose intelligence supposedly penetrated the Palaeoanthropians' thick skull at long
range. Even supposing that this were true, it would not alter the far more obvious
fact that the Palaeoanthropians understood and lived out the ideas allegedly put in
their minds by beings more developed than themselves. The real truth, as more care
fully conducted excavations may show in the future, is probably Simpler: During the
fifty millennia of Neanderthal man's existence, the transition from the last archaic
anthropoids to the first representatives of our own species took place gradually,
affecting body, brain, and actions alike.
The Language of "Prehominids"

We possess no direct means ofstudying language before writing. Attempts have
been made to link the exercise of speech to the shape of the mandible or the size
of the insertion ridges ofthe tongue muscles, but such speculations make little sense.
The problem of language is not a matter of lingual muscles.9 Tongue movements
served for processing food before they had a phonetic function, and the limited free
dom of movement of Mauer man's tongue (not an easy fact to demonstrate) matters
rather little. The point at issue is neuromotor organization and the quality of cerebral
projections. The answer to the problem of language does not lie in the mandible but
in the brain. Useful insights can be derived, however, from a study of the points of
Archanthropians and Palaeonthropians 1 13
insertion of the muscles of the face and jaw with regard to the degree of flexibility
of the organs of phonation and mimicry. Such scant information as we possess sug
gests that the muscles of expression became progressively more refined with each
anthropoid stage, thereby merely continuing a path already outlined in the mam
mals, whose facial expressions sometimes play an important role.
The language of fossil anthropoids is a question that must, in my view, be
approached in a roundabout way. In chapter 2 we saw how, in the higher vertebrates,
the field of responsiveness developed to form two poles between which the neu
romotor apparatus coordinates th� actions of the face with those ofthe hand. We also
saw, at the beginning of this chapter, that in the physiology of the cerebral cortex the
manual projection fibers are very close to the facial fibers. It is moreover known that
areas 8 and 44 of the frontoparietal cortex play a role in two language anomalies, one
involving the inability to form written language symbols (agraphia) and the other the
inability to organize vocal symbols (aphasia).
A link therefore exists between the hand and the facial organs, and the twin
poles of the anterior field attest their equal participation in the construction of com
munication symbols. Can these facts, which are true of the modern human, be pro
jected backward to a time when writing did not exist?
The phenomenon of agraphia is not due to neurological connections that
became established in humans since the invention of writing (if it were, Australian
aborigines would be incapable of learning to write) or to connections that develop
in children learning to write (if it did, learning to write would not be possible for
adults). We are therefore entitled to think that the relationship between area 44 and
the pyramidal centers of the face is of the same nature as that between the base of
the second frontal convolution and the pyramidal centers of the hand. In primates,
facial and manual organs maintain equal technical activity: Monkeys work with their
lips, their teeth, and their hands, just as modern humans speak with their lips, their
teeth, and their tongues and gesticulate or write with their hands. To this should be
added, however, that humans also use the same organs for making things, but that
a shift has taken place in the relative positions of the two functions: Before writing,
the hand was used principally for making and the face for language, but with the
invention of writing the balance between the two was restored.
To put it another way, humans, though they started out with the same formula
as primates, can make tools as well as symbols, both of which derive from the same
process or, rather, draw upon the same basic equipment in the brain. This leads us
to conclude, not only that language is as characteristic of humans as are tools, but
also that both are the expression of the same intrinsically human property, just as the
1 14 Technics and Language
chimpanzee's thirty different vocal signals are the precise mental counterpart of its
use of several sticks to pull down a banana hanging overhead-in other words, no
more a language than fitting the sticks together is, properly speaking, a technique.
From this starting point, a paleontology of language could perhaps be
attempted, but it would only be a skeleton of a science, for there is little hope of ever
recovering the living flesh of fossil languages. One essential point that we can estab
lish, however, is that as soon as there are prehistoric tools, there is a possibility of
a prehistoric language, for tools and language are neurologically linked and cannot
be dissociated within the social structure of humankind. 10
Can we go any further than that? There is probably no reason, in the case of
the earliest anthropoids, to separate the level of language from that of toolmaking:
Throughout history up to the present time, technical progress has gone hand in hand
with progress in the development of technical language symbols. It is possible, in
the abstract, to conceive of a purely gestural technical education; in practice, even
completely silent instruction will actuate a reflective symbolism in both teacher and
pupil. The organic link appears to be strong enough to justify crediting the Austral
opithecinae and the Archanthropians with language at a level corresponding to that
of their tools. Where comparative studies of tools and skulls tell us that the rate of
development of industry corresponded to that of biological development, language
must have been very primitive indeed, but it undoubtedly amounted to more than
vocal signals. The characteristic trait of the "language" and "techniques" of the great
apes is that they are resorted to spontaneously in response to an external stimulus
and are just as spontaneously abandoned, or fail to appear, if the material situation
triggering them ceases to exist or does not occur. The making and using of choppers
or bifaces must be ascribed to a very different mechanism since the operations
involved in making a tool anticipate the occasions for its use and the tool is preserved
to be used on later occasions. The same is true of the difference between Signal and
word, the permanence of a concept being comparable to that of a tool although its
nature is not the same.
We shall revert to the concept of operating sequences in chapters 7 and 8, but
mention of it must be made here if we are to understand the link between technics
and language. Techniques involve both gestures and tools, sequentially organized by
means of a "syntax" that imparts both fixity and flexibility to the series of operations
involved. This operating syntax is suggested by the memory and comes into being
as a product of the brain and the physical environment. Ifwe pursue the parallel with
language, we find a similar process taking place. On the basis of what we know of
techniques from pebble culture to Acheulean industry, we could adopt the hypoth-
Archanthropians and Pa!aeonthropians 115
esis of a language whose complexity and wealth of concepts corresponded approx

imately to the level of those techniques. The language of Zinjanthrop� with his
single series of technical actions and small number of operating sequences, would
then have had a complexity and wealth of symbols scarcely greater than that of the
gorilla's vocal signals, but, unlike the latter, it would have been composed of already
available and not totally determined symbols. The operating sequences of the
Archanthropians with their doubled series of actions and their ·five or six different
tool forms were already much more complex, and the language we may credit them
with was considerably richer, though probably still limited to expressing concrete
situations.
The early Palaeoanthropians were the direct inheritors of this situation, but
their possibilities became gradually extended. The exteriorization of nonconcrete
symbols took place with the Neanderthalians, and technical concepts were thence
forth overtaken by concepts of which we have only manual operating evidence
burial, dyes, curious objects. This evidence, however, is sufficient to establish with
certainty that thought was being applied to areas beyond that of purely vital technical
motor function. The Neanderthalians' language probably differed only slighdy from
language as we know it today. It was reserved essentially for concrete situations and
used for the purpose of communication during the performance of activities, a prime
function in which language and technical behavior are closely combined. It was also
used for post facto transmission of the action symbols in the form of narration. This
second function must have emerged gradually in the Archanthropians, but this sup
position is difficult to demonstrate. Lasdy, a third function emerged in the course of
the Palaeoanthropians' development, one in which language went beyond the reflec
tion of concrete situations to express sentiments of a less precise nature, of which
we know with certainty that they were to some extent religious. These new aspects
will be discussed extensively later on; here we need only note that they emerged at
the time of the Palaeoanthropians.
The origin of language in anthropoids preceding Homo sapiens thus seems to
have been closely linked with technical motor function. Indeed the link is so close
that employing as they do the same pathways in the brain, the two main anthropoid
characteristics could be attributed to one and the same phenomenon. The early
anthropoids' technical activity suggests an extremely slow but roughly synchronous
evolution of tools and of the skull toward the status of Homo sapiens. No reliable
evidence available to date, with the exception of records relating to the most recent
period, suggests that early anthropoids performed other than vital operating
sequences. If language really sprang from the same source as technics, we are enti-
tled to visualize language too in the form of operating sequences limited to the
expression of concrete situations, at first concurrently with them and later involving
the deliberate preservation and reproduction of verbal sequences going beyond
immediate situations. The fact that has profoundly altered the philosophical status
of fossil man in the last few years is that we have been forced to accept the existence
of Zinjanthropus as a human being walking upright, making tools, and, if my argu
ment is correct, speaking. The image of this early man in no way fits in with what two
centuries of philosophical thought had accustomed us to see. Facts now show that
the human is not, as we had b�come used to thinking, a kind of monkey gradually
improving itself; the human is not the majestic pinnacle of the paleontological edi-.
fice; from the earliest moment at which we pick up the trail, the human is something
other than a monkey. At that moment, humans still have a very long way to go, but
their journey will be not so much a matter of biological development as of freeing
themselves from the zoological context and organizing themselves in an entirely
new way, with society gradually taking the place of the phyletic stream. If we abso
lutely insist on finding the monkey who was at the beginning of it all, we must look
all the way back to the Tertiary. But the already human picture we now have of the
Australanthropians changes the very foundations of the problem of our originS.
Their bipedalism, which was certainly not newly acquired, implies a considerable
distance between them and the ancestors of present-day monkeys, somewhat com
parable to the distance between the lineages of the horse and the rhinoceros: In
other words, it implies that we may one day discover an animal that was neither mon
key nor human but was potentially capable of becoming the ancestor of both.
4 The Neanthrop ians
The Physical Past and Future a/Homo Sapiens

We saw earlier the general evolution of zoological species whose development
followed the same course as ours involved successive "liberations," the two most
important of which were the freeing of the head in theromorphous reptiles of the
Paleozoic era and the freeing of the hand in Australanthropians at the very end of the
Tertiary period of the Cenozoic. The "liberations" that occurred during the evolution
of anthropoids were the freeing of the brain and, consequent upon it, the loosening
of certain zoological bonds. It is this evolution that we now propose briefly to survey.
By the time of the Australanthropians the freeing of the base of the skull had
already been accomplished and, as we have seen, the cortical "fan" had begun to
open out. Quite early, not later than the Palaeoanthropian stage, the pyramidal motor
apparatus and the contiguous areas of association reached a development roughly
eqUivalent to the modem human's. Innumerable objects bearing witness to the
Palaeoanthropians' highly developed technicity are there to prove it. The same phe
nomenon of stabilization of acq':lired structures, the same overtaking of existing sys
tems by new ones, must therefore have taken place in the evolution of the brain. By
the time of Australopithecus, the harid must have been almost as it is today. By the
end of the Archanthropian stage, the development of the technical brain was prac
tically complete.
The stabilization and eventual overtaking of the technical brain were of par
ticular importance to the human species. Had development continued toward ever
increasing corticalization of the neuromotor system, our evolution would have
stopped at a stage comparable to that of the most advanced insects. What happened
instead was that the motor areas were overtaken by zones of association having a very
different character that, instead of orienting the brain toward ever more developed
technical specialization, opened up unlimited possibilities of generalization

unlimited at any rate by comparison with the possibilities offered by zoological evo
lution. Throughout our evolution, ever since the reptiles, the human appears as the
inheritor of creatures that escaped anatomical specialization. Neither human teeth
nor hand, neither human foot nor, when all is said and done, brain has attained the
perfection of the mammoth's teeth, the horse's hand and foot, or the brain of certain
birds-with the result that humans have remained capable of just about every pos
sible action, can eat practically anything, can run and climb, and can use the unbe
lievably archaic part of their skeleton, that is, their hands, to perform operations
directed by a brain superspecialized in the skill of generalizing. In the foregoing
pages we have covered much of the path that took us there, but it still remains for
us to explain how the last liberation was achieved.
The Skull of Homo sapiens

The evolution of the Anthropian skull seems clearly to reflect a threefold pro
cess: the mechanical disengagement of the back of the skull through the acquisition
of erect posture, the mechanical disengagement of the forehead through progressive
reduction of the roots of the teeth, and an increase in brain volume until the Nean
derthalian stage, followed by the brain's progressive invasion of the frontal areas
unaccompanied by further increase in volume. The fact most characteristic of the
Neanthropians is the gradual fining down of the facial frame, which in the most
highly evolved individuals of today's races, whether black, white, or yellow, has only
a very slight support structure. Except in a few small primitive groups such as Aus
tralian aborigines, this is not a racial feature in the ordinary sense, for the most highly
evolved forms are to be found in all major racial groups. It is as though the basic
design were independent of racial variations or, more precisely, as though the struc
tural drift were a matter of very slow but synchronous gradual development of the
whole of humankind-which would explain why, notwithstanding variations in skin
color, height, blood groups, dental prognathism, and many other traits, Homo sapi
ens is the only human species alive on earth today. This bears out G. G. Simpson's
concept of "macro-evolution," the whole of the phylum going through stages of
adaptation that involve all the fundamental typological characteristics. It was a devel
opment or "drift" of this order that conditioned the succession of Archanthropians
from Australanthropians, Palaeoanthropians from Archanthropians, and, finally, of
The Neanthropians 119
Neanthropians from all others. It is small wonder therefore that mechanical equi
poise diagrams show no distinction among the black, white, and yellow races.
For over a century and a half anthropologists have been inventorying racial dif
ferences in the human skeleton and particularly the human skull. Curiously the pick
ings have been rather slim. It is far easier to determine the racial origin of a skull by
simply looking than to prove the point mathematically with compasses and figures.
The loose network of measurements confounds, without any possibility of differ
entiation, those characteristics that can properly be called racial with much more
general ones that reflect specific stages of development. Moreover, significant micro
racial values-which are a matter of subtle variations in the curve of an orbit or all
but imperceptible inflexions of the cranial convexity-simply cannot be quantified.
But if measurement methods do not faithfully render either the basic design or fine
racial distinctions, they do shed a useful light on variations in general proportions,
so study of a chronological series of individuals covering the whole period for which
Homo sapiens is known to have existed may help us to establish the extent to which
we have evolved since our earliest days.
Graphic Profiles
The evolution of general proportions can be expressed through the relative
length and width of the cranium, the face, the orbit, and the nose at several successive
moments in time. The data can be used to plot the profile of lengths in relation to
widths, and both of these in relation to a statistical mean established for present-day
Homo sapiens of different races. Figure 51 shows various Palaeoanthropians (A), var
ious fossil men of the Upper Paleolithic from Europe and Asia (B), modern men of
the most archaic type taken from each major racial group (C), and men of the most
developed type selected from the same racial groups (D).
In the case of the Palaeoanthropians (A), we find that the general picture is the
same for all dimensions: All are conSiderably larger than the modern average, the
skull is very large and elongated, the face is enormous and very high (except in the
case of the man of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, who is toothless), the orbit is large and
wide, and the nose extraordinarily large and wide. These Palaeoanthropian pro
portions are not found in any known Neanthropian, however primitive. They clearly
belong to a stage of homogeneous characteristics that was left behind many thou
sands of years ago.
A B C D
��
- 1 + - , + + - 1 +
� 1
�
/1\ II
Skull_ .
Face
orbit -
\
K
Nose ___ ./
1
�'
/ � ,, �/ .�
I
1 1 I
1 -- SkhGl V ____ Cro-Magnon France (Ain) France (lsere)
�J
I 1 I
I 1
:"- " : ""- :X
2-
i �
1
1 Broken Hill
� 1<
1
Obercassel America (
I
� unsee)
i I
Egypt (Ptolemaic)
__
' __ __
.�
I I
1
: i'-. !X. )/
1 1 � V �)
3 - Monte Circeo ___ Choukoutien __ Japan (Ainu) ___ Japan (Kobe)
1 I I
� 1
\\ � � I).
A g. \:. \: " .�
-,,: .//-
/\
'1 ,� � \ '- .
4 _ La
1
Ferrassie Dolni Vestonice Africa (Malinke)
.I
__ __ _ Africa (Malinke)
1 I I I
)
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.7.\
I . .1
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.x. ii
I •
: II..
: I\ /: \ ./ U �\
: \ �. '- \ \:\ �. i
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1 I 1
5_La Chapel le-aux-Saints_ Prdmost X ___ Tasmanian ___ Sweden
51. Graphicprofiles ofPalaeoantbropians and ofHomo sapiens. Theprofiles were estab

lished by comparing the lengths and widths. ofPalaeoantbropian skulls, faces, Erye sockets,
and noses with the corresponding averagesfor modern humans ofall races. Thepicture
thus obtained ofthe main proportions ofthe skull is interesting: A, Palaeoantbropians; B,
fOssil Homo sapiens; C, modern individuals with skullproportions similar to those ofB; D,
modern individuals ofthe type most divergentfrom B. The examples were takenfrom all
continents in order to demonstrate that thephenomena are not racial but, rather, testify to
the general evolution ofthe species. All the D individuals illustrate the intensity offacial
regression during the lastfew millennia.
Tbe Neanthropians 121
In the case of fossil Neanthropians (B), irrespective of whether they were

found in France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Russia, or China, the uniformity of type
is very striking. The external features are so manifest that anthropologists created the
"race of Cro-Magnon" to describe them-although in fact Cro-Magnon is not a race
but a type corresponding to a particular stage. Except for the cranium, which is long
but a good deal smaller than the Neanderthalian's, the CrO-Magnon type differs from
the Palaeoanthropian in every respect. The face is very low, wide, and short; the orbit
extremely low and wide; the nose of medium length and narrow. The fossil Nean
thropians date back to about 30,000 B.C., as against around 50,000 B.C. for the most
recent Neanderthalians. During the intervening twenty thousand years a transfor
mation took place; the precise terms of it are still largely obscure because of a lack
of fossils or of suitable interpretations of such fossils as are available.
Some of the known fossils, such as skull V from Skhiil, classified as Neander
thalian with Neanthropian characteristics, or skull X from Prdmost, classified as
Neanthropian with Neanderthalian affinities, seem to indicate the direction in which
the evolution took place. Comparing the Skhiil cranium with those from Broken Hill
and Cro-Magnon, we find that the characteristics of the skull and the face are atten
uated Neanderthalian ones, while the proportions of the orbit and nose are of the
CrO-Magnon type. In other words, the face is still wide and high, but the orbits are
low and the nose has become thinner. Going on to compare Prdmost X with
La Chapelle-aux-Saints, we find that, except for a considerable reduction in length
and height, the general proportions are the same. The Cro-Magnon type does not yet
seem very different from the Palaeoanthropian, or rather, the differences between
them are more a matter of quantity than of substance. If we compare the two "tran
sitional" individuals with each other, we find that in both cases the changes involve
the orbital height. The facial height of the Skhiil fossil is still considerable, while the
Prdmost face seems to have dwindled. The tooth rows of both are of Neanthropian
proportions, showing a general reduction of the roots and, so far as the molars are
concerned, a reduction of the crown between the first and last molars. In other
words, both show an appreciable regression of the wisdom tooth and suggest a facial
balance in which the function of the first molar is preponderant. That being so, the
whole orbitomalar region begins to undergo a profound change which, at this stage,
takes the form of a nonharmonious reduction in facial height and a shift of the facial
structure of the supraorbital bloc into the lateral framework of the orbits.
Thus the "Cro-Magnon type" appears as the first stage following the completion
of the prefrontal development process. Reduction of the tooth row and acquisition
of a facial balance no longer based on canines as well as molars, though predomi

nantly on the molars, determine this type of Homo sapiens to which all the known
fossils belong. In Europe it persists until the Mesolithic and then gradually disap
pears. Survivals of the archaic sapiens type have been reported by many authors and
have given rise to hypotheses-some of which are rather bold-conceming the ori
gin or the geographical distribution of the "race of Cro-Magnon." In fact the struc
tural type is a universal one and can still be found, with variable frequency, in all parts
of the world (C). It is relatively common among Melanesians and Australian aborig
ines, but some isolated fossils have been found in America, Europe, and Africa as
well. In each case it is a matter of general proportions only (long cranium, very short
face, very low orbits) and not of racial features in the strict sense.
The Evolution ofNeanthropian Types

A common thread of general evolution, that slow and continuous "drift" so
clearly attested by so many facts for many species of animals, appears to run through
the multiple paths of racial evolution. In the case of anthropoids the drift seems to
have become gradually accelerated: Australanthropians and Archanthropians
account for 70 percent of the Quaternary period of the Cenozoic era, Palaeoanthro
pians for 25 percent, and Neanthropians for only 5 percent. Does this 5 percent of
the Quaternary period, which represents the past of our own species, suffice to
reveal a significant development from the man of Cro-Magnon to man as he is today?
The time span that separates the two is a little over 30,000 years, and it would indeed
seem that certain important changes have taken place during that time.
First of all we must understand under what conditions the comparison has to
be made. So far as the modern human is concerned, we have at our disposal thou
sands of individual samples covering the full range of racial variations. Except for
some scattered and isolated peoples such as certain Eskimos, the Australian aborig
ines, and a few African groups, each racial type exhibits such a wealth of racial var
iations that the picture we obtain can never be more than a statistical one. In other
words, unless a precise geographical identification of the individual is possible, our
definition must remain very broad, for example, "Mongoloid skull from Southeast
Asia" or "Alpine type." In the case of fossil man the opposite is true: We have in our
possession just a few individ\lals separated by thousands ofyears and, sometimes, by
great distances. Racial type is no longer apparent among different variants--which,
in the absence of possibilities of comparison, cannot be discerned-and we are
forced to treat as significant whatever information the fossil has to offer. What is
more, we are inevitably tempted to classify disparate fossils in broad categories or
"families," as was the case for a long time with the Palaeoanthropians whom anthro
pologists persisted in grouping round the nucleus of the first Neanderthalians.
Another aspea, one related not to physical conditions of documentation but to racial
genetics, must be considered in connection with Neanthropian physical develop
ment. Genetic experiments with animals have given us an insight into certain aspects
of racial and individual variation. Two faaors play a preponderant role in the con
stitution of individual genetic formulas which, in combination with one another,
establish the racial type: geographical isolation and population density.
To varying degrees the importance of the former factor depends on the latter.
For example, the areas populated by the main racial groups (white, black, and yel
low) are so obviously larger than those in which mixed characteristics may be found
that each group is in effect isolated from the others, areas of crossbreeding forming
only a narrow fringe at the borders. The full range of possible formulas can be found
within each group. In the case of low-density groups, on the other hand, isolation
plays a very important role in terms of genetic development. Any group composed
of some thousands of individuals, if segregated or insularized, will in time tend to
acquire the characteristics of a homogeneous race, which explains why all the "pure"
races beloved of classical anthropology-Ainus, Bushmen, Lapps, Eskimos, Austral
ian aborigines-are groups that experienced prolonged isolation in the course of
which their genetic capital became standardized. These geographically marginal
groups, like animal groups in similar circumstances, show very clearly defined char
acteristics, often of an aberrant nature, and their general structure often remains
quasi-archaic. It is among such groups that the most clear-cut examples of survival
of the original Neanthropian type are encountered.
The density faaor, when associated with an open geographical setting, plays a
capital role in determining the general physiognomy of populations, whether it be
in densely populated areas of restricted size (such as Europe, India, or the Far East)
or in areas such as Africa where the mobility of individuals or groups offsets relatively
low population density. In such groups it is very difficult to pinpoint a clear-cut racial
type, genetic standardization being prevented by crossbreeding. The group, which
may consist of several millions of individuals, develops as a whole and produces an
ill-defined "average" type representing the balance struck between the individual
variations. Since such populations include the fewest individuals of the archaic Nean
thropian type, it would seem that this situation is the most conducive to an accel
erated drift proceeding by distinct stages.
Ifwe consider individuals of the most widely varying provenance representing

the general movement which originated with the primitive Neanthropians, we find
a new stage-type already much in evidence (figure 51). It occurs among whites as
well as in the black and yellow races, among dolichocephalians as well as brachy
cephalians. Its chief characteristic is the harmonization of diameters, especially as
regards the length and width of the face and skull. No increase in cerebral capacity
is perceptible, but the face tends to become narrower and remains short. The orbits
are proportionally large, and the absolute proportions of the nose-which is wide
in the black races and narrow in others-remains relatively unchanged.
The phenomenon of reduction in the massiveness of the face that characterizes
the earliest Neanthropians is thus maintained in all high-density groups as part of a
process of standardization of facial width and height (figures 52 to 63). This phe
nomenon is connected with the general regression of the dentition, taking the form
of reduction or complete disappearance of wisdom teeth and smallness of the roots
of all teeth. It would be hazardous to relate the whole history of human cerebrali
zation to a single mechanical cause-the reduction of the dentition, a genetic evo
lution concerning which our knowledge is still extremely incomplete-but dental
evolution expresses better than any other factor the mechanism of a complex evo
lutive process that is still continuing in all modern humans.
Physical Stocktaking
The physical development of Homo sapiens can be traced through various
races over a period of some thirty thousand years. The diverSity of racial types makes
it difficult to establish the details of the process within so short a time frame, but chro
nological analysis does yield some useful facts. The earliest specimens, many of them
associated with the "race of Cro-Magnon," exhibit a very distinctive cranial type: The
brain box is large and very long, the face is wide and extraordinarily short, especially
by comparison with the directly preceding Neanderthalians; the orbits are extremely
low and rectangular. This type of cranial conformation is found in practically all
Upper Paleolithic fossils in France, Central Europe, Germany, the U.S.S.R, and as far
afield as China. This would seem to be the most archaic skull structure of our species.
In Europe this type continued into the MesolithiC, with evideI;1ce being found in Por
tugal, Brittany, and Denmark Individual instances of the same type of structure can
still be found in all regions of the world today, but as a collective racial formula it
applies only to Tasmanian and Australian aborigines and some New Caledonians.
1be Neanthropians 125
52-55. Narrowing ofthejugal "compasses" in Homo sapiens. The angle decreasesfrom

100 degrees in the New Caledonian (figure 52) and the Melano-African (figure 53) to 95
degrees in the European man with a complete tooth row (figure 54), and90 degrees in the
European woman with no back molars. Note the shift on the axis E2 as a result ofwhich
,
(figure 55) the supportfor the cheekbones tends to merge with the supportfor theforehead
(loss ofmechanical independence (i)fthefront teeth).
56-59. Structure ofthe canine tooth row in Homo sapiens. Same individuals as infigures
52 to 55. Note that the connection between thefront teeth and theprefrontal bloc is main
tained in the modern man. In the individual without back molars (figure 59), the angle C'
has narrowed to 40 degrees, rtiflecting the shortening ofthe base P-Bj the line ofsupport
for the canines (E3) tends to merge with thatfor the molars E2 infigure 55.
60-63. The general balance oftheface is expressed by thefact that the angle ofthe cheek
bone E2 equals the angles ofthe chin D and ofthe apophjsis ofthe basion B, which links
thefacial structure with the stresses due to erectposture. Taking the New Caledonian (fig
ure 60) and the Melano-African (figure 61) to represent the normal balancefor Homo
sapiens, we note that the values ofthe cheekbones, the chin, and the base are identical. In
the European (figure 62) the axis E2 has begun to shift toward E3, and theface (60
degrees) is not in balance with the base (figure 67). The disappearance ofwisdom teeth
(figure 63) reflects a real distortion of the skull in search ofa cranial structure compatible
with erectposture, a case of ''superevolution'' comparable to that ofthe Pomeranian (fig
ure 24).
After the Upper Paleolithic a considerable diversification of skull types took place.
In many different races, especially in regions of high population density, certain traits
that seem to carry on the anthropoid evolution appear often enough to be consid
ered Significant. The brain shows no marked tendency to increase in volume; indeed
no gain would seem to have been achieved in this respect since the Neanderthalians.
The facial dimensiOns, on the other hand, tend to diminish, and this decrease in facial
volume is often reflected in the disappearance of wisdom teeth (figures 55, 59, and
63). The fact that the length ofthe dental arch has been reduced-the first molar con
tinuing to provide the main point of support for the face-has made the forehead
come increasingly to overhang the face. This was first noticed more than half a cen
tury ago and has been the source of theories to the effect that the modem human is
a fetus or an infant arrested at an early stage of its development. It is a commonly
observed fact, in monkeys as well as in humans, that the volume of the brain in child
hood and adolescence is considerable by comparison with the size of the face, which
does not assume its definitive proportions until puberty. Only a step was needed to
conclude from this observation that evolution toward the human being was a kind
of gradual prolongation of infantile states that supposedly gave the intelligence time
to develop--and the step was readily taken. I myself prefer to think that we should
no more regard the human as a fetus of a gorilla than we should cling to the idea of
the ape-ancestor: Both are forms of the same morbid search for our monstrous twin.
We have also seen that in Zinjanthropus, the formula of a human body with a human
skull containing a small brain was proved mechanically sound. Is it conceivable that
the rhinoceros is really a kind of latter-day fetus of the hyrax, or the trout an embryo
coelacanth? By trying too hard to explain why our brain is larger than others, we may
find ourselves denying an evolution that from the start has tended toward improved
neural organization, and consequently toward an increase in the weight of the cere
bral apparatus. Taking a general view of the body as a machine, the general mech
anism of the human species has not undergone any fundamental change since the
time of the first bipeds. Only successive modifications have occurred. In the Nean
derthalians the balance of the face was still based upon the canines and the first
molars; with Homo sapiens the canines ceased almost entirely to provide support
and the prefrontal region was unbarred. None of this is remotely connected with the
infantile stages of monkeys. Zinjanthropus has nothing in common with a monkey's
fetus about him-and the processes involved in the development of our lineage up
to and including the modem human are biologically normal and have nothing to do
with "fetalization."
The Neantbropians 129
The Human of the Future
Can the trajectory of human development be extended further? In terms of its

main characteristics--vertical posture, hand, tools, language-the system called
"human" reached its ceiling possibly a million years ago. If we ask ourselves how
humans can develop still further without losing any of their fundamental triuts, our
thoughts inevitably turn to intracranial. Our parieto-occipital apparatus was stabi
lized by erect posture a very long time ago, which means that our posture would have
to change if anything new were to happen in that area. The cranial convexity also
appears to be stabilized so far as its middle part is concerned; give or take a few var
iations, the cortical fan has opened out as wide as it will go. A last improvement was
achieved in the prefrontal areas through the loss of the orbital visor, followed by the
disappearance of wisdom teeth, a process that is still in its initial stages. Progress in
this direction cannot be unlimited; we have to acknowledge that not a great deal of
scope is left if we are to remain human beings in the physiological and mental sense
accepted today. Late in the nineteenth century, writers of futuristic science fiction,
impressed by the fetus theory, imagined our contemporaries of the late twentieth
century as having an enormous brain, a tiny face, and a shriveled body. The picture
is false because there is no reason for any appreciable increase of brain volume in
less than several thousand years. We are still only thirty thousand years old, and a
great deal more time must pass before the species drift becomes strongly percep
tible. The most that may happen-if the weight of the brain is really such an impor
tant issue-is a relative increase in brain weight due to artificial selection. But what
those early science fiction writers failed to see is that no change is possible without
the loss of the hand, the teeth, and consequendy of erect posture. An anodontic
human race living in a prone pOSition and using such forelimbs as it still possesses
to push buttons is not completely inconceivable, and in certain works of science fic
tion we find "Martians" or "Venusians" who come close to this evolutive ideal. But
have we the right to say that such beings would still qualify as human beings? Paleon
tology is not without examples of species reaching a state of balance which subse
quent developments reveal to be permanent. Some of these species, like the sharks,
achieve a certain immutable stability, while others suffer definitive extinction. It
seems probable that Homo sapiens would fall into the latter category; were we ordi
nary mammals, the prognosis would have to be resolutely pessimistic. We can, how
ever, comfort ourselves with the thought that we remain subject to the general
species drift and may consequendy enjoy a respite of some tens of thousands ofyears
before becoming extinct; we might also imagine that, by a voluntary act, we will make
use of genetic laws to suspend the course of our evolution, at least for some time.
But in any case it is not obvious what further "liberations" we could achieve without,
by so doing, being transformed into a different species.
The Evolution of the Neanthropian Brain

The last really spectacular episode of Anthropian evolution was, as we have
seen, the disappearance of th.e prefrontal ridge. In line with the procedure we
adopted in respect of the other hominids, we must therefore consider the effects of
this important modification of cranial structure upon the functioning of the brain.
Brain volume remained cQnstant from the time of the most developed Palaeoan
thropians (Archanthropians 600-1,200 cubic centimeters, early Palaeoanthropians
1,200-1,300 cubic centimeters, Neanderthalians 1,400-1,600 cubic centimeters,
Neanthropians 1,400-1,550 cubic centimeters), which means that major changes had
to result, not from input of new matter, but from changes in proportions between
different parts of the brain. An increase in cell density and in the number of con
nections probably occurred and the available volume was probably utilized more
efficiently, but there is no way of checking these hypotheses by paleohistological
means. The essential factor, however, would seem to have been the development of
the prefrontal part of the brain. A relationship between forehead size and intelli
gence was established empirically a very long time ago and assumed the status of
scientific truth, almost of dogma, with the works of late eighteenth century authors,
particularly Louis Daubenton and Pieter Camper. But before we accept this idea,
which has become a commonplace, and develop it further, we should recall that
brain volume, intelligence, and the development of the forehead are not necessarily
interrelated. Individual exceptions to the statistical mean are very numerous, and it
has long been known that a brain that is small in size but compact and finely orga
nized, even behind a low forehead, is preferable to a bulky one. There is, however,
a statistical truth in which the very essence of anthropoid cerebral evolution is con
tained, namely humanity'S gain of the whole of the prefrontal areas.
Over the past few decades neurophysiology and neurosurgery have exten
Sively explored that region of the brain that is divided into two zones: the neocortex,
which is located in front of the premotor areas, and the rhinencephalon, which is a
very ancient part ofvertebrate brain structure. The rhinencephalon, whose main role
since the lower vertebrates has been to interpret olfactory data, underwent consid
erable change in the higher mammals, becoming one of the mechanisms that reg-
ulates the emotions. It is, we could say, the center of affective integration in the
cerebral apparatus. As for the prefrontal cortex, numerous surgical experiments and
observations confirm that it constitutes one of the prindpal elements of individual
personality, and m0st neurologists believe that it plays a predominant role in con
trolling operations and in the powers of foresight and lucid consciousness. The
development of the rhinencephalon at the upper end of the animal scale and its
proximity to the controlling cortex provide at least a partial insight into what the dis
appearance of the prefrontal bar did for the evolution of the human. By virtue of its
prefrontal regulatory apparatus, ¢Ie forebrain of Homo sapiens stands between the
technical motor function cortex and the emotion-triggering cortex. Prefrontal lobot
omies, which for some years were practiced in the treatment of certain categories
of mental patients, brought out the dual suppressing and stimulating role played by
the prefrontal cortex in affective and motor processes. It would be impossible to
imagine an apparatus better designed to serve the intelligence than one that governs
emotional impulses and motor organization at the same time. Although not yet fully
investigated, the role of the prefrontal cortex as an instrument of affective regulation,
operational control, and intellectual judgment appears essential. Before affective
regulation was achieved, there could be no question of intelligence or thought in
the fully human sense. What is more, we shall see that in the history of human soci
eties the disappearance of the frontal bar was rapidly followed by profound changes
in the relationship between humans and the biological world. Some development
of the prefrontal areas may no doubt have occurred even in the most primitive
Anthropians, for the emergence of tools and the development of operating
sequences on the basis of motor and premotor mechanisms alone is inconceivable.
Already with Zinjanthropus a frontal brain was interposed between the emotions
and the motor reactions of making-of technical organization-and its role even
then was surely very important. Yet it is strikingly true that the frontal region
becomes steadily larger with the passing of time and with increasing evidence of a
controlling intelligence. In accepting the postulate that in the case of the Australan
thropians and Archanthropians, the development of techniques more or less kept
pace with that of the skull, we allowed for the possibility of individual creative intel
ligence manifesting itself even at that early stage. In linking technical progress at that
level with biological development we are, I believe, merely acknowledging a phe
nomenon comparable to that which, in Homo sapiens, links technical progress to the
organization of the social group. The fact that emerges most clearly, once the freeing
of the forebrain has taken place, is the importance assumed by the sodal group as
opposed to the zoological spedes. As soon as individual variations begin to play a
preponderant role in progress, the register of values also changes. Very palpably it
was during the time of the Palaeoanthropians that this development took place. In
terms of form they still belonged to a world whose imperative values were zoolog
ical-a world that had not yet fully mastered the possibilities of technics and lan
guage, though certain important details show them as already forming part of the
world of today. Study of their culture, too often neglected by scholars more inter
ested in finding skulls than in understanding the human being, is fundamental to our
knowledge of ourselves, for when all is said and done it was in the Palaeoanthro
pians, and not in the Australanthropians, that the penultimate act of our history was
played out.
Diversification and Tempo of Technical Evolution

Now that we have established a certain number of facts about the physical
nature of our ancestors and about their intelligence, we should give some consid
eration to the history of their techniques before we tum our whole attention to
Homo sapiens. In briefly reviewing the main stages of that history, I shall endeavor
to pinpoint the connections between material and biological progress in the early
parts of the process.
Tbe Stages of Technical Evolution

Our knowledge of anthropoid technical development from earliest times until
the beginning of the present climatic period is based essentially on tools made of
knapped stone. Provided we recognize that such tools represent only a very small
part of the fossil human's equipment-for anything made of a substance more per
ishable than flint must remain unknown to us for practical reasons--we may regard
their testimony as pertinent.
Nineteenth-century tradition, still obeyed by too many popularizers today, cre
ated a picture of prehistoric man by simply substituting ancient elements for modem
ones: three-piece suit = bearskin wrapped round the waist, woodcutter's ax = biface
tied to the end of a stick, house = cave, and so on. Illustrations of every kind, from
frescoes on lecture-room walls to films and comics, have familiarized us with this
picture, which is not even based on the primitive races living today but Simply pres
ents prehistoric man as a more rudimentary version of the man of today. Compar
isons with the Australian aborigine or the Eskimo can help the researcher to some
extent, but objects now available to these peoples are so numerous and so highly
1be Neanthropians 133
specialized that the parallel should not be pursued too far. In fact our picture ofpre
historic man as a technical being remains one of extreme poverty, and this applies
almost equally to Zinjanthropus, whose technical culture was no doubt really very
meager, and to fossil Homo sapiens, who left only some stones and a few pieces of
carved bone behind him , but whose equipment must in fact have been considerable.
Yet, if we look at the details, we find that the amount of documentary evidence
aboutHomo sapiens for the period between 30,000 and 8000 B.C. is fairly substantial.
Without attempting too rigorous a cultural identification, we could say that humans
built huts and made tents, that their clothing consisted of finely sewn skins, and that
they adorned their bodies with necklaces and latticework ornaments made of animal
teeth, shells, or pieces of carved bone. We know that they used spears for hunting
and were experienced butchers and furriers. As artisans they had a wide variety of
tools at their disposal, including tools for the rough working of flint as well as for
very fine bone carving. Add to this some other crafts, such as basketry, bark work,
and woodwork which prehistoric humans had probably mastered, and we obtain a
rather rich picture that could serve as the pattern for a multitude of primitive cul
tures, both dead and living.
If we attempt the same synthesis for the most recent Palaeoanthropians, about
whom the Mousterian in Europe supplies substantial evidence, the picture is con
sistent but conSiderably poorer. The highly evolved Palaeoanthropians knew how to
erect shelters (huts or tents), they probably hunted with the spear, and there is ample
evidence of their skill in skinning and cutting up animals. The range of their man
ufacturing tools was limited; they did not work in bone, but we have reason to sup
pose that they did work in wood and bark.
To go further than that would not be reasonable. No excavations seriously
angled on cultural research have been conducted for early Palaeoanthropians- or
Archanthropians, who are very rarely found in their habitat. A path of technical evo
lution stretching back from Homo sapiens to the Australanthropians is perceptible,
but it runs too close to the line of gradual disappearance of records to be interpreted
with any degree of certainty. What hope we have of building up a picture of technical
evolution must therefore rely exclusively on the stone industry.
1be Stone Industry

Leaving out of account the stones used for striking and the faceted spheroids
whose purpose remains enigmatic, we could say that all stone tools were intended
for cutting, scraping, or pierCing. In trying to trace our technical evolution with the
help of knapped-stone tools, we therefore depend on a cultural image strictly limited

to sharp objects. We need only imagine any present-day culture from which all forms
of equipment other than sharp-edged tools or weapons have been excluded in order
to gauge the inadequacy of our knowledge of the industry of the fossil human. Once
we have grasped this fundamental fact about the nature of the available records, we
can concentrate on those factors from which a picture of technical evolution may
nevertheless be derived.
European prehistorians discovered long ago, by empirical means, that the
average size of flint tools decreased from the Abbevillian to the Mesolithic. Large
bifaces were gradually replaced by Mousterian flakes and later by the blades char
acteristic of the Upper Paleolithic, which in turn led on to Mesolithic "microliths."
It occurred to me some years ago that this development, resembling as it does certain
evolutive processes observed in paleontology, might reflect a general technical fact
that has nothing to do with the form of tools but represents something in the nature
of an "orthogenesis." My initial hypothesis was that the process of extraction of a cut
ting edge from a lump of flint varied in time proportionally with the ratio between
the length of cutting edge obtained and the volume of flint required to obtain it (fig
ure 64).
The hypothesis can easily be verified by experimental means. All that needs to
be done, leaving discards out of account, is to determine the length of usable cutting
edge per kilogram of flint fashioned into tools of a specific form. Figure 64 shows
the remarkable progression of this ratio, which reflects the first material relationship
between humans and minerals. It is fascinating to find that this relationship devel
oped strictly in parallel with human evolution, a fact that confers a curiously bio
logical character upon the prehistory of sharp-edged objects. The parallel becomes
still more obvious when we consider the succession of forms in greater detail.
From Chopper to Biface A rough-cutting edge formed by . perpendicular

impacts upon the edge of a pebble is a "chopper," a "core tool," the prototype of a
long series. The initial operation led on to a second one whereby a few additional
splinters were chipped from either side of the pebble in order to produce a point.
The cutting edge was now exposed more conveniently for use. The very crude tool
thus obtained is a biface-a heavy, almond-shaped cutting tool that evolved slowly
over a period of around four hundred thousand years. In the Acheulian the cutting
edge originally obtained by a series of identical perpendicular strokes (60 centi
meters) assumes a more regular and more slender form (1.20 meters) as a result of
tangential impacts applied in order to produce the first long flakes. At the peak of its
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64. The relative lengths of usable cutting edge obtainedfrom a kilogram offlint at differ
entperiods of the Paleolithic,
evolution, the biface was an almond-shaped piece of flint, thick but well balanced,
although having an asymmetric cross section because of the two distinct series of
actions involved in making it. To produce the biface, long, regularly shaped flakes
(which in turn were employed as knives) were removed by chipping from both ends
of the initial lump of stone.
From Biface to Levalloisian Point The biface had now become the source
from which flakes were obtained. Instead of being a Ucore tool," it was itself treated
as a core. The asymmetry of its cross section was more accentuated, and it was grad
ually turning into a mallet used to produce flakes of predetermined shape. A change
of function had taken place as a result of the adaptation process, and during the
hundred thousand years or so of the Levalloiso-Mousterian period the stereotyped
core was used to produce three or four types of flakes--oval, elongated, and tri
angular. The technique's development culminated in the production of points with
a thinner base, which could be as much as 20 centimeters long. The technical advan
tage was twice that obtained with the biface because the same amount of flint yielded
three times the length of useful cutting edge and because even quite small lumps of
flint could be put to use. As a result the toolmaker was no longer obliged to work
in the immediate proximity of places where unprocessed flint was to be found.
From the Levalloisian Point to theMicrolith In developing the core as a source

of flakes of predetermined shape, the Mousterians achieved what was perhaps the
most important technical revolution in the whole of human history, the subsequent
evolution involving only minor improvements of the flake-forming technique. The
improved angle of impact meant that a longer core was obtained, which in turn
offered the possibility of producing increasingly narrow and slender blades. Prog
ress during the Upper Paleolithic consisted in developing such blades into tools of
various forms. Moreover every sizable piece of discarded material found a specific
use depending on its shape, so that from the Gravettian onward, about 25,000 B.C.,
wastage was reduced to practically nil. Toward 12,000 B.C., in the Magdalenian
period, the range of tools was already so wide that several hundred tools could be
produced from only two or three kilograms of flint. This explains why flint objects
have been found in dwellings of the period hundreds of miles from any natural
source of raw material. Toward the end of the Magdalenian and in the Mesolithic,
between 8000 and 6000 B.C., the trend toward the production of microliths became
accentuated, and a further stage entered the technical process: Blades obtained from
the core began to be cut up into small sections of geometric shape, so the blade in
tum became a source of products.
In the Neolithic era the general tradition persisted, but the ratio between mass
and cutting-edge length changed dramatically, falling to extremely low figures. The
reason for this was that technical requirements were being completely transformed
by agriculture: A hatchet or an adze has only a narrow cutting edge but needs to be
rather heavy. For flint knives, however, the ratio continued to be closer to that
observed in the Upper Paleolithic (between 6 and 8 meters). At the dawn of the age
of metallurgy, toward 2000 B.C., imitations of Paleolithic copper daggers--which
could be over 30 centimeters long-were still being made at Grand Pressigny in
France from a huge core prepared in the old traditional way.
Thus the art of making cutting blades, from the earliest choppers to the long
blades of Grand Pressigny, followed an unbroken line of evolution leading gradually,
irrespective of form, toward better adaptation of the material to the desired purpose.
Some things about the geochronology of the Quaternary are still uncertain, but
although the geologists' estimates vary widely-between half a million and one mil
lion years--the general proportions are more or less universally agreed upon, and
from 100,000 B.C. onward the views held are practically unanimous. In figure 65 the
chronological development of the cutting-edge-weight ratio is compared with the
brain volume of a number of anthropoid fossils.
The comparison-which might seem artificial because it is drawn between
biological data, on the one hand, and a phenomenon relating to technical progress,
on the other-is nevertheless highly revealing. Up to and including the Archan
thropians, the two curves follow parallel courses and are almost flat; they then rise
steeply during the Moustero-Levalloisian period, which saw the development of the
early Palaeoanthropians, after which the "industry" curve rises vertically while those
representing brain volume flatten out and remain flat until the present day. This
tends to confirm the tentative finding of our last chapter, namely, that the very slow
opening out of the cortical fan, probably quite closely reflected in cranial capacity,
continued little by little until the Palaeoanthropians, in whom a radical biological
crisis occurred and was resolved with the disappearance of the prefrontal bar. Until
then technical activity was a faithful reflection of biological status; had the human
continued to be other than Homo sapiens, the industry curve might have been
expected to start rising between 200,000 and 400,000, years after our era, instead of
in the Magdalenian, 10,000 years before it. In other words, it does seem as though
the "prefrontal event" had marked a radical turning point in our biological evolution
as a zoological species governed by the normal laws of species behavior. In Homo
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65.. The relationship between increase in brain volume and technical evolution during the
Quaternary Period ofthe Cenozoic era (relative length of blade per kilogram ofmaterial
and diversity of tool types). +
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sapiens technicity is no longer geared to cell development but seems to exteriorize

itself completely-to lead, as it were, a life of its own. Different aspects of this sep
aration will be considered in subsequent chapters.
Diversification ofProducts
A clear confirmation of this conclusion is obtained if we draw up a list of suc
cessive extensions of the range of tools and correlate it with stages in the evolution
of rough-cutting methods. Figure.66 surveys the evolution toward special-function
tools and brings out the importance of the bone industry and of products other than
those required for simple subsistence in the last (fourth) stage.
A striking feature of the figure is that development in the first three stages takes
place uniquely by the addition of new forms derived from still existing older ones.
A single current flows through all the industries, from the pebble culture to Mous
terian, confirming what we know of the consistent biological evolution of humans
from Australanthropians to Neanderthal man. But the third stage is already set upon
a new course and Neanderthal man already displays some of the distinctive features
of the next stage. Not until the final part of his long reign, however, did he begin to
manufacture bone awls which were, properly speaking, fashioned.
The fourth stage is in complete contrast to the earlier ones. At the end of a rapid
transitional phase which occurred in Western Europe between 35,000 and 30,000
B.C., we not only find that the diverSity of tools has tripled but also that some tools
and other objects seem to be directly echoed in present-day primitive culture. Blade
tools, scraping and piercing tools, needles, spears, harpoons, spear and harpoon
throwers, and lamps belonging to that period have been seen and can still be seen
in the hands of living people. A new technical world, our own world, is coming into
existence.
The stone industry of the fourth stage (Upper Paleolithic) is firmly rooted in
the preceding stages and the evolution of new forms from older ones, though rapid,
is gradual. The two curves----cutting-edge-weight ratio and diversification of forms
rise vertically between the end of the Mousterian and the Magdalenian, but this can
be seen as an acceleration rather than a fundamental change. The situation is alto
gether different in the case of the bone industry, which was literally born at the
approaches to the late Paleolithic.
We have already referred to the existence of a bone industry during the earlier
stages, but the bone splinters attributed to the Australopicinae, the Sinanthropians,
or the Alpine Mousterians hardly deserve to be described as an industry. The most
First stage Second stage Third stage Fourth stage
Perpendicular striking Perpendicular striking Perpendicular striking Perpendicular striking

Core tool Tangential striking Tangential striking Tangential striking
Core tool Prepared core Prepared core
Flake tool Flake tool
Blade tool
Chopper Chopper Chopper Laminar flake

Clactonian flake Biface Biface Backed blade
Stone
Clactonian flake Clactonian flake Notching blade
Laminar flake Laminar flake Foliaceous point
Hatchet Levallois flake Notched point
Scraper Hatchet Geometrical objects
Scraper Notcher
Levalloisian point Scraper
Notching tool Burin
Backed blade Piercing tool
Scraper
Graver awl Awl

Needle
Spear
Harpoon
Bony Spear o r harpoon
materials thrower
Piercing tool
Spatula
Semispherical rod
Wedge
Pick
Polyhedrons Polyhedrons? Polyhedrons Dyes

Dyes Fossils
Fossils Ornaments
Miscellaneous Huts Lamp
Burial places Huts
Burial places
Figurative art
66. The diversification oftool types in the Paleolithic.

1be Neanthr0pians 141
that can be supposed-although the fact is far from proved-is that from among
pieces of bone they had splintered in order to extract their marrow, these anthro
poids selected some that could be put to direct use. The only incontrovertible evi
dence consists of a few deer antlers roughly cut into segments; not until the end of
the Mousterian do bone awls-extremely rare and few in number, but carved with
remarkable skill-make an appearance.
This absence is very curious and could be due to very significant facts per
taining to general behavior. On the face of it, there seems to be no possible reason
why the Archanthropians and Palaeoanthropians, excellent artisans capable of vis
ualizing the future shape of their bifaces and points in a lump of raw stone, should
not have been able similarly to "read" an awl, a gimlet, or a spear in a bony mass.
What is more, their stone tools as well as certain other material evidence suggest that
they used spears and lances made of wood. A no less singular fact is that bone tools
appear contemporaneously with objects of adornment made of similar materials-
spikes and spears on a par with bone ear pendants or animal teeth prepared for use
as ornaments. Although we, with our brain ofHomo sapiens, cannot quite grasp why
this should be so, chipping a tool out of flint or rasping down a wooden pole in order
to make a spear are operations on a different level from the slow process of fash
ioning a spear from a mammoth's tusk We can argue that the need for an awl or for
a more pointed lance did not arise until the end of the Mousterian, but by doing so,
we posit the existence of concerns and technical means which were probably alto
gether beyond the early anthropoids. Instead of insisting-for reasons that would
presuppose that their mind ran along the same lines as ours-that they must have
had a bone industry, we could simply say that they had not yet reached the point at
which these techniques were to emerge.
Diversification ofEthnic Groups

The only way in which we can try to understand the human phenomenon in
its totality is by carrying out a series of verifications of many aspects of the initial
hypotheses. For the present it appears that a very profound change took place with
the disappearance of the prefrontal bar, when the steadily rising curves representing
industrial progress and the increase in brain volume, respectively, began to diverge
in a spectacular manner; brain volume had apparently reached its peak and the
industry curve, on the contrary, was at the start of its vertical ascent. We may assume
that it was at this point that, from being governed by biological rhythms, human cul
tural development began to be dominated by social phenomena.
Is tentative verification of this hypothesis feasible? Ideally the vestiges of pre

historic times should provide us with at least one criterion for ethnic differentiation,
given that the idea of the dominance of social phenomena presupposes that humans
were beginning to combine in groups of cultural affinity rather than in social group
ings similar to those in existence among the most evolved vertebrates. In the living
world such criteria are not hard to find; language is the most convenient one, but
social and religious customs and aesthetic traditions also offer means of drawing eth
nic frontiers within human populations. None of these criteria is unfortunately avail
able to the prehistorian. Art came upon the scene too late to be of use as a means of
differentiation at the level at which the argument of these early chapters is con
ducted. Technology offers the only hope. But the results oftrying to check the validity
of technical criteria against the ethnic divisions of the living world of today are some
what disappointing. True, there are the minutiae that enable us to distinguish a Dan
ish sickle from an Austrian, Spanish, or Turkish one, but ifwe were considering those
objects across a distance ofseveral thousands of years, and ifthey had moreover lost
their handles, can we be sure that they would still reflect cultural distinctions as
marked as those which we know exist between Danes, Austrians, Spaniards, and
Turks? The prehistoric records we have are not a satisfactory source for research of
this kind. Yet it has to be admitted that, poor witnesses of ethnic diversity though they
are, only tools even suggest the existence of such diversity. Implicitly prehistOrians
have always been haunted by the problem of how to differentiate between ethnic
groups. Influences unconsciously absorbed from history, where everything happens
between peoples, put them in the habit of regarding Acheulians, Aurignacians, Per
igordians, and others as real ethnic entities, and sometimes as both ethnic and
anthropological entities. This attitude is particularly evident when it crystallizes
around certain striking and readily recognizable objects such as "Solutrean bay
leaves." All too easily the Solutreans then become a people or even a race, cropping
up all over Europe and the world at the behest of successive studies and excavations.
Yet the Solutrean (to pursue the same example) is not a person but a certain manner
of making an object. Even more narrowly, it is a style of fashiOning flint applied to
an object that in all probability was the reproduction in stone of a spear tip made of
bone. Stripped of all but its essential content, the Solutrean fact belongs entirely to
the field of ideas: One day when prehistory has advanced further, it will no doubt be
possible to trace the progression of the Solutrean idea across the Europe of around
15,000 B.C. just as it is possible today to map the distribution of television sets across
the rural areas of Westem Europe. This example shows how futile it is to look for
clues to the intimate personality of ethnic groups in objects that became associated
The Neantbropians 143
with an epoch because of their dramatically innovative nature. That being estab
lished, it remains for prehistorians to try, not to delimit ethnic groups with the help
of prehistoric tools, but to see whether there is anything in such tools and other
objects that does suggest ethnic diversification. In other words, the cartography of
the main types of tools, and especially of different versions of these main types,
should furnish some useful hints. At the present stage of knowledge the task can only
be performed in very broad outline, but even so the approach offers some valuable
information. Available records of the first (pebble culture) stage show no differences
throughout the whole African continent except in the nature of the stone used. Given
that only the chopper and the Clactonian flake tool are at present recognized as
belonging to the first stage, the existence of any variants hardly seems possible.
In the second stage, despite enormous gaps in the records, we can assume the
existence of several large industries with the emphasis at times on the biface, at oth
ers on the Clactonian flake tool, or on large flakes produced by tangential impacts.
These forms recur in varying proportions over very large geographical areas (Indo
nesia, Asia, India, Central Europe, the Mediterranean, Africa), revealing-if nothing
else-the existence of what we might be tempted to describe as "civilizations" if the
term were not connected exclUSively with the emergence of cities. In any case we
are entitled to believe that very large culturally homogeneous areas existed in the
Lower Paleolithic. Since everything suggests that no variants (other than those due
to the nature of the raw material) existed within those cultural areas, we can consider
that differentiation at this stage was not yet of a different order from that observed
in zoological subgroups, especially since distribution was severely limited by climate
and the irregularities of continental configuration. The existence of genuine small
sized cultural entities in Europe and Africa during the Abbevillian and the Acheulian
would be difficult to prove. If we had means of knowing Acheulian languages,
we might be surprised to discover a multitude of dialects, but such materials as
we do possess force us to acknowledge that exactly the same technique was em
ployed in making a Saharan biface as in making a biface found on the banks of
the Somme.
The situation is not very different in the third stage, which includes the whole
Levalloiso-Mousterian industry. The number of forms remains small and variants are
rare. Ifwe consider the best-known area, that of Europe and Africa north of the equa
tor, the only striking example of a regional variant is provided by the hafted tools of
the Aterian tradition. It is not impossible, however, that a thorough study of, say, the
industries of Eastern Europe might show that the fragmentation of large cultural
areas was more marked in the middle than in the Lower Paleolithic.
In the fourth stage the situation changes completely. Forms such as the Aurig
nacian split-hafted spear or the Solutrean awl do still recur throughout the European
continent, but the effects of regional differences are already clearly perceptible in
the range of tools as a whole. The imperfect state of present knowledge makes it
impossible to draw a map shOwing the situation-even in Europe alone-for every
period of a thousand years, butwhatwe do know is that although the biface remained
unchanged for several hundreds of thousands of years from Great Britain to South
ern Africa, more than two hundred variants of the twenty main types of tools existed
in Western Europe alone during the twenty thousandyears of the Upper Paleolithic.
It might be thought that such a wealth of variations was not necessarily due to ethnic
diversity but rather to the same acceleration as we observed when considering the
ratio between the length of cutting edges and the volume of raw material employed
to produce them. But to think this would be, as it were, to put the, cart before the
horse, for, as we shall see in the next chapters, cultural diversification has been the
main regulating factor in the development of Homo sapiens. Although, as has been
said, tools are in many ways an unsatisfactory criterion, art--examples ofwhich are
available from the Upper Paleolithic onward-indisputably shows the existence of
distinct regional entities living side by side and steeped in the same material culture
but separated from one another by the myriad details of their group personalities.
5 The Social Organism
The Biology ofSocieties

So far we have considered the human being as a phylum, that is, as a time
sequence of collective individuals eventually culminating in Homo sapiens. The evo
lution of these specific individuals (Australanthropus, Archanthropus, Palaeoan
thropus) proceeded side by side with that of technics and language until the
emergence of Homo sapiens. At that point a change occurred in the tempo of tech-_
nical development, a change apparendy due to a major modification of the cerebral
aJ;-lparatus. As we are now beginning to realize, these developments coincided with
the emergence of a social apparatus based on cultural values. As a result of that the
zoological human species broke up into ethnic groups, and relationships of a new
type began to form between the individual and the group mechanism from which
the individual derived his or her efficacy. Were we to infer from this that social life
began with Homo sapiens, we would be mistaken. There is more than one reason
to suppose that even in their most primitive form, anthropoids were already social
g
beings. This can be demonstrated without invokin anthropoid apes and their var
ious forms of organized social life. Instances of groups being formed for mutual ben
efit among mammals and other vertebrates, indeed throughout the living world, are
sufficiendy numerous to convince us that life in society reflects a basic biological
option, like the option for bilateral or radial symmetry or like the specialization of
the forelimb for grasping.
The relationship between individual and societal values in humans varies in
direct proportion with the evolution of technoeconomic structures. We must there
fore define these structures if we wish to understand certain properties of the social
body at different stages of its development. The most direct effect of the technical
level upon the social group involves the group's density. From the moment when,
as a result of developments in the human intellect, values peculiar to Homo sapiens

first came into being, the "technical level-social density" ratio became the chief fac
tor of progress. In chapter 13 we shall discuss the use ofsymbols as a means of taking
control of the outside world and will describe the gradual establishment of a com
pletely humanized universe. At the present stage we need consider only the terms
of the human's material relationship with the environment and thus to trace the main
stages of our technical and economic development.
Analysis of techniques shows that their behavior over time resembles that of
living species, as though driven by an apparently inherent evolutionary force that
places them outside human control. The idea of "humans outstripped by their tech
nology" is a commonplace and undoubtedly a mistaken one, but it would be just as
erroneous to ignore the curious parallel between paleontology and technical evo
lution, a fact to which I have already drawn attention (particularly in Milieu et tech
niques, pp. 357-361). There is room for a real "biology" of technics in which the
social body would be considered as. an organism independent of the zoological
one-an organism animated by humans but so full of unforeseeable effects that its
intimate structure is completely beyond the means of inquiry applied to individuals.
Is this enormously complex social body the result of a gradual evolution comparable
to, and synchronous with, that of the brain, or was the form of the societies of today,
a form that evolved within the space of less than ten thousand years, determined by
other, nonbiological factors? A brief review of societies over the ages could help to
answer this question.
In adopting the history of the brain and the hand as the subject of the first part
of this book, I wanted to begin at the beginning. Humans are perceptible above all
in their corporeal reality, and it seemed to me that the first thing to do was to measure
the results of what can be done with the hand-to see what it was that humans make
in exercise of what their brains can think. The approach involves some risk of ignor
ing or underestimating the incorporeal elements in human reality. To say that the
human brain-in other words, human thought-could not have come into being
without erect posture is to ignore the fact that "human" erect posture could not have
been achieved without the general tendency of the central nervous system to prog
ress by adaptation. Obviously the human being is the result of the coincident devel
opment of posture and of the nervous system; the attainment of humanity appears
to have been a genUinely paleontological process which, in a Teilhardian perspec
tive, may have been determined by the slow emergence of reflective thought
through the geological ages. But whereas there is material proof for the first half of
the proposition, only metaphysical evidence can be advanced in support of the view
The Social Organism 147
that evolution may, at some stage, have been guided by thought-a view that shifts
the discussion to a level for which the paleontological method is but imperfectly
suited. Exactly the same happens when we try to move from the paleontological
sphere to that of ethnology. We can prove that the way in which material, technical,
and economic factors are balanced influences social forms and therefore a society's
thinking, but we cannot establish the principle that philosophical or religious
thought coincides with a society's material development. Were that to be true, the
teachings of Plato or Confucius would seem to us as archaic as a plow of the first mil
lennium before our era. In fact, although we may think these teachings inappropriate
to present-day social conditions as created by the evolution of material means, they
do embody concepts that are still meaningful today. The equivalence of human
thought is a fact that applies both in time and in space. Except in so far as it impinges
on a purely technical field, or has a specific historical context, the thinking of an Afri
can or a citizen of ancient Gaul is completely eqUivalent to mine. That is not to say
that each of our ways of thinking does not have its peculiarities, but only that once
their reference system is known, their values become transparent. This fact is of an
order that cannot be transposed to the material world, just as material proof cannot
be provided for the hypothesis that the brain contributed toward the expansion of
the skull. Each sphere draws upon its own source of evidence: For the material
sphere that source is techology, economics, and history; for the sphere of thought
it is moral or metaphysical philosophy. We may think them mutually complementary,
but their complementarity is really a matter of mutual opposition.
Technical, Economic, Social

The close interdependence between social institutions and the technical and
economic apparatus is borne out by countless facts. Although the nature of moral
problems remains essentially unchanged, each society molds its behavior using such
implements as the material world will offer. Social security for the maminoth-hunter
is as unthinkable as is a patriarchal family in an industrial city. Technoeconomic
determinism is a reality whose effect upon the life of societies is deep enough to
bring into existence structural laws to govern the material world as firmly as moral
laws govern the behavior of individuals toward themselves and their fellow beings.
We may recognize that thought has as much reality as the material world, we may
even assert that the latter owes its being to the effects of the former, but the fact
remains that thought is reflected in organized matter. It is the organization of matter
that, in various ways, directly shapes all aspects of human life.
Further along in this book an analysis of the rhythms and the organization of
human society in space and time will help us to define more clearly the close con
nection between social behavior and the technoeconomic apparatus and to place
both in a dialectic comparable to that which governs the relationship between the
body and the mind as sustained by the nervous system. Difficult as it is to analyze a
living substance-and humankind is precisely that-our study must begin with the
techno economic skeleton of humanity. It was in this spirit that my book L 'Homme
et la matiere was written twenty years ago.
Since Rousseau there has been no shortage ofworks on the behavior of "prim
itive" man. Those written in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were delib
erately angled to give support to theories of political sociology. Their object was not
so much to observe Australian aborigines or Fuegians as to plot a theoretical curve
of social institutions, show how western society had deviated from that curve, and
suggest ways of ensuring the social welfare of future generations. Marxism was born
during this initial phase and has never completely outgrown it The sociology of
political action borrows from observation only those things it needs for purposes of
practical demonstration. When a sociology of primitive peoples began to come into
being toward the end of the nineteenth century, it derived its momentum directly
from the general sociological movement then taking place. In France, Emile Durk
heim, Marcel Mauss, and Lucien Levy-Bruhl based their theoretical constructs of ele
mentary social behavior upon indirect observations of living primitive peoples.
Today Claude Levi-Strauss and his school are trying, on the basis of social anthro
pology, to revive this approach within a perspective based on the exact sciences.
Developments elsewhere have taken much the same course. Except for the Russian
school of historians of material culture, the technoeconomic infrastructure has been
taken into consideration only where its effect upon the superstructure of matri
monial practices and rites was blatantly obvious. Our best sociologists have certainly
had things to say about the ongoing relationship between the two facets of human
existence, but they have always said them in terms of the social sphere affecting the
material one rather than of a two-way flow springing initially from the world of mat
ter. The result has been that today we know more about people exchanging goods
for reasons of prestige than about the kinds of exchanges that go on every day, more
about ritual observances than ordinary services, more about the circulation of dowry
money than about selling vegetables, and much more about how societies think than
about how they are structured.
In making this point, I do not in any sense mean to disparage sociology or
social anthropology, but only to observe that when Durkheim and Mauss so eagerly
championed the "total social fact," they were assuming that the technical and social
infrastructure was already known. Within such a perspective all material life is
upheld by social life: As we shall see in part II, the approach is a good one when dis
cussing the specifically human aspect of ethnic groups, but it overlooks the other
facet, the general conditions by virtue of which the human species forms part of the
living world and on which the humanization of social phenomena is based.
The two facets are not mutually exclusive but mutually complementary. In
either case the totality of the social fact is not in doubt, but it is perceived differently.
To the sociologist or social anthropologist, the social fact is totally human because
it brings the human down from the apex to the base of the development curve. Con
versely, the practitioner of in-depth ethnology reads the facts in terms ofgeneral biol
ogy, yet totally humanized. Many authors have outlined the stages of the
humanization process, but only a few have tried to analyze it To consider Zinjan
thropus and observe that humanization began with the feet may be less exalting than
to imagine anatomical partitions being broken down by the sheer force of a not-yet
existent brain, but it is a sound approach and one that we should adopt when study
ing the social edifice.
The Primitive Groupll

The anthropoids have in common with the primates a short tooth row, includ
ing grinding molars, and an alimentary canal, including a simple stomach and intes
tines of medium length in which the fermentation processes of the assimilation of
cellulose-containing substances play a minor role. This digestive system, upon which
survival depends, emerges as the simplest and most basic element of the human
economy.
The organization of the human body dictates the consumption of fleshy
foods-fruit, tubers, shoots, insects, larvae. The human diet is drawn from both the
vegetable and the animal kingdoms. Humans are alone among the primates in having
developed the consumption of animal flesh. Monkeys do catch and eat reptiles and
birds, but only incidentally. So far as archaeology enables us to judge, this situation
dates back to a very distant past. The Australanthropian was already a hunter. Unlike
the gorillas with their enormous canines, which consume fruit and vegetable shoots,
the earliest anthropoids had small canines and were carnivorous. Of course they
were not exclUSively so; the idea that fossil man ate nothing but animal flesh arose
because bone remains are all that has survived. Ifwe draw up a list of the uncultivated
seeds, fruit, stalks, shoots, and bark that were eaten by European peasants as recently
as a hundred years ago and compare it with a list of the plants growing in our lati
tudes even during the rigors of the glacial periods, we can see how much edible veg
etable matter was available to Neanderthal man.
This type of food imposes the first constraint upon the form of the primitive
group. Fleshy foods, whether vegetable or animal, occur only sparsely under natural
conditions, and their availability is subject to considerable seasonal variations. If
humans had been equipped with rasping teeth and with a ruminant's stomach, the
foundations of sociology would have been radically different. Had we been able to
eat herbaceous plants, we might-like the bison-have formed seasonally migrating
herds composed of thousands of individuals. But being an eater of fleshy food, we
were compelled from the outset to observe certain very specific conditions of group
formation. The fact is an obvious one but in studying human groups it must be taken
as the starting point.
The Territory
The relationship between food, territory, and population density at all stages
of human technical and economic development is an equation in which the variables
are correlated. In the case of the primitive group the ratios between the terms are
the same whether we are dealing with Eskimos, Bushmen, Fuegians, African Pyg
mies, or certain Amerindians. This is so strictly true that it must be applied to the
interpretation of prehistoric data. To provide themselves with food, prehistoric
beings had to possess a detailed knowledge of animal and plant habitats. The old pic
ture of the roaming primitive "horde" is certainly incorrect. Some gradual shifts of
a group's territory may have occurred, as may accidental or sudden migration, but
as a rule the group would have long frequented a territory whose feeding potential
was known to it in minute detail. Of course it is difficult to tell what a normal Aus
tralanthropian or Archanthropian territory looked like; the established fact of the
existence of huts and tents from the Palaeoanthropians onward makes the terms of
the equation comparable to those for the primitive peoples of today. Indeed we
arrive at very similar terms if we apply standards from the animal world to the Aus
tralanthropians and Archanthropians: However large the territories of monkeys or
carnivores may be, constraints of food and shelter will limit them to some extent in
terms of both area and topogaphy.
Frequentation of a territory implies making periodic journeys. The primitive
group is normally nomadic-it moves from place to place as resources become avail
able, usually exploiting its territory in a seasonal cycle. A complex relationship thus
exists between the density of food resources, the area that can be covered in daily
food-getting forays round the temporary abode, and the territory's total area as deter
mined by the group's knowledge of seasonal food availabilities-a balance between
food requirements, security within the habitat, and the length of boundaries with the
territories of other groups. Lastly, a relationship exists between the amount of avail
able food, the number of individuals in the group, and the size of the frequented
territory. The density of food resources of course has a directly limiting effect on the
number of consumers, but the territory's size is just as much a constraint. The group
can only exist if daily forays are compatible with cohabitation or if periodic ones will
ensure a sufficient food supply for a corresponding number of grouped individuals.
The size of primitive groups today is determined by two variable factors: constant
resources, on the one hand, and periodically available ones, on the other. Constant
resources will provide normal subsistence for a group limited at most to some tens
of indiViduals-usually between ten and twenty. Periodically available resources,
such as a temporary abundance of salmon or reindeer, would permit several such
elementary groups to band together into a larger one. Thus the texture of the social
fabric is, at its very origin, closely dependent on the ratio between territory and food
supply.
The Conjugal Group Technical and economic relations between husband and
wife are closely complementary in all known human groups (figure 67). In the case
of primitive peoples we may even speak of strict specialization. This state of affairs
is the more interesting because, unlike the situation with regard to territory, it has
no real parallel in the world of the higher mammals. Among the carnivores, males
and females engage equally in hunting; among primates, the search for food is per
formed indiVidually, and no trace of gender specialization is to be found. We might
never know what the situation of the earliest anthropoids was in this respect and
must therefore resort to reasoning in order to arrive at a hypothesis. The human
feeding pattern involves operations of two very different orders: the acquisition by
violent means of the flesh of large animals and the more peaceful acquisition of small
animals, invertebrates, and plants. In all known primitive groups, hunting is normally
done by men and gathering by women. This separation can be placed in a religiOUS
or social context, but its organic character is demonstrated by the fact that the divid
ing line between the male and female realms varies from one primitive people to
another. Eskimo women do not hunt, but among some western Amerindians women
are responsible for trapping rabbits. Among Bushmen gathering is not in principle
supposed to be a man's job, but men do participate in finding and gathering plants
67
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68
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69
67. Theprimitive couple-basic unit ofthe social group-comp!ementarily sharing the eth
nic group:S entire stock ofknowledge.
68.The nomadic group with a primitive economy travels over its territory cyclically. It
maintains matrimonial and economic exchanges with complementary neighboring groups.
69. The economic relations ofNaron Bushmen. Within theframework ofthe ethnic group,
thefamily group operates as infigure 68. Exchanges gradually extend to other Bushmen,
to Bantu, and to whites.
that are too scarce to brook gender specialization barriers. Thus it would seem that
gender specialization is rooted in physiological characteristics. The more pro
nounced aggressivity of males, a frequent characteristic in the animal world, and the
more restricted mobility of women explain why women specialize in searching
partly for food of an animal nature and partly for vegetables. The very slow growth
of human children makes women naturally less mobile, and given the dual nature
of human food, the primitive group appears to have no other organic solution than
to assign men to hunting and women to gathering. The humanization of this bio
logical imperative is reflected in the social and religious forms that human groups
have evolved to deal with the problem. The basic phenomenon is a general one,
peculiar to humans simply by reason of the exceptional character of the human diet,
but the sometimes very strict limits of specialization, and all the traditional elements
evolved in order to rationalize it, form part of a social phenomenon that is exclu
Sively human.
Technical Multivalence
The primitive group then is made up of a limited number of functionally spe
cialized individuals of both sexes who periodically frequent a territory correspond
ing to their needs (figure 68). Such a group is basically an elementary subsistence
unit capable of ensuring its own survival over a prolonged period, although it may
sometimes band together with others. Its main characteristics are complete knowl
edge of survival practices and technical multivalence. With Eskimos, Australian
aborigines, or Fuegians the primitive group composed of a limited number of cou
ples and their descendants offers an overall picture of Eskimo, Australian aboriginal,
or Fuegian SOCiety, possession of the whole of the group's material culture being
essential to the survival of units living in isolation. More narrowly still, the totality of
the group's survival culture is held by the conjugal group, in which it is shared
equally by husband and wife. The couple, especially among Eskimos, may find itself
temporarily isolated from all other social units. The fact that in primitive peoples
technical specialization does not extend to the sphere of survival operations reflects
the basic conditions of life of such groups, where each social unit must possess all
the knowledge necessary for survival. Normally the elementary unit will include a
sufficient number of individuals for a certain division of tasks to operate among
them, older and weaker members being assigned a role in secondary operations, but
such specialization does not cast doubt upon the basic principle of multivalence of
each of the group's members. A permanendy isolated primitive group at the Homo
sapiens level is inconceivable, except perhaps in the abstract hypothesis of an iso

lated community breaking up into several elementary units. Normally each group
forms part of a larger system comprising several other groups with which it practices
exchanges of various kinds, especially matrimonial ones. Sociologists (in France,
Levi-Strauss in particular) have clearly demonstrated the role of matrimony in the
organization of secondary units described in sociology by the approximate but con
venient term "clans." The complex network of exchanges ofgoods and wives is well
known, as is the role of food-acquisition and food-consumption operations in nor
malizing relations between groups practicing exchanges of women. At the anthro
poid level, procreation and food were inseparable from one another in
techno economic terms. The often highly complex systems of humanization of group
behavior in these two essential areas merely reflect a fact that remains, at root, bio
logical. The notion of "primitive" sexual promiscuity is as devoid of biological sub
stance as that of the "roaming horde." The survival of animal societies presupposes
a constant and precise system of organization, which varies from one species to
another depending on the balance between each society and its environment. In the
preceding chapters we showed that the anthropoids' neuroanatomical apparatus was
as well integrated as that of animals. The development of a bioeconomic apparatus
based on manual and verbal technicity presupposes equally efficient social integra
tion-a basic cell in harmony with its food requirements and linked to neighboring
cells by a network of exchanges in harmony with its reproductive requirements.
Concerns relating to the acquisition of food preponderate in the primary group (the
couple or family unit), and those relating to the acquisition of matrimonial partners
in the wider kinship or ethnic group.
Forms ofSymbiosis
The complementary technical actiVities of the spouses are, strictly speaking,
symbiotic in that they cannot be separated at the technoeconomic level without
dehumanizing the society (figures 69 and 70). Because the primitive group's survival
demands that its base be as narrow as pOSSible, the symbiosis of immediate survival
is confined to the couple. But there are areas of technical and economic life where
under these conditions the elementary group's survival would be endangered in the
longer or shorter term, or at any rate certain products, materials, and objects
regarded as necessary would not be available to the group. Manufactured objects or
commodities circulate continually among the primitive peoples of today. Depending
on what its specific resources may be, a small group will serve as a specialized sup-
70. The economic relations ofEskimosfrom the Middle Ages until thefinal annihilation of
traditional structures. Vital commodities (ivory, skins, wood), locally manufactured goods
(stone lamps, cookingpots, native copperware) and goods ofAsian, Indian, or European
origin (pipes, tobacco, ironware) are circulated as a result of exchanges between neighbor
inggroups.
plier to its neighbors. With Eskimos the balance was until recendy based on the cir
culation of stone lamps, wood for making harpoon handles and sleds, and reindeer
skins for making winter garments. With Bushmen it was based on skins and bead
ornaments made from ostrich egg shells; with Australian aborigines, decorated
boomerangs and stone knives. All these objects were the subject ofexchanges whose
interruption would in many cases have jeopardized the survival of the elementary
group supplying the object in question. Exchanges of foodstuffs, manufactured
objects, and raw materials, as well as of services, form part of the essential function
ing of the cluster of matrimonial cells which earlier writers used to call the "clan."
They are essential at least as much to technoeconomic as to social balance, and there
is no reason why this should not have been so at least as far back as the late Paleo
lithic. There are records to prove that flints of exceptional quality were already being
circulated at that time, and the existence of regional units was beginning to become
quite dearly perceptible in the different styles of objects in common use: It is
unlikely therefore that territorial arrangements were very different from those
known to us through more recent examples.
The idea of a primitive population pattern made up of small hordes roaming
over interminable plains without any organized contact between them is contrary to
the simplest biological rules. The survival of any species is predicated upon the sym
biotic organization of a sufficient number of individuals-large and tighdy knit
groups in the case of species with massive food resources, handfuls of individuals
confined within a small area in the case of species whose resources are few and far
between. We have seen that humans could not have survived living in herds or living
alone, and we have to acknowledge that the specifically human form of group life,
with all its sociological consequences, is still maintained wherever conditions allow.
In order that the phenomena of technical, economic, and social life peculiar to
humankind should arise and subSist, each group's territory had to be at least rela
tively permanent and contiguous with other permanent territories belonging to
other groups.
We can say with certainty that the above is true of the past forty thousand years.
The fact of our ceasing to be a zoological species and becoming an "ethnic" one
made it inevitable. But what of earlier times? What of the period before the emer
gence ofHomo sapiens capable of thought? In chapters 3 and 4 we saw how the tech
nical development curve turned steeply upward at that moment, and we ascribed this
sudden evolution to the loss of the prefrontal bar and the consequent release of a
higher form of intelligence capable of using symbols as implements for achieving
control over the external environment. Such control is unthinkable without lan
guage, but it is also inconceivable without a complex social organization. If we then
try to look back further than forty thousand years, what picture can we form of Pithe
canthropian or Australanthropian society? The existence of continentwide technical
stereotypes, coupled with lack of data about life in those societies, inevitably makes
speculation abstract. The comparison with family groups of gorillas or chimpan
zees-with their relative conjugal stability, their polygamous arrangements, their
more or less permanent territories, and their habit of splitting up into intermediate
groups-naturally comes to mind. But the social organization of these higher spe
cies, whose young mature even more slowly than ours, could not be fundamentally
different from the general type to which the present-day human belongs. We can
imagine their matrimonial unions to have been less long-lived, or the constraints
imposed by members of the group upon each other less dear-cut, but it seems that
1be Social Organism 157
the basic organization of anthropoid society must have been really and completely
Anthropian from the outset, firmly anchored in its forms by laws that successive cul
tures would paraphrase into legal rules or dogmas but that owe their stability to
essentially biological causes.
1be Transition to an Agricultural Economy

Toward the end of the Paleolithic, a radical technoeconomic transformation
took place in societies living around the Mediterranean perimeter. Between 8000
and 5000 B.C., a new technoeconomic system based on agriculture and stockbreed
ing made its appearance, and societies assumed a completely new form (figures 71
and 72). In terms ofgeological time only an instant separates the last aurochs hunter
from the Mesopotamian scribe, and the emergence of the new economies is there
fore a sudden explosion. That is precisely how the phenomenon was considered for
a long time, and indeed some authors even today refer to the "invention" of agri
culture. In a similar vein prehistorians ofan earlier generation introduced the notion
of at least partial domestication of the reindeer and the horse. The primitive world
seems so different from that of the farmer and stockbreeder that it is difficult to see
what else but an "invention" could join them together. In Milieu et techniques I
stressed the importance of a "favorable environment" in the phenomenon of inven
tion and the fact that the phenomenon is usually impersonal in character. There is
no reason why normal rules should not have applied in the case of agriculture and
stockbreeding. What we must look for are the circumstances in which the association
could have occurred spontaneously. Major advances have been made in that direc
tion during the past ten years. Near Eastern archaeology previously situated one of
the earliest sources of both techniques somewhere between the Mediterranean and
the Caspian. Today excavations in northern Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Tur
key have very considerably narrowed down the area, thus providing some factors on
which an answer could be based. Finds at the now famous Jarmo, Shanidar, Zawi
Chemi, and (atal Hilyiik sites show that a transition from a primitive economy ofgoat
hunting and gathering of uncultivated edible grain to a wheat-growing and goat
breeding one took place between 8000 and 6000 B.C., The change occurred imper
ceptibly. There were sickles before there was agriculture, and the moment in time
at which goats ceased to be hunted as game can only be established statistically. The
example of Iraq ideally demonstrates the point because there the change took place
in only a few centuries without any upheavals to jeopardize cultural survival. A com-
71. Distribution ofmajor agglomerations corresponding to proto-agricultural andprimi

tive agriculturalforms ofsocial organization in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near
East.
72. Distribution ofbovines and ovi-caprines. From the Eurasian center the species Bos,
Ovis, and Capra spread to all regions where it wasphysically possiblefor them to adapt,
probably assimilating some local wild breeds. At the northernperimeter ofthe biotope their
function was taken over hy the domesticated reindeer, while bovine infiltration in the
south was supplemented hy the zebu in arid regions, the buffalo in marshland, and the yak
in Tibet.
parative investigation is necessary if we want to understand the nature of the

phenomenon.
Proto-stockbreeding
The emergence of a transitional form between hunting and stockbreeding pre
supposes a favorable environment of a rather special kind in which the relationship
between hunter and hunted is, to some extent, a personal one. This automatically
excludes the large migrating herbivores, whose herds came within range of the
primitive human's weapons only annually or biannually, as well as dangerous or
swift-moving herbivores such as the bullock, the bison, or the horse-animals of the
wide-open spaces, difficult to approach and impossible to contain. When we analyze
the separate elements of a possible transitional stage, we realize that conditions relat
ing to the physical environment must have played an even more important role than
biozoological ones. It is very unlikely, for example, that stockbreeding began in the
steppes of Africa or Central Asia. Further insights are obtained by studying the gen
eral situation of the most primitive animal breeders in the present-day world. Rein
deer breeders in the north of Lapland and the Siberian Far East live in an
environment where the reindeer still runs wild. Their method ofherd management
relies on a close symbiosis facilitated by the geographical environment. The moun
tainous terrain, both in the west and the east, is etched into by steep valleys, some
tens of kilometers long, that channel and isolate the migrations of herds between the
upland pastures and the winter grazing of the lowlands. The same herds go up and
come down again each year, accompanied by herders who protect the animals with
out imposing any Significant change on their natural behavior. The conditions for a
changeover to stockbreeding are provided by the boundaries of the human group's
territory, the normal migration paths of herbivorous herds and the regular time pat
tern of their migrations in search of additional food.12 The conditions for goat breed
ing that once existed in northern Iraq correspond exactly to those for reindeer
breeding today. Proto-stockbreedillg very probably originated in mountainous ter
rain. The fact that the only large mammal bred by Amerindians, the Andean llama,
was also a mountain-dwelling herbivore makes that probability still greater, and sim
ilar conditions are likely to have existed in the Magdalenian in the area of the Massif
Central and the Pyrenean Valleys. Conditions for stockbreeding were perhaps not yet
ripe at that stage, but relations between groups of hunters and seasonally migrating
reindeer herds probably already showed an advanced degree of familiarization.
The domestic dog, which first appears at about the same time as stock breed
ing, obviously played a very important role in its development. The Canidae
beaters and trackers of game--display a form of behavior very similar to the human
hunter's. Although information is still lacking about the origins of the dog, which was
not yet in existence in the Magdalenian, we have no difficulty in understanding how
the Canidae and human came to work with one another, first in hunting and later in
channeling the movements of herds.
The transition from goat and sheep breeding in a mountainous environment
to breeding large herbivores on the plains has not yet been elucidated, but the indi
cations are that if received its first impetus from the proto-stockbreeding of goats,
since it developed only a short while later, spreading like an oil stain around the ini
tial center. Breeding of sheep and oxen, pigs, donkeys, and horses-and later, in the
area of the Indus, of the buffalo, the zebu, and the elephant-began to be practiced
between 6000 and 3000 B.C., spreading from the Near East to Asia, Europe, and Africa
(figure 72). The only aspect of this movement about which there is any doubt is its
original impetus; except for the American llama, all animal husbandry forms a con
sistent historical whole. Once the principle became established, its application to
new species presented fewer difficulties than the transition from pottery to metal
lurgy. It is interesting to note that with the exception of the reindeer, whose food
requirements are altogether special, all herbivores used for breeding (bovines,
sheep, horses, camels) are grass-eating animals that live in large groups on contin
uous expanses of open grassland and band together when fleeing from danger. With
animals of this kind, the game-beating methods of the herders and their dogs are
highly effective. Leaf-eating animals (Cervidae), which live in small herds under
cover of trees and scatter when fleeing, have proved resistant to stock-breeding.
Proto-agriculture
An important point to be noted is that agriculture sprang up at the same period
and in the same parts of the world as stockbreeding (figure 71). This is hardly
surprising if we recall what was said earlier about the technical and economic
composition of the primitive group. Human groups were formed on the basis of a
mixed-diet economy and their balance throughout prehistory depended on the
complementary exploitation of the animal and plant kingdoms. A separation
between farmers and herders must have taken place at an early stage, perhaps from
the very outset. We can imagine primitive social cells of proto-stockbreeders relying
on gathering for the vegetable part of their diet as we can imagine proto-farmers sup-
plementing their vegetable diet with hunting. Neighboring communities probably

evolved more or less synchronously toward organized production of plants and ani
mals. If we acknowledge that the exceptional topography of the Near East was con
ducive to the channeling of herds and the transition to proto-stockbreeding, we must
also allow that the botanical conditions in the same regions favored a transition to
agriculture. The ethnic units concerned were not, however, necessarily the same.
Among the innumerable wild plants that can be used as foodstuffs, those with
edible grains play a role of the first importance throughout the temperate zone and
especially in its southern part, �hich includes Africa north of the tropics, the Middle
East, Central Asia, and America. Before the present era of dryness, at the time when
the transition to proto-agriculture was taking place, the periodic exploitation of her
baceous grain-bearing plants undoubtedly formed an essential part of the search for
food. Among such plants Gramineae proper occupy an important place. Although
their grains are small, they have high nutritive value and can be stored for prolonged
periods. It was recently established that large-grained Gramineae, the ancestors of
today's cereal crops, were growing in the Near East and in particular in northern Iraq
at least from the middle of the last Ice Age. Thus the basic conditions for the increas
ingly agricultural exploitation of wild wheat existed in the very regions that offer the
first evidence of goat breeding.
Exactly how the transition from one economy to the other occurred is still a
matter for conjecture. Still we can readily imagine that communities of hunters and
plant gatherers with access to game animals whose seasonal movements were chan
neled in river valleys, as well as to a wild food plant growing extenSively over a very
large habitat, might find themselves engaging in a more and more intimate form of
exploitation of this plant without any disturbance to the previous balance of their
lives. Between the seventeenth and the early twentieth centuries, Wisconsin Indians
in that part of their region where Chicago stands today had an economy that suggests
the successive stages that such a development may have taken. A gramineous plant
(Zizania aquatica, or wild dce) growing in the marshes around Lake Superior and
Lake Michigan used to be exploited to a considerable extent by several tribes. The
manner of this exploitation is particularly instructive. The Dakota Sioux, hunters of
bison and gatherers of wild plants, would simply harvest the rice when it ripened,
using it to supplement their diet. The Menomini or Algonquin Indians, forest hunters
and gatherers of maple sugar, lived in close symbiosis with the wild rice that con
stituted their staple diet in autumn and winter. They neither prepared the soil nor
sowed seeds but only tied the ears of rice in bundles to protect the grain from birds.
Areas in which wild rice grew were distributed in accordance with a highly elaborate
system of land property rights. Similar instances of protection and personal attri
bution of wild plant habitats are known in other primitive groups.
The way in which a "neolithic"-type economy at least partially based on seden
tary plant resources and on partly nomadic animal resources came to emerge is fairly
clear. In this case agriculture and animal husbandry are as one, and the dividing line
between the primitive economy and an economy of farmer-stockbreeders is imper
ceptible; the two forms really mesh with one another. A little further on we shall see
that in Near Eastern societies this .situation gave way fairly rapidly to an exclusively
agricultural-pastoral economy, but around the edges of the original agricultural
world the initial situation (proto-farmers or proto-stockbreeders balancmg their
economy by hunting or gathering) perSisted, allowing the necessary transitions to
take place gradually. The first agricultural populations of Europe, more recent than
those of the Mediterranean, came into contact with agriculture and animal husban
dry between 6000 and 4000 B.C., Cereals and cattle came in at the same time, but
neither played anything like an essential role at the beginning. In proportions that
vary from one region to another, the new economy existed side by side with tra
ditional hunting and gathering techniques. Surprisingly, bones of game animals
found in certain Neolithic sites in France are as numerous as cattle bones, and the
little information we have about plants at that time shows that in the Iron Age wild
cereals still accounted for an appreciable part of the human diet. Existing ideas
about the agricultural "revolution"-which was an instantaneous event on the geo
logical time scale but must have been, if not imperceptible, then at least very gradual
to the generations that experienced it-will certainly have to be reviewed in the
future.
Agriculture and Stockbreeding

Whether the agrarian economy came in gradually, and whatever forms the tran
sition may have taken in peripheral regions, the process that began in the Near East
during the Mesolithic era toward 8000 B.C., had, by 5000 B.C., completely transformed
the structure of societies from Mesopotamia to Turkey, Greece, and Egypt (figure 72).
Even before the appearance of pottery between 6000 and 5000 B.C., the foundations
for the new economy had been laid by the association of wheat and barley with
sheep, goats, and pigs, and the first permanent villages had come into existence. Cul
tural variations were already considerable. Not enough records are available to pro-
vide us with a detailed picture of the way of life of these first farmer-stockbreeders,
whose environment was not then the desert it has since become, but we do know
that they were sedentary-at any rate for a large part of the year-since there is evi
dence of real villages and organizational forms whereby periodic contact at least was
maintained between the cattle and the fixed habitat.
From a certain stage of settled agriculture onward, the proto-stockbreeding
system that obliged the herders to follow their seasonally migrating herd was prob
ably at the origin of the separation of Near Eastern populations into sedentary and
nomadic elements. Proto-stockbreeding was a form of economic balance that did
not require a break with earlier structures. Settled agriculture, however, was a new
form, and its consequences were extremely far-reaching. We can imagine proto
farmers as being attached for part of the year to areas in which wild rice was plentiful,
but the concept of sedentarization becomes meaningful only when the group's
survival depends entirely on cultivated grain. Permanent settlement was dictated
simultaneously by having to tend the fields and by the presence of food stocks.13
Complete plans of agricultural villages during the first period are practically
nonexistent, but recent excavations in Mesopotamia, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and
Israel have brought to light some important facts concerning preceramic and early
ceramic settlements (figure 73). There are also many records of the first stage of agri
cultural penetration in both Western and Eastern Europe. Their functional config
uration is more or less uniform: They consisted of clusters of dwellings of various
forms and materials, grouped close together and not including any buildings that
would suggest marked social differences. The preurban settlements of Palestine,
Lebanon, and Turkey possibly included shrines or richer-than-average houses but
not yet any real palaces, and the distance between the top and bottom of the social
ladder was not yet as great as it would become a little later on. This nucleus of
homes was encircled by protective structures-palisades or ramparts-and
equipped with cattle yards and sunken store pits. An immediately noticeable fact, by
comparison with primitive groups, is the concentration of a relatively large number
of individuals in one place. The consequences of settled agriculture are uniform in
all areas to which it extends: They are the forming of a human group of several tens
of individuals concentrated round stocks of food and protected by defense works
against the natural environment and fellow human beings. These immediate con
sequences were the cause of the complete transformation of the way of life of human
societies. The most striking features of this transformation-capitalization, social
dOmination, military hegemony-have been well inventoried by sociologists, so all
73. (a) Plan ofpart ofthe neolithic village of (atal Hilyiik in Anatolia (afterJ. Mellaart).
The village, which dates to the early sixth millennium, is among the earliest examples ofa
permanent settlement with an agriculturalpastoral economy. (b) Plan ofpart ofthe sec
ond millennium city ofMohenjo-Daro in India.
we need do in the present context is to mention those points upon which the tech
no economic function appears to have a direct bearing.
Settled and Nomadic Groups

In the societies in which it originated, settled agriculture gave rise to a sepa
ration between farmers who also bred a small number of animals and nomads who
were large-scale stockbreeders. The separation persists to this day and imparts a spe
cific character to a number of civilizations from South Africa to China. The group spe
cialization typical of our savannas and steppes probably resembles that which existed
in primitive communities; in both cases a symbiosis takes place. Like the primitive
man/woman couple, the community is divided into two complementary technical
groups, and the same causes account for the greater or lesser mobility of each of the
two groups living in symbiosis and dealing, respectively, with animals and plants.
This new division of the technical and economic apparatus is functionally ofthe same
nature as earlier ones, but its elements are radically different. The symbiosis between
an agricultural and a pastoral society is no longer one in which each of the two ele
ments belongs to the same culture and is at an eqUivalent technical level. The two
form distinct technoeconomic systems, economically linked but socially separate, no
longer mutually complementary as in matrimony but often closed to one another.
A more complex structure, in which two distinct societies maintain a similar rela
tionship, has been superimposed on the complementarity of the couple and of allied
groups within a system of exchanges. The situation is comparable to the develop
ment ofvegetative systems from the association of unattached cells at the bottom end
of the biological scale to complex organisms requiring the coordination of a con
siderable number of aggregated cells at the top end. Fr. Teilhard de Chardin
expressed the same thought when commenting on the replacement of the zoologi
cal element by the social. Similar causes naturally produce similar effects: Pastoral
agricultural societies owe their special characteristics to increased population den
sity, which is determined by and requiredfor food production, itself both the cause
and the effect of the altered complementarity relationship. That is the starting point
of the complex history of the symbiosis between farmers and herders. Now one, now
the other, of these two economically inseparable groups has dominated in different
societies and different historical situations. For thousands of years, from biblical
antiquity until the invasions of the Huns and Mongols or, in Africa, the migrations of
the Peuls and Bantu, much of the Old World's history reflects this alternation.
War Another feature reproduced in the economic apparatus of today is the

tendency of this complementarity between farmers and herders to assume violent
forms. Here again, we are not dealing with a radically new situation but rather with
a basic characteristic manifesting itself on a different scale and in a changed form. In
primitive sodeties murder is an affair between individuals within the system of alli
ances, and the motives behind vendettas waged by fractions of a group are generally
of an individual kind. Rivalry in the acquisition of land,' goods, or women arise
between elements belonging to different alliance systems or ethnic groups. While
there is no reason whatever to suppose that the primitive human was any less aggres
sive than humans are today, it is important to note that, for organic reasons, aggres
sion in primitive peoples takes very different forms from those of war as rendered
possible by the existence of large sedentary units. Such war forms part of innovative
technical activity and, as such, is to this day connected with sodal progress. The
aggressive behavior of human communities did not become sharply differentiated
from their acquisitive behavior until a very recent stage in history-if indeed the atti
tudes existing today offer evidence of change. The techniques of aggression have
always been closely associated with acquisition. For the primitive human the first
purpose of such techniques was hunting, where aggression and the acquisition of
food merge into one. During the transition to agricultural societies, this fundamental
connection was disturbed by the deviation of the sodal apparatus from the biological
course of human evolution. Aggressive behavior has been a fact of human life at least
since the Australanthropians, and the accelerated development of the social appa
ratus has not had any effect on the slow maturing of the phylum. Hunting and war
have gradually become assimilated with one another, the exerdse of both activities
becoming concentrated in a new class thrown up by the new economy, the class of
men-at-arms. Cereals and cattle, the keys to the enfranchisement of primitive human
kind, opened the way to progress but could not throw off human genetic servitudes.
Our history has taken place on three conflicting levels: that of natural history, in
which Homo sapiens of the twentieth century is hardly different from Homo sapiens
of three hundred centuries ago; that of sodal evolution, in which the biological
group's basic structures have adapted, with varying degrees of success, to the struc
tures resulting from technical evolution; and at the level of technical evolution, that
astonishing excrescence from which our species derives its efficacy but which it is
not biologically equipped to control. Between these two extremes-the physical
human at one end, and, at the other, the techniques of which the human sometimes
seems to be no more than a tool-some mediation is achieved by a sodal edifice
whose responses to new problems are always a little delayed and by moral concepts
upheld by religions or ideologies and deeply rooted in social morality. By giving us
a counterimage of the biological human, these moral concepts help to create an
image-still very abstract--of a Homo sapiens beyond the sapiens stage. The outer
shell of the farmer is still the same as the mammoth-slayer's, but the economic system
that made the farmer a producer of resources also made the farmer, by turns, hunter
and prey.
Social Classes
Storage is a fundamental aspect of animal and plant production at the agri
cultural-pastoral level. The group is immobilized round its hoard of cereals, dates,
or olives just as nomadic herders are tied to the movements of their herds. The new
relationship between humans and their food resources inevitably brings about an
adjustment of social relations and thus determines a stratified social organization, the
very mainspring of progress. The first villages were followed in less than two thou
sand years by the first towns with all they imply by way of chiefs, warriors, servants,
and tied villagers. The theory of this evolution was expounded by historical mate
rialism a century ago. We need only remark in passing that it represented a normal
process of achieVing social balance and not, as the theories of early sociologists
would have it, a pathological aberration. While it is true to say that social forms lagged
seriously behind the process of economic adaptation, they still provided the best
possible response to the insoluble dilemma of phyletic as against technical evolu
tion. Throughout the enormous wastage of humans and resources that denotes his
tory, it is always the human who serves as the connecting link between successive
stages.
1be Freeing ofthe Technician

Prehistorians drew attention long ago to the suddenness with which major
"inventions" made their appearance in the history of human societies. Toward 6000
B.C., when agriculture had only just consolidated its hold, pottery seems already to
have reached an advanced stage, and metallurgy and writing followed suit toward
3500 B.C. After only 2,500 years of agriculture, oriental societies were ready to
acquire the technical and economic foundations upon which the human edifice still
rests today. Yet it had taken Homo sapiens thirty thousand years to reach the thresh-
old of agriculture. This suggests that the constituents of the human group now
included an element that had been lacking in primitive societies: The group had
become capable of covering the food requirements of individuals engaged in tasks
not directly related to food production (figures 74 and 75).
The cycle of technical progress starts with storable food. Of course animal
breeders played an essential role in the evolutionary process, but it is with the seden
tary part of the population that it must have begun. The "inventions" of pottery and
metals had two causes: the new tempo of work and the presence of stored food
resources. The exercise of crafts presupposes the freeing of a very considerable
amount of time: This may take the form of food-producing individuals being freed
during intervals in farm work, or of specialists totally exempted from food produc
tion tasks. The fluctuating seasonal character of agricultural work and the availability
of more or less constant food reserves create the conditions for a "favorable envi
ronment." Just as the Australanthropians' freed hand did not stay empty for long, so
too the free time of agricultural societies soon became filled with activity.
Settled existence was favorable to the development of techniques such as bas
ketry and weaving, which had undoubtedly existed earlier but which the require
ments of farming and the reduced availability of animal hides now promoted to the
status of necessities. But the most important innovation had to do with the handling
of fire, and it was around the "furnace crafts" that technical progress crystallized. The
origin of such arts lies in the very distant past. The Paleolithic human already had
some accidental acquaintance with baking clays, and we know that Chatelperronians
and Aurignacians as far back as 35,000 B.C. found and gathered native metals such as
iron pyrites and galena crystals, probably using them for purposes relating to reli
gion or magic. But the acquaintance did not lead to pottery or metallurgy because
the primitive group lacked the countless hours that must be spent by countless indi
viduals before an invention can materialize.
Availability of time of course was not the only factor. Steady population growth
and the community's increasing needs created a strong demand for innovation, such
as is not felt to the same degree by societies that have already achieved a balance.
Stabilization in space and the possibility of producing additional resources Simply
by increasing the number of individuals in the group created a special inner envi
ronment that coincided with the freeing of many hours of time. This was the basis
upon which the snowball of accelerated technical progress began to roll, within a
social system composed of dense territorial units communicating with each other
through a network of peaceful or warlike exchanges.
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74. Functional diagram ofthe elementary agricultural group. Necessities are shared
between individuals grouped by gender in a number ofsocial subsystems based on the
extendedfamily. The system allows a certain marginfor specialization based, in particu
lar, on the age group. From the Bronze Age onward, the agricultural group is in many
Civilization
The transition from the essentially rural Neolithic stage to the age of metals
coincided with the development of a way of life that in fact was its direct conse
quence-"civilization" in the strict sense of the term, with the city beginning to play
a part in the functioning of the ethnic organism (figure 76). No doubt the transition
occurred very gradually. While we may expect to discover evidence of ever older
semiurbanized units going back to the very beginnings of proto-agriculture, the first
city will probably never be found. All we need to know in order to understand the
urban phenomenon can be inferred from archaeological records relating to the
period between 6000 and 3000 B.C. already available from Mesopotamia to Egypt.
The transition from villages built on natural raised ground to the first towns
built on mounds on top of the ruins of earlier villages is literally imperceptible.
Archaeological investigations reveal that successive layers of such ruins were per
manently occupied from Neolithic times. Civilization is reflected in a functional pat
tern, not in morphological features that are clear-cut from the s�. The pattern is
that of a group of villages organically linked to an agglomeration that fulfills the role
of a capital. Such a pattern presupposes an established social hierarchy and the con
centration of authority and of the group's "capital" of grain in the hands of an elite
based on military and religious power. From the techno economic point ofview, the
most important fact here is the artisan's entry upon the scene, for it is on the artisan
that all technical evolution depends.
cases supplemented � a smaller one-individual or collective-ofartisans (blacksmith or

femalepotter, carpenter, weaver, etc.).
75. Spatial organization ofagricultural groups. Each group has its own territory, at least
relatively, and maintains exchanges with neighboring groups. The exchanges may be so
far-reaching as to include matrimony, or they may stop at exchanges ofgoods. The artisans
maintain among them a system ofrelations ofthe same tYPe, which may extend over very
large areas and may be accompanied � strict endogamy.
76. Functional diagram ofthe city. The city serves as the centerfor the territory and is sur
rounded � a group ofagricultural villages ofthe type shown infigure 75,from which it
derives its resources and which it holds together. The central authority (1) is linked with
military (2), religious (3), and legal (4)junctions, which tend to become speCialized in dis
tinct individuals or classes. The degree ofsegregation ofthe merchants (5)from the ruling
classes is variable, but the indirect influence and the alliances ofthis group always endow
it with considerable importance. The artisans (6) and small traders, although dependent
upon the ruling classes, are completely isolatedfrom them. Some members ofthese groups
achieve advancement, however, thanks to thepermeability of the merchant class.
Civilization thus depends on the artisan, but ethnology has not yet fully defined
his or her position within the functional apparatus. In all historical periods and in
all nations, even when their activities are closely integrated in the religious system,
artisans were relegated to the back of the stage. The priest is "holy," the warrior
"heroic," the hunter "brave"; society acknowledges the orator's "prestige" and
will even concede "nobility" to the peasant's tasks, but what the artisan does is
merely "skillful ." Artisans embody what is most Anthropian in humans, but as we
survey their long history we begin to suspect that they represent only one of the two
poles-the hand, the antithesis of meditative thought Society's discrimination in
favor of the "intellectual" as against the "technician," which still persists today,
reflects an anthropoid scale of values on which technical activity comes lower down
than language, and working with the most tangible elements of reality lower down
than working with symbols. In agricultural societies, wealth-the possession of
money-began at a very early stage to be reckoned on a scale parallel to the functions
of the priest, the chieftain, the manufacturer, or the farmer. Even today, when the
divinization of inventions has led to a veritable cult of technology, the soldier-astro
naut who travels in a rocket is perceived as a hero but the engineer who designs one
merely as a servant of science-a hand. Once we have glimpsed the deep biological
roots of such well-known social Situations, we can no longer ascribe the ascent of
the human to the workings of chance or of mysterious predestination, for we can see
that "chance" has been working in the same direction from the very start, and that
the mystery is in the gradually evolving whole, not in its parts.
The initial apparatus of civilization was also constituted as a single whole. Set
tled existence, itself the product of the storage of agricultural goods, led to the form
ing of hierarchical societies and to the concentration of wealth and of dual military
and religious power in capital cities. The chiefs and their capital city were organically
the "head" of the ethnic body-an etymological image that reflects the fact that an
organization of functions represented by hierarchically organized social groups now
took the place of the hierarchical division of functions between individuals within
the primitive group. The development of the social apparatus into a macroorganism
springs from the same source as the development of all other living societies from
corals to bees. The individual human organism too is designed on the same model;
it too is an aggregation of specialized cells grouped into organs responsible for each
of the various sectors of the organism's economy. It is not surprising therefore that
when civilized individuals adopt a complex form of grouping, they come more and
more to resemble a body whose parts are increasingly subordinated to the whole.
A characteristic feature of the social body everywhere is that although its form has
to do with evolution, the rate of its development does not. Not a great deal of evo
lution goes on near the top of the pyramid. Appreciable progress has no doubt been
achieved in religious and philosophical thinking since the founding of the first Meso
potamian cities, but can we claim that anyone today thinks (in the strict sense) better
than Plato? It seems that Homo sapiens achieved his full psychological potential for
exploring the immaterial at a very early stage. All we can do now is wait for the evo
lutionary drift to carry us slowly toward a clearer view. If intellectual progress is tak
ing place at all, it is still imperceptible in biological terms and is more a matter of
exp-anded means and fields of speculation than of improved psychophysiological
equipment.
On the other hand, the disproportion between the rate of technical progress
and that of biological evolution is an obvious point that does not need to be labored.
Once the agricultural organism was established, humankind entered upon a process
of evolution vertically upward to the present day. On the basis of what is still a very
simple functional pattern (chief, capital city, capital, manufacturers, rural producers),
social institutions maintain an uneasy peace between a de.principe harmonious
social order and a defacto situation largely at the mercy of technical and economic
imperatives. Our techniques, which have been an extension of our bodies since the
first Australanthropian made the first chopper, have reenacted at dizzying speed the
events of millions of years of geological evolution until, today, we can already make
an artificial nervous system and an electronic intelligence. The founding of the first
cities and the birth of civilization thus mark, in imperative form, the beginning of the
dialogue between the physical human-borne on the same tide as the dinosaur
and technology, the child of human intelligence but completely freed from all
genetic ties.
The Rise ofPrometheus

Metallurgy is the only one of the furnace crafts (figure 77) directly involved in
the development of civilized societies, yet it must be seen as part of the inseparable
whole it forms with all such crafts, inclUding the making of pottery, glass, dyes, plas
ter, and whitewash. Invention should never be imagined as a unique act of genius
whereby an isolated new technique is produced out of thin air. Individual genius
needs substantial soil to grow in. Before metallurgy could come into being, a whole
body of techniques had to be practiced for many centuries by a large number of indi-
Temperature
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77. Thefurnace arts. The connections among metal, ceramic, and glassmaking techniques
are apparentfrom the scale oftemperatures.
viduals. It is impossible to put a date on the domestication of fire, but we do know

that Sinanthropians knew how to keep a fire burning and that Palaeoanthropians had
fires. The first technical application for a purpose other than cooking goes back to
the Upper PaleolithiC, around 35,000 B.C. From that time on there is evidence of iron
ocher being roasted to produce a range of dyes varying in color from a yellowish
orange to a purplish red. Dye making was by far the earliest of the furnace crafts. No
record exists to suggest that clay was baked for a practical purpose, although there
are traces of this occurring aCcidentally in cave dwellers' hearths. Not until about
6000 B.C. does baking of modeled figurines and of clay ovens seem to have occurred
(still aCCidentally but more frequently) in Iraq, and only toward 5000 B.C. did pottery
proper emerge and spread across the early agricultural societies. Plaster made its
first appearance at about the same time, and floors and walls of dwellings from Mes
opotamia to the Mediterranian began to be covered with gypsum reduced to plaster
by firing.
Pottery and plaster making imply some experience in controlling tempera
tures between 500 and 700 degrees centigrade and a possibility of exceeding 1,000
degrees in a few well-aerated parts of the hearth. We may therefore consider that
toward 4000 B.C., countless potters and limeburners were handling fires whose qual
ities were gradually approaching those required for reducing metal oxides to metals.
The use of lime derived from calcareous rock further suggests that a reducing chem
ical capable of lowering the melting point of the ore may have been-present in the
hearth. An environment potentially favorable to the emergence of metallurgy was
thus present.
Temperature and a reducing chemical are two of the three terms of the metal
lurgical equation. The third-the ore itself-was likewise available, for in addition
to ocherous iron (which is not readily reducible), malachite with its high copper
content now appears among the dyes. Used probably as a cosmetic, it was common
in Egypt. While we do not yet know anything precise about the discovery of copper
reduction, we do know that between 5000 and 3000 B.C. copper had become com
mon from Egypt to Mesopotamia, and that by 2000 B.C., when iron came on the
scene, the use of bronze or copper had spread like an oil stain from the Atlantic to
China.
The fact that the beginnings of metallurgy coincided with the first cities is more
than pure chance. It reflects the application of a teChnoeconomic formula already
fraught with all the consequences it was to have for the history of the great civili
zations. It is not possible to understand the phenomenon of civilization through any
one of its separate elements. To try to grasp it by studying the development of a reli
gious or political idea is to stand the problem on its head, but to interpret civilization
solely in terms of technical and economic forces is equally mistaken. A cycle of inter
actions is at work between the base and the superstructure. Ideology is undoubtedly
molded by technoeconomic factors, yet it also influences their development; as we
saw in the preceding chapters, a similar interaction exists between the nervous sys
tem and the body. In the context of the present chapter, the primacy of basic technical
and economic factors seems evident. It may subsequently be possible to trace the
course of the ideological currents by which the individual has, over the ages, sought
to escape from the power of the material forces inexorably transforming him or her
into a depersonalized cell. But unless we first provide ourselves with a clear picture
of the skeleton and muscles of SOCiety, we will never penetrate beyond the outer
layer of its skin. The peoples on whom we base our memory of the earliest days of
modern society were aware of the ambiguous nature of the organism then just com
ing into being. It is not by chance that the myth of Prometheus gives us both Man
triumphant over the gods and Man shackled by the gods, or that Genesis speaks of
the murder of Abel by the farmer Cain, builder of the first city and ancestor of
Tubalcain, the first metallurgiSt.
Technicians then are the masters ofcivilization because they have mastered the
furnace crafts. From the hearth (which they learned to operate in several centuries
of pottery making) comes plaster, soon to be followed by copper and bronze. Slag
and clinker, the residues ofmetallurgical processing, are at the origin of glassmaking.
But the artisan is an enslaved demiurge. We have already seen that the artisan's posi
tion within the techno economic machine is a subordinate one. It is he, Vulcan the
all-powerful, the lame, the derided, who forges weapons for the chieftains' use,
makes jewels for their wives, hammers out dishes for the gods. His is the "hand" that
over the course of fifty centuries, during which humanity's ideological levels remain
practically unchanged, provides the "head" with the means of ensuring the triumph
of the artificial over the natural world. The mood of malediction that hangs over the
furnace artisan's history in most civilizations is the reflection of a frustration intui
tively felt by humans from the earliest times.
The City
Toward 2000 B.C. cities from Egypt to Turkey, to the Indus, to China, and to the
northern shores of the Mediterranean bear witness to the first great surge of civi
lization (figures 76, 78, and 79). Their structure is singulady uniform, but this need
1be Social Organism 177
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78. Plan of the Assyrian city ofKborsabad (eighth century B.C.).
79. Plan ofAigues-Mortes, France.
not surprise us if we regard the city as the embodiment of the new functional system
adopted by the human community.
At all periods of history, in America as well as in non-Mediterranean Europe
or Black Africa, the same functional apparatus has come into being whenever a group
with an already established agriculture crossed the threshold into the world of metal
lurgy. The city, enclosed within its defensive structures, built round its stocks of grain
and its treasure-house, is the hub of the mechanism, and the king or his represen
tative, the military dignitaries, and the priests, served by a populace of domestics and
slaves, are its dynamic cells. Artisans form a series of generally endogamous cells
inside the urban mechanism. Their fortunes are linked with the ruling classes, but
their status is generally neither quite that of the slave nor that of one who has attained
full human dignity. The city and its organs are connected to the countryside, which
supplies them with food and which they control through a network of stewards act
ing as intermediaries between the king and the generally enslaved peasantry (figure
76). Fairly early a further social element, the merchant-locally based or, more often,
itinerant--enters upon the scene at the same time as money, making the basic mech
anism more complex but not altering its structure.
Thus we see that ever since the first agrarian economies carne into existence,
the trend has been in the direction of supersettlement, the result of a capitalism
directly consequent upon the group's immobilization around a stock of grain. This
immobilization entailed the establishment of a defensive apparatus, which in turn
led inevitably to the hierarchical organization of society. The development was per
fectly normal in that the social machine, like a living organism, had a head inside
which the group's ideology was created, arms that forged its means of action, and an
extensive system of acquisition and consumption to meet the group's requirements
for maintenance and growth.
The development of the urbanized organism (a civilized organism in the ety
mological sense) leads inevitably to all the negative features of present-day society.
Indeed the artificial organism cannot function effectively without accentuated social
segregation, its particular form of the cellular specialization common to all animate
beings: the landlord, the peasant, the prisoner, are social categories whose effec
tiveness is directly proportional to the distance society sets between their functions.
In agricultural societies, social injustice and human triumph over nature are two
sides of the same coin.
The polarization of specialists within the city's defensive walls is another fea
ture peculiar to civilization. The artisan, as we saw, is a consumer of food surpluses,
a luxury not accessible to primitive societies, an advance on capital that the group
is willing to pay in expectation of future benefits. The artisan's existence is possible

only thanks to an overprovided dominant ruling class. This is still just as true in the
world of today: Technical research is still a luxury indulged in by civilizations which,
their different political systems notwithstanding, have a large surplus of capital at
their disposal, and its purpose is still to perpetuate the technical overprovisioning
of the community's ruling stratum. The artisan was always a maker of weapons first,
a maker ofjewelry second, and only then a maker of tools. It is because they partook
of the ruling group's technical overprovisioning that the carpenter and the stone
mason, builders of palaces both, C4ffie so early into the possession of metal tools. Not
until the Iron Age, when the almost ubiquitous availability of ore made it possible
for a small-scale rural metallurgical industry to develop, did the peasant exchange
the wooden hoe for a metal one.
We can now see more clearly what are the consistent elements in the social
forms of humanity as it was until a very short time ago and still is in some parts of
the world. From the outset the agricultural technoeconomic apparatus contained
within it all the factors of both technical progress and social strife. The picture we
have drawn would be incomplete, however, ifwe failed to point out that the furnace
crafts were not alone responsible for the rise of the first cities. Writing was born at
the same time as ironworking. This again was not a matter of chance but a logical
development. The first sapiens societies of the Upper Paleolithic differed from
Palaeoanthropian societies not only by their extraordinary technical advances but
also by the fact that they produced the world's earliest graphic notations. As soon as
agricultural societies began to emerge from the transitional period and to assume
their definitive structure, they also began to develop a symbolic instrument of
expression in order to meet their new needs. This instrument, as we know from
numerous records, first came into being as a reckoning tool and developed very rap
idly into an instrument of historical memory. To put it differently, the means ofkeep
ing written accounts emerged at the precise moment when agrarian capitalism
began to become established: The first genealogies were written at the precise
moment when social hierarchization began to affirm itself. This graphic aspect of the
development of human memory will be dealt with in the next chapter.
The Breakup ofthe City

Until the end of the eighteenth century the technical and economic apparatus
remained Virtually the same as it had been in antiquity. Surrounded by its food
providing countrySide, in touch with its rural environment and the world at large
through its markets and fairs "outside the walls," the city continued to enclose its
merchants and artisans within its ramparts and around its religious and administra
tive core in a system whose topographical compartmentalization was all the more
rigorous as larger numbers of individuals belonging to a wider range of social
groups were obliged by constraints of space to rub shoulders with one another. Then
a new technoeconomic pattern began to take shape in Europe. Since the Middle Ages
the increasing specialization of furnace artisans had caused metallurgical, pottery
making and glassmaking centers to spring up outside the urban system in the great
civilizations of Europe and Asi�, a development that marked the beginning of a tran
sition from artisanal to preindustrial structures. Pottery still retained its local craft
character, but the same was not true of metallurgy, whose growing requirements
entailed a concentration of specialists at geographical points with an assured supply
of fuel and ore, foreshadowing a new form of social grouping, the industrial city
(figures 80 and 81).
It is very difficult to speak of facts so close to contemporary history without
seeming to state the obvious, but the decentralization of the iron and steel industry
and the rise of cities that had lost all traditional character and were nothing more
than agglomerations ofworkers round their workplace are facts at least as important
and interesting as the preeminence of technical specialization in the primitive cou
ple or the bond between farmers and herd breeders in the transition to an agrarian
economy. They are all the more important as the industrial revolution was the only
major change to occur within agricultural societies in five thousand years. So its
repercussions on the social edifice as a whole must be considered comparable to
those of the transition to an agrarian economy. Indeed metallurgical decentralization
and the establishment of urban units in coal and ore fields led to a complete reap
praisal of all existing social structures, including religious ones, within the space of
less than a century. The upheavals caused by the industrial revolution are common·
knowledge. A point worth making is that they were not at odds with but consistent
with the functional development of an artificial sociotechnical organism that seems
increasingly to reflect properties of the living organism. Another interesting point is
that the agrarian problem, as well as the problem of metallurgy, first arose in 3000
B.c.-and did so already in crisis terms. For as long as agricultural societies maintam
their original structure, furnace crafts and their successor, industry, will continue to
act as the powerful but somehow sinister driving force of material development in
the service ofa society composed ofan ever-increasing number ofhuman beings still
governed by the laws of their zoological nature.
t GD
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b b'
80. Functional diagram ofa nineteenth-century industrial society. The basis is still the
same as in preindustrial times. The capital (a) is divided as infigure 76, but the industrial
function is represented by a new group (7) that is connected with the commercial group
(5) and has direct contacts with the central authority, whatever theform ofgovernment.
The agricultural villages, where artisans and small traders are represented, continue to
function according to the old system; they are grouped round regional centers (c, d) with
theirfairs and souks. The difference lies in the establishment of industrial centers (b) con
nected to the traditionalframework by a transport network. Isolated atfirst because they
had to be located close to raw materjpls and energy sources, industrial centers have prolif
erated in the vicinity ofrailways, resulting in the creation ofworking-class suburbs whose
proletarian population no longerfits into the traditionalframework.
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81. (a) Plan ofIe Creusot, France. Note the industrial development along the railway line
and the chaoticproliferation ofhousing areas. (1) Industry, (2) densely built-up area,
(3) less densely bUilt-up area, (4) green belt. (b) Gradual spread ofthe city ofLyons,
France. Note the old city built on the banks ofthe Rhone and SaOne rivers, the.geometric
development in the 1850s and 1870s along the railway line, the irregularly structured
late-nineteenth century suburb of Villeurbanne and the sprawl ofrecent years.
The Present Time
Although the technoeconomic equation has changed in magnitude over the

past centuries, its terms still remain the same. The tiny Near Eastern city of the second
millennium before our era, with its chiefs, its officials, its group of artisans, its market,
its countryside, its flocks, its little wars, its plunders, its tyrannized classes supplying
the surplus needed for the development of an apparatus whose rulers, and they
alone, indicated the level to which the society had risen-this city of high antiquity
can be transposed in unaltered form to any ofthe great nineteenth-century European
states, the only difference being that the surplus n<;>w came from distant colonies
rather than from peasant serfs just outside the city outskirts. InMilieu et techniques
I tried to demonstrate the biological consistency of the "the civilized human-the bar
barian-the savage" system and the fact that the material progress of humankind still
remained tied to that system today. The system is like all living organisms in that it
includes apparently privileged elements side by side with obscure masses whose
role is to furnish, at the cost of enormous losses, the small reserve impetus needed
in order to achieve the transition to the next stage. At the social level this biological
truth is expressed in terms of justice and injustice, but that is hardly helpful when it
comes to resolving a problem of stricdy organic origin.
To what extent does the initial formula still apply? Before the disappearance
of the negative constraints imposed by the agricultural-metallurgical technical and
economic apparatus became possible, Homo sapiens would have to enter upon a
new biological stage where perhaps he would be able to control his aggressivity
the factor that, far more than progress, determines justice and injustice. A reduction
in aggressive potential, which corresponds to the acquisitive instinct, would of
course be reflected in an equivalent lowering of the creative instinct and ultimately
of the vital urge: for creation and destruction are but two sides--one bright, the other
dark-of the same coin. All the same we may one day break out of the cycle in which
society imprisoned itself when humans became their own and practically their only
prey. Agriculture and metallurgy may have to give way to a new technoeconomic
apparatus whose nature we cannot even guess at today, when the human diet is still
based on animal and vegetable matter and metal is still the principal agent of prog
ress. For more than a century socialist ideology has grappled with the problem with
out, however, exploring all its possible repercussions, which are of particular
interest when seen in the general perspective of development. It is a fact that ever
since the Upper Paleolithic, but especially since the advent of agriculture, the world
of symbols-religious, aesthetic, and social-has always stood higher on the hier-
archical ladder than the world of technics. The ambiguity of the social pyramid lies
in the fact that symbolic functions enjoy preeminence over technology, although it
is the latter that is the driving force behind all progress. Socialist ideology attempts
to resolve the problem by subordinating society to technology, thus seemingly
acknowledging the triumph of the hand over the head.
But is that really a solution, or is it a dead end? The similar behavior of Marxist
and capitalist states in this area strongly suggests that we are indeed moving toward
a new solution. It is legitimate to wonder whether the movement is really toward a
new balance in which all value$ will be restored to their proper place in the anthro
poid equation, or whether the artificial organism civilization has become is in pro
cess of destroying the balance for which the human is physically constituted. In the
latter case the hackneyed idea of "man outstripped by his technology" would come
strictly true. Even with the help of theoreticians of either ideology, it is difficult to
imagine a balance based on indefinitely increasing the material well-being of an
indefinitely growing number of individuals. The ratios among production, con
sumption, and' materials suggest that humans are irremediably-though with ever
greater efficiency--consuming the materials they derive from the natural environ
ment; in other words, they are consuming their own substance.
Today, despite efforts being made in the social sphere and despite decolOni
zation, the planetary human group still has the same form as the small Mesopotamian
societies of four thousand years ago. Whatever the political system in force; the indi
vidual is still conditioned by a strictly hierarchical social organization (hereditary or
selective) to perform an increasingly narrow functiol'l; the world economy still ba
sically rests upon animal and vegetable matter, the only dramatic change being in the
technical means employed to obtain it; and industry, successor to the artisan of old,
is still based on metals, although its fuels are no longer the same.
Humankind's fabulous triumph over matter has been achieved through a sub
stitution. We have seen how, in the course of anthropoid evolution, zoological bal
ance was gradually replaced by a new balance, perceptible from the very beginnings
of Homo sapiens in the Upper Paleolithic. The ethnic grourr-the "nation"--came
to replace the species, and the human, whose body is still that of a normal mammal ,
merged into a collective organism with a practically unlimited potential for achieve
ment. The human internal economy, however, was still that of a highly predatory
mammal even after the transition to farming and stockbreeding. From that point on
the collective organism's preponderance became more and more imperative, and
human beings became the instrument of a technical and economic ascent to which
they lent their brains and hands. In this way human society became the chief con-
sumer of humans, through violence or through work, with the result that the human
has gradually gained complete possession ofthe natural world. Ifwe project the tech
nical and economic terms of today into the future, we see the process ending in total
victory, with the last small oil deposit being emptied for the purpose of cooking the
last handful of grass to accompany the last rat. The prospect is not so much a utopia
as the acknowledgment of the singular properties of the human economy, an econ
omy of which nothing as yet suggests that it may one day be properly controllable
by the zoological (i.e., intelligent) human. In the last twenty years or so, the con
sumption ideal has at least been t�mpered by a growing skepticism about the infal
libility of techno economic determinism.
6 Language Symbols
In the preceding chapter we discussed the development of technoeconomic

organization and the establishment of social machinery closely connected with the
evolution of techniques. Here I propose to consider the evolution of a fact that
emerged together with Homo sapiens in the development of anthropoids: the capac
ity to express thought in material symbols. Countless studies have been devoted to,
respectively, figurative art and writing, but the links between them are often ill
defined. It has therefore occurred to me that there might be some profit in attempt
ing to analyze those links within a general perspective. In part ill we shall consider
the aesthetic aspects of rhythms and values, but here, as we near the end of a long
reflection principally concerned with the material essence of humans, it may be use
ful to consider how the system that provides human society with the means of per
manently preserving the fruits of individual and collective thought came slowly into
being.
The Birth of Graphism

There is a most important fact to be learned from the very earliest graphic
signs. In chapters 2 and 3 we saw that the bipolar technicity ofmany vertebrates cul
minated in anthropoids in the forming of two functional pairs (hand/tools, face!
language), making the motor function of the hand and of the face the decisive factor
in the process of modeling of thought into instruments of material action, on the one
hand, and into sound symbols, on the other. The emergence of graphic signs at the
end of the Palaeoanthropians' reign presupposes the establishment of a new rela
tionship between the two operating poles-a relationship exclusively characteristic
of humanity in the narrow sense, that is to say, one that meets the requirements of
mental symbolization to the same extent as today. In this new relationship the sense
of vision holds the dominant place in the pairs "face/reading" and "hand/graphic
sign." This relationship is indeed exclusively human: While it can at a pinch be
claimed that tools are not unknown to some animal species and that language merely
represents the step after the vocal signals of the animal world, nothing comparable
to the writing and reading of symbols existed before the dawn ofHomo sapiens. We
can therefore say that while motor function determines expression in the techniques
and language of all anthropoids, in the figurative language of the most recent anthro
poids reflection determines graphism.
The earliest traces date b;tck to the end of the Mousterian period and become
plentiful in the Chatelperronian, toward 35,000 B.C. Theyappear simultaneously with
dyes (ocher and manganese) and with objects of adornment. They take the form of
tight curves or series of lines engraved in bone or stone, small equidistant incisions
that provide evidence of figurative representation moving away from the concretely
figurative and proof of the earliest rhythmic manifestations. No meaning can be
attached to the very flimsy pieces of evidence available to us (figure 82). They have
been interpreted as "hunt tallies," a form of account keeping, but there is no sub
stantial proof in the past or present to support this hypothesis. The only comparison
that might possibly be drawn is with the Australian churingas, stone or wood tablets
engraved with abstract designs (spirals, straight lines, and clusters of dots) and rep
resenting the body of the mystic ancestor or the places where the myth unfolds (fig
ure 83). Two aspects of the churinga seem relevant to the interpretation of Paleolithic
"hunting tallies": first, the abstract nature of the representation, which, as we shall
see, is also characteristic of the oldest known art, and, second, the fact that the chu
ringa concretizes an incantatory recitation and serves as its supporting medium, the
officiating priest touching the figures with the tips of his fingers as he recites the
words. Thus the churinga draws upon two sources of expression, that of verbal
(rhythmic) motricity and that ofgraphism swept along by the same rhythmic process.
Of course my argument is not that Upper Paleolithic incisions and Australian chu
ringas are one and the same thing, but only that among the possible interpretations,
that of a rhythmic system of an incantatory or declamatory nature may be envisaged.
If there is one point of which we may be absolutely sure, it is that graphism did
not begin with naive representations of reality but with abstraction. The discovery
of prehistoric art in the late nineteenth century raised the issue of a "naive" state, an
art by which humans supposedly represented what they saw as a result of a kind of
aesthetic triggering effect. It was soon reallzed near the beginning of this century that
this view was mistaken and that magical-religious concerns were responsible for the
figurative art of the Cenozoic Era, as indeed they are for all art except in a few rare
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82. Paleolitbic incisions on bone, known as "bunting tallies. " (a) CMtelperronian,
(b) Aurignacian, (c) Solutrean.
83. Australian churingas (after B. Spencer and F. J Gillen). (1) Circles represent trees, and
dotted circles represent tbe dancers' steps; lines d represent rhythmically struck stiCks, and
e tbe dancers' movements. (2, 3) Cburinga ofa chiefoftbe boney-ant totem: (a) tbe eye,
(b) tbe intestines, (c) tbepaint on tbe ant's chest, (d) tbe back, (e) a small bird, connected
witb the boney ant. Figure 82 supports tbe evidence supplied by tbisfigure tbat representa
tions relating to a verbal and gestural context, like tbose of tbe churingas, may be com
pletely lacking in realisticfigurative content.
periods of advanced cultural maturity. However, it was discovered more recently that
the Magdalenian records on which the idea of Paleolithic realism is based were pro
duced at what was already a very late stage of figurative art: They date to between
11,000 and 8000 B.C., whereas the true beginning belongs to before 30,000. A fact of
particular relevance in our present context is that graphism certainly did not start by
reproducing reality in a slavishly photographic manner. On the contrary, we see it
develop over the space of some ten thousand years from signs which, it would
appear, initially expressed rhythms rather than forms. The first forms, confined to a
few stereotyped figures in which only a few conventional details allow us to hazard
to identify an animal, did not appear until around 30,000 B.C. All this suggests that in
its origins figurative art was directly linked with language and was much closer to
writing (in the broadest sense) than to what we understand by a work of art. It was
symbolic transposition, not copying of reality; in other words, the distance that lies
between a drawing in which a group agrees to recognize a bison and the bison itself
is the same as the distance between a word and a tool. In both signs and words,
abstraction reflects a gradual adaptation of the motor system of expression to more
and more subtly differentiated promptings of the brain. The earliest known paintings
do not represent a hunt, a dying animal, or a touching family scene, they are graphic
building blocks without any descriptive binder, the support medium of an irretriev
ably lost oral context.
Prehistoric art records are very numerous, and statistical processing of a large
mass of data whose chronological order is more or less definitely established
enables us to unravel, if not to decipher, the general meaning ofwhat is represented.
The thousand variations of prehistoric art revolve round what is probably a myth
ological scene in which images of animals and representations of men and women
confront and complement each other. The animals appear to form a couple in which
the bison is contrasted with the horse, while the human beings are identified by sym
bols that are highly abstract figurative representations of sexual characteristics (fig
ure 91 and part II, figure 143). Having arrived at such a definition of the content of
prehistoric art, we are in a far better position to understand the connection between
abstraction and the earliest graphic symbols.
The Early Development of Graphism

Rhythmic series of lines or dots continued to be produced until the end of the
Upper Paleolithic. Parallel with these, the first figures begin to appear in the Aurig
nacian period about 30,000 B.C. They are, to date, the oldest works of art in the whole
Language Symbols 191
of human history, and we are surprised to discover that their content implies a con
ventionality inconceivable without concepts already highly organized by language.
The content then is already very complex, but the execution is still rudimentary: In
the best samples, animal heads and sexual symbols-already highly stylized-are
superimposed on one another pell-mell.
During the next (Gravettian) stage, toward 20 ,000 B.C., the figures become
more deliberately organized. Animals are rendered by the outline of their cervi
codorsal curve with the addition of details characteristic of particular species
(bison's horns, mammoth's trunk, horse's mane, etc.). The content of the groups of
figures remains the same as before, but it is more skillfully expressed. In the Solu
trean period, toward 15 ,000 B.C., engravers or painters are in full possession of their
technical resources, which barely differ from those of engravers or painters of today.
The meaning of the figures has not changed, and the walls or decorated slabs show
countless variations on the theme of two animals and of a man and a woman. How
ever, a curious development has taken place: The representations of human beings
seem to have lost all their realistic character and are now oriented toward the tri
angles, rectangles, and rows of lines or dots with which the walls of Lascaux, for
example, are covered. The animals, on the other hand, are developing little by little
toward realism of form and movement, although-for all that may have been said
and written about the realism of the animals of Lascaux-in the Solutrean they are
still far from achieving such realism. In technical skill and mythological content these
figures are indeed products of the "Paleolithic Middle Ages," but it would be an error
to compare these groups ofworks to the frescoes of our medieval basilicas or to easel
paintings. They are really "mythograms," closer to ideograms than to pictograms and
closer to pictograms than to deSCriptive art.
So far as human figures are concerned, the Magdalenian between 11 ,000 and
8000 B.c.-the period of the great series of cave paintings of Altamira and Niaux
sometimes exhibits a still closer connection with the ideogram and at other times a
categorical return to realistic representation. As for t:l;1e animals, they are swept along
on a current in which the artist's skill will eventually (at the time of Altamira) result
in a certain academism of form and later, shortly before the end of the period, to a
mannered realism that renders movement and form with photographic precision.
The art of this later period was the first to become known, thus giving rise to the idea
of primitive or "naive" realism.
Paleolithic art, with its enormously long time frame and its abundant records,
provides evidence that is irreplaceable for understanding the real nature of artistic
figurative representation and ofwriting: What appear to be two divergent tracks start-
ing at the birth of the agricultural economy in reality form only one. It is extremely
curious to find that symbolic expression achieves its highest level soon after its ear
liest beginnings in the Aurignacian (figures 84 to 87). We see art split away from writ
ing, as it were, and follow a trajectory that, starting in abstraction, gradually
establishes conventions of form and movement and then, at the end of the curve,
achieves realism and eventually collapses. The development of the arts in historic
times has so often followed the same course that we are forced to recognize the exis
tence of a general tendency or cycle of maturation-and also to recognize that
abstraction is indeed the source of graphic expression. The question of the return
of the arts to abstraction on a newly rethought basis will be discussed in chapter 14,
where we shall see that the search for pure rhythmiCity, for the nonfigurative in mod
em art and poetry (born as it was of the contemplation of the arts of living primitive
peoples), represents a regressive escape into the haven of primitive reactions as
much as it does a new departure.
The Spread ofSymbols

As we just saw, figurative art is inseparable from language and proceeds from
the pairing ofphonation with graphic expression. Therefore the object of phonation
and graphic expression obviously was the same from the very outset. A part-per
haps the most important part--of figurative art is accounted for by what, for want of
a better word, I propose to call "picto-ideography." Four thousand years of linear
writing have accustomed us to separating art from writing, so a real effort of abstrac
tion has to be made before, with the help of all the works of ethnography written in
the past fifty years, we can recapture the figurative attitude that was and still is shared
by all peoples excluded from phonetization and especially from linear writing.
The linguists who studied the origins of writing often applied a mentality born
of the practice of writing to the consideration of pictograms. It is interesting to note
that the only true "pictograms" we know are of recent origin and that most of them
resulted from contacts between ethnic groups without any writing with travelers or
colonizers from countries with writing (figures 88 to 90): Eskimo or Amerindian pic
tograms are therefore not suitable terms of comparison for acquiring an understand
ing of the ideograms of peoples who lived before writing was invented. Furthermore
the origins of writing have often been linked to the memorization of numerical val
ues (regular notches, knotted ropes, etc.). While alphabetic linearization may indeed
have been related from the start to numbering devices which of necessity were lin-
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84
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86
84. Engravingfrom Aurignacian 1, cellier shelter (Dordogne). One ofthe earliestfigurative
records that can be dated with certainty. We see a head (probably a horse's), afemale sym
bol, and some regular incisions.
85. Engravingfrom Aurignacian Iv, La Ferrassie (Dordogne), representing an animal
(damaged), afemale symbol, and some regular rows ofpoints.
86. Engraving, probably Gravettian, Gargas (upper Pyrenees), -representing a horse and a
female symbol.
87. Magdalenian engraving, Les Combarelles (Dordogne), representing the same subjects.
Note that while the theme remains the same, the. elements ofthe mythogram are becoming
more reglistic.
88
89
88-89. Alaskan Eskimo pictogram engraved on an ivory blade, early twentieth century.
On one of the sides we see a summer encampment (four tents and a man by a hillock).
Turning theplatelet over, we see a winter encampment drawn on the �ame groundline; a
sea lion, a skin dinghy turned upside down and a cupola-shaped winter house with a
longer covered entranceway. The object was a message left in an abandoned camp to
showpotential visitors which wto/ to go. Pictograms have been used only by Alaskan
Eskimos and only in recent times (nineteenth century).
90. Sioux bison skin (late eighteenth century) on which a war expedition ispictographi
cally recounted.
ear, the same is not true of the earliest figurative symboism. That is why I am inclined
to consider pictography as something other than writing in its "infancy."
Through an increasingly precise process of analysis, human thought is capable
of abstracting symbols from reality. These symbols constitute the world of language
which parallels the real world and provides us with our means of cOming to grips
with reality. By the time of the Upper Paleolithic, reflective thought-which had
found concrete expression, probably from the very start, in the vocal language and
mimicry of the anthropoids-was capable of representation, so humans could now
express themselves beyond the immediate present. Two languages, both springing
from the same source, came into existence at the two poles of the operating field
the language of hearing, which is linked with the development of the sound-coor
dinating areas, and the language of sight, which in turn is connected with the devel
opment of the gesture-coordinating areas, the gestures being translated into graphic
symbols. If this is so, it explains why the earliest known graphic signs are stark
expressions of rhythmic values. Be that as it may, graphic symbolism enjoys some
independence from phonetic language because its content adds further dimensions
to what phonetic language. can only express in the dimension of time. The invention
of writing, through the device of linearity, completely subordinated graphic to pho
netic expression, but even today the relationship between language and graphic
expression is one of coordination rather than subordination. An image possesses a
dimensional freedom which writing must always lack. It can trigger the verbal pro
cess that culminates in the recital of a myth, but it is not attached to that process; its
context disappears with the narrator. This explains the profuse spread of symbols in
systems without linear writing. Many authors ofworks on primitive Chinese culture,
Australian aborigines, North American Indians, or certain peoples of Black Africa
speak of their mythological way of thinking in which the world order is integrated
in an extraordinarily rich system of symbolic relationships. A number of these
authors mention the very rich systems of graphic representation available to the peo
ples they observed. In each case, except perhaps that of the early Chinese where the
records postdate the invention of writing, the groups of figures represented are
coordinated in accordance with a system that is completely foreign to linear orga
nization and consequently to any possibility of continuous phonetization. The con
tents of the figures of Paleolithic art, the art of the African Dogons, and the bark
paintings of Australian aborigines are, as it were, at the same remove from linear
notation as myth is from historical narration. Indeed in primitive societies mythology
and multidimensional graphism usually coincide. If I had the courage to use words
in their strict sense, I would be tempted to counterbalance "mytho-logy"-a mul

tidimensional construct based upon the verbal-with "mytho-graphy," its strict coun
terpart based upon the manual.
The forms of thought that existed during the longest period in the evolution
of Homo sapiens seem strange to us today although they continue to underlie a sig
nificant part of human behavior. Our life is molded by the practice of a language
whose sounds are recorded in an associated system ofwriting: A mode of expression
in which the graphic representation of thought is radial is today practically incon
ceivable. One of the most striking features of Paleolithic art is the manner in which
the figures on the cave walls are organized (figure 91). The number of animal species
represented is small, and their topographic relationships constant: Bison and horse
occupy the center of the panel, ibex and deer form a frame round them at the edges,
lion and rhinoceros are situated on the periphery. The same theme may be repeated
several times in the s:pne cave and recurs in identical form, although with variations,
from one cave to another. What we have here therefore is not the haphazard rep
resentation of animals hunted, nor "writing," nor "imagery." Behind the symbolic
assemblage of figures there must have been an oral context with which the symbolic
assemblage � associated and whose values it reproduced in space (figures 92 and
93). The same fact is evident in the spiral figures Australian aborigines draw on sand
as symbolic expressions of the unfolding of their myths of the lizard or the honey
ant, or in the carved wooden bowls of the Ainus that give material· expression to the
mythified narration of their sacrifice of the bear (figure 94).
Such a mode of representation is almost naturally connected with cosmic sym
bolism, and we shall consider its development in chapter 13 in connection with the
humanization of time and space. This mode has resisted the emergence of writing,
upon which it exerted considerable influence, in those civilizations where ideog
raphy has prevailed over phonetic notation (figures 95 to 97). It is still alive in areas
of thought that came into being in the early days of linear written expression, and
many religiOns offer many examples of spatial organization of figures symbolizing
a "mythological" context in the strict ethnological sense (figure 98). It still prevails
in the sciences, where the linearization of writing is actually an impediment, and
provides algebraiC equations or formulas in organic chemistry with the means of
escaping from the constraint of one-dimensionality through figures in which pho
netization is employed only as a commentary and the symbolic assemblage "speaks"
for itself. Lastly, it reappears in advertising which appeals to deep, infraverbal, states
of mental behavior (figure 99).
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92 93
91. Magdalenian mythographic composition, Niaux cave (Mege). We see an ibex, a bison,
and a horse of equal size, a large horse accompanied by a small bison and a small ibex, a
large bison with a small horse between its legs,· and a bison and horse ofequal size; the
bisons bear a series ofsymbolic wounds. A direct reading is impossible because ofthe com
positiOn's mythographic character.
92. Proto-historic rock painting, Val Camonia (Italy), representing a stag accompanied by
enigmatic symbols. As- with theprecedingfigure, it is impossible to interpret the meaning
without knowing the oral content.
93. Proto-historicfigurespainted on rock. Val Camonia (Italy). The composition resembles
a pictogram by its narrative character (aploughmanfollowed by other individuals cany
ing hoes, who are covering up the seeds he has sown), but in contrast to a pictographic
series there is no narrative "thread."
94
95 96
97
94. Cup commemorating a bear sacrifice, Sakhalin Ainu. Cups were made on the occasion
ofeach bearfestival and served as both reminder and record
95. Ex-voto,]apan. Hand-clapping gesture meant to attract the divinity's attention before
making a wish.
96. Ex-voto,]apan. Two tuna (Ka�u-o) meant to express the concept of "obtaining"
(Katsu).
97. Ex-voto,Japan. Deposited at a temple in the hope ofcuring a drunkard The octopus,
which turns red when boiled in rice beer, is the symbol ofintemperance.
a 98 b
In oil In its own juice
Tu n a is good
fo r yo u !
99
98. (a) Polynesia, Tubuai. Statuette representing the myth ofthe creation ofgods and
humans by the Great Gods ofthe Ocean. (I)) France, sixteenth century. Signs ofthe zodiac
c01Tesponding to parts ofthe human body.
99. Advertisingpostershowing variousfigurative symbols (afishwife, a can offood, a can
opener) superimposed on the representation of tunafish.
Thus the reason why art is so closely connected with religion is that graphic
expression restores to language the dimension of the inexpressible-the possibility
of multiplying the dimensions of a fact in instantly accessible visual symbols. The
basic link between art and religion is emotional, yet not in a vague sense. It has to
do with mastering a mode of expression that restores humans to their true place in
a cosmos whose center they occupy without trying to pierce it by an intellectual pro
cess which letters have strung out in a needle-sharp, but also needle-thin, line.
Writing and the Linearization ofSymbols

Only agricultural peoples are known for certain to have had a graphic system
even remotely identifiable as linear writing. Eskimos and Plains Indians, often cited
as examples to the contrary, created pictographies as a result of exposure to alpha
bets. The chief distinguishing feature of "mythographic" writing is its two-dimen
sional structure which puts it at a remove from linearly emitted spoken language. In
many nonalphabetic forms of writing, on the other hand, the skeleton of the first sys
tem of notation is formed by survivals from the old multidimensional system of fig
urative representation: This is so for Egypt and China, as well as for the Mayas and
the Aztecs. One might be tempted to suppose that these "scripts" had a pictographic
origin, with signs for concrete objects such as an ox or a walking man being aligned
one after the other to reproduce the linear thread of language. Except for some
bookkeeping enumerations in proto-historic China or in Near Eastern tablets, there
in fact is no known pictographic evidence of the origins of writing. From groups of
mythographic figures-simple "rock paintings" or decorations on objects-we go
straight to linearized symbols already fully set upon the process of phonetization.
The pictographic hypothesis presupposes a "cold" start, an initial idea of align
ing images in such a way as to match the thread of spoken language. It would be
acceptable if no other symbolic system had existed previously, but may prove false
if we apply the "favorable circumstances" rule and posit that what took place did not
do so all at once but represented a transition. Writing did not happen in a void any
more than did agriculture. The stages that precede both have to be taken into
account. At a certain moment in time, which was not the same moment in different
parts of the world, the system of organized representation of mythical symbols
appears to have combined with the system of elementary bookkeeping (figure 100),
the result being the primitive Sumerian or Chinese writing in which images bor
rowed from the regular repertory of figurative representation were drastically sim-
b
a
100. Egyptian hieroglyphics of(a) thefourth and (b) the twenty-first dynasties. Note the
developed linearization ofthe more recentphonetic symbols.
plified and arranged to form a sequence. The procedure did not yet produce any
actual texts but helped to keep count of animals or objects. The simplification of the
figures, necessitated by the nonmonumental, provisional nature of the records, was
responsible for their gradually becoming detached from the initial material context.
From being symbols with extensible implications, they developed into signs, gen
uine tools in the service of memory, on the one hand, and bookkeeping, on the other.
Preparation of written bookkeeping or genealogical accounts is foreign to the
primitive social apparatus. Not until the consolidation of urbanized agricultural soci
eties did social complexity begin to be reflected in documents whose authenticity
was attested by humans or by gods. Whereas we can conceive of a bookkeeping sys
tem in which figures and simplified drawings of animals or measures of grain are
sequentially aligned, it is difficult to imagine linearized pictographic signs express
ing actions (rather than objects) from which the phonetic element has been entirely
excluded. The "mythogram" in fact is already an ideogram, as we must realize if we
look at such traces as still survive today: A cross next to a lance and a reed with a
sponge on the'end of it are enough to convey the idea of the Passion of Christ. The
figure has nothing to do with phoneticized oral notation, but it has an extensibility
such as no writing can have. It contains every possibility of oral exteriorization, from
the word "passion" to the most complex commentaries on Christian metaphysics.
Ideography in this form precedes pictography, and all Paleolithic art is ideographic.
A system in which three lines are followed by a drawing of an ox or seven lines
by a drawing of a bag of corn is also readily conceivable. In this case phonetization
is spontaneous, and reading becomes practically inevitable. This form of pictography
is probably the only one that existed at the time of the birth of writing, and writing
was bound to merge immediately with this preexisting ideographic system. The
spontaneous confluence of the two would explain why the earliest forms of Medi
terranean, Far Eastern, and American writing begin with numerical or calendar nota
tions and, at the same time, with notations of the names of gods or of distinguished
individuals in the form of figures assembled in small groups after the fashion of suc
cessive mythograms. We think ofEgyptian, Chinese, and Aztec writing as lines of pho
neticized mythograms rather than as aligned pictograms (figures 100 to 102). Most
recent authors have been well aware of the difficulty of fitting the pictographic stage
into the development of phoneticized writing, but they do not seem to have per
ceived the connection between very early mythographic notation systems, which
implies an ideography without an oral dimension and a form of writing whose pho
netization apparently began with numbers and quantities.
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101. Mayan manuscript. Fragment ofafigurative representation ofceremonies to mark
the beginning and end ofa year. Lines ofnumerical signs and mythographicfigures are
integrated in the same composition.
102. Figurative manuscript representation ofthe beginning ofthe Aztec migration. From
left to right: (1) Seated on an Aztlan island hispersonification and, in hieroglyphics, the six
tribes. (2) The Aztecs cross the water. (3) The date (inside a rectangle). (4) A march, repre
sented by afootprint, leads to the city of Colhuacan, represented by its hieroglyphic. (5)
Eight other tribes, representing by the hieroglyphicfor a man talking. This inscription is a
succeson si ofpartiallyphoneticized mythograms connected to one another by a picto
graphic thread.
Chinese Writing
For all the variety of known phonetic scripts, the number of scripts that devel
oped into fully elaborated phonetic systems is very limited. Those of America dis
appeared before they had a chance to develop beyond the earliest stages. The writing
of the Indus has no known descendants. Once the Near Eastern group of scripts had
been created, there was no further reason, save .very exceptionally, for any fresh
departures, and the languages of Eurasia moved directly to syllabic or consonantal
scripts or to alphabets. Only Egypt and China remained as the two poles of the
ancient civilizations to develop phoneticized ideographic systems. Since the seventh
century B.C. Egyptian writing has lost much of its archaicism, and China alone has
maintained until the present day a system ofgraphic symbols that has more than one
dimension.
The Chinese system combines the two contrasting aspects of graphic notation
(figure 103). It is a script in the sense that each character contains the elements of
its phoneticism and occupies a position in a linear relationship with other characters
so that sentences can be read easily. The phonetic reference of the word, however,
is an approximation. In other words, an ideogram now used only to represent a
sound-a stage that alphabetic languages too went through at one time. Chinese as
a phonetic tool corresponds approximately, though with greater subtlety, to a
graphic pun or rebus whereby the word "rampage," say, might be rendered by the
signs for "ram" and "page." Imperfect as it is, this tool has, because of the multiplicity
of its signs, proved a satisfactory means of language notation. We should note, how
ever, , that oral tradition is there to ensure phonetic continuity: Without it, Chinese
characters would become hopelessly unpronounceable, even if recordings of the
spoken language were available. Be that as it may, Chinese writing in its phonetic role
complies with the rule that governs all writing by recording sounds in an order that
reconstitutes the flow of spoken language.
From the linguistic point of view, Chinese is regarded as word writing, each
sign representing the sound of a word rather than a letter. This is an ambiguous sit
uation because the Chinese word has changed over the centuries from being poly
syllabiC to being monosyllabic, with· the following results: (1) Chinese literary
writing is practically a series of syllable-words, difficult to understand without vis
ually or mentally reading the signs that correspond to them, and (2) in the joining
together of monosyllables, the spoken language has reconstituted a large number of
disyllabic or trisyllabic words so that the written notation of the spoken language is,
in the final analysis, a syllabic script. In both of these aspects Chinese clearly dem-
onstrates that writing was born of the complementary interaction of two systems:
"mythograms" and phonetic linearization. The somewhat strained and often labo
rious, but ultimately successful, adaptation of Chinese writing to phoneticism has
resulted in preserving a particular form of mythographic notation rather than simply
the remote memory of a "pictographic" stage.
The earliest Chinese inscription (twelfth and eleventh centuries B.C.), like the
first Egyptian inscriptions and Aztec glyphs, have come to us in the form of figures
assembled in groups that provide the object or action they describe with a "halo"
much wider than the narrow me�ing words have assumed in linear writing. To
write the words an ("peace") or chia ("family") in letters is to state the two concepts
reduced to their skeleton: To convey the idea of peace by representing a woman
under a roof opens up perspectives that are, properly speaking, "mythographic" in
that the Sign is neither a transcription of a sound nor a pictographic representation
of an action or a quality but an assemblage of two images whose interplay reflects
the full depth of their ethnic context. This becomes still more patently evident when
we see that an assemblage composed of the signs for "roof" and "pig" stands for
"family," a foreshortened image with the whole technoeconomic structure of ancient
China for its background.
One might see little difference between such writing and pictography in the
sense of a succession of drawings showing actions or objects wholly outside a pho
netic context. Chinese writing may seem to come close to this definition because of
its basic principle, which is that one-half of each character is "pictographic" and the
other phonetic. But to see in the Chinese character nothing more than a category
indicator (the radical) stuck on to a phonetic particle would be an unwarranted
restriction of its meaning. We need only take a modem example like the word "flash
light" to realize how flexible the images still are (figures 103 and 104). To the
speaker, tien-ch'i-teng means "flashlight" and nothing else. But to the attentive
reader, the juxtaposition of the three characters for "lightning", "steam," and "lamp"
opens a whole world ofsymbols that form a halo round tIie banal image of the flash
light: lightning issuing forth from a rain cloud, for the first; steam rising over a pan
of rice, for the second; and fire and a receptacle, or fire and the action of riSing, for
the third. Parasitic images, no doubt, and likely to cause the reader's thoughts to stray
in a manner irrelevant to the real object of notation, worthless images, indeed, in the
context of a modem object-yet even an example as commonplace as this gives us
an inkling of a mode of thought based on diffuse multidimensional configurations
rather than on a system that has gradually imprisoned language within linear
phoneticism.
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103. Chinese writing. (a) Archaic and modern graphic signsfor a skein offiber (picto
grams). (b) A skein and the sign (archaic and modern)for a shuttle: When assembled they
signify "order" or "succeson"
si (ideogram). (c) The skein and the sign chili The picto
graphic element has a classificatoryfunction (the concept of 'Jibers"), the other element
being thepurelyphonetic chili (paper"). (d) Archaic graphic signfor "roof" (e) Roof +
woman peace. (f) Roof + fire disaster. (g) Roof + pig domestic arrangements,fam-
= = =
It is interesting to note that in a sense the combination of ideographic with pho

netic notation in ideograms emptied of their meaning has deepened the role of
mythographic notation in the Chinese language by deviating it from its course. It has
created a highly symbolized relationship between the sound that is noted (auditive
poetic matter) and its notation (a swarm of images), thus offering Chinese poetry and
calligraphy their superb possibilities. The rhythm of the words is counterbalanced
by that of the subtly interrelated lines, creating images in which each part of each
character, as well as the relationship of every character to every other, sparkles with
allusive meaning.
The two aspects-ideographic and phonetic-of Chinese writing are so
mutually complementary and, at the same time, so foreign to one another that each
has engendered separate different notation systems outside China. The manner in
which Chinese writing was borrowed by theJapanese is difficult to describe in terms
comprehensible to a European mentality (figures 104 and 105). The two languages
are much further removed from one another than Latin is from Arabic, and the man
ner in which Chinese writing fits Japanese spoken language is something like trying
to write French by selecting from among postage stamps the picture that approxi
mately corresponds to the meaning of the words to be transcribed, and asse�bling
them in rows: Both grammar and the phonetic content are completely lost. The char
acters were borrowed at a strictly ideographic level, with Japanese phoneticism
expressed by signs emptied of their sound in Chinese, much as the phoneticism of
the figure 3 is different in every language. Here, however, the borr�wing does not
involve a mere ten signs, as in our numerical system, but thousands of signs, ulti
mately expelling the sound matter of language from the scope of writing. As for the
ideological matter, it is confined to concepts, grammatical inflexions being com
pletely left aside and unaccounted for. To compensate for this shortcoming, the Jap
anese language borrowed from the Chinese, in the eighth century AD., forty eight
characters that are used exclusively for their phonetic value, and from these it has
created a syllabic notation register that has inserted itself between the ideograms. In
consequence, the Chinese system of writing composed of multidimensional ele
ments, each group forming a character contains the means whereby it can be ren-
ily. (h, i, j) tiench'i teng: electric bulb. Tien: thunder = rain, lightning ch'i steam = cloud,
rice; teng: /amp fire + mount + pedestal.
=
104. Japanese writing. (a) Two Chinese characters: sung-shell, "mountain ofpines. " (b)
Japanese reading: matsu-yama, expressed in syllabic characters. (c) Fragment ofa dramatic
text including Chinese characters held together by a syntactic "binder" in cursive syllabic
characters and annotated by phonetic elements.
Chiku
Animals
sho
Ji Themselves
Toku Achieve
Dar G reat
Chi
Wisdo m
105. Fragment ofa popular Buddhist text including: (a)Japanesephoneti.c notation:

chiku-shO ('animals"), ji ('themselves"), toku ('achieve"), da'i ('great"), chi-e ('wisdom'').
(b) The seven Chinese characters corresponding to thephoneticized test. (c) Drawings rep
resenting an animal (sh5), an eiderdown (toku), a tray (dai), a pair ofbreasts (chi), and a
house (e), which approximately reconstitute the text.
dered phonetically,]apanese first stripped the characters of their phonetic coloring

and then attached a distinctive phonetic Sign to each one.
The Chinese system, like the]apanese, is said to be "impractical" and ill-suited
for the purpose of translating spoken language into graphic terms. This is true only
to the extent that writing is viewed as an economical method of transcribing narrow
but precise concepts-an object achieved most efficiently by linear alignment. The
language of science and technology meets such a definition, and alphabets meet its
requirements. It seems to me that other procedures for expressing thought should
not be overlooked, and in partiClllar those that reflect the flexibility of images, the
halo of associations, and all the complementary or conflicting representations that
gravitate round the central point of a concept. Chinese writing represents a state of
balance unique in human history: Whatever one may say, it renders mathematical or
biological concepts faithfully enough, while still preserving the possibility of using
the oldest system of graphic expression-the juxtaposing of symbols to create, not
sentences, but meaningful groups of images.
Linear Graphism
There is no need here to go into the details of the history of linear writing. The
Sumero-Accadian scripts, which before 3000 B.C. already contained a very large num
ber of ideograms in process of development toward phonetic transcription; were
followed by consonantal scripts, of which the Phoenician (around 1200 B.C.) is the
earliest example, and later by the Greek alphabet of the eighth century B.C. This con
tinuous development included every possible stage-:-from realistic representation
of an object to render the word for that object, through the same representation to
render the equivalent sound in other words according to the principle of the picture
puzzle, through the process of simplification whereby the object is made uniden
tifiable and becomes a purely phonetic symbol, to assembling discrete symbols in
order to transcribe sounds through the association of letters. The development has
been described many times; it is regarded as the glory of the great Civilizations, and
rightly so for it was this development that put them in possession .of the means for
their ascent.
There indeed is a direct link between the technoeconomic development of the
Mediterranean and European group of civilizations and the graphic tool they per
fected. We saw earlier that the role of the hand in toolmaking counterbalanced the
role of the facial organs in creating verbal language; we also saw that at a certain
moment just before the emergence of homo sapiens, the hand began to play a part
in creating a graphic mode of expression that counterbalanced verbal language. The

hand thus became a creator of images, of symbols not directly dependent on the pro
gression of verbal language but really parallel with it. The language that, for lack of
a better term, I have called "mythographic" because the mental associations it
arouses are of an order parallel to that of verbal myths, both lying outside the scope
of strict coordinates in space and time, belongs to this period. Writing in its earliest
phase preserved a great deal of this multidimensional vision; it continued to suggest
mental images that, though not imprecise, were "haloed" and could point in several
divergent directions. Although.our anatomical evolution had been overtaken by the
evolution of technical means, the global evolution of humankind remained perfectly
consistent with itself. The brain of the man of ero-Magnon may have been as good
as ours--at any rate, there is nothing to prove the contrary-but his means of
expressing himself were far from equal to his neuronal apparatus. The greatest
development has been in the means of expression. In primates the actions of the
hands are in balance with those of the face, and a monkey makes wonderful use of
this balance. It" even goes so far as to make its cheeks serve to carry food, which its
hands, still required for walking, cannot do. In early anthropoids a kind of divorce
takes place between the hand and the face. Thereafter the one contributes to the
search for a new balance through gesticulation and tools, the other through phona
tion. With the emergence of graphic figurative representation, the parallelism is rees
tablished. The hand has its language, with a Sight-related form of expression, and the
face has its own, which relates to hearing. Between the two is the halo that confers
a special character upon human thought before the invention of writing proper: The
gesture interprets the word, and the word comments upon graphic expression.
At the linear graphism stage that characterizes writing, the relationship
between the two fields undergoes yet another development: Written language, pho
neticized and linear in space, becomes completely subordinated to spoken lan
guage, which is phonetic and linear in time. The dualism between graphic and verbal
disappears, and the whole of human linguistic apparatus becomes a single instru
ment for expressing and preserving thought-which itself is channeled increasingly
toward reasoning.
The Constriction o/Thought
The transition from mythological to rational thinking was a very gradual shift
exactly synchronous with the development of urban concentrations and of metal
lurgy. The earliest beginnings of Mesopotamian writing date back to about 3500 B.C.,
some 2,500 years after the appearance of the first villages. Two thousand years later,
toward 1500 B.C., the first consonantal alphabet appeared in Phoenicia, toward 750
B.C. alphabets were being used in Greece, and by 350 B.C. Greek philosophy was
advancing by leaps·and bounds.
Available evidence of the organization of primitive thought is difficult to inter
pret' either because it comes to us from very fragmentary prehistoric evidence
or because our records about the thinking of Australian aborigines or Bushmen
have been filtered by ethnographers who did not always take the trouble to analyze
them. What we do know suggests a process wherein contradictions between diff
erent values are ordered within a participatory logic that at one time gave rise
to the concept of "pre-logical" reasoning. Primitive thought appears to take place
within a temporal and spatial setting which is continually open to revision (see
chapter 13). The fact that verbal language is coordinated freely with graphic
figurative representation is . undoubtedly one of the reasons for this kind of
thinking, whose organization in space and time is different from ours and
implies the thinking individual's continuing unity with the environment upon
which his or her thought is exercised. Discontinuity begins to appear with
agricultural sedentarization and with early writing. The basis now is the creation
of a cosmic image pivoted upon the city. The thinking of agricultural peoples is
organized in both time and space from an initial point of reference-omphalos
round which the heavens gravitate and from which distances are ordered. The think
ing of pre-alphabetic antiquity was radial, like the body of the sea urchin or the star
fish. It only just began to master rectilinear progression in archaic forms of writing,
whose means of expression were still very diffuse except for the purposes of account
keeping. The process of the world's subsequent imprisonment in the toils of "exact"
symbols had barely begun, and the summit of perfection in the handling of myth
ological thought was reached in the Mediterranean or in the China of the first mil
lennium before our era. It was a time when the vault of heaven and the earth were
joined together within a network of unlimited connections, a golden age of pre
scientific knowledge to which our memory still seems to hark back nostalgically
today.
The process set in motion by settled agriculture contributed, as we have seen,
to putting the individual more and more firmly in control over the material world.
This gradual triumph of tools is inseparable from that of language-indeed the two
phenomena are but one, just as technics and society form but one subject As soon
as writing became exclusively a means of phonetic recording of speech, language
was placed on the same level as technics; and the technical efficacy oflanguage today
is proportional to the extent to which it has rid itself of the halo of associated images
characteristic of archaic forms of writing.
Writing thus tends toward the constriction of images, toward a stricter linear
ization of symbols. For classical as well as modern thinking, the alphabet is more than
just a means of committing to memory the progressive acquisitions of the human
mind; it is a tool whereby a mental symbol can be noted in both word and gesture
by a single process. Such unification of the process of expression entails the sub
ordination of graphism to spoken language. It avoids the wastefulness of symbols
that is still characteristic of Chinese writing, and it parallels the process adopted by
technics over the course of its development.
However, it also entails an impoverishment of the means of nonrational
expression. If we take the view that the course humankind has followed thus far is
wholly favorable to our future-if, in other words, we have complete confidence in
settled agriculture and all its consequences--then we should not view the loss of
multidimensional symbolic thought otherwise than we do the improvement
achieved in the running ability of Equidae consequent upon the reduction of the
number of their digits to one. But if, conversely, we tend to believe that human poten
tialitywould be more fully realized ifwe achieved a balanced contact with the whole
of reality, then we may ask ourselves whether the adoption of a regimented form of
writing that opened the way to the unrestrained development of technical utilitar
ianism was not a step well short of the optimum.
Beyond Writing: The Audiovisual

With alphabetic writing, a certain level of personal symbolism is still preserved.
The reconstruction that the eye performs in reading the written word is still an indi
vidual one. There is a margin which, though limited, is indisputably present, and it
ensures a personal interpretation of phonetic matter. Moreover the images evoked
by reading remain the property of the reader's imagination, which may or may not
be very rich. When it replaced ideographic symbols by letters--when, as it were, it
changed levels--the alphabet did not abolish all possibilities of recreation. To put
it differently, alphabetic writing, while meeting the needs of social memory, still
allows the individual to reap the benefits of the interpretative effort he or she has to
make.
We could ask ourselves whether, despite the current vast increase in the output
of printed matter, the fate of writing is not already sealed. The emergence of sound
recording, films, and television in the past half-century forms part of a trajectory that
began before the Aurignacian. From the bulls and horses of Lascaux to the Meso
potamian markings and the Greek alphabet, representative signs went from mytho
gram to ideogram and from ideogram to letter. Material civilization rests upon
symbols in which the gap between the sequence of emitted concepts and their repro
duction has become ever more narrow. This gap or interval is narrowed still further
by the recording of thought and its mechanical reproduction. We might wonder what
the consequences of this narrowing will be. Curiously enough, the mechanical
recording of images has, in less than a century, covered the same ground as the
recording of the spoken word did over several thousands of years. First, two-dimen
sional visual images became automatically reproducible through photography.
Then, as with writing, came the turn of the spoken word, reproduced by means of
the phonograph. Up to that point the mechanism of mental assimilation had
remained undistorted: Photography, being purely static and visual, left as much room
for freedom of interpretation as the bisons ofAltamira had left to the humans of the
Paleolithic. The auditive sequence imposed by the phonograph likewise allowed
room for· personal and free mental vision.
This traditional state of affairs was not appreciably altered by the arrival of silent
films. The silent reel was supported by sound ideograms of an indeterminate nature
supplied by a musical accompaniment that maintained a distance between the indi
vidual and the image imposed from the outside. A radical change occurred, however,
with the cOming of sound film and television, both of which address the faculties of
Sight, motion, and hearing at the same time and so induce the whole field of per
ception to participate passively. The margin for individual interpretation is drastically
reduced because the symbol and its contents are almost completely merged into one
and because the spectator has absolutely no possibility of intervening actively in the
"real" situation thus recreated. The spectator's experience is different from a Nean
derthalian's in that it is purely passive, and different from a reader's in that it is totally
lived through both sight and hearing. From this dual point ofview, audiovisual tech
niques really seem to represent a new stage of human development-a stage that has
direct bearing on our most distinctive possession, that of reflective thought
From the social point of view, the audiovisual indisputably represents a valu
able gain inasmuch as it facilitates the transmission of precise information and acts
upon the mass of people receiving it in ways that immobilize all their means of inter
pretation. In this respect language follows the general evolution of the collective
superorganism and reflects the increasingly perfect conditioning of its individual
cells. Can a genuine return by the individual to earlier stages of figurative repre
sentation still be envisaged? Writing is unquestionably a most efficient adaptation of
audiovisual behavior, which is our fundamental mode of perception, yet it is also a

very roundabout way of achieving the desired effect. The situation now apparendy
becoming generalized may therefore be said to represent an improvement in that
it eliminates the effort of "imagining" (in the etymological sense). But imagination
is the fundamental property of intelligence, and a society with a weakened property
of symbol making would suffer a concomitant loss of the property of action. In the
modem world the result is a certain imbalance, or rather a tendency toward the same
phenomenon as that taking place in the arts and crafts: the phenomenon of loss of
the exercise of the imagination in vital operating sequences.
Audiovisual language tends to concentrate image making entirely in the minds
of a minority of specialists who purvey a completely figurative substance to the indi
vidual. Image makers--painters, poets, or technical narrators--have always, as far
back as in the Paleolithic, been a social exception, but their work always remained
incomplete because it called for the participation of the image users, whatever their
cultural levels. Today a separation (extremely profitable to the collective) is in pro
cess of being wrought between a small elite acting as society's digestive organ and
the masses acting purely as its organs of assimilation. This development is not con
fined to the audiovisual media, which are merely the end point of a general process
that involves the whole of human graphic activity. Photography did not at first cause
any change in the intellectual perception of images; like all innovations, it was sup
ported by what already existed. Just as the first motor cars were horseless carriages,
so the first photographs were portraits and scene paintings without color. The pro
cess of "predigestion" did not begin until the emergence of cinematography, which
completely changed the concept of photography and drawing in the purely picto
graphic sense. The sports photograph and the comic strip, together with the "digest,"
have also contributed to separating the image maker from the image consumer
within the social organism.
The impoverishment is not in the themes but in the loss of personal imagi
native versions. The number of themes in popular (as indeed in highbrow) literature
has always been limited, so there is nothing extraordinary about seeing the same
very handsome and exceptionally strong superman, the same amazingly attractive
woman, and the same more or less stupid giant appear successively in the midst of
Sioux Indians and bisons, in a pitched ballie during the Hundred Years' War, on
board a pirate ship, in a police car roaring off in pursuit of gangsters, or in a space
rocket traveling between two planets. Endless repetition of an unchanging stock of
images goes hand in hand with the tiny amount of free space that the exercise of emo
tions related in one way or another to aggressivity or sexuality leaves in the indi-
vidual consciousness. That the comic strip's ability to render action in a convincing
manner is far greater than the old "penny dreadful's is not in doubt: In the latter a
punch in the face was an incomplete symbol, whereas Superman's left hook to the
traitor's jaw leaves nothing to be added by way of traumatic precision. Everything
assumes a totally naked reality, to be absorbed without the least effort, the recipient's
brain perfectly slack.
In this first part of the book language has been considered on the same footing
as technics, from an entirely practical point of view and as a product of the biological
entity called the "human being." The initial balance between the two poles of the
field of responsiveness connects our evolution with that of all animals in which the
performance of operations is divided between the face and the forelimb. But by
implication it also connects the existence oflanguage with that of manual techniques.
What we know about the evolution of the brain allows us--so far as new techniques
are concerned-to analyze the connection between erect posture, the freeing of the
hand, and the opening up of areas of the brain that were the preconditions for the
exercise of physical abilities, on the one hand, and the development of human activ
ity on the other. The proximity, inside the brain, between the two manifestations of
human intelligence is so striking that despite the lack of fossil evidence, we must
accept that human language was from the very outset different in nature from the
language of animals--that it was the product of reflection between the two mirrors
of technical gesture and phonic symbolism. This hypothesis concerning humans
who existed before Homo sapiens-humans going as far back as the remotest Aus
tralanthropians--becomes a certainty when we discover the close synchronism
between the evolution of techniques and that oflanguage. The certainty is confirmed
when we see how closely, even for the very purpose of expressing thought, hand and
voice remain intimately linked.
Parallel with the extraordinary acceleration of the development of material
techniques following the emergence ofHomo sapums, the abstract thought we find
reflected in paleolithic art implies that language too had reached a similar level.
Graphic or plastic figurative representation should therefore be seen as the means
of expression of symbolic thinking of the myth-making type, its medium being
graphic representation related to verbal language but independent from phonetic
notation. Although no fossil records of late Paleolithic languages have come down
to us, evidence fashioned by the hands of humans who spoke those languages clearly
suggests that their symbolizing activities-inconceivable without language-were
on a level with their technical activities, which in turn are unimaginable without a
verbalized intellectual supporting structure.
The parallelism continued at every stage: When agricultural sedentarization

gave rise to a hierarchical and specialized social system, a fresh impetus was
imparted Simultaneously to technics and language. If the topographical structure of
the cerebral cortex of primitive anthropoids accommodated the joint development
of the material and the verbal, the topographical structure of the urban superor
ganism reflected the same contiguousness. When the economic system became
transformed into capitalism based on metallurgy and grain, the transformation
engendered both science and writing. When techniques within the city walls began
to prepare the ground for the world of today, when space and time became orga
nized within a geometrical network that captured both the earth and the heavens,
then rationalizing thought began to overtake mythical thought Symbols were linear
ized and gradually adapted to the flow ofverbal language until graphic phonetization
finally culminated in the alphabet. From the beginning of written history, as in still
earlier times, there has been a complete reciprocal linkage between technics and
language, and the whole ofh1,!man develop�ent depends upon this fact. The expres
sion of thought through language found an instrument with infinite possibilities in
the use of alphabets, which totally subordinated the graphic to the phonetic. All pre
vious forms remain alive, however, although to varying degrees. Further on in this
book we shall try to demonstrate that a significant portion of our thought diverges
from linearized language in the effort to grasp that which does not lend itself to strict
notation.
Although the interplay between the two poles of figurative representation
between the auditive and the visual-changed considerably with the adoption of
phonetic scripts, the individual's capacity to visualize the verbal and the graphic
remained intact. The present stage is characterized simultaneously by the merging
together of the auditive and the visual, leading to the loss of many possibilities of
individual interpretation, and by a social separation between the functions bf symbol
making and of image receiving. Here again the parallelism between technics and lan
guage is clearly apparent. Tools detached themselves from the human hand, even
tually to bring forth the machine: In this latest stage speech and sight are undergoing
the same process, thanks to the development of technics. language, which had sep
arated itself from the human through art and writing, is consummating the final
divorce by entrusting the intimate functions of phonation and Sight to wax, film, and
magnetic tape.
II Memory and Rhythms
7 The Freeing of Memory
Species and Ethnic Group

Since the eighteenth century philosophers have been divided between two
positions on the relationship between animal and human societies-one that sees
the animal and human worlds as essentially identical, and one that accentuates the
disparity between them. Both outlooks actually form part of the same movement,
which goes back to the very origins of philosophy: the perception of an opposition
between the material and the mental. This perception has been cast in many ideo
logical molds over the centuries, and the opposition of nature to culture, of the zoo
logical to the sociological, has reemerged again and again from the earliest
metaphysical thinking down to contemporary sociology. If we study the view of the
animal world held by Australian aborigines or Eastern Siberians, we find that fun
damentally there is no essential difference between animal and human, that both
have received the same intellectual gifts, and that their reactions, as reflected in
myths over the ages, admit of parity and of a possible continuity of relations between
them. The same view is apparent in the traditional European fairy tale, where animals
speak and behave like humans.
The attitude recurs today in literary form, whether it be traditional tales, the
stories ofKipling, or the adventures ofMickey Mouse. The fact that this type ofwriting
is regarded as "children's literature" in no way diminishes its significance. Between
this attitude and that of the nineteenth-century naturalist confronted with the social
life of ants, the difference is minimal. Anthropocentism is at work in the search for
the "language" of ants no less than in the many fairy tales in which a bear marries a
human girl. And perhaps it is at work again in the efforts made to establish a radical
separation between animal and human by opposing instinct to intelligence.
220 Memory and Rhythms
In mythological thought animal and human partake of the same essence, but
their paths diverge at a certain point. The bear or the serpent are males, the bird
maiden is a female, when each has shed its outer skin of bear, serpent, or wild goose.
Dressed in that outer skin, they adopt the species behavior that goes with it, exactly
in the same way as people assume the behavior of their ethnic group or social class
when they assume its clothing. This attitude, likewise anthropocentric, reveals a per
ception of the division of the living world into sociological units with distinct habits,
customs, and external attributes, in contrastwith the identity of living beings in their
natural state. This view is so spontaneous and so universal that it cannot but reflect
a real fact, that of the separation between our physical self and our external social
shell. It extends to the animal world something that is specifically true of us, but it
analyzes the essential fact that we belong to two worlds, the zoological and the socio
logical. It also brings out another essential fact, namely that we are humanly signif
icant only through the behavior peculiar to our group, and if we bear in mind that
in myths animals are identified with actual ethnic groups, it leads on to the recog
nition of the determining character of ethnic differences.
In the scientific thought of the past two centuries the same attitudes are to be
seen on two levels-in the study of the respective functions of intelligence and
instinct and in the search for the dividing line between the natural and the cultural.
The first is concerned with animal psychology, the second with ethnology. Our ear
lier comments on the development of anthropoid societies by stages in which the
link between the zoological and the sociological has become progressively more
tenuous show that the problem can arise simultaneously at both levels, or rather that
there is a possible third level that comes very close to our empirical picture of pre
literal societies. Within the context of this third track, the problem of grouping would
dominate the question of what is animal and what is human. Society of both animals
and humans would be seen as maintained within a body of "traditions" whose basis
is neither instinctive nor intellectual but, to varying degrees, zoological and socio
logical at one and the same time. To an outside observer the only thing that a society
of ants and a human society have in common is the existence of traditions which
ensure from one generation to the next the transmission of action sequences
required for the social group's survival and development. We may argue over what
is like and unlike in the two groups, but each survives thanks to the exercise of a real
memory in which behaviors are stored. In animals this memory-peculiar to every
species-is based on a highly complex instinctual apparatus, whereas in anthropoids
the memory of each ethnic group rests on the no less complex apparatus of language.
The Freeing ofMemory 221
To oppose instinct to language rather than to intelligence is legitimate only if there

is true correspondence between the two terms so opposed, and that correspon
dence is what we shall try to demonstrate in this chapter. If it is true to say that the
species is the characteristic form of animal grouping and the ethnic group of human
grouping, then a particular form of memory must correspond to each body of
traditions.
Instinct and Intelligence

Countless studies have been devoted to the apparently insoluble problem of
intelligence and instinct. The debate, dominated by anthropocentric ideas until the
early twentieth century, seems to have lost much of its vigor in the past generation.
Neither instinct nor intelligence can be regarded as causes: They are effects. Instinct
does not explain instinctive behavior; rather, philosophically speaking, it character
izes the accomplishment of ceratin complex processes of different origin. In the case
of an individual, instinct may be said to be located at the intersection of the means
specific to that individual and the external causes for deploying those means in
action sequences. The external causes may be provided by education as well as by
stimulation.
The distinction between instinct and intelligence is of practical interest only at
the extremes of the scale-in insects as well as in humans--and even there its real
value is difficult to measure. The action programs of the lowervertebrates are closely
conditioned by their internal environment and by external stimuli. The active behav
ior of an amoeba or an annelid can be reduced to short sequences triggered or pro
longed by causes unrelated to what might be termed "automatic intelligence" as
opposed to "intelligence based on reflection." Therefore it is not possible to trace
the supposed transformation of instinct into intelligence by starting at the bottom
end of creation and proceeding to the higher animals. The only fact that emerges
from experimental study of animal behavior is the plasticity of an individual animal's
behavior in relation to its specific means. This must be interpreted as a liberation,
not from instinct, but from the fixed sequences established at the confluence of the
individual's internal biological environment and the exterior. The-question is thus
one of nervous apparatus rather than of the existence of a property peculiar to the
animal condition. More precisely, the nervous system is not an instinct-producing
machine but one that responds to internal and external demands by designing
programs.
Today the concept of instinct appears too vague. We have become aware of the
complexity of hereditary behavior patterns. But the existence of species-related
memory14 is difficult to challenge. It may manifest itself in action sequences resulting
from the individual's gradual conditioning by external influences, to which it
responds in the only ways for which it is hereditarily designed. The fact remains,
however, that as one generation succeeds another the same sequences--or very sim
ilar ones--are reproduced from individual to individual. Instinct expressed as spe
cies-related memory is a reality only inasmuch as the resulting action sequences are
constant in nature. Hence what is at issue is not the contrast betWeen instinct and
intelligence but only the opposition of two modes of programming, one of which
the insect mode-involves a maximum of genetic predetermination and the other
the human mode-apparently none at all. In fact the distinction is reflected in brain
mechanisms which differ very widely between insects and humans, and the problem
is less a matter of philosophy than of neurophysiology.
All living organisms can be divided into three groups in terms of instinct and
intelligence. The first is that of the lower invertebrates with their very rudimentary
brain system in which the programs take the form of short, stereotyped sequences
of very simple actions reflecting the state of the balance between the organism and
its environment. The memory of animals such as the earthworm, the slug, or the lim
pet can readily be compared to that of an electronic machine in the sense that (1)
the animal is born with a determined range of needs and means of satisfying them,
(2) its action sequences represent a struggle for balance between organic impulses
and the external environment in a cycle where the action series is determined by
physiological or external causes, and (3) the memory is incorporated in programs
that determine the animal's conditioning. Nervous systems of this simple type have
already been artificially reproduced, and the electronic apparatus employed in
rocket control is already more complex than the brain of the lower molluscs or of
annelids.
The second group is a good deal more problematic. It is represented by the
bee or the ant, insects whose behavior appears to imply the presence of highly com
plex genetically recorded programs that go into operation at once and with discon
certing development in both the larva and the imago. The execution of these
programs is today known to be less perfect than earlier authors had thought, but it
would still be difficult to regard them Simply as the interplay of external and internal
environments causing the formation of a conditioned memory. In seeking to explain
the insect's choice of plants or prey for its nourishment, its building practices, or its
The Freeing ofMe-mory 223
activities pertaining to social cohesion, we are obliged to adopt the concept of a ner
vous apparatus with highly determined responses to visual, olfactory, and tactile
impressions. Such hereditary determination implies the existence of a potential
memory whose operations appear preconceived because only a minimal choice of
possible responses is available. We can, however, imagfue an artificial apparatus that
might select impressions created by light or by chemical�r else by vibrations
and channel them into complex action sequences. We could even envisage a system
that would allow a certain indeterminacy, a possible choice between impressions
perceived as being equivalent. If every internal chemical state produced a specific
reaction to impressions received from the outside, the economy of such a control
mechanism would be very close to an insect's.
The third group would include vertebrates. Here the behavior of the lower
invertebrates is reproduced in that the operating memory is largely conditioned by
mechanical determinism, physiological impulses, and the demands of the external
environment. Again, although ever less strongly as each branching achieves a higher
degree of cerebral development, conditioning is connected with the existence of
potential memory or, in other words, of automatic, "instinctual" behavior, which is
the result of a genetic selection of possible responses. The vertebrate behaves as if
following a preestablished program, an "instinct" whose consequences we may
sometimes think absurd because it cannot adapt to situations not stored in the col
lective memory, whereas in fact it is producing a series of linked responses within
the limits of its organic possibilities. Almost the entire behavior of the lower ver
tebrates (fish and reptiles) is of the first two types; we can imagine an electronic
device that would, like the lizard, respond to phototropic or thermotropic stimuli,
become more active with rising temperature, pursue any moving prey of swallow
able size, reject any prey whose consistency or taste was recorded as being danger
ous, and exhibit colored panels when visually or olfactorily excited. It should be
added that actions performed for the first time by a process of trial and error would
be recorded as programs in a series of memories whose interplay might subse
quently trigger complex operating s�quences, going so far as to cause a reversal of
behavior during the performance of a sequence. What is conceivable in fish and rep
tiles is also, and to a much more complex degree, conceivable in birds, which dem
onstrate in profuse detail that the most elaborate part of automatic behavior is
connected with reproductive activity. This is a general fact to which I shall revert in
the chapter on "symbols of society" in connection with the relationship between aes
thetics and the maintenance of group cohesion. In our present context we need only
note that the elaborateness of automatic behavior varies considerably between, on

the one hand, actions performed for individual survival and, on the other hand, those
taken to ensure the survival of the species.
The behavior of the lower vertebrates may form part of the memory of higher
vertebrates and may indeed constitute its main bulk. But as we rise higher in the
series we observe a new element that suggests that the two earlier pictures may not
be altogether complete. The characteristic feature of the individual behavior of mam
mals, at least so far as survival behavior is concerned, is the possibility of choice
between action sequences, of checking the adequacy of each potential response to
a given situation-a margin of control that varies from one species to another but is
already very considerable in carnivores and primates. Ifwe pursued the analogy with
electronic devices, we should have to add to the apparatus for triggering responses
and memories-another mechanism capable of comparing and of orienting the device
toward a particular response. Within the sweep of evolution, nervous systems in fact
appear to have progressed in two opposite directions, some (those of insects and
birds) toward behavior channeled more and more narrowly by the nervous appa
ratus and others (those of mammals and humans) toward a prodigious enrichment
of the nerve pathways by connective elements capable of establishing connections
between new situations and already experienced ones. The individual's memory,
formed in the earliest period of life, then takes precedence over the species memory,
which is merely the result of the hereditary arrangement of the nervous system.
Instinct and Freedom

One of the basic characteristics of humanity is the possession of a brain capable
of making comparisons. Regulatory controls of elementary behavior are still present,
however, in the lower stages of the human nervous system, and especially in the sym
pathetic system: The organism is subject to the same laws of balance between the
external and the internal environment as that of the Simplest invertebrates. The mid
dle level, "instinct," is also present inasmuch as our operating behavior is molded
by the genetic framework. Since sight and hearing are our predominant sense, our
actions are genetically different from those of an animal whose chief references
might be those of smell and touch. If instinct resides in the accomplishment of
actions the implements for which are genetically conditioned, then a good deal of
our activity is instinctual. In the short lineages that form within our constantly chang
ing mass of humanity, genetically acquired intellectual or physical "gifts" represent
the eqUivalent of the "instinctual" capital of animal lineages. The parallelism between
the innate aptitudes of human individuals and those of animal spedes helps us to
understand the nature of instinctual behavior. In neither case are we dealing with
mysterious programs transmitted by atavism and developing automatically under
favorable circumstances, but rather with hereditary neurovegetative mechanisms
that permit the constitution of a memory recorded in action sequences. Among a
thousand individuals given a musical education, only one may be genetically con
ditioned to become a great performer of whom it could be said that he or she played
"by instinct" j but among a thousand musically gifted individuals only one perhaps
will receive a musical education-:-the others will never have a chance to form their
memory for musical execution, and the connection between their genetic aptitudes
and the demands of the external environment will never be established. Vocational
guidance in modern sodeties is only the empirical search for the genetic aptitudes
that exist in humans as they do throughout the animal world.
Human operating behavior therefore draws upon a very extensive instinctual
fund composed both of mechanisms for the regulation of deep organic impulses
common to all individuals and of mechanisms capable of recording operating pro
grams whose details may vary from one individual to another. This margin of indi
vidual variation, which is conSiderably wider than in even the most developed
mammals, is an essential trait of human sodety. The "thinker," the inventor, the vir- ·
tuoso, perform a crucial role in the dialogue between the physical entity and the col
lective organism that is sodety. We must realize that the presence of individual
genius may be genetically normal in the human spedes and that progress is less a
matter of personal genius than of a favorable collective environment.
That these facts are to some extent recognized is illustrated by the relative posi
tions of spirituality and materialism in the ideologies of recent sodeties. In the great
religiOns, and espedally in Christianity, individual genetic aptitudes cannot cross the
threshold of eternity, and hierarchy in those religiOns rests upon foundations that
have nothing to do with such gifts. The saint is not necessarily a thinker nor an inven
tor or a virtuoso, but rather one who breaks out of the operating cycle and goes
beyond and outside it. All great metaphysical philosophies are based upon this break
which reflects our liberation from the genetic link and at the same time from the
social one (at a different level, this reflects the homology of the spedes with the eth
nic group). Materialist ideology-present not only in Marxist sodeties but, in prag
matic form, in all human societies--tends, on the contrary, to accentuate social
effiCiency. It emphasizes the importance of the genetic link by making a hero of the
"gifted" individual. In capitalist sodeties the choice is made within the framework
of a hierarchy divided into social classes, whereas Marxist sodeties tend to make use
of genetic possibilities through the institution of "heroes of labor" and the cult of
personality, a linear hierarchy founded upon the efficacy of individuals.
The human problem cannot, however, be understood with the help of instinc
tual factors alone. The all-tao-often forgotten share of the zoological in human
behavior must certainly be taken into account, but if we failed to integrate the mind
in the general biological process we should be dealing with the infrastructure alone.
In cliapter 3 we saw the results of destroying the motor areas of the cerebral cortex
change in a most revealing manner from the dog to the monkey and from the mon
key to human. In the dog ablation of the motor cortex brings about an inability to
remember operating sequences acquired by learning; in the monkey the zones of
association bordering on the main motor area must also be eliminated, and in the
human only the destruction of a very large area indeed will produce the same result.
Earlier these facts provided us with the means of tracing the main stages of devel
opment toward reflective motor function. In our present context they indicate to
some extent the degree of freeing of the human brain. The increasingly wide aureole
that surrounds the centers of voluntary motor function corresponds to intelligence
in the strict sense, that is, both to the capacity to store large numbers of operating
sequences in the memory and to the capaCity to choose between sequences.
Between the most highly developed monkey and the human being, the difference
in terms of freedom of choice is qualitative. True, the most intelligent anthropoid
ape can never compare between more than a limited number of programs and its
comparisons must rely on a conSiderably smaller neuronic apparatus than the
human's, but the difference is essentially a matter of quality because reflexion is
closely connected with language.
In our most common operations, language does not seem to intervene at all.
We perform many actions in a twilight state of consciousness not basically different
from that in which animals perform theirs. But as soon as the operating sequence is
governed by choice it requires the intervention of a lucid consciousness closely con
nected with language. Freedom of behavior is attainable only at the level of symbols,
not of actions, and symbolic representation of actions is indissociable from com
parison between actions. From the lower animals to the higher mammals, the rel
ative shares of conditioning acquired genetically and by learning are gradually
reversed until a choice between simple operations becomes possible. But operating
behavior remains completely rooted in lived experience, for projection can only
take place once operations have been freed from their materiality and transformed
into sequences of symbols. If we want to compare animal instinct with human intel
ligence, we must depart from the traditional meaning of each of those terms: We
must view instinct as a set of phenomena so complex that the word no longer has
a precise meaning, and intelligence as the ability to project symbolic sequences. This
is tantamount to regarding language as the instrument of liberation from lived expe
rience. In a parallel manner the hand-tool could be seen as the instrument of lib
eration from the genetic constraints by which an animal's organic implements are
tied to the zoological species. At the level of language therefore, as at that of the
implement, human intelligence observes the relationships we have already
described.
Human technical behavior, with its consequences for the headlong develop
ment of the instrumental apparatus of society, needs to be considered at three levels:
species-related, sOcioethnic, and individual. At the species-related level, human tech
nical intelligence is connected with the degree of development of the nervous sys
tem and the genetic programing of individual aptitudes; certain proportions aside,
nothing distinguishes it fundamentally from the behavior of animals, especially as
regards its obedience to the extremely slow rate of species development in general.
At the socioethnic level, human intelligence behaves in a wholly particular and
unique manner in that, transcending both individual and species-related limits, it
creates a collective organism with astOnishingly rapid evolutive properties. For the
individual the degree of socioethnic constraint is as imperative as the zoolOgical con
straint that causes one to be born Homo sapiens, but the terms of the former are dif
ferent from those of the latter to the extent that, under certain conditions, they admit
of the possibility of a certain degree of individual liberation.
At the individual level the human species is equally unique because, having
received from the human cerebral apparatus the ability to compare between situ
ations translated into symbols, the individual is capable of freeing him or herself
symbolically from both genetic and socioethnic bonds. This enfranchisement forms
the basis for the two complementary situations between which human reality is lived:
one in which comparison between different operating sequences leads to material
mastery over the organic world, and one in which enfranchisement from the organic
world takes place through the creation of the intuitive situations in which human
spirituality consists.
Social Memory
In primates hereditary operating behavior is increasingly influenced by an
indiVidually constituted memory; in humans the problem of operational memory is
dominated by that of language. Although the role of genetic conditioning and con-
ditioning through individual experience remains considerable, it is completely over

laid by education, through which human individuals receive the whole of their
operating behavior. Individually constructed memory and the recording of personal
behavior programs are entirely channeled through knowledge, whose preservation
and transmission in all ethnic communities is ensured by language. 1bis creates a
genuine paradox: The individual's possibilities for comparison and liberation rest
upon a potential memory whose entire contents belong to society. In insects mem
ory is vested in society only to the extent that the latter represents the survival of a
certain genetic combination in which the individual's possibilities of comparison are
practically nil. But the human is both a zoological individual and the creator of social
memory, a fact that may shed light upon the manner in which species-related and
ethnic factors affect human behavior and that uniquely human two-way traffic
between the innovative individual and the social community that makes for progress.
The most important consequences of the transfer of ethnic memory outside
the zoological species are the individual's freedom to transcend the established eth
nic framework and the ability of ethnic memory itself to progress. When we compare
human societies with insect ones, we sometimes forget that in the latter genetically
recorded behavior is dominant and imperative: Each individual must possess the
entire capital of collective knowledge, and the society can evolve only at the rate of
the paleontological drift. No really well-founded term of comparison between the
two kinds of societies is conceivable because humans are free to create their own
situations, even if these are only symbolic. Rapid and continuous evolution could
apparently be achieved only by breaking the link between species and memory, an
exclUSively human solution. That being so, human societies can never become
imprisoned in behavior comparable to that of insects. Their way and ours have been
completely divergent all along. Paleontologists have often pointed out that our spe
cialization consists in preserving the very general nature of our aptitudes. 1bis
applies far beyond the purely physical context. It is true that we run less quickly than
the horse, cannot digest cellulose like the cow, climb less well than the squirrel, that
our whole osteomuscular mechanism is superspecialized only in remaining capable
of doing all of those things, but the most important fact is that the human brain has
evolved in such a way that it remains capable of thinking everything-and that it is
virtually empty at birth.
Individuals at birth are faced with a body of traditions that belong to their eth
nic group; a dialogue takes place, from childhood, between the individual and the
social organism. Tradition is as biologically indispensable to the human species as
genetic conditioning is to insect societies: Ethnic survival relies on routine, the dia
logue taking place produces a balance between routine and progress, routine sym
bolizing the capital required for the group's survival and progress the input of
individual innovati0ns toward a better survival.
The peculiar character of social memory emerges at another level as well. The
creation of the first artificial tool by the first anthropoid put technics outside the
scope of zoological realities and outside the multimillennial course of evolUtion, and
at the same time made the social memory capable of adding to itself at a rapid rate.
We have seen in earlier chapter.s that cerebral evolution before Homo sapiens
remained incomplete and that technical evolution seemed to follow the very slow
development ofwhat humans still lacked in order to acquire an adequate apparatus
for making comparisons. We have also seen that from the moment of the disap
pearance of the prefrontal ridge, a characteristically human evolution led to the birth
of a technical world that drew upon resources outside the confines of genetic evo
lution. From the emergence of Homo sapiens, the constitution of an apparatus of
social memory dominates all problems of human evolution; in chapter 9 we shall
see by what means, up to and including the creation of an artificial brain, societies
have attempted to record and preserve their uncontrollably growing capital of
knowledge.
Once again, the dichotomy between the material and the moral becomes
apparent. The theme of "man outstripped by his techniques" emphasizes the dis
parity between the evolution of technology and that of society's moral apparatus: In
the course of thousands of years, we have acquired the technical means that have
helped us to achieve an indiVidually balanced mastery over the material environ
ment, yet at the same time we continue in a disordered manner to employ a major
part of those means in satisfying our predatory tendencies which hark back to times
when humans were fighting the rhinoceros. This apparent inability to constitute a
"lived" moral behavior on the level of our technical behavior has nothing abnormal
or particularly distressing about it. It has, we hope, been demonstrated clearly
enough that human evolution did not begin with the brain but with the feet, and that
higher human qualities were able to emerge only in so far as the basis for their emer
gence had been constituted much earlier. For thousands of years individuals have
had access to concepts of moral equilibrium quite as advanced as those achieved in
technology. Societies have enshrined these concepts in their great moral and reli
gious laws, but the genetic behavior of the mass of individuals who constitute society
has not been freed from its fundamental constraints, which remain essentially pred-
atory. Must we then conclude that tens of thousands of years must pass before a
human brain more developed than that ofHomo sapiens puts into effect the contents
of moral memory? That is far from obvious; on the contrary, we believe that progress
in this field, although strongly hampered by our' incomplete liberation from bio
logical constraints, nevertheless benefits from the means offered by technology for
the collective arousal of our consciousness. The means of channeling and orienting
our species-determined aggressivity may come from a clear perception of biological
laws. Its total disappearance would probably mean the end of the human species, but
conscious control of the link between thought and our physiological apparatus offers
an optimistic prospect of the future.
Operational Memory
The forming of operational sequences raises, at its various stages, the problem
of the relationship between the individual and society. Progress is achieved through
the cumulative effects of innovations, yet group survival is conditioned by the record
ing of a collective capital presented to individuals in traditional life-sustaining pro
grams. Operational sequences are formed as a result of interaction between
experience, which conditions the individual by a process of trial and error identical
to that of animals, and education in which language occupies a variable, though
always decisive, place. We have seen earlier that human operational behavior com
prises three stages. The first takes place at a deep level and is an automatic form of
behavior directly connected with our biological nature. This stage provides the basis
upon which education eventually imprints the data of tradition. Physical attitudes,
eating habits, and sexual behavior rest upon this genetic base, their modalities being
strongly marked by ethnic nuances. The second stage is that of mechanical behavior
·
and includes operational sequences acquired through experience and education,
recorded in both gestural behavior and language but taking place in a state of
dimmed consciousness which, however, does not amount to automatism because
any accidental interruption of the sequence will set off a process of comparison
involving language symbols. This process leads on to the third stage, that of lucid
behaVior, in which language plays a preponderant role, either by helping to repair
an accidental interruption of the sequence or by creating a new one.
These three stages succeed one another at each level of human behavior in
varying proportions and in direct relationship with the survival of the social
mechanism.
Mechanical Operational Sequences

Like any attempt to divide a continuum, the division of operational behavior
into these three stages is arbitrary, but it coincides with the psychologists' categories
of the unconscious, the subconscious, and the conscious, which in turn correspond
to three levels of operation of the human neuropsychological apparatus. This dis
tinction is certainly more important than one that might be drawn between instinct
and intelligence in that it separates strictly instinctual, genetically channeled actions
from sequences in which language and consciousness do not intervene in an
ordered manner and do not express themselves through symbols. Psychological
terms could no doubt be applied to technical operations, but they carry all kinds of
implications that it would be best to avoid in the present context. In speaking of oper
ational sequences, we therefore propose to use the terms "automatic," "mechanical,"
and "lucid" or "fully conscious."
Ethnology ignores automatic practices because it is more interested in what
makes cultures different from one another than in what all humans have physiolog
ically in common. Racial anthropology attaches some importance to identifying dif
ferences in the physical functioning of different races, and has even attempted to
establish something like a racial psychology. But practically nothing is known about
what is genetically significant; most of the differences observed belong to the cultural
superstructure. Literature on the subject of "wolf children," strongly tinged as it is
with legend, yields hardly any scientific information as to what a human being living
exclusively off the genetic fund might be like. Although the role of our anatomical
and physiological heritage is undoubtedly decisive, we must finally conclude that
spontaneous behavior in the human species is overlaid by behavior acquired
through the social community. Within the perspective adopted in this book, how
ever, we must not fail to attach due importance to spontaneous behavior. The prob
lem will be taken up again later in the context of gesture and of aesthetic categories.
Although data on the automatic aspects of operational behavior are scarce, .
practices whose roots are to be found in collective life offer opportunities of observ
ing the influences exercised reciprocally by the individual and the environment.
Every action performed by an individual forms part of his or her operational behav
ior, but it does so in different forms and with different degrees of intensity depending
on whether the practice is elementary and recurrent on a daily basis, occasional or
exceptional. The programs involved presuppose different levels of intellectual activ
ity and different relationships between the individual and society. Elementary prac
tices are the individual's vital programs. They include all those daily actions that affect
one's survival as an element of society: bodily constitution, dietary and hygienic hab
its, actions performed in the exercise of one's profession, actions involved in one's
association with family and friends, and so forth. These programs, drawn from an
unchanging fund, are organized in sequences of stereotyped gestures whose rep
etition ensures the individual's normal balance within the social environment and
his or her own psychological comfort within the group. Elementary operational
sequences are acquired early in life through training by imitation, experience by trial
and error, and verbal communication. The individual's integration in society
depends upon the smooth performance of these operational sequences in normal
life. Most of the sequences we perform between waking and going to bed require
only slight conscious intervention; they take place, not in a state ofautomatism where
consciousness would be nil, but in a psychological twilight from which the individual
is aroused only by some unforese<;!n occurrence. In the gestures we perform when
washing and dressing or eating our meals or writing, the return to full consciousness
is exceptional but it is decisive, and that is why I prefer to speak of "mechanical
operational sequences" rather than of automatic, unconscious, or instinctive ones.
Mechanical operational sequences form the basis of individual behavior; they
are our essential element of survival. Under the conditions of human life they take
the place of "instinct" because they imply a high level of potential cerebral activity
or "cerebral availability." Operational behavior requiring constant full conscious
ness is actually unimaginable, just as is completely conditioned operational behavior
in which full consciousness can be dispensed with altogether-the former because
every gesture, including the least Significant, would have to be reinvented, the latter
because it would presuppose a completely preconditioned, and therefore inhuman,
brain. The human brain is so designed that it can reserve a part of its availability by
creating elementary programs that guarantee freedom of behavior under excep
tional circumstances. These elementary practices, whose sequences begin at birth,
place the strongest ethnic imprint upon the individual. The gestures, attitudes, and
ways of behaving in humdrum day-to-day situations form that part of our link with
the original social group from which we never free ourselves even when trans
planted into a different class or ethnic environment.
Today's political readjustments and the general process of "planetarization"
currently taking place are causing serious problems in this respect. For the individ
ual, the diversification of ethnic groups and the emergence of operational practices
common to fairly large social units are a matter ofpsychological balance. In our par
ticular zoological group the ethnic unit replaces the species: human individuals dif-
1be Freeing ojMemory 233
fer ethnically as animals do in terms of their species. At the level of elementary

practices, this specificity is perceived only by contrast: Certain gestures that I perform
are felt to be peculiar to my group only by contrast with those of strangers. Ethnic
practices are thus a source of differentiation, though, by the same token, also of com
fort and intimacy among members of the same group, and they make individuals
isolated in a strange environment feel even more uprooted. Completely inter
changeable individuals would no doubt benefit society, in its role of consumer of
individuals in the name of social progress, but to what extent would society still
encompass members if they ceased to be ethnically diverse? Whatever the answer to
that question may be (we shall revert to it later), mechanical operational sequences
form the fund of individual behavior common to members of the same ethnic group.
They are performed at a deep level of collective memory and involve language only
to a limited extent. Not until a very advanced stage of organization of collective con
sciousness do we find the social or professional gesture written down in books on
etiquette, "how-to" books, or textbooks on ethnography. The transmission of ele
mentary sequences is essentially connected with the organization of social cells of
limited size and, in particular, of families or groups of children or adolescents.
Games involving imitation of adults play an important role in this process.IS
Thus active individuals orient the major part of their activities with the help of
programs established in the course of their ethnic group's development and
recorded in their motor memory by education. They perform ' these action
sequences or "chains" in a state in which full consciousness intervenes in order, as
it were, to adjust the links of the chain. To put it more precisely, lucidity follows a
sinusoidal curve whose troughs are mechanical series and peaks represent adjust
ments of those series to the operation's specific circumstances. This is already a char
acteristic of the intelligence of higher mammals. In us it is so intense as to be one
ofthe decisive characteristics ofhuman behavior. Conscious intervention, connected
as it is with the ability to compare, not only orients the operational process but also
enables us to cope with accidental situations--that is, to rectify the operational pro
cess by adjusting the appropriate links of the chain. The possibility of rectifying, of
making improvements both in the field of social relations and in that of technology,
is the invention factor: It reasserts the role of the human individual as inventor in the
general course of progress. The characteristic capacity of human societies to accu
mulate and preserve technical innovations is connected with the collective memory.
Our role is to organize our operational sequences consciously toward the creation
of new processes.
Periodically Recurring or Exceptional Operational Sequences

In the case of operations that go beyond mechanical sequences--seasonally
recurring agricultural activities, giving a feast, building a house, group fishing or
hunting-the collective memory is organized differently. The role of the mechanism
that records the operational series in the collective memory varies in importance
depending on the length of the interval at which the operation is performed. In each
case language intervenes as the medium for the actions to be performed. All societies
without writing possess a range of means of preservation in the form of proverbs,
precepts, or recipes, often stored in the memory of only a few individuals. Periodic
operations, especially long-term ones, require more than mechanical storage and
represent one of the traits that most radicallydistinguish human society from the rest
of the zoological world. In animal societies there are operations that occur season
ally or only once in the lives of individuals, triggered by the succession of seasons
or by physiological maturing. The animal will then perform new sequences within
the channel of its genetic preconditioning, or it will pick up the thread of operations
already experienced under identical conditions. Much of the human attitude toward
periodic operations is also connected with the seasonal cycle and with physiological
maturing: The same collective operation is lived differently depending on the indi
vidual's age and experience, but the process is traditional rather than genetic and is
maintained in a set of verbal formulations that forms part of the ethnic capital.
Operational Behavior as a Whole

Human operational behavior, although apparently forming a single whole,
thus involves several highly complex processes. It is of course closely connected
with social life, but it cannot be circumscribed either by crudely contrasting human
intelligence with the bee's instinct or by concluding that because both insects and
human beings live in society, their societies are essentially the same.
The human in fact is both closer to the animal world than the traditional dichot
omy between instinct and intelligence would have us think and much further from
it than might be inferred from the striking similarities between the social structures
of all animals with an organized collective life. We seem to have lost nothing of what
may have been our remote kinship with the trilobite or the earthworm. Every ele
ment of psychological organization that the vertebrate needs for its vital balance we
need too. But all these elements are the steering wheel that steers our vegetative
activity behind what is particular and peculiar to ourselves alone: our symbolizing
faculty, or to put it more generally, that property of the human brain that consists in
1be Freeing ofMemory 235
maintaining a distance between lived experience and the organism that serves as its
medium. The problem of the dialogue between the individual and SOciety, which has
come up in connection with the question of intelligence and instinct and which will
come up again and again in the rest of this book, is nothing other than this capacity
human beings have of distancing themselves from their environment, both external
and internal. This detachment, which expresses itself in the separation between tool
and hand and between word and object, is also reflected in the distance society cre
ates between itself and the zoological group. The whole of our evolution has been
oriented toward placing outside ourselves what in the rest of the animal world is
achieved inside by species adaptation. The most striking material fact is certainly the
"freeing" of tools, but the fundamental fact is really the freeing of the word .and our
unique ability to transfer our memory to a social organism outside ourselves.
This twofold distancing-of tools and of the memory-will form the subject
of the next chapters.
8 Gesture and Program
A study of technics limited to classifying different types of tools and analyzing

different stages of manufacturing processes would bear the same relation to eth
nology as systematic zoology does to animal biology. In such a study tools exist only
as part of the operating cycle. They provide evidence of the cycle because they gen
erally carry significant traces of it, but no more so than a skeleton of a horse does of
the swift herbivore to which it once belonged. Systematic technology, which forms
the subject of the two volumes of my Evolution et techniques, is an indispensable
basis, yet the real significance of tools is in the g�ture, which makes them technically
effective.
The concept "tool" itself needs to be reviewed with reference to the animal
world, for technical action is found in invertebrates as much as in human beings and
.
should not be limited exclusively to the artifacts that are our privilege. In animals,
tool and gesture merge into a single organ with the motor part and the active part
forming an undivided whole. The crab's claws and jaws are all of a piece with the
operating program through which the animal's food acquisition behavior is
expressed. The fact that human tools are movable and that their characteristics are
not species related but ethnic is basically unimportant. The sociocultural divisions
that make a particular technical operation typically New Caledonian in terms of both
the method and the tools employed have simply taken the place of the psycho
zoological divisions that make certain operations and a certain physical apparatus
typical of particular species of animals.
The operational synergy of tool and gesture presupposes the existence of a
memory in which the behavior program is stored. With animals, this memory forms
part of organic behavior as a whole, and the technical operation becomes, in the pop
ular sense, "instinctive." We saw earlier that in humans, the mobility of tools and lan
guage has determined the exteriorization of operational programs related to the
survival of the group. What we must now do is to trace the stages that have led to a
liberation so great in present-day societies that both tool and gesture are now
embodied in the machine, operational memory in automatic devices, and program
ing itself in electronic equipment. Most ofwhat needs to be said about tools is already
to be found in earlier chapters. Gesture, however, has not often been considered by
a method in which animal behavior and the deliberate motor activities of humans
are viewed from the same perspective.
Elementary Analysis of the Gesture

The osteomuscular apparatus of primates is similar enough to the human's for
its mechanical properties to be considered largely eqUivalent to ours. Human move
ments are no doubt more finely differentiated than those of monkeys, but the ana
tomical differences are negligible compared with those of the neuromotor
apparatus. Ordinary monkeys, anthropoid apes, and the human can therefore be
considered to have the same anatomical and gestural possibilities.
The essential traits of human technical gesticulation are undoubtedly con
nected with grasping. We saw earlier that grasping actions are characteristic of a
whole category of mammals starting with rodents and carnivores, which show vary
ing degrees of the same aptitudes. The distinction between operations in which hand
actions are combined with actions of the face, particularly of the lips and the front
teeth, and operations in which hand actions, bilateral or unilateral, are performed
without facial participation is evident at different levels. We became aware of the
importance of this distinction when we analyzed the formation of the anterior field.
To it we must add another that is particularly important when analyzing the technical
behavior of humans-the mode of action peculiar to the hand. Action peculiar to the
hand consists in the potentially wounding effect of fingernails, in grasping opera
tions involving the fingers and the palm (digitopalmar prehension), and in grasping
between the fingers (interdigital prehension). Since movements of transmission or
rotation determine both our manner of holding a hand tool and the impetus we
apply to it, a fourth term descriptive of the leverage exercised by the forearm and
the arm is needed in order to analyze human gestural behavior in the technical field.
A full analysis would have to be based on the whole of the body, but here we need
go no further than to suggest a method of ordering the main categories of the ges
tural behavior of the higher mammals and the human.
The interest in defining the common capital of monkeys and the human being
does not lie in finding human elements in the monkey but in analyzing the elements
Gesture and Program 239
of physiological anatomy common to both. Figure 106 shows the technical behavior
of primates and human technical capital from the earliest beginnings until the dawn
of Homo sapiens.
The elementary behavior of monkeys and anthropoid apes involves coordi
nated or isolated action of the forelimb and the face against the moving background
of the body mass in operations relating to the acquisition and consumption of food,
to aggression or defense, and to associative behavior through facial or manual con
tact. Unlike the rodents, which almost exclusively seize or palpate by grasping with
the lips and teeth, primates use the hand by preference.16 This reversal of the pro
portion between the respective uses of the hand and the face in a number of actions
not basically different from those performed by rodents having a prehensile hand
is in itself sufficient to set the primates apart from the rest of the mammals. It marks
the beginning of human operational behavior processes.
From primate to human being, grasping operations do not change in nature
but develop in terms of the variety of ends pursued and the delicacy of execution
(figure 106). Digitopalmar grasping operations, affectionate or hostile contact,
!meading or using the hand as a receptacle remain fundamental in bare-handed tech
niques, while the interdigital operations performed by primates for the purpose of
grooming or peeling assume considerable importance in techniques requiring
some delicacy of execution, such as spinning yarn. The fact that our brain as it is today
was the human being's most recent acquisition emerges more clearly from the study
of technical gestures than from any other form of research because the result of a
technical gesture does not require any part of the osteomuscular apparatus that is
not already present in the higher monkey: The difference is one ofnervous apparatus
alone.
The borderline between the primate and the first toolmaker is not a matter of
technical possibilities: The great apes can grasp, touch, pick, !mead, peel, and handle;
they tear food apart using fingers and teeth, crush with their molars, cut with their
incisors, hamme r with their fists, scratch and dig with their nails. The list ofwhat pri
mates can do includes every one of the operations attested by Archanthropian or
Palaeoanthropian tools.
In an earlier chapter we arrived at the impression that tools were "exuded" by
humans in the course of their evolution. A moment came when the lineage was
mature enough to produce the free-handed biped to whom the first part of this book
is devoted, a biped who emerged without losing touch with the continuum of living
organisms, totally different--even in his most elementary humanity-from the most
advanced of the monkeys but carried along on the same tide. An identical impression
Dental percussion Manual percussion Percussion with the nails
i,\o
�
�e<;; · o�
/ Crushing Hammering Scraping
I>-�g ,s\i,\\� Sectioning Digging
I>-c.O: O\��
/ ,{e0
Grasping:
Relationship Tearing
labio-dental
Brachiation, seizing Crusher Chopper, hammer, club Notcher

Affective contact Knife Spatula Digging-stick,
Digito-palmar Kneading Awl pick, hoe
Cupping Spike
Snuggling, protection
Peeling Graver Scraper

Interdigital Grooming Punch
Molding Needle
Projection Spear Stone, projectile

Bola
106. Elementary connections between actions andprimitive tools.
arises even more powerfully when we analyze technical gestures and see how our
tools sprang, literally, from the nails and teeth of primates without the smallest per
ceptible interruption.
The technical · equipment of the earliest anthropoids-the Australanthropes
and Archanthropes-consisted of percussion tools, rough-edged choppers, stag
antlers cut down to make clubs or digging sticks, and spherical projectiles for which
the act of throwing was a direct development of earlier gestures. The human hand
is human because of what it makes, not of what it is, namely a fairly simple osteo
muscular device capable, from the monkey, of performing, in a mechanically very
economical mann�r, movements of grasping, rotation, and transmission which
thereafter undergo no change. The human value of the gesture is not in the hand
for which freedom while walking is a sufficient precondition-but precisely in the
Gesture and Program 2 41
b f 9
�==-� . .
.
a
107. Equipment used by Australian aborigines: (a) spear and throw-stick, (b) digging stick,
(e) boomerang, (d) chopper, (e) knife, (f)piercing tool, (g) double scraper, (h) disb made of
bark.
ability to walk upright and its paleontological consequences for the development of
the cerebral apparatus. The gradual enrichment of tactile sensibility and of the neu
romotor apparatus occurred qualitatively without changing the nature of the basic
equipment
The complex actions of grasping, handling, and kneading which already
existed at the primitive anthropoid stage still account for a large share of our tech
nical gestures today. But with the emergence of the percussion tool, the chopper and
the antler employed for a practical purpose, a perceptible shift took place. Cutting,
crushing, molding, scraping, and digging operations were transferred to tools. The
hand ceased to be a tool and became a driving force.
The Intermeshing of Tools and the Motive Gesture

The hand's modes of action became gradually enriched during the operational
process in the course of human evolution. The manipulative action of the primates,
in which gesture and tool form a single whole, was followed in the first anthropoids
by directly motive action ofthe handwith the hand tool separable from the motive
gesture. In the next stage, reached possibly before the Neolithic, gesture became
annexed by the hand-operated machine, the hand merely supplying its motor
impulse by indirect mobility. In historic times motive force itself was transferred
from the human arm, and the hand intervened only to start the motorprocess in ani
mal-operated machines or mechanical machines such as mills. Finally, in the last
stage, the hand is used to set off a programmedprocess in automatic machines that
not only exteriorize tools, gestures, and mobility but whose effect also spills over
into memory and mechanical behavior.
This enmeshing of tools and gestures in organs extraneous to the human has
all the characteristics of biological evolution because, like cerebral evolution, it
develops in time through the addition of elements that improve the operational pro
cess without eliminating one another. Earlier we saw that the brain ofHomo sapiens
still preserves all stages acquired since the fish stage, and that each stage, overlaid
by the next, continues to play a role even in the most sophisticated forms of human
thought. Similarly the existence and operation of an automatic machine with a com
plex program implies that at every stage of its manufacture, regulation, and repair,
all categories of technical gestures-from handling metals through handling a file
to coiling electric wire to assembling the machine's parts, whether by hand or
mechanically-are still present though only faintly discernible.
Handling
The complex operations of grasping, rotation, and transmission that charac
terize handling were the first to appear and have crossed the ages without under
going any transposition. They still form our most common stock of gestures, the
prerogative of the human hand which is so very archaic and relatively so unspe
cialized by comparison with those marvelous machines for capturing or running that
are the "hand" of the lion or the horse. The privilege of long life which in paleon
tology is enjoyed by species that are not overspecialized also attaches to operations
performed by the bare hand with which, to this day, the finest forms of architectural
construction, pottery, basketry, and weaving are connected.
Devices for grasping, transporting, and positioning objects did not become
available in assembly lines or in the form of automatic manipulators until a highly
advanced stage of industrialization had been reached. In cranes and pulley blocks,
known since ancient times, the hand intervenes only as a hook and the machine is
a simple exteriorization of the motive force. The example of weaving too is conclu
sive: In the most elaborate fabrics such as those of Peru or in oriental brocades, the
hand picks up the threads individually in order to make the desired design. Yet
freeing of the fingers was achieved quite early, perhaps as early as the Neolithic, by
reducing operations to the repeated lifting of one thread in two or three. Not until
the nineteenth century did the introduction of a punched-card system raise mechan
ical weaving to the level of handling skill of which the bare hand had been capable
from the start. In both cases the development is the same: In the first stage, the hand
can perform actions that are limited in terms of force or speed but infinitely diverse;
at a later stage, that of the pulley block or the weaving loom, a single action of the
hand is isolated and transferred to the machine; in the third stage, the programming
of movements is reconstituted through the creation of an artificial and rudimentary
nervous system.
The Hand Acting through Direct Motor Function

Unlike handling, actions involving the use of the teeth or nails became exter
iorized from the very first. In these actions the hand merely serves as a pincer at the
extremity of a device that has a direct motor function and is suitable for percussion
of various kinds (see my L 'Homme et la nature).
The range of percussive actions ofwhich Anthropoid apes are capable is quite
wide, but their main instrument is the teeth-incisors for cutting and scraping, ca
nines for piercing and tearing, molars for crushing. The role of the hand consists
above all in presenting the object to the teeth or in preparing it for being eaten. The
nails are employed only in operations involving scratching or digging, but their
action is important because of its rhythmic nature. If we consider the operational
behavior of the great apes, we are left with an impression of a potential rudimentary
technicity based on dental percussion, handling, and recurrent scraping movements.
Everything required to constitute human technicity is already there, and it all comes
together the moment tools enter upon the scene.
Lacking records as we do, we find it difficult to visualize how the incisor
became a chopper-how, in other words, our only organic tool capable of cutting,
worn on the projecting end of the jaw, became transferred to the hand via the incisive
action of a splintered pebble. We do know, however, that at an extremely early stage,
by the time of the Australanthropians, this transfer seems to have been effected. Here
again, walking upright played the decisive role. In monkeys the two operating fields
(biting and handling) are involved Simultaneously when the quadruped is seated
and separately when it is walking; the dental apparatus remains the forward point of
the body and the animal's chief organ of association. With erect posture, the hand
takes over as the organ of association. Operations performed when seated remain
connected with simultaneous action of the face and hand (food consumption and
technical operations involving the teeth), but labiodental contact is no longer dom
inant as in quadrupeds, nor even equivalent as in many monkeys. In the human it
continues to be important only in affective contact and in a few technical operations
where the mouth serves as an additional claw or pincer. The transition to tools is thus
functionally justified by the transfer of the field of association to the hand.
To view the chopper as an incisor placed at the ends of our fingers or the per
cussion tool as a molar brandished in the fist would be childishly fanciful: Yet it is
true that the scale of actions remained the same before and after the transfer that took
place at the hypothetical point in time when an upright-walking primate transposed
its percussive activity from the teeth to a pebble activated by the arm. The vast num
ber of objects with which humans have surrounded themselves obscures the fun
damental simplicity of the tools they need for survival. The forms of the technical
equipment used by Australian aborigines are few in number: the spear and the
throwing-stick for hunting, the digging stick for gathering, the pebble crusher, the
knife, the flint chopper and scraper for the preparation and cOhSumption of food,
the bone awl, fibers for tying, pieces of bark to serve as receptacles. What we know
of fossil humans up to and including the Palaeoanthropians is of the same order and
covers a range of dental and manual actions exactly the same as that of the primates:
The percussion tool attests to crushing and hammering, the deer antler used as a dig-
ging tool, and the small scraper used on wood to scraping; cutting actions, whether
by direct application of a hand-held tool or by throwing a sharpened weapon, are
performed with sharp-edged splinters and the chopper or biface. In the Upper Paleo
lithic, withHomo sapiens, the range widens, but there is nothing to indicate-except
in levers and traps--that indirect motor function had been achieved.
The ability ofthe hand to exercise indirect motorfunction reflects another "lib
eration," with the motor gesture finding new freedom in the hand-operated machine
that extends or transforms it The point in time when this important stage was
reached is very difficult to define. It does seem, however, that by the late Paleolithic
there were at least two implements attesting to indirect motor function, the pierced
stick and the spear thrower. The former is a length of reindeer horn pierced with a
hole and probably employed as a lever for hot-straightening bone rods. With this tool
both the force and the direction of movement of the hand are transformed. This very
simple application of indirect motor function in the form of a tool that acts upon the
direction of movement is found as early as in the Aurignacian period, some 30,000
B.C. Evidence of the hurling stick dates back to a later period, the Magdalenian,
around 13,000 B.C. This is a hooked stick that serves to accelerate spear-throwing (see
my Milieu et techniques) by adding the mechanical value of an extra elbow and
forearm to the arm of the thrower, who holds it in his hand.
From that point onward and until the dawn of historical time, applications of
indirect motor function developed further. The transition to an agricultural-pastoral
economy caused them to become incorporated in a variety of techniques and in
many forms--as springs and levers, as continuous or alternating motion in hand
operated machines such as the bow or the crossbow, in snares, pulleys, millstones,
cranes, and transmission cables. These machines, which are discussed in my two ear
lier books, reflect a logical stage in human evolution. As with hand tools the process
whereby all implements came gradually to be concentrated outside the human body
is again perfectly clear: Actions of the teeth shift to the hand, which handles the port
able tool; then the tool shifts still further away, and a part of the gesture is transferred
from the arm to the hand-operated machine.
The Hand Separatedfrom Motor Function

The evolution continued with muscular impetus itself becoming separated
from the human body through the harneSSing of the motor function of animals and
of wind and water. It is a singular property of the human species that by confining
itself to engendering action, it periodically eludes the organic specialization that
would definitively tie it down. If the hand of the earliest anthropoid had become a
tool by adaptation, the result would have been a group of mammals particularly well
equipped to perform a restricted series of actions: It would not have been the human
being. Our significant genetic trait is precisely physical (and mental) nonadaptation:
a tortoise when we retire beneath a roof, a crab when we hold out a pair of pliers,
a horse when we bestride a mount. We are again and again available for new forms
of action, our memory transferred to books, our strength multiplied in the ox, our
fist improved in the hammer.
The freeing of motor function is the decisive stage, perhaps not for the indi
vidual but for human society collectively in possession of each member's means of
action. The phenomenon is a very recent one. The adoption of animal traction and
of machines activated by water or wind are reported in ancient history; moreover it
was confined to a few Eurasian civilizations whose techno economic supremacy con
tinued to be founded upon it until the eighteenth century. Generally regarded as his
torical phenomena of technical significance, the invention of the four-wheeled
carriage, the plough, the windmill, the sailing ship, must also be viewed as biological
ones-as mutations of that external organism which, in the human, substitutes itself
for the physiological body.
The animal machine requires a good deal of muscular participation. Motor
function is "deflected" to drive the animal motor, but it remains considerable. More
over the effiCiency of the animal-driven machine became stabilized very early on and
at a rather low level: The number of horses does not increase the speed of the vehicle
nor, within certain limits, their resistance to fatigue.
The relationship between humans and their exteriorized force is altogether
different in the automotive machine, including even the Simplest water-driven pile
driver or mill . Having set the process in motion, the hand no longer intervenes
except to feed or to stop the machine. The operator can increase the machine's
power or distribute it among machine tools which will perform all the operations
for which human intelligence has designed them.
The conquest of water and wind was accomplished in antiquity-early in his
toric time-but for many centuries they remained the only sources of automotive
power. Not until the nineteenth century was the decisive step taken with the har
nessing of steam pressure.
The momentous nature of the change in scale of the relations between the
human and the natural world was clearly perceived at once. The initial conquest of
metals had been a triumph of the hand: the conquest of steam definitively confirmed
the exteriorization of muscle power.
However, human participation was still considerable, and the Age of Steam was
also the age of the cruelest enslavement of the manual worker. The automotive
machine of the nineteenth century possessed neither a brain nor a hand. Its nervous
system was extremely rudimentary, consisting simply of speed and pressure regu
lators discharging a constant but blind force. The worker operating the machine pro
vided the brain that made that force useful and the hand that stoked the fire, fed raw
material to the machine, and oriented and rectified its action.
Nevertheless, if we are agreed that biological change affects both the physical
organization and the behavior of the organisms concerned, the birth of automotive
force was a crucial biological stage. The fact that the organs involved are extraneous
to the body matters little if the change creates a new living reality. We have seen that
human evolution from Homo sapiens onward has been a story of more and more
radical separation between the rate of change affecting the body-still governed by
the geological time scale-and that of change affecting tools, which now occurs with
every generation. If the species was to survive, some accommodation was necessary,
and this accommodation was bound not only to affect our technical habits but also
to involve thoroughgoing changes in the laws according to which individuals group
themselves together. Of course the parallel with the zoological world cannot be
maintained except byway ofparadox, but we cannot completely dismiss the thought
that some species change takes place whenever humankind replaces both its tools
and its institutions. Although peculiar to humans, the changes that affect the entire
structure of our collective organism hang together in much the same way as changes
that affect all the individuals in a group of animals. From the moment when the exter
iorization of motive force became unlimited, social relations assumed a new char
acter; a nonhuman observer unfamiliar with the explanations to which philosophy
and history have accustomed us would separate the eighteenth-century human from
the human of the tenth century as we separate the lion from the tiger or the wolf from
the dog.
The Automatic Machine Nineteenth-century machinery was still a long way

from the ideal mutation whereby exterior to the human there would be another,
wholly artificial human acting with unlimited rapidity, precision, and force: a long
way from the moment when everything-tool, gesture, strength, and thought
would be transposed to a perfect twin image of the social ideal. The gradual estab
lishment of a social organism wherein the individual increasingly plays the role of
a specialized cell makes it more and more clear how inadequate the human being
is-the flesh-and-bone human, a living fossil, immutable on the historical scale, per-
fectly adapted to external conditions at the time the human species was triumphing
over the mammoth but already overtaken by them when required to use muscle to
operate the trireme. Our constant search for more powerful and more precise
implements has inevitably led to the biological paradox of the robot, a creature
which, in the form of the automaton, has haunted the human mind for centuries. The
ape-ancestor image evoked in chapter 1, the expression-of a nostalgic retreat into the
past, has its counterpart, not in the spiritual image of the angel or the physical one
ofa perfect human body, but in the image ofthe perfectly made machine, the Anthro
poid's mechanical twio-Tarzan, the astronaut, and the robot gravitating like a con
stellation around the human of flesh and blood.
Many of the mechanical monsters produced in the nineteenth century still sur
vive today-machines without a nervous system of their own, constantly requiring
the assistance of a human partner. Developments in the use of electricity, and above
all the rise of electrOniCS, taking place less than a century after the mutation that pro
duced automotive machines, have triggered another mutation that leaves but little
in the human organism still to be exteriorized. Machines have changed radically as
a result of the development of small-scale motors, photosensitive cells, transistors,
and miniaturized devices of all kinds. This disparate arsenal is supplying the parts
for a composite body strangely similar to the biological one. Whereas nineteenth
century machines with their voluminous energy sources conducted a single force to
blindly acting organs via extensive transmission systems, to day's machinery with its
multiple sources of energy is leading to something like a real muscular system, con
trolled by a real nervous system, performing complex operating programs through
its connections with something like a real sensory-motor brain.
Mechanical automation, from the mechanical brontosaurus of the nineteenth
century rolling mill to the automatic pilot of today, represent the penultimate pos
sible stage of the process begun by the Australanthrope armed with a chopper. The
freeing of the areas of the motor cortex of the bram, definitively accomplished with
erect posture, will be complete when we succeed in exteriorizing the human motor
brain. Beyond that, hardly anything more can be imagined other than the exterior
ization of intellectual thought through the development of machines capable not
only of exerciSing judgment (that stage is already here) but also of injecting affectivity
into their judgment, taking sides, waxing enthusiastic, or being plunged into despair
at the immensity of their task. Once Homo sapiens had equipped such machines with
the mechanical ability to reproduce themselves, there would be nothing left for the
human to do but withdraw into the paleontological twilight. In point of fact, the
chance of machines equipped with a brain taking our place on earth is slight; the
threat lies within the zoological spedes itself, not directly in the exteriorized organs.
The nightmare picture of robots pursuing human beings in a forest of mechanical
tubes will come true only to the extent that other human beings will have regulated
the robots' automatic system. What is to be feared-if only slightly-is that in a thou
sand years' time Homo sapiens, having exhausted the possibilities of self-exterior
ization, will come to feel encumbered by the archaic osteomuscular apparatus
inherited from the Paleolithic.
Mechanical Program and Mechanical MemOry

The development of automatic programs represents a peak in human history,
comparable in importance with the emergence of the chopper or the rise of agri
culture. Because it has occurred so recently, it can provide us with some insight into
the mechanism of great technical mutations in general. The idea that a series of tech
nical gestures might be performed mechanically evolved very slowly in historical
time. Automatic machines capable of performing a single gesture, like the water-dri
ven pile driver, were developed in Mediterranean or Chinese antiquity, but the idea
of mechanical programing was technically unrealizable until the Middle Ages. The
first means of programing by purely mechanical processes were found in clock
making. A technical confraternity spedalized in giving material expression to the
concept of time provided a favorable environment for innovation. The medieval
clockmaker, a spedalist in progression and animation, learned to use pinions and
cams and to combine circular with rectilinear motion in order to devise the simple
program of the first animated clocks and automata.
The evolution of animation depended on that of the source of motive power
employed. From the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, clockwork mechanisms were
operated by rectilinear traction using a weight, a system that considerably restricted
their possibilities. From the fifteenth century on, the use of a spiral spring provided
a means of reducing the size of the automatic device and making it portable.
Improvements to the mechanism led to the eighteenth-century automata, which rep
resent the peak of what could be achieved in programming with clockmaking
devices. The nineteenth century saw a change in the scale of the pinions and cams
employed and the invention of steam-operated machines capable of simple gestures.
Like the automata that preceded them, these machines represent a fascinating stage
of technical evolution not without parallels in animal evolution.
Mechanical automata are programmed to perform a sequence of simple ges

tures in an order prescribed within the mechanical organs themselves. The oper
ating memory is situated at the level of the cams, a little to the back of the machine's
active part; there is no nervous system and no coordination network other than the
transmission mechanism. Jacques de Vaucansson's automata are to electronic
devices what the earthworm is to the m ammal. In other words, they are like living
organisms with a segmental memory stored in each of their active elements, cams
being distributed to each part to be animated like the chain ganglions that animate
each of the annelid's jOints.
By a completely different path, automatism entered weaving techniques at the
beginning of the nineteenth century. JosephJacquard invented a loom for patterned
fabrics using a set of punched cards which determine what threads should be picked
for each run. A complex pattern can thus be executed by wholly automatic means.
Barrel organs using perforated bands of paper, which operate on a similar principle,
made their appearance at about the same time. The Jacquard loom and the barrel
organ can be described as a pair of automatic machines which, in terms of their prin
ciple, are opposable to the pair formed by the automaton and the music box. Per
forated card machines are equipped with a centralized memory separate from the
executing organs, to which it transmits a real message corresponding to a program
capable of a large number of modifications. Like the tune of the music box or the
bird organ, the program that actuates an automaton's finger comprises a set of cog
wheels. It is invariable for a specific mechanical situation and can be modified only
by adopting a different mechanical formula, just as the progression of the annelid
consists in coordinating the simple movements of a series of joints endowed with an
invariable motor function. The program of the Jacquard loom is external to the
organs of execution-it is "intelligent" by comparison with a mechanical device. Fur
thermore, by changing the set of perforated cards the machine can be made, without
any mechanical modification, to perform a different set of operations. A "nervous
system" proper is not yet there, but everything that the nineteenth-century technical
environment could contribute toward developing a memory machine is already in
place.
Not until the last twentyyears* has the mimicry ofliving matter by artificial mat
ter achieved a reasonably high standard. A century of familiarization with electricity
and, later, with electronics was needed before this became possible. The resulting
*Translator's note: Again, it may be useful to remind the reader that this book was first published
in 1964.
machine represents a synthesis of all previous stages. Mechanical organs of execu

tion, actuated by as many energy sources as efficient articulation may require, are set
in motion by a program that, at one stage at least, is recorded on tape. The essential
difference lies in the presence of what amounts to a real nervous system through
which the central organs transmit commands and monitor their execution. The
sequence of mechanical gestures is preSCribed by a transformable memory. The
physical health of the machine is checked by organs that regulate the speed, tem
perature, and humidity of each organ. The texture and form of the substance being
processed is examined by ponderal, tactile, thermosensitive, or photosensitive
organs that transmit their findings to automatic regulating centers, and the machine
can orient, correct, or suspend its actions in response to messages it receives from
its "sensory" organs. A biologist will find it hard to resist comparing the mechanisms
of animals whose evolution is already completed with these organisms which, in the
last analysis, constitute a parallel living world.
Evolution of Operations and ofthe Gesture

For these reasons there may be some benefit in adopting and sustaining the
same attitude toward the whole of human evolution. Proceeding from the very gen
eral biological phenomenon of evolution employing earlier stages to serve as the
active substratum for new, innovative ones, we have considered the evolution of the
nervous system in terms of the addition of new cortical areas that led to the simul-
. taneous emergence of technical motor function and of language and, later, to tech
nicity controlled by mental processes and to figurative thought. It is already clear at
the paleontological stage that erect posture and the general osteomuscular structure,
once they have achieved human form in the Australanthrope, are no longer decisive.
The hand, already formed in the monkey, stops changing (except for purposes of
neuromotor adaptation) from the moment it begins to hold a tool. The decisive evo
lution of primitive anthropoids lies in the neuromotor equipment of the manual and
facial cortex. From the osteomuscular point ofview, nothing more takes place except
adaptation accompanied by minor variations. The main thrust of evolution is mas
Sively oriented toward tools.
The actions performed by tools are relatively simple and few in number. The
gestures of hammering, cutting, and piercing, which remain the stock-in-trade of
hand manufacturing to this day, are qUickly acquired. Evolution therefore became
focused entirely on materials and forms of motion. The evolution of motion deter
mined the freeing of motor function. Ever since the earliest agricultural SOCieties, the
conquest of force-together with the conquest of new materials--has been the dom
inant pursuit: conversion of rectilinear into circular motion, conversion of force
through transmission, transfer of driving force from human to animal and, later, to
the motor. The orientation toward new materials affected both the tool itself and the
force that actuates it Initially confined to metals, over the course of history it grad
ually created the problem of fuels directly or indirectly employed to drive machin
ery. Between the Bronze Age and the eighteenth century, advanced techniques
evolved very slowly and with great difficulty, confronted with the problem of impart
ing more powerful motion to tpols made of more resistant materials. With the solu
tion offered by iron founding, motion and materials merged into a �ingle cycle and
everything became a matter of coal and steam. The prodigious leap forward of the
nineteenth century was due to the fact that coal not only meets the requirements of
iron founding and steelmaking but also provides the motive energy needed for min
ing and for operating machine tools. It thus fulfilled the conditions for a tremendous
advance toward the freeing offorce-and, as a corollary to this, challenged the whole
inner structure of humankind. The consequences of coal for our way of life have
been as important as a rapid transformation of the dental and digestive apparatus
would be for an animal lineage. Railways and the emergence of a proletarian work
ing class, to name only two of the immediate consequences of the freeing of driving
power, have had a direct effect on the entire organization of our species. The adjust
ment of human individuals, whose brain and physical frame are still those of Cro
Magnon man, to the new conditions has involved an ever-increasing degree of
distortion.
Today the process of adaptation is not yet complete. Evolution has entered
upon a new stage, that of the exteriorization of the brain, and from a strictly tech
nological point of view the mutation has already been achieved. From a more gen
eral point of view, the distance between ourselves--the descendants of reindeer
hunters--and the intelligent machines we have created is greater than ever. The
compression of time and distance, accelerated rates of activity, nonadaptation to car
bon monoxide and industrial toxins, permeability by radiation-all these facts raise
the curious problem of our physical compatibility with the environment in which we
must now live. The conclusion to be drawn may well be that progress is beneficial
only to society, while the individual human being is already an outdated organism,
useful like the cerebellum or the rhinencephalon, like the foot and the hand, but
already receding into the background to become the mere infrastructure of human
kind in which "evolution" will henceforth be more interested than in the individual
human being. Indeed, that would only confirm the identity of the human species
with animal species, whose progress as a species is alone worthy of consideration.
Evolution of Operational Sequences

Technical liberation unquestionably reduces the technical freedom of the indi
vidual. From the Australanthrope to the age of mechanization, the operational behav
ior of individuals has progressively become richer, but its nature has not changed.
The technical life of the hunter, apd later of the farmer and the artisan, involves a
large number of sequences that correspond to the many actions needed for their
material survival. These sequences are empirical, borrowed from a collective tra
dition that one generation passes down to the next. Their principal trait, for all the
unity of their broad outlines and their extension over vast polyethnic territories, is
their strongly marked local and individual character. Everything humans make
tools, gestures, and products alike-is impregnated by group aesthetics and has an
ethnic personality which even the most superficial visit to an ethnographical
museum will reveal. Individuals introduce their personal variations into the tradi
tional framework and, safe in the knowledge of belonging to the group, draw some
of their sense of existing as individuals from the margin of freedom allowed them.
With the passage to industrial motor function, the situation changed thor
oughly. The purpose of operational sequences was now to fill the gaps-still very
wide-in the behavior of the machine. The worker was required to perform parts
of sequences measured at the rhythm of the machine, series of gestures that
excluded the worker as an individual. Complete "technical deculturation" took
place, while at the same time the individual ceased to belong to a group of marked
personality and comfortable size.
Early industrialization was followed by a process whereby the worker was
gradually adapted to the machine without the latter's losing any of its preeminence.
The "Taylorization" ofgestures was accompanied by the standardization of tools and
products, intensive adaptation to continuous circular motion (of rotary tools, lathes,
spindles), and undifferentiated processing of different materials. Then mechanical
automatism gradually came in, the worker's activity becoming confined to super
vising the input of feedstock, executing the program, and delivering the finished
product.
There cannot be any value judgments made about an evolutive process. We
may think that the gigantism of dinosaurs in the Mesozoic era was "bad" because the
dinosaur vanished while the crocodile survived, but we know nothing about the
future of whatever it is that will replace Homo sapiens. What we can do, being far
enough advanced in the present stage of evolution, is measure those things that have
already changed beyond retrieval. From Pithecanthropus to the nineteenth-century
carpenter, operational sequences remained essentially the same: Workers consid
ered the materials they were to process, drew on traditional knowledge to select a
certain series ofgestures, and then manufactured and possibly rectified the products
of which they were the authors. Throughout the process, their expenditures of mus
cular effort and of thought were in balance. However mechanical their behavior, it
involved the "outcropping" of images and concepts and the presence-however
shadowy-of language. For several hundreds of thousands of years, the human spe
cies-determined operational behavior was total, integrated in an immediately sig
nificant collective context and inseparable from the quality of humanness.
The possibility of feeding wood into a machine without paying any attention
to the grain or knots and obtaining a standard piece of parquet flooring that will then
be automatically packaged undoubtedly represents a very important social advance.
But the only option it leaves to us is that of ceasing to be sapiens and becoming some
thing else, something that may perhaps be better but will certainly be different. When
we consider the ways open to us if we are to have some sense of existing other than
the satisfaction of being a depersonalized cell within an organism (however admir
ably planetized that organism may be), we should remember that it takes more than
a century or two for the zoological human to change.
The Fate ofthe Hand

The same facts can be verified from a different perspective that brings out
another aspect of the mutation the human species has undergone. In preindustrial
societies the individual level of technicity was relatively high: Putting it more pre
cisely, the lives of all individuals were filled with manual activities of many kinds and
of a quality at least sufficient for survival. The group made use of individuals of
below-average ability as stopgaps, while virtuosos led in every field, offering a stim
ulating image to the rest of society: Artisans, musicians, or rich farmers, each little
group had its share of models and maintained itself through contact with them. At
the stage we have now reached, the ratio has changed very considerably, with vast
masses of average and below-average people confronting an ever-diminishing num
ber of models. Participation still exists, but it is exercised via the press or the' audio
visual media: The following of the macrocollective model, whether astronaut, hero
of labor, or Iranian princess, has no common measure with that of the master of the
wolf hunt, the village blacksmith, or the local bartender, but the savor of proximity
has gone, and the model's only value is as a purveyor of illusions.
The situation is quite similar if we consider the human hand. Originally it was
a claw or pincer for holding stones; the human triumph was to tum it into the ever
skillful servant of human technical intelligence. From the Upper Paleolithic to the
nineteenth century, the hand enjoyed what seemed like an interminable heyday. It
still plays an essential role in industry, a few skilled toolmakers producing the oper
ative parts of machines to be operated by crowds of workers requiring no more than
a five-fingered claw to feed in the material or simply an index finger to push the but
tons. But ours is still a transitional stage, and there can be no doubt that the non
mechanized phases of industrial processes are being gradually eliminated.
The dwindling importance of the makeshift organ that is our hand would not
matter a great deal if there were not overwhelming evidence to prove that its activity
is closely related to the balance of the brain areas with which it is connected. "Being
useless with one's fingers," "being ham-fisted," is not a very alarming thing at the
level of the species as a whole: A good number of millennia will pass before so old
an organ of our neuromotor apparatus actually regresses. But at the individual level
the situation is very different. Not having to "think with one's fingers" is equivalent
to lacking a part of one's normally, phylogenetica1ly human mind. Thus the problem
ofregression ofthe hand already exists today at the individual if not the species level.
I shall revert to this question in part III in order to show that manual imbalance has
already partially destroyed the link that used to exist between language and the aes
thetic image of reality. It is not a matter of pure coincidence, as we shall see, that non
figurative art is flourishing at the same time as "demanualized" technicity.
9 The Expanding Memory
In the preceding chapter we considered the uniquely human phenomenon of

exteriorization of the organs involved in the carrying out of technics. In that context
it is not without interest to review the problems that arose when machines began to
be endowed with the properties of a nervous system and a preestablished "con
sdousness" of their actions. The question of the relationship between the species
and the ethnic group again arises in this context, but this time it does so in terms of
instinct, intelligence and "artifidal intelligence" or species-related memory, sodal
memory, and "mechanical memory." To dis �ss a machine in the same way as a living
organism may seem unwarranted. To do so from a purely zoological standpOint
would be pointless, but some purpose is served, I think, by taking such an approach
within an ontological perspective. We can then dispense with fractionating the
human by choosing only those pieces that correspond to sdentific systematology.
Had Descartes, who opposed the human being as the embodiment of intelligence
to the animal as a "machine," known about present-day electronics, he might well
have spoken of the machine as an "animal." From a different point of view, we can
refer to the obscure fantasies of the bulk of humankind. Reduced to their bare bones,
the plots of newspaper cartoons and comics the world over always involve the same
three characters--beast, man, and robot; where the cartoons are American inspired,
the evolutive progression is, revealingly enough, the following: bison, gorilla, cow
boy, sdentist, astronaut, robot. Each of the main stages--beast-man-thinking
machine-leads on to the next via the transitional stages of the thinking beast
(gorilla), man-as-muscle (cowboy), man-as-brain (sdentist), man-as-machine (astro
naut), and machine-as-man (robot). That being so, the question arises whether the
collective imagination might serve as the source for a classification that would help
us to understand the evolution of the human community.
258 Memory and Rbythms
We have already commented on the fundamental fact relating to human mem

ory: Like tools, human memory is a product of exteriorization, and it is stored within
the ethnic group. This is what distinguishes it from animal memory, of which we
know little except that it is stored within the species. Animal, human, and mechanical
memory differ from each other in some essential respects. Animal memory is formed
through experience within narrow genetic channels prespecialized by the species,
human memory is constituted through experience based on language, and mechan
ical memory is constituted through experience within the channel of a preexisting
program and of a code based on human language and fed into the machine by a
human being. Mechanical memory is not without some points of resemblance to ani
mal memory: A kind of species-related preconditioning exists in all types of
machines, bu� the operating program is dictated in a wholly instinctive manner
because it materially preexists the actiem, whose every twist and tum is plotted in
advance. Seen in this light, the machine comes a good deal nearer to the standard
definition of instinct than does the animal itself.
Within a functional perspective, then, the three forms of memory can be
regarded as distinct but comparable. Human inherited memory is preexistent within
the genetic group, and the reason why human beings do practically nothing "by
instinct" is that, unlike animals, they have not received a hypothetical atavistic mem
ory. The animal's experience uses a small keyboard that has been tuned in advance,
leaving practically no room for personal variants, whereas human beings have a large
keyboard at their disposal and can asSimilate and embroider upon the many series
of programs handed down to them by SOciety. Seen from this angle, mechanical
memory is halfway between the two in that the electronic machine uses only a small
keyboard but receives an "education" in the form of the programs dictated to it.
Transmission ofPrograms
The history of the collective memory can be divided into five periods: that of
oral transmission, that of written transmission using tables or an index, that of simple
index cards, that of mechanography, and that of electronic serial transmission.
Oral Transmission
A group's body of knowledge is the basic constituent of its unity and its per
sonality. The transmission of this intellectual capital is the necessary precondition for
the group's material and social survival. Transmission is effected through the same
hierarchy as operating sequences.
1be Expanding Memory 259
Mechanical operating sequences are part and parcel of the common memory
of families. They are performed in all material and moral episodes of daily life and
are recorded in the personal memory of individuals during childhood by means of
processes in which the role of language is not necessarily the most important The
same cannot be said of less frequent or exceptional practices that, in all societies
without writing, are stored in the memory of specialists-elders, bards, priests, who
in traditional human groups discharge the highly important function of maintaining
the group's cohesion.
The recording of knowledge is connected with the development of oral lit
erature and of figurative representation in general; it will be dealt with in part III. In
the most general sense practical, technical, and scientific knowledge is rarely
recorded in literature of any kind, although it normally forms part of a context in
which magical and religious matters are not clearly separated from practical ones.
In agricultural societies and so far as artisanal tasks are concerned, the social struc
turing of crafts plays an important role: This applies as much to the blacksmiths of
Africa and Asia as to European corporations before the seventeenth century. The
training of apprentices and the preservation of craft secrets are taken care of within
each of the ethnic group's social cells. At this level, which is that of primitive peoples
as well as of quite recent agricultural societies, the contents of technical memory are
not systematically organized in anyway. To put it more precisely, each group of oper
ating sequences--or each sequence-forms a more or less independent whole
including actions to be copied as well as oral instructions.
Early Written Transmission

Writing did not spring into existence by chance; after thousands of years of
maturing in systems of mythographic representation, linear notation of thought
emerged together with metals and slavery (see chapter 6). Nor were the initial con
tents of linear notation a matter of chance: They were accounts, records of debts
owed to gods or to others, series of dynasties, oracular pronouncements, lists of pen
alties. The limited and very poorly documented nature of the earliest texts is a con
stant source of disappointment to the ethnologist: How much more we would know
if the Sumerians had left us some cookery recipes, hints on etiquette or wood
working, or metalworking manuals! But in point of fact it is unimaginable that writing
should have been invented for such purposes, traditionally consigned to oral mem
ory. The first concern of evolution is with the new, and in order to be felt as "new,"
early metallurgy itself would have had to fall completely outside the scope of existing
mechanical practices.Jt would have had to be an exceptional operation unconnected

with any established gestural sequence, which a manufacturing technique clearly
could not be. Or else writing would have had to mature without an object for cen
turies in order to acquire the means of recording what had only recently become
suitable material for notation, as unlikely a hypothesis as the earlier one. The col
lective memory would not have broken out of its traditional cycle at the birth ofwrit-
ing except in order to deal with matters that in a nascent social system were felt to
be of an exceptional kind. Therefore it is not by chance that what was written down
was not what is made or exper:ienced in the normal course of events but what con
stitutes the very bones of an urbanized society where the nodal point of the auto
nomic system is the interchange between producers-be they celestial or human
and rulers. Innovation was concerned with the upper end of the system and selec
tively encompassed financial and religious acts, dedications, genealogies, the cal
endar-all those things within the new structures of the city that could not be
completely consigned to memory either through gesture sequences or through
products.
Only a few characteristic elements of science in its infancy were consigned to
written memory. The earliest references of this order, whether in Mesopotamia,
Egypt, China, or Precolumbian America, relate to the calendar and to distances.
Primitive peoples before the settlement of agriculture did not lack knowledge
about time and space, but both of these took on a new meaning from the moment
when the capital city became the pivot of the celestial world and of humanized
space.
As the instrument for storing words and phrases in the memory of generations
became more efficient, the keeping of records developed and spread to deeper
strata of knowledge. But even in classical antiquity, the sum total of facts that could
be transmitted to future generations was limited by the hierarchy of social values to
certain well-defined areas: religiOUS, historical, and geographical texts, together with
philosophy, accounted for the main bulk of written material. In other words, the
basic theme was the connection between the divine and the human, and within that
framework the material to be committed to memory concerned the threefold prob
lem of time, space, and the human being. Agriculture cropped up in poems whose
main subjects were the seasons, and architecture in descriptions where cosmic space
was identified with palaces and temples. Mathematics and music, emerging at the
same time as medicine, were the first scientific subjects in the full sense of the word,
but they too were haloed with magic and religion.
The Expanding Memory 261
Finding One's Wqy around a Text

Until the invention of printing, in the West as in China, the distinction between
oral and written transmission is difficult to draw. The main body of knowledge was
buried in oral practices and in techniques. Only the uppermost part of knowledge,
its framework unchanged since antiquity, was set down in writing, to be learned by
heart. During the centuries that lay between Homer or Yu the Great and the first west
ern or oriental printed manuscripts, the concept of reference developed together
with the growing mass of recorded facts. But each piece of writing was a compact
sequence, rhythmically broken up by seals and marginal notes, around which the
readers found their way like primitive hunters-by follOwing a trail rather than by
studying a plan. The spoken word had not yet been converted into a system of ori
entation tables. We saw earlier that the conversion of the two-dimensional mytho
gram not reducible to a phonetic phrase into a linear series of alphabetic signs
represented the freeing of speech and at the same time a certain restriction of the
individual's symbolizing power: With the advent of printing a further conversion,
soon to become indispensable because of the abundance of texts, began to take
place.
The texts set down in ancient or medieval manuscripts were intended to be
committed to the reader's memory for life, at least firmly enough to enable readers
to find their way around the manuscript with ease. There was also of course written
material of a more mundane kind-letters and contracts, just as in the earliest days
of writing but involving larger sections of the population-but these were kept in
the possession of the persons concerned or of notaries, and practical problems of
orientation did not arise. The same is by no means true of printed matter, which soon
went beyond the range of traditional subjects. Readers not only obtained access to
an enormous collective memory whose entire contents they could not possibly reg
ister but were also frequently confronted with new material. A process of exterior
ization of the individual memory then began to take place. The work of finding one's
way around printed material was done from outside. For centuries, dictionaries and
glossaries had offered some possibilities of orientation; Chinese writing with its pho
neticized mythograms, as well as the Greek and Latin scripts, had provided readers
with means of orienting themselves along the traditional thread of successive ideo
graphic or phonetic signs. But the dictionary provides only a narrow outlet for writ
ten memory, a form of knowledge that is both linearized and fragmented and
therefore incompatible with the processes of sustained thought.
The eighteenth century in Europe marked the end of the ancient world in
printing as well as in technology. It saw the old tradition at its richest as well as the
first stirrings of the process of change still going on today. Within the space of a few
decades the social memory had engulfed in books the whole of antiquity, the history
of the great peoples, the geography and ethnography of a world now definitely
acknowledged to be round, philosophy, law, the sciences, the arts, the study of tech
nics, and a literature translated from twenty different languages. The ever-widening
stream still flows today, but at no moment in human history did the collective mem
ory dilate more rapidly than in the eighteenth century in Europe. This is why all pos
sible methods of equipping readers with a preconstituted memory were already to
be found at that time.
The dictionary reached its limits with the encyclopedias ofevery kind that were
published for the use of manufacturers or artisans as well as of pure scholars. In the
latter half of the eighteenth century, technical literature began to flourish. Every sub
ject was explored, and the descriptive vocabulary still in use today began to form.
The dictionary is a highly developed form of external memory in which thought is
broken down into an infinity of fragments; the "Great Encyclopedia" of 1751 is a
series of short manuals encased in a dictionary. The level of the art ofdocumentation
was then as high as that of mechanical animation: The automaton reached its peak
when actuated by separate cams that endowed each of its organs with a fraction of
memory; the encyclopedia is a fractional alphabetically arranged memory each of
whose isolated mechanisms contains an animated part of the whole of memory. The
relationship between Vaucansson's automaton and the French encyclopedia-its
contemporary-was the same as that between to day's electronic machine and inte
grated memory.
In sequentially arranged works the eighteenth century made use of practically
everyknown method, in particular the medieval method of the marginal note (which
still survives today) in order either to sum up a paragraph or to provide references,
with the latter being more often consigned to footnotes. An alphabetic index at the
end of the volume, already fairly common in the sixteenth century, became an almost
standard feature.
The most interesting development from our point ofviewwas the direct oppo
site of alphabetical indexing and affected the contents of the work as a whole. As early
as the Middle Ages, and more or less universally from the sixteenth century onward,
the margins of a book had served to provide summaries of the contents of each page
or paragraph, and a brief list of contents had been supplied (without pagination) at
the beginning of the volume. Little by little book presentation began to be organized
The Expanding Memory 263
in such a way as to help readers find their way around an unfamiliar volume. That
is exactly the function of an external memory. The process took place along two
tracks, each developing until the early twentieth century. One consisted in having
each chapter preceded by a summary, the other in including a table of contents
before or after the main body of the work The former was a residue of the old atti
tude whereby a considerable personal memory input was expected from readers
and, barring a few exceptions, has today disappeared. A summary at the head of each
chapter after a list of contents at the head of the volume was a logical stage in the
detailed discovery of the volume's contents, but the trend has been to turn the table
ofcontents into something resembling a mythogram-a significant assembly of sym
bols in which the eye and the intelligence are not obliged to follow the rectilinear
progress of the written text. To achieve this status, the table of contents has had to
divest itself of all syntactic elements and now contains only freestanding words that
serve as signposts for readers. In the sphere of printed matter, we have not gone any
further than this pOint, first reached two centuries ago. As in all other spheres the
spearhead of evolution has shifted; it is no longer in the book, which survives as the
documentary infrastructure, but in d00Imentary material freed from any context.
Index Cards
By the nineteenth century the collective memory had expanded to such pro
portions that the individual memory could no longer be expected to store the con
tents of whole libraries. The need became apparent to organize the inert "thought"
contained in the printed "brain" of the collective by means of an additional fabric
upon which a highly simplified picture of the contents could be projected. Above all
else, the constituent cells of this new fabric had to be capable of indefinite enrich
ment and reconstruction in a manner appropriate to every type of documentary
research. The eighteenth and part of the nineteenth century had still made do with
notebooks and catalogs. These methods were succeeded by the card index, which
did not begin to be properly organized until the early twentieth century. In its most
rudimentary form it already represents a real exteriorized cerebral cortex: A simple
set of bibliographical index cards will lend itself to many adaptations in the hands
of its user, becoming an author or subject index, a geographical or a chronological
one with every possible permutation to meet requirements as particular as the place
of publication or the dimensions of inset plates. This is still more obvious in the case
of card indexes containing scientific information, where each documentary com
ponent can be rearranged at will in relation to all other components. Actually the
2 64 Memory and Rhythms
parallel with the cerebral cortex is in some respects misleading, for if a card index
is a memory in the strict sense, it is a memory lacking its own means of recollection
and has to be brought into the researcher's visual and manual operating field before
it can go into action.
Punched Cards and Electronic Memory

A further step forward was taken by making the card index contain several sets
of cards, perhaps of different colors, so that a second network of references was
added to the first basic one, or-better still-by using punched cards. Books in their
"raw" state are comparable to hand tools: However sophisticated their presentation,
the reader's full technical participation is still required. A simple card index already
corresponds to a hand-operated machine: Some of the operations have been trans
formed and are now contained in potential form in the index cards, which are the
only things the reader needs to activate. Punched index cards represent yet another
stage, comparable to that of early automatic machines. Whether they are cards with
marginal perforations that have to be activated by hand or cards of some other kind
.requiring mechanical or electronic sorting, the principle of the punched-card index
is always the same: The data are converted by means of a binary code (positive = no
perforation, negative = open perforation), and a sorting device separates the cards
according to a set of questions, releasing only those that produce an affirmative
response. The principle is that of the Jacquard loom, and it is curious to note that
documentary material waited for more than a century to follow in the footsteps of
weaving. But although the mechanism is the same, the degree to which it is exploited
is entirely different. The punched strips of the weaving loom express answers,
whereas each perforated index card corresponds to a possible question. A punched
card index is a memory-collecting machine. It works like a brain memory of unlim
ited capacity that is endowed with the ability-not present in the human brain-of
correlating every recollection with all others.
No progress beyond this stage has so far been made except in the matter of
proportions. The electronic brain, although it employs different and more subtle
processes, operates on the same principles. Theoretically devices using perforations
or integrators (generally associated with the former) can compete with the brain in
terms of the ability to compare. Theycan-on a gigantic scale and within a negligible
period of time-process a mountain of data to achieve a well-defined end, and they
can produce every possible answer. If provided with the data needed for an oriented
The Expanding Memory 2 65
choice, they can weigh those answers and enrich such preestablished weightings
with judgments based on experience drawn from precedents stored in their mem
ory. The electronic integrator's superiority over the card index is derived from the
amount of data it can process within a very short period through the simultaneous
action ofseveral selection centers capable of checking and correcting their own out
put, whereas the most efficient cards in existence, having a data density of 20,000 per
card or 10,000,000 per 500 cards, still require the operator's direct participation and
considerably more time. The artificial brain of course is still in its infancy, but we can
already be sure that it will be more than just a nine days' wonder with limited appli
cations. To refuse to see that machines will soon overtake the human brain in oper
ations involving memory and rational judgment is to be like the Pithecanthropus
who would have denied the possibility of the biface, the archer who would have
laughed at the mere suggestion of the crossbow, most of all like the Homeric bard
who would have dismissed writing as a mnemonic trick without any future. We must
get used to being less clever than the artificial brain that we have produced, just as
our teeth are less strong than a millstone and our ability to fly negligible compared
with that of a jet aircraft.
The tradition that holds the human brain responsible for human achievements
is a very old one. The human species adjusted with equanimity to being overtaken
in the use of its arms, its legs, and its eyes because it was confident of unparalleled
power higher up. In the last few years the overtaking has reached the cranial box.
Looking facts in the face, we may wonder what will be left of us once we have pro
duced a better artificial version of everything we have got. We already know, or will
soon know, how to construct machines capable of remembering everything and of
judging the most complex situations without error. What this means is that our cere
bral cortex, however admirable, is inadequate, just as our hands and eyes are inad
equate; that it can be supplemented by electronic analysis methods; and that the
evolution of the human being-a living fossil in the context of the present conditions
of life-must eventually follow a path other than the neuronic one if it is to continue.
Putting it more positively, we could say that ifhumans are to take the greatest possible
advantage of the freedom they gained by evading the risk of organic overspeciali
zation, they must eventually go even further in exteriorizing their faculties.
If electronic machines learned one day to write perfect plays' and paint inim
itable pictures, some serious questions would have to be asked about the future of
the human species. By learning how to love they would definitively settle our hash
as a zoological species. Before we project into the future a picture that may well be
266 Memory and Rbythms
false, I propose in the last part of this book to consider an area as yet untouched by
the machine, for we have all along gone round inside a triangle formed by the hand,
the word, and the sensory-motor cortex and have shuttled back and forth between
the human and the monkey in search of what cannot be shared with the rest of the
zoologically or mechanically animated world.
III Ethnic Symbols
10 Introduction to a Paleontology of Symbols
In the first part of this book we often spoke about.the evolution of the human
body, the physical "fund" of humanity. Having defined the two major criteria of tech
nicity and language against the background of their common origin, we became
aware of the close links between human evolution and a broader zoological context.
The second part dealt principally with the collective entity of the cultural group.
Technicity and language were viewed no longer in a zoological perspective but as
phenomena subject to evolutionary laws which, although developing far more rap
idly, run parallel to those of zoology. Human evolution was seen to be coherent in
terms of its two fundamental characteristics of manual and verbal technicity although
in a sense dissociated into two levels, that of phyletic evolution-as a result of which
present-day peoples are a collection of individuals with physical properties hardly
different from those possessed thirty thousand years ago--and that of ethnic evo
lution, which has turned humankind into an exteriorized body whose properties are
globally in a state of accelerated change.
Beyond this dual image of the human machine and its improved artificial copy
lies something else. Analyses made thus far have deliberately left out of account those
things that constitute the fabric of the individual's relationship with the group-that
is to say, everything that has to do with aesthetic behavior. A survey of relationships
of individuals with each other and with society reveals the existence of certain func
tional formulas-such as marriage or economic exchange-that are no more than
the expression of the fundamental physiology of any society, a physiology that is
reducible to the laws of the species or the social group but that fails to reflect what
is specific to each human collective. The distinction between species and ethnic
group was seen to be necessary because members of the human zoological species
combine in units that are clearly not zoological in character. But the characteristics
of the ethnic group were studied only in so far as they fell within the scope of the
270 Ethnic Symbols
functional formulas. The rules of particularization that govern everything that is spe
cifically human in us were left outside the technoeconomic schema, and these rules
still remain to be defined.
In the preceding chapters we found ourselves gradually stripping the human
of some of traditional human attributes in the attempt to demonstrate that human
beings as a mass constitute a social macroorganism capable of employing individuals
to develop thinking machines that can think more qUickly and more usefully than
they. For a missile made" by a large number of individuals to destroy a longway away
a sufficient number of individuals, no individual can calculate quickly enough the
trajectory to make the operation profitable for the collective that dispatches the
missile; an artificial brain can do so. The question that arises is what is left of us at
the end of such an evolution. Does our species still retain a sense of the beauty and
goodness, an unsurpassable affective quality from which the machine is excluded
forever, or merely the ability to reproduce artificial machines, using an ingenious
combination of male and female elements to generate the indispensable machine
makers?
We should not be too qUick to assert that machines will never appreciate
beauty and goodness. They can already reduce truth to sets of unassailable data, and
will probably soon be able, not perhaps to tell whether representational painting is
preferable to abstract painting, but to set out the statistical relationships between the
respective contents of the two in such minute and ingenious detail that all artists will
need to do will be to collect printouts telling them what subjects, what forms, dimen
sions, details, what frames will maximize their chances of appealing to the potential
viewer's attention, sense of form, and possibly even cultural snobbery. It will become
possible to make a robot portrait of the piece of sculpture that will best lend itself
to financial speculation over the next three generations or one that will have the best
chances of surviving the hazards of international transport or nuclear damage.
Already we have the right to ask ourselves which parts of the osteomuscular system
ofHomo sapiens will stand up to an analysis of fourteen million good deeds that will
reveal our dominant physiological motives, the derisory banality of our feelings of
greatness or justice, their hormonal motivation, the threadbareness, finally, of the
whole vast carpet of humanity which, illuminated here and there for the space of
three or four generations, has been unrolling since the beginning of time. Apoca
lyptic writings sparkle with mysterious numbers: The electronic apocalypse for its
part is entirely made up of numbers whose demystifying power is immeasurable.
There may be some interest in going over the long story of evolution yet again, not
Introduction to a Paleontology 271
in order to ask whether evolution has a meaning (one day, the machine will tell how
many chances out of how many billion the human adventure had of ever taking
place), but whether we still have a meaning other than as creators of superhuman
machines. That is my object in trying to �ite these last chapters.
Aesthetic Behavior
The term "aesthetics" is employed here in a rather wide sense that requires
some preliminary explanation. We are indeed concerned with the subject that in phi
losophy is the science of the beautiful in nature and in art, but we are concerned with
it from the viewpoint adopted from the beginning of these pages, that is to say, within
a paleontological perspective in the general sense, a perspective in which the dia
lectical two-way traffic between nature and the arts pinpoints the twin poles of the
zoological and the social. Within such a perspective the concept of the beautiful can
not be restricted only to the auditive and visual emotivity ofHomo sapiensj instead,
we must consult the whole gamut of our perceptions in order to discover how a code
of emotions to which the ethnic individual owes much, if not all, of his or her affec
tive integration in society came to be constituted in time and in space.
This aesthetic code of emotions is based on biological properties common to
all living organisms, properties of the senses that afford a perception of values or
rhythms or, more broadly still and including the Simplest invertebrates, which afford
some reflex-related partiCipation in rhythms and some reaction to variations in val
ues. In humans the gradual intellectualization of sensations has led to conscious per
ception and production of rhythms and values and to codes whose symbols have an
ethnic significance, such as those that govern music, poetry, or social relations. Aes
thetic phenomena emerge at different levels, some having the same significance in
all human societies while others-the great majority-are fully significant only
within a particular culture.
AppreCiations of food, architecture, dress, music, and so forth, form the
essence of a culture and symbolize the distinctions between ethnic groups. Take
away the penumbra ofvalues and all that is left of a cultural trait of any kind becomes
impersonal and interchangeable. The particularizing function of aesthetics rests
upon a basis of mechanical practices having in-depth links with both the physiolog
ical and the social apparatus. Much of aesthetics has to do with the humanization of
forms of behavior common to animals as well as humans (such as feelings of comfort
and discomfort), with visual, auditive, or olfactory conditioning, and with the intel-
272 Ethnic Symbols
lectualization, through symbols, of biological links with the natural and social
environment.
Aesthetic feeling may express itself at the level of an activity pertaining to bodily
functions, as with taste; of technical activities, as with gestures employed in the
course of exercising a craft; of social life, as in codes of polite behavior; or they may
be reflective or figurative, as in the arts or in literature. These different levels-pJ.rys
iological, technical, social, andfigurative-will serve us to define the broad areas
within which human sensations are ordered. The reference points of human aes
thetic sensibility are found in deep visceral and muscular sensibility, in the sensibility
of the skin, in the senses of smell, taste, hearing, and sight, and lastly in the mind's
eye which symbolically reflects the whole fabric of sensibility.
It might seem more in line with aesthetic reality ifwe limited its scope to sym
bolism, seeing in its various expressions only what is uniquely human, namely the
ability to create images of the outside world reflected in the mind and materialized
in artistic creation. In other terms, it might suffice if we tookfigurative representation
to be the basis of aesthetics and argued that the reason why, for example, the notion
of physical comfort is not the same in China as it is in]apan is not physiological but
that social and artistic norms imprint certain attitudes upon the individual and the
resulting habit eventually expresses itself in sensations of comfort. Similarly we
might argue that the aesthetics of polite gestures are not based on social cohesion
but reflect a certain image of the behavior of an educated indiVidual, modeled on
ceremonial art, with the individual playing the role of the polite person.
But if we proceeded in this manner, we would lose the paleontological per
spective. Our only sure source for conjecture about the aesthetics of Archanthro
pians lies in physiological value judgments: from the carnivore or the primate to the
modem human, we find in the senses of taste, smell, and touch a common ground
that allows us to make comparisons, especially as no figurative activity can possibly
be involved. At the Archanthropian and Palaeoanthropian level, the only coherent
evidence suggests a sense of balance in the efficient shapes of tools, a manner of
organizing specifically human functional values that involves aesthetic assessment
but does not lead to figurative symbolization of any kind: A picture of a smithy is no
more a functional symbolization (which cannot be achieved otherwise than in the
function itself) than a cardboard meal on a theater stage is a figurative representation
of taste. It cannot be denied, however, that value judgments can be made in both
areas and that the standards resulting from those judgments are neither wholly tech
nical nor moral but aesthetic in riature. The conclusion to be drawn is that although
in Homo sapiens the peak of aesthetic sentiment is no doubt to be found in figurative

representation while physiology and technical functionalism account for its deeper
reaches, we must first investigate those depths that alone are paleontologica1ly sure
if we want to study the transition to higher forms and, above all, if we want to study
such archaic matter as those forms may still contain. We cannot claim to understand
the trends of modern abstract art as a "return to the source" until we first elucidate
the nature of that source.
In the social sphere the problem is somewhat different. Animal sociology is
sufficiently advanced for us to be able to compare, say, attitudes of deference among
wolves, the courtship displays of birds, the recognition of characteristic features of
young males or females, or the periodic assemblies of numerous animal species with
similar features in the social behavior of human beings. Without language coming
into play at all, the color of an individual's tie will show his position within a human
group as precisely as the robin's red breast in a society of birds. But unlike physi
ological or technical features, the wearing of a vestimentary distinguishing mark is
a symbol that gives rise to several social images at once. As a characteristic of function
it lies just inside the technical range; as a portable and conventional badge it comes
very close to figurative representation. That is why we have placed social aesthetics
at the point of contact between the technical and the figurative spheres.
Beyond that lies nothing but images, and we have subdivided these in an order
suggested by physiology and by the level of their integration. Motor figurative rep
resentation (mimicry and dance) comes first, for the gesture inseparable from lan
guage must have followed the early development of language, coming to the surface
in the form of figurative representation at a very early stage. Next come auditive rep
resentations (music and poetry), whose connection with gesture (in the case of
music) and with speech (in the case of poetry) places them in a position halfway to
visual forms. These, such as painting, involve the human dominant sense, which is
also the one where symbolization is farthest away from actual movement-where
intellectualization has stripped the real forms of their contents and kept only the
signs. Writing comes after visual aesthetics, its images being purely intellectual and
its symbols completely interiorized.
The status of language at each stage of this sequence is interesting. Of all
branches of philosophy, aesthetics has always found it most difficult to find expres
sions in words. When it succeeds, it is by evocation, by relying on the reader's imag
ination and experience to supply the sounds, forms, and gestures that words can
conjure up but not reconstitute. Language, it seems, is not adequate for expressing
274 Ethnic Symbols
the aesthetic. The marvelous thing about poetry "is that it creates an ambiguity
between its rhythm and the words that that rhythm carries. The words of a song are
the less intelligible, the more the song is really music; it is as though the vocal func
tion served not only intellectual expression but also something else in which intel
ligence, the faculty of understanding, plays no part.
It seems that the conquest of tools and of language accounted for only a part
of the human evolution and that aesthetics-in the sense employed here-played
an equally important role in the ascent. But whereas paleontology supplies us with
fairly detailed means of reconstructing the successive states of the brain and the
hand, with knapped flints giving us a clear view of technical evolution, it is hard to
see how we can possibly isolate and identify something that is not imprinted either
in the human skeleton or in human-made tools.
In trying to outline a paleontology of language we drew upon the constant
presence of a facial and manual anterior field and the cerebral connection between
the motor functions of the facial and manual apparatus. The advent of figurative rep
resentation, followed by that of writing, provided a means of checking this connec
tion, which goes back some fifty thousand years. An attempt to study the evolution
of aesthetics has to be based on something different.
The physiological/technical/social order, as discussed earlier in this book, is a
very general biological schema applicable to the life of an insect as much as to that
of a rodent or a human, since all species, even parasites, display-for a time at least
sufficient technicity to ensure a supply of food and as much social behavior as will
assure their reproduction. This schema therefore represents the substratum upon
which aesthetic behavior must of necessity be implanted. Just as in technics we have
seen facts deeply rooted in zoology become specifically human in the course of evo
lution, just as in language we find facts of interindividual relationship implanted
deep inside the mass of living species now bathed in the light of human intelligence,
can we see the perception and creation of rhythmiC symbols as something deeply
rooted in the animal world which-on emergence at the human level--displays the
same characteristics as technics and language? To put it differently, since the tech
nical function in human beings exteriorizes itself in portable tools and since the per
ceived object too is exteriorized in a verbal symbol, can we assume that movement
in all its forms-visual, auditive, and motor-was also "freed" and entered upon the
same evolutionary cycle?
As with technics and language there are different degrees: The purest art always
plunges deepest; only the uppermost tip emerges from the plinth of flesh and bone
without which it could not exist. I believe that although a paleontology of symbols
might have more to do with psychoanalysis than with comparative anatomy, the prin
ciple of creating one should at least be debated.
To define the relationship among technics, language, and aesthetics is impor
tant because the interdependence among these three fundamental traits of humanity
is not in doubt. The relationship may reveal itself in different ways. We could suppose
that language and technics form the indispensable "fund" sufficient for survival, and
that aesthetics came to be gradually superimposed upon them like a coat of paint,
having been independently acquired at a late stage of evolution. According to that
hypothesis the aesthetic sense, starting from the high peaks of figurative art asso
ciated with the late Paleolithic, would gradually have spread down toward its roots
until in our own epoch it would be beginnfug to overlap the physiological. Such a
hypothesis would postulate the particularity ofthe aesthetic sense, obliging us to find
out where that sense fits into the mechanism of our brain, on the assumption that,
besides the ability to create an abstract language, something else was at some stage
added to our cortical apparatus to create new relationships between images. Argu
ments in support would not be hard to find, for an enrichment of aesthetic responses
can be observed in the technical sphere as well as in tactile and olfactory perception;
but how might it be proved that this process of enrichment was confined to artistic
form rather than being a globally comprehensive one?
The other hypothesis we could adopt is that since technics and language are
but two aspects of the same phenomenon, aesthetics could well be a third. We should
then have something to guide us, for if tools and words developed into machines and
writing by similar stages and more or less Simultaneously, the same phenomenon
ought to be observable in the case of aesthetics: From the pleasure of digestive sat
isfaction to that of handling a handsome implement, from the sense of music
expressed in dancing to watching a ballet from a theater seat, we should be able to
detect the same process of exteriorization. Stages in aesthetic evolution comparable
to the transition from the mythogram to writing and from the hand tool to the auto
matic machine would have to be found in historic times--an "artisanal" or "prein
dustrial" period in aesthetics in which the arts and social and technical esthetics had
reached their peak at the individual level, followed by a specialization stage in which
the disproportion between the producers of aesthetic material and the increasingly
large mass of consumers of prefabricated or "prethought" art became accentuated.
This second hypothesis corresponds more closely, if not to the whole reality, then
at least to the general direction in which the biological facts seem to pOint, and
276 Ethnic Symbols
it is the one I shall endeavor to demonstrate because it brings to the problem of

ethnic grouping an element that a theory based exclusively on technics and language
would lack.
Ethnic "Style"
No description of ethnographic facts, however detailed and precise, can

account for what is most real in an ethnic group's value. We can describe a type of
object, an agricultural practice, a belief that may belong to just one specific group;
we can add them together to obtain a formula that will characterize that group with
out any risk of confusion. But the major part of culture is made up of traits that belong
to humankind at large or to a continent or, at the least, to a region composed of many
groups, each of which feels different from the others. The ethnic particularity that
transforms a simple enumeration of axes, bellows, or matrimonial arrangements
into an expression of a people's "spirit" does not lend itself to verbal classification;
it is a style that has its own value and that pervades the group's culture as a whole.
Precisely like the connoisseur who recognizes the very vineyard from which a par
ticular wine has come, the trained ethnologist, helped by harmonies of forms or
rhythms, will tell the products of one culture from those of another. The process is
empirical, and it can be imagined that electronic analysis will one day reduce the
undefinable flavor of each ethnic group's works to a few equations. But that does not
alter the fact that style, unlike technical or linguistic characteristics, is inaccessible to
ordinary language. A detailed mechanical analysis can explain how the engines of
English motor cars differ from those of French or Russian ones, although the fact of
being a motor car is common to them all. An analysis on a gigantic scale would have
to be performed in order to explain why the observer can tell at a glance that a car
is "typically British." Similarly the "New Orleans" style in jazz has become part of our
common heritage and should in theory be invariable; the ear can tell, however,
whether the same item is being performed by a Swedish group rather than an Amer
ican one. If ethnology is thus incapable of formulating what is the central object of
its study, it must be missing something in a field that has nothing to do with language
but is important enough to contain the ethnic group's reality. This fact is common
to several branches of natural science, ofwhich the study of the human and of human
products is one. Racial anthropology has all the outward characteristics of an exact
science, yet a practiced anthropologist will take only a second to recognize the geo-
graphical origin of a skull and then spend weeks demonstrating it scientifically-a

demonstration, incidentally, from which most of the factors on which the initial spon
taneous identification was based will be absent.
In zoology weather has been found to determine a certain genetic orientation
in nonnomadic species. This orientation, which may be of greater or lesser impor
tance, is reflected in the emergence of local variations, often of a subtle and fluc
tuating nature and liable to become rapidly diluted through contact with other
populations of the saine species. The same is true of cultural characteristics. They are
based upon what may be a very broad common stock, become particularized in any
reasonably coherent group, and produce local variations, sometimes very slight, that
come and go at the whim of history. This "play" affects minor technical and social
innovations as well as forms of all kinds and in every possible area, from the cur
vature of a hoe handle to ritual practice.
This interplay, thanks to which no human group is exactly like another and all
ethnic units are different from all others and from themselves at any two moments
of their existence, is extremely complex. Individual innovation, although predom
inant, is so only in terms of the direct influence exercised by preceding and con
temporary generations. Moreover the degree of consciousness varies with the level
of the innovations, in the same way as it does in the case of technical operating
sequences. Everyday forms are subject to a slow process of unconscious adaptation,
as though common objects and gestures were being gradually molded to the chang
ing attitudes of a collective whose membership is homogeneous. Exceptional forms,
on the other hand, undergo real mutations in groups where individual invention is
not hampered by an excessively rigid tradition. At one end ofthe scale we see domes
tic or agricultural practices or objects and the tools and gestures of artisans gradually
assuming rhythms and forms that isolation makes increasingly characteristic; at the
other, festive costumes or ritual dances may show sudden and in many cases marked
changes between one event and the next.
In day-to-day practices and in their setting, the marks of style are deep because
they lie outside the scope of conscious awareness. As with technical operations they
persist through the lives of several succeeding generations. The ethnic "tonalities"
of certain attitudes, certain gestures of politeness or communication, walking
rhythms, dietary and hygienic customs, are transmitted from one generation to the
next. In figurative practices such as music, dancing, poetry, and the plastic arts, there
is a clean break between the basic practice and its individual variations because the
operating stages of figurative representation do not change: The bare bones of fig-
278 Ethnic Symbols
urative representation in, say, music or painting may remain the same for centuries
precisely because of the possibilities they offer to individuals for introducing per
sonal variants without altering the basic structure.
This deep-rootedness of aesthetic practices goes to confirm the method we
have adopted. Physiological actions occupy a predominant place in day-to-day oper
ations; they not only form the paleontological substratum but also are the area most
often visited by living individuals. The motor elements of figurative representation
are closely connected with physiological actions. Technical actions-tbe whole of
"functional" aesthetics--also play a most important role in the most commonly per
formed operational sequences. But in their case the level of conscious intervention
is higher, and there is more scope for exceptional innovation. The fact that neither
physiological nor technical actions can conceivably be integrated in figurative activ
ity makes their substratal nature even clearer.
The social element is of pivotal importance, for two reasons. First, social oper
ations are performed with every possible degree of frequency and with degrees of
stylization ranging from the mechanical gesture of buttoning one's coat in order to
be properly dressed to the elaborate ceremonial that governs the reception of a head
of state. Second, they involve levels of mechanical action that range from the purely
physiological, such as our bearing, to abstract symbolism in our handling of figures
or of the calendar. Thus the physiological, the technical, and the social clearly cor
respond to three successive levels as regards operating practices, but in the case of
figurative practices, which have their own order of development parallel to that of
language, the same succession is not observed in the same form.
Ethnic style may then be defined as a collective's own way of adopting and
expressing forms, values, and rhythms. Seen from this angle, aesthetic personality
becomes less elusive, and an analytical method as precise as those used in tech
nology or descriptive sociology can be posited. Ranges of tastes, odors, feelings to
the touch, sounds, or colors are extremely wide and differ greatly from one group
to another. The distance that separates natural postures from those adopted in soci
ety within a given culture is a measure of the collective's tolerance; the shape of tools
lends itself to precise functional analysis, as does the integration in space and time
of individuals in their domestic and broader environments. In addition the means
of investigation employed in the arts are also available. Indeed they ought to be orga
nized for the purposes of comparative research, for ethnic style involves every form
of expression. At the summit of poetic art we merely find ourselves at the head of a
procession whose rearguard is still submerged in the hormonal darkness. Faced
with a sculptor at the very peak of his or her personal genius, we are still dealing with
a certain individual, member of a certain ethnic group, brought up in a certain social

environment, the spokesperson-so far ahead of the rest that he or she may some
times look like being completely alone-but nonetheless the spokesperson of an
Oceanian, Chinese, or Turkish collective reality.
The third panel of the ethnological tfiptych is no less revealing than the two
others, but its ambience is completely different. We can discuss technics and lan
guage-and, later, social memory-without introducing any value judgments. The
facts we deal with are there or not there, they evolve in coherent sets to give us a
degree of efficacy which overall is increasing. In them the social element predom
inates by far over the individual, and evolution knows no criterion other than that
of collective benefit. The resonance of aesthetics is altogether different; here society
predominates only in order to give individuals a sense of their personal existence
within the group. The aesthetic sense is based on judging nuances. It orients our
choice toward a conformism as strict as that of technics, but a conformism of a dif
ferent order because it is produced by an opposition between values to which the
individual's integration in society offers the solution. The use of an ax does not
involve judgment. The ax is necessary or it disappears, replac�d by the mechanical
saw. But the aesthetic halo surrounding the efficient shape and movement of the ax
is created by every individual who judges goodness and beauty, not as an absolute,
but within the safety of the aesthetics of his or her group and the imaginary freedom
of his or her choice.
11 The Body as the Source of Values and Rhythms
If we agree that the aesthetic sense rests upon a consciousness of form and
movement (or of values and rhythms), which is peculiar to the human being because
only the human is capable of formulating a value judgment, we must for the same
reason inquire into the sources from which we draw our perception of movement
and form. A mammal like many others, although with a cerebral apparatus of unique
complexity, the human is not known to have any organ of perception not shared with
the rest of the mammals. Our sensory equipment, placed at the service of a mar
velous apparatus for transforming sensations into symbols, functions like the sensory
equipment of animals; their mental life lacks our symbolizing equipment, but our
sensory life includes every feature of theirs. We obey the rhythms of our digestion,
we feed at fixed times, in a crowd, we obey the collective rhythm like a sheep; our
tastes in food are. based on the same organs as those of a fish, our muscles flex and
relax without our consciousness coming into play. In short, the human animal mech
anism functions at several levels which, except for intellectual integration, are the
same as those of other living organisms. We could take the a priori view that intel
ligent symbolization can have a reflex action and that everything in the human being
is therefore assimilable to the workings of aesthetically constructive thought. Or,
conversely, we could ask ourselves whether aesthetic thought does not stop where
"natural" behavior starts. Of these two hypotheses, the former seems to me closer
to the pOSition we have adopted thus far. In supporting it, we should have to concede
that while our mind does in fact ensure a certain consciousness of our lived expe
rience, the activities of some parts of our sensory apparatus must always remain infra
symbolic: This , for example, is the case with taste in the strict sense of the word,
which cannot be rendered by anything other than itself. You cannot create an image
of a salty taste.
282 Ethnic Symbols
The Sensory Apparatus
In animals, the simplest forms of behavior can, from the sensory point of view,
be reduced to three levels: that of feeding behavior, which ensures the functioning
of the body by processing materials assimilable by the organism; that of physical
affectivity, which ensures the genetic survival of the species; and that of integration
in space, which makes the two others possible. These levels, which are diversified
according to the degree of evolution of each species, correspond to three levels
involving the relationship of individuals with one another and with their environ
ment. The aesthetic implications of these three levels are still observable in humans;
we could describe them as "physiological aesthetics." They bring into play, in varying
proportions, all the instruments of the sensory apparatus: visceral sensitivity, mus
cular sensitivity, taste, smell, touch, hearing and balance, and sight.
Each of these elements forms part of a dynamic whole whose basic machinery
is the same in animals and humans. Visceral rhythms are the driving force of feeding
behavior, while smell, taste, and touch are the agents of perception. Affective behav
ior is determined by perception of the play of the muscles as well as by touch, smell,
and Sight. Behavior pertaining to one's position in space and time is served by the
organs of balance, and perception of the body in space is determined by reference
to the dominant sense, which in the human is the sense of vision and in other species
the senses of smell, touch, or hearing. None of the three levels of relationship with
the external environment is conceivable without a certain rhythmicity of the body
and without a reference mechanism. Taste without nutritive activity is an abstraction,
affective acts expressins sympathy or aggressivity are entirely a matter of the con
nection between perception and the movements it detetmines, and integration in
space exists only to the extent that the physical body perceives space. In other words,
association of movement with form is the primary condition for all active behavior.
Whether animal or human, active individuals have their being within a network
of movements that originate inside or outside their body mechanism and whose
form is interpreted by their senses. Broadly speaking, individual perception inter
venes between external rhythms and an individual's motor responses to them. The
movements of the marine annelid as it ascends and descends with the tides inside
its tube are determined by its sensory perceptions oftaste and touch, which responds
to temperature and vibrations. Its feeding behavior and its integration in space and
time are the equivalent of its integration in the environment to which it belongs. At
a much higher level, the mammal living inside its territory staked out by smells and
sounds, sensitive to the alternation of day with night, to temperature variations and
The Body as the Source of Values 283
visual images, exists wholly within the synergy of rhythms and forms, the signals
received by its senses, their interpretation and its own responses.
With human beings the situation clearly remains the same, with the difference,
however, that it can be reflected in a network of symbols and held up for comparison
with itself. Over the period of human evolution, rhythms and values thus reflected
have tended to create a time and a space proper to humankind, to imprison behavior
within a checkerwork of scales and measures, to assume concrete form in "aes
thetics" in the narrower sense. Yet the biological infrastructure--our body-still
uses the same means and has none other to put at the disposal of the artistic super
structure. The aesthetic sense in its reflected form must continue to be like the world
from which it has sprung, with sight and hearing-the senses made dominant by our
zoological evolution for purposes of reference in space-maintaining their primacy.
Imagine the "syntacties" or "olfacties," paintings in smells, symphonies of touch,
architectures of balanced vibrations, poems of salt or acid taste, we should have had
if touch or smell or a subtle perception of vibrations had been our principal senses!
All these aesthetic forms, though not completely inaccessible to us, have found only
a modest place in our arts. It would be a pity, however, to deny them their place in
the subterranean regions of our aesthetic life.
Visceral Sensibility
The ordinary functioning of our physiological mechanism seems destined to
be overlooked. The perceptions relating to it are obscure and difficult to locate and
cannot play any part in the process of aesthetic formulation. Yet Freud and the rest
of the psychoanalytical school have demonstrated the impottance of the libido and
of frustrations clearly enough to prove that psychophysiological conditioning can
affect the highest forms of aesthetic life--one might say especially the highest forms,
for figurative creativity is the main element of individual liberation, whereas tech
nical or social behavior is determined by collective norms that demand a degree of
conformism.
The most important expression of visceral sensibility is connected with
rhythms. The alternation of periods of sleeping and waking, of digestion and appe
tite, all such physiological cadences create a fabric upon which all activity is
inscribed. These rhythms are generally connected to a wider fabric, that of the alter
nation of days and nights and of meteorological and seasonal changes. The result is
a real conditioning that provides a steady basis for day-to-day operations but affects
aesthetic behavior only inasmuch as its instrument is the human body. Visceral com-
284 Ethnic Symbols
fort matters only to the extent that it establishes the conditions for normal function
ing; sickness or physiological deficiency can significantly modify the individual's
aesthetic field, but only through the effects they exercise upon normal activity in
general.
However, if we bear in mind that in all cultures many unusual motor or verbal
phenomena occur as a result of individuals being "transported" to a mental state
other than their normal one, we must acknowledge that disturbances of the rhythmic
balance do play ail important role. In exceptional rituals-ecstatic revelations, states
of possession during which individuals dance or make music highly charged with
the supernatural-one of the methods employed all over the world consists in put-
. ting performers outside their daily rhythmiC cycles by breaking their physiological
routines with fasting and lack of sleep. The end result may be excitement of the psy
che, but the starting point is visceral. The change of register cannot be brought about
unless it starts in the very depths of the organism.
Privation and Control

Interruptions of natural rhythms-prolonged waking, turning night into day,
fasting, sexual abstinence-tend to evoke the religiOUS rather than the aesthetic
sphere because in modern culture these two spheres have become divorced from
each other. That, however, is only a recent consequence of the evolution of the social
organism, the outcome of a process ofrationalization ofwhich we are the promoters.
At the social level an interruption of the normal cycle is equivalent to a decline in
technical performance. Isolating the religiOUS from the aesthetic spheres prevents
the disruption of vital rhythms and puts the individual in a situation favorable to the
smooth running of the sociotechnical mechanism. This fact has been explicitly or
impliCitly understood since Confucius and is applied on a decisive scale in modern
societies. It presupposes the existence of a small number of virtuoso practitioners
specialized in the art ofliving against the normal rhythms and, for the mass of human
ity, the safety valve of events filtered and measured in time and space and consum
able without serious disturbance of those rhythms. This is blatantly obvious in the
steps taken in some Muslim countries to abolish the Ramadan fast as an obstacle to
production and a little less so in the gradual easing of fasting rules by the Catholic
church. We must repeat, however, that this is a recent development whose result can
not be projected back over the thirty thousand years in which human life was lived
as a totality and physiological control provided the infrastructure for the great imag
inative flights of the spirit.
At a different level it could be argued that the initiate was cold sober when he
or she learned the dance and that it was a well-fed poet in a state of perfect mental
lucidity who composed the verses chanted by the delirious crowd of pilgrims. But
even if this were not generally incorrect-even if composition and performance
were two completely different things--it would still not alter the facts. Aesthetic
behavior is no more confined to the creation of a work of art than the blacksmith's
forge is simply a matter of the invention of metallurgy. In any event the role of
improvisation in practices that antedate writing is so overwhelmingly obvious that
aesthetic production and consumption must be seen as intimately intermingled
within the same field.
More important still are the methodical efforts made to break the cycle, to .
establish a quasi-permanent secondary state. The great mystical schools of India and
China, of Islam and the West, have all tended toward physiological control, toward
escape from rhythms through contemplation and control of the visceral apparatus.
The most popular of such techniques of abstraction is yoga, in which the pursuit of
rhythmic control involves all the organs, including the heart. The perfect yoga ascetic
forms part of an aesthetic universe of ecstasy, all organs at peace, all rhythms of time
and outward space abolished-an antithesis that, as we shall see, is not so different
from what has led figurative art to abandon figurative representation. Taoism too has
its techniques for escaping from the alternating cycle of the male and female prin
ciples, its rigorous dietary rules, its breathing discipline based upon a conception of
the universe in which everything obeys rhythms of complementary values, a mobile
frame of a cosmos the sage can slip into without brushing against anything at all, out
side time and space. We shall reencounter the problem of our insertion between
heaven and earth when we discuss the symbols of society. Here it is interesting to
note that the sage's dISinsertion begins with the digestive tract in a process of initial
purification that eventually leads to being able to sustain oneself by swallowing noth
ing but air. To see the spirits that rule each separate organ, to discipline one's liver,
to learn to retain one's saliva and one's vital secretions, to control one's breath, to
still the whole physiological apparatus until one acquires a body made of jade-such
was the dream, pursued for centuries, from which much of Chinese philosophy has
sprung. We are still too close to see what our western arts owe to a certain conception
of life that borrows its foundations from the pact between oneself and one's body.
But in the way of life and the art works of classical China-because a sufficiendy great
distance separates us from it and also, no doubt, because the expression of that pact
was there carried to an extreme-we can observe a continuity between the uttermost
depths and the summit.
286 Ethnic Symbols
The superimposition of Buddhism upon Taoism has intensified the effort to

escape from the circular rhythms of life on earth. In China, and later in]apan, a com
plete mode of ideal existence has been created in which the peaceful sage, having
achieved complete control over his body, lives out his life in perfect harmony with
wind, water, trees, and moon in a state of balance that starts with the stomach and
ends with painting.
Muscular Sensibility
Unlike the skeleton, which in the normal state is not perceived, its drapery of
muscle is the seat of strong impressions. Our osteomuscular mechanism may be
regarded, not as a tool; but as the instrument of our insertion in existence. We must
leave aside" as being an intellectual operation, the integration of movements per
formed within the motor cerebral cortex, but we should not fail to note the paleon
tological connection between the inner ear and the osteomuscular apparatus in
ensuring the individual's balance with respect to the environment, in immediate per
ception of space, and in organizing movement.
The weight of the body is perceived by the muscles; it combines with spatial
balance to hold us down in our concrete universe and, by antitheSis, to constitute an
imaginary universe from which weight and balance have been banished. Acrobatics,
balancing exercises, the dance, are to a large extent the material expression of the
attempt to break away from normal operating sequences and create something out
side the day-to-day cycle of positions in space. Such a liberation occurs sponta
neously in dreams about flying when the inner ear and the muscles are at rest and
when sleep has lifted us outside the normal scene. In a different way we experience
a sense of liberation during waking hours when we watch an acrobat throw off the
shackles of operating logic.
The normal functioning of the intellectual apparatus as a whole is governed by
the organic infrastructure, not only in terms of the satisfactory or poor state of the
body machine but also, at every moment of our lives, in terms of the rhythms that
integrate us in time and space. For animals as well as humans, balance consists in the
coordinated play of organs and muscles according to rhythmic sequences of differ
ent amplitudes dovetailed into a regular order. A serious disturbance of internal or
external rhythmicity causes neuropsychological behavior to diverge from the nor
mal. In wild mammals in captivity, disturbance of the body's operating sequences
produces an artificial rhythmicity, often a rocking movement that provides the cap
tive animal with a substitute framework within which it becomes spatially and tem-
porally integrated. In the human, similar phenomena of exteriorized rhythmicity are

observed in circumstances where the creation of an artificial framework assists the
individual to free him or herself from the normal operating cycle or to engage in a
process of intellectual assimilation. There are many examples of this: Chinese
schoolchildren rock backward and forward when reciting lists of characters, French
ones do likewise with their multiplication tables. The fingering of "worry beads" in
the Eastern Mediterranean area is a similar phenomenon. In many cases the trance
like state is maintained by a motion confined to just one part of the body, such as
twisting one's thumbs or kneading some plastic substance or rolling a spherical
object between the fingers. Obviously such rhythmic practices are rarely a matter of
muscular play alone; rather, they form part of a whole in which hearing often plays
an important role, as when the Buddhist monk chants while rhythmically striking a
gong.
Beyond this point the role of the osteomuscular infrastructure tends to be dis
guised by the quality of the superstructure. Integration in exceptional sequences
through rhythmic treading, whirling, choreography, prostrations, or genuflections
performed at set times, and walking in procession is found in both religious and pro
fane events and in all parts of the world. Accompanied by music, unlike the actions
described in the preceding paragraph, they assume the character of a real escape
from the environment of everyday life. This category of actions always has a dema
terializing value. From the military march past to the possession trance, the degree
of mascular alienation is total.
Society's hold on the individual through rhythmic conditioning is reflected in
certain collective attitudes which are highly characteristic. "Bringing to heel," in
French "mettre au pas," literally "bringing into step," is not just a military imag�.
Rhythmic uniformization, the reduction of individuals to a conditioned crowd, is
quite as marked in subway cars as it is at a funeral, in dervish exercises as in the sud
den rush of schoolchildren when the bell rings for break. The science of muscular
conditioning has been practiced empirically for purposes of political uniformization
since the dawn of the earliest cities. It forms the basis for today's crowd movements,
for the behavior of masses "marching as one being."
The same phenomenon is observed in architectural functionalism, which
tends to order-and therefore to organize rhythmically-the movements of people
in the environment of their work or their home. The introduction of music on the
factory floor can also be viewed as an attempt at muscular conditioning; "music while
you work" represents a complete mutation of operating behavior, a technique nor
maJly used to lift people out of their ordinary environment being applied in order
288 Ethnic Symbols
to make them work more efficiently inside that environment. A distinction needs to
be drawn between the conscious performance of complex operational sequences
against a background of sounds rhythmically unconnected with the work being done
and the process of complete integration achieved by performing stereotyped
sequences against a musical background rhythmically integrated in the work The
latter form is met with in the most diverse societies in connection with collective
tasks of all kinds, such as plOwing, hoeing, threshing, or hauling. As with industrial
manufacture the object is to dtSintegrate a certain number of individuals in order to
reintegrate them into a collective tool. The rhythmic productivity-raising methods
employed in industrial societies owe their inhuman quality to the remoteness of the
entities for which the individuals are working and the fact that, once the work is
done, these individuals will disperse, whereas in traditional societies the technical
operation, performed for a visible and known benefiCiary, is only a phase in a col
lective process with all the manifestations of group cohesion.
In the next chapters, the "beautiful," the "good," and the "better" will take on
an increasingly intellectual value. We may end up forgetting that even when, lying
down and surrounded by complete silence, we read a poem, whatever image is con
jured up by the words we read is Significant only to the extent that it refers to every
thing we have experienced in the past in concrete situations comparable enough to
the poetic image to make it intellectually graspable. Yet the first reference of all con
crete experience is to the body, or rather, all experience relates to time and space
as perceived by the body. It is essential to keep this idea in mind when judging aes
thetic or intellectual performances or products at a high level. Seen by animals or
by organisms fundamentally different from ourselves, we would appear to be
obsessed by time and space. Ever since the emergence of civilization these concerns
have dominated all our areas of thought. The fabric of our practical life is woven of
the material conquest of geographical and-eventually, cosmic space-the
compression of time through speed and the efforts of medical research. Speculation
about astronomy and light, metrology and the physics of the atom, beguiles our
philosophical and scientific dreams. Our spiritual dreams feed upon the conquest
of eternity and the celestial spheres. For thousands of years our favorite game has
been to organize time and space in rhythms, in the calendar, in architecture. Our
microcosmic creations support the religiOUS apparatus in which the fate of the uni
verse is settled. Even negatively, time and space weigh upon every one of our ges
tures, and if we withdraw into the desert seeking immobility and contemplation, we
do so to escape from "the age," that is to say, from both the time and the space in
which the rhythms of normal life are taking place. The lives of the great spatiotem-
1be Body as the Source of Values 289
poral escape artists illl the Taoist with admiration, as they do the Buddhist and the
Christian. The reason why human thought is thus invaded by perception of the fugi
tive nature of time and motion is the perfectly banal one that life on earth is situated
at the intersection of time and space. To obserVe that we are acutely conscious of this
fact is to discover nothing at all. Yet discovery there was, once: The image of time and
space was new when the human first realized that he could relive them both by say
ing "he was by the river," "he is at my house," "he will be in the forest tomorrow."
For the rest of the living world, time and space have no initial reference other than
that of the bowels, the labyrinth of the ear, and the muscles. Hunger, balance, and
motion are the tripod upon which rest the higher reference senses of touch, smell,
hearing, and Sight. All this is also true ofus-butwith the addition of our enormously
complex symbol-making machinery, which underlies the whole of the Cartesian
perspective.
Taste
Taste is the lowliest of the human senses, as it is of all animals. The role of the
papillae distributed at the entrance to the digestive tract is essentially defensive: They
are nociceptive; they send out alarm signals on contact with acids or salts capable of
producing a toxic effect. Their intervention is general in both invertebrates and ver
tebrates, and they always line the buccal orifice. The register of perceptions is fairly
narrow. Most animals, like us, can distinguish more or less clearly betweer sour, salt,
sweet, and bitter tastes. To these one might also add pungency, which, however, is
less a matter of taste than of direct assault upon the mucous membranes.
Taste does not operate as a space reference in animals with the exception of
fish, where it is associated with the sense of smell. In some insects to which the
search for sweet food is of extreme importance, the presence of taste buds on the
tarsus of the front legs provides something like a spatial reference, and the same is
no doubt true of ant-eating or termite-eating mammals, whose very long and narrow
tongue acts as a feeler. In this case, however, the sense of touch certainly
predominates.
Gastronomy
The aesthetics of gastronomy are based on a very general biological fact,
namely the ability to recognize different foods. Animals all along the scale can absorb
a certain range of foods which they recognize not only through their organs of taste
but also by association with mutually complementary sensory images. The senses
290 Ethnic Symbols
(not including the sense of hearing) intervene in their relative order as spatial ref
erences: Birds, in which visual reference predominates, recognize principally by
sight and secondarily by touch and by smell and touch combined; fish, whose spatial
references are largely conditioned by smell and taste, recognize their food in the
Simplest way. The vertebrates' scale of conditioned food acceptance sequences is
based on sight and smell for purposes of recognition from a distance and feel in the
mouth plus a combination of smell and taste for immediate recognition, memory
playing a strong role in orienting preference and rejection. In m ammals, acquired
preference plays a significant if not a predominant role in carnivores and omnivores
because of the long period during which the young of these species depend upon
their parents for dietary education. The adult animal is in some measure capable of
extending its range of foods, but generally speaking preferences in later life are
guided by childhood tastes.
The food aesthetics of human beings are not very different. They are deter
mined by sight and smell as well as by taste and feel in the mouth, and preference
sequences formed in early life often guide the tastes of the adult. Everything that is
edible can be used in the extraordinarily accommodating digestive tract of the
human species, but far from everything is actually eaten. Unless forced by famine,
human groups will reject many kinds of food and will show preferences strongly
marked by ethnic personality. Yet again, the social organism takes the place of the
zoological species in determining the mechanical sequences that mold individual
taste. The subdivisions of humankind can be mapped by regional cuisine-not in
terms of the worldwide distribution of animals and edible plants but as a function
of gastronomical preference systems based on both local and imported foods. Sen
sory reference systems develop in the same way as gestures, speech, and music, and
they lend themselves to aesthetic analysis because, being human, they include the
feedback effect of reflection.
Food preferences acquired through ethnic education are like all human sys
tems of tradition in that they are channeled through a code whose general rules form
the basis of the tastes of the community at large and whose detailed interpretation
is up to the individual.
The reference system of French cooking, for example, relatively complex
though it is, can be reduced to a general framework within which the tastes of prac
tically all individuals are accommodated. The range of strictly gustatory effects is
rather rigid, some dishes being savory, others sweet, and a few sour. The code goes
so far as to prescribe the order in which these gustatory effects must succeed each
other: discreetly acidified hors d'oeuVre, savory main dish, acid salad, savory cheese,
sweet pudding. Salt and sour go together, the pungency of pepper or mustard is
added up to the cheese course; in the classic tradition, sweet and savory must avoid
one another. Thus certain taste associations are considered to be harmOniOUs, but
this is entirely a matter of ethnic convention, for certain regiOns of France and some
other countries do combine savory and sweet in their main dishes, marry sweetwith
sour, and slip bitter-tasting substances among their condiments. In African societies
the use of potassic ash in place of salt creates a gustatory register of a special kind.
It is interesting to observe the aesthetic ordering of what is the Simplest of our
sensory systems, our taste buds, which in biological terms are mere alarm signals
designed to prevent the ingestion of dangerous substances or to recognize certain
simple foods such as salt and sugar. Primitive peoples who consume a great deal of
fruit generally appreciate sour and sweet-tasting food. Appreciation of savory foods
is rarer, for Australian aborigines, Eskimos, and Bushmen do not have direct knowl
edge of salt except for seawater and seaweed in the case of Eskimos. The limited and
relatively constant nature of strictly gustatory perceptions explains the role they
assume in cultures with developed gastronomical aesthetics. They are like the key
note in music: They strike the prevailing note and provide a basso continuo against
which other values enter into play.
These other values are distributed between the senses of buccal touch and of
smell. The sense of touch in gastronomy is determined by temperature and consis
tency. In very highly developed cuisines, the role of temperature parallels that of .
basic taste: A well-balanced meal will display a full range of temperatures from pip
ing-hot soup to iced sherbet by way of cold hors d' oeuvres and a hot main dish. The
same is true of consistency, with soft and firm, sticky and crisp, chewy, juicy, grainy,
and smooth making a counterpoint with the basic savors and the temperatures.
Gustatory sensibility and feel in the mouth thus account for the deeper part of
culinary aesthetics, upon which the embellishments of olfactory gastronomy are
superimposed. This part-the primitive basis of gastronomy-is known even in the
least sophisticated dietary practices through simple associations of olfactory per
ceptions obtained without the use of condiments.
Olfactory and Visual Gastronomy

The superstructure of gastronomical aesthetics is essentially olfactory. The spa
tial location apparatus constituted by our organs of smell is capable of infinitely more
subtle performance than the reference organs of the mouth. It forms part of a ref
erence system no less rich than Sight or hearing, and has to be included under phys-
292 Ethnic Symbols
iological aesthetics only because of the biological factors that separate it from
speech.
In the animal world olfactory identification may rank higher than sight or hear
ing. This is the case with many mammals. Where it is the chief sense of reference,
for instance, as in dogs, it forms the bulk of what may be termed the animal's intel
lectual capital. We cannot clearly visualize what an image of the world based on the
senses of smell might be; in the spatial images of primates and anthropoids, it plays
a purely secondary role. Among the human reference senses its place is rather spe
cial. Sight and hearing-which, like the hand, are involved in language-are the only
senses to form part of the emitting and receiving system through which figurative
symbols are exchanged. The sense of smell, being purely receptive, has no com
plementary organ for the emission of symbols of odors. It thus remains outside the
most essentially human mechanism. Although reflection can codify its perceptions,
they are nontransmissible. That is why gastronomy and olfactory aesthetics in gen
eral do not fall within the category of the fine arts.
Still some of the deepest cultural reference systems of ethnic personality have
been based on the identifying perception present in all dietary operations, and the
links between cuisine and ethnic personality are almost entirely olfactory. There are
many national cuisines in which rice is the staple element, but no one can confuse
a Malagasy rice dish with an Indian, Chinese, Hungarian, or Spanish one, for the sim
ple reason that culinary processing entails the creation of a bouquet of smells and
tastes peculiar to each culture.
The use of condiments is a somewhat special area of culinary art in that, unlike
all others, it is entirelywithout spatial or temporal references. The shape of an imple
ment has a certain movement as its corollary; so does a statuette, and the same is true
of a form of social politeness, a building, a poem, or a hymn. The use of thyme in
combination with salt and nutmeg is not translatable into movements or even into
words. Culinary art does not share that characteristic trait of all other arts which is
the possibility offigurative representation; it never reaches the symbolic level. Every
thing is symbolizable in theory, but in gastronomy too much substitution would be
required. You can use a meal as a symbol for the workings of the world at large, but
then you are talking about the rhythm at which the courses are served and the mean
ing of each separate dish apart from its purely gastronomical characteristics. The
smell of thyme may symbolize a Mediterranean hillside at daybreak, but that is due
to the little that the human sense of smell still has to do with spatiotemporal ref
erence. A dish may be a picture, but then-it enters the field of visual reference, and
how it looks does not represent how it tastes.
The Body as the Source oJValues 293
In gastronomy whatever has to do with something other than the aesthetic

development of dietary recognition is no longer gastronomical. In theory the real
basis of this aesthetic-without-a-Ianguage is formed of taste, smell, and consistency.
However, the sense of sight in humans is too important to be excluded. In its spa
tiotemporal reference role sight of course is only secondary: A dish may look terrible
but still be very good? which is impossible in the figurative arts and which clearly
demonstrates the separateness, in gastronomy, of the basic aesthetics of nutrition
from the aesthetics of space and time. The role of sight as a means offood recognition
is far more important. In the human, a mammal whose sense of smell is poor, food
is recognized above all by Sight, so that if a meal is, say, served in a violet light our
sense of smell cannot be relied upon and the actual ingestion of the meal, with all
the visceral activity it involves, will be disturbed. The phenomenon here is entirely
different from what happens if, say, a caramel sponge cake is served in the shape of
a chicken: The effect then is similar to trompe l'oeil in painting; an immediate trans
position will take place without the food being any the less acceptable. An additional
esthetic effect has been created, but the normal harmonies remain intact.
The Sense ojSmell

Food recognition apart, our sense of smell fulfills, to varying degrees, the twin
functions of identification and spatiotemporal integration. In technical activities, and
especially in chemiStry, whose processes are similar to cooking, it serves the former
of those two purposes.
In affective behavior, which for the most part finds material expression in social
aesthetics, the sense of smell still plays an important role in relations between indi
viduals. Perfumes, aromatic oils, and deodorants, whether used to disguise the nat
ural odors of the body or to create an idealized image, are a significant element of
relations between the sexes. It is interesting to note that figurative representation is
possible to some extent in this context. Between the civet cat or the dog marking out
their territory and the human female's use of flower scents or of the contents of the
civet cat's glands, the process offigurative representation has entered into play. Smell
has become the symbol of a motor process whose references no longer derive from
the digestive mechanism (which does not admit figurative representation) but from
the muscular dynamic that forms the basis both for affective behavior and for spatial
integration. Here the sense of smell stands at the threshold of the imaginary in the
strict sense.
294 Ethnic Symbols
That threshold has been crossed when the sense of smell fulfills the function
of spatiotemporal integration-in other words, when it serves for perceiving one's
situation in time and space. The world of many animals is, above all, a world of
smells. It is perfectly conceivable that a fund of knowledge should be based on ana
lyzing smells: Instead of building their perception on sight and hearing, as humans
do, dogs build theirs on smell and hearing, the function of sight being only to con
firm the perceptions thus received. The gap between human thinking and animal
thinking constructed in this way is obviously a wide one. Dogs can, within the limits
of their muscular capability, learn deductive sequences, but any possibility of reflec
tive behavior of the human kind is completely lacking. Ifwe tried to invent a dog with
a developed brain comparable to ours, we should have to provide it with a rhinen
cephalus of enormous size wherein the instruments for an extraordinarily fine per
ception of the world of smells would have developed side by side with a
hyperaffectivity that would endow such a creature with a "sentimental" intelligence
in place of our rational one. Let us not forget that what makes us human is precisely
the duality of the facial and manual operating fields and the basic link between grasp
ing and sight. In the dog the anterior field is located in the narrow space between
the nostrils, which explore from a distance, and the canines, which seize; in the
human sight serves an exploratory purpose and enables the hand to exercise func
tions, not only of grasping but also of complex construction. Whereas the dog's eva
lutive potentialities lay in the direction of areas common to the sense of smell and
to affectivity, thus precluding figurative representation, human evolution toward
dominant vision and manual motor function opened to us the universe of rational
imagination. For us, the world of odor therefore serves as a secondary practical ref
erence, though not a negligible one: Let a smell of smoke pervade a house, and the
inhabitant will soon be sniffing the wind to get the spatial references. Aesthetically,
the sense of smell is closely connected with the visual and auditory systems; a par
ticular odor, unperceived for many years, will suddenly evoke scenes forgotten since
childhood. We do not recollect odors as we do events, but olfactory perception, pre
cisely because it activates physiological areas unrelated to reflection, bestows con
siderable depth and intensity upon reflective images.
For similar reasons odors can be a determining element in escaping from day
to-day sequences. They can induce a state of beatitude or promote overexcitement
Certain environments located outside the commonplace world of time and space
have an olfactory ambience that isolates them from what is experienced normally.
This is true of the incense used ill holy places, the stench of holocausts, the smell of
gunpowder intoxicating to the battleground hero. Their role is far greater than a
The Body as the Source o/Values 295
mere condiment's; odors in such cases become the chief scene-setting element that
releases extremely deep-rooted emotional reactions. We need only imagine a sanc
tuary pervaded by tempting kitchen smells, or spring breezes wafting suddenly
across a battlefield, to realize how seriously this would impair our conditioning. I
speak of "conditioning" advisedly, for when all is said and done, the sense of smell
remains firmly embedded in the physiological. Piety in biblical times was not incom
patible with the odor of roasting meat, and battles are sometimes fought in a flow
ering meadow. This brings out, on the one hand, the importance of acquired
traditions and, on the other, the flexible nature of olfactory behavior as a reference
of location. A dog would refuse to believe a piece of meat was a piece of meat if it
smelled of freshly mowed hay, and a human would stop believing in a battle if the
battlefield was suddenly filled with images associated with a village fete.
The Sense o/Touch

The sense of touch of vertebrates, their source of direct reference in space, has
the same topographical location. Tactile organs are very densely concentrated in the
anterior facial zone and somewhat less so at the extremity of the forelimb; they are
more sparsely scattered over the rest of the body. The lips are the seat of the subtlest
sensitivity to temperatures, vibrations, and contact; their sensory equipment is often
reinforced by palps, for example, as in fish, or by long stiffwhiskers as in felines and
rodents. The origin of the sense of touch lies close to that of hearing, and the two
appear to combine in many animals, especially fish and mammals with a little or no
sense of vision, such as the mole. Hearing and tactile perception in its broadest sense
are extremely important in gregarious behavior; they are principally responsible for
the movements of shoals of fish and of herds of animals in close formation.
In humans the organs of touch are distributed as they are in other vertebrates:
The lips are responsive to a load of as little as 5 to 6 milligrams per 0.1 millimeter
of their surface and the fingertips to a load of 30 to 40 milligrams, the sensibility of
the rest of the body being variable but much less pronounced.
The importance of touch as a surface of spatial reference is particularly great
where visual reference is lacking, that is, in the blind, in darkness, or outside the field
ofvision. Unlike the sense of smell, it appears to be extremely subtle under such con
ditions. Unlike the sense of Sight, whose mode of perception is synthetic from the
start, it can analyze and recreate volume by passing the hand and fingers over the
object. This combination of motion and touch makes it one of the senses accessible
to figurative perception.
296 Ethnic Symbols
Labial touch relates to feeding or affective behavior more than to types of

behavior pertaining to figurative aesthetics. Body touch relates to comfort and phys
ical integration in space. Only in the manual field is there an aesthetic that can
properly be described as tactile. It stays very close to the physiological level and, in
various ways, has to do with the sensation of caressing. It involves textures--such as
those of polished materials, furs, and grains, the consistencies of plastic pastes, and
the feel of flexible or elastic substances--and is exercised in techniques aimed at
producing surfaces agreeable to the touch-such as sculpture. Tactile judgment is
constandy exercised in day-to-day operations. Unlike smell, touch is practically never
the source of extraordinary integration, at least not as the dominant perception.
Rhythmic sounds and movements as well as unusual odors can trigger states of exter
iorization from routine sequences, but conditioning by the sense of touch is hard to
imagine. This is principally due to the analytical nature of tactile perception, which
stands in the way of complete immersion in a situation.
There can be no doubt, however, that the sense of touch plays a part in that
specific area where recurrent tactile movement determines a transposition of mus
cular behavior. All over the world repeated manipulations of small objecrs--han
dling of prayer beads in Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist cultures, rolling grains or
pieces of jade between the fingers, prolonged kneading of a flexible substance
accompany states of meditation or peaceful reverie (see the discussion of muscular
sensibility earlier in this chapter). Objects specially designed for purposes of tactile
aesthetics exist only in this very narrow area where perception of form is focalized
and beyond which the machine of the body is entirely at rest.
. Spatiotemporal Integration
Our coverage of the subject of physiological aesthetics would be incomplete
if we failed to mention the sense of hearing and Sight, but only in so far as these still
contain elements of infraverbal·behavior. Whatever there is in human sensory equip
ment that is inherited from the common fund of species cannot be understood
unless we go right back to the sources. In the case of the senses of taste, smell, and
touch, as well as of visceral sensibility and muscular perception, human forms of per
ception and expression barely impinge upon the common zoological fund. One
could pursue the ascent toward the "noble" senses and demonstrate that the spatial
integration of the human individual at rest in his hut is not very different from that
of the badger in his earth, or that our social recognition systems are remarkably sim
ilar to the codes that enable birds to establish relationships among themselves on
The Body as the Source o/Values 297
the basis of their plumage. But between the living space of the badger and the space
symbolically constructed by a human, between the plumage of the grouse and the
army officer's symbolic uniform, between the song of the nightingale and a senti
mental ditty, the borderline has already been crossed. Our lived behavior is filtered
through images, and though we need to acknowledge the deep-seated origins of our
behavior, it would be paradoxical and futile to pretend, for the sake of an excessive
concern with logic, that they account for the whole of it. That is why, now that the
concept of functional aesthetics as it relates to the properties of the human hand has
been established, we shall revert to the senses of sight and hearing when discussing
the question of bodily balance in the chapters devoted �o social and figurative
aesthetics.
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12 Functional Aesthetics
An analysis of objects of practical use-tools, machines, engines, houses, or

cities--shows that they possess particular aesthetic properties directly related to
their function. In saying that a form is or is not well suited to its function, we make
what amounts to an aesthetic judgment. It is a striking fact that except in some rare
cases, if not always, absolute aesthetic value is directly proportional to the adequacy
of form to function. Tracing the development of many technical objects over time,
we observe their gradual integration in increasingly balanced forms. One need only
think of aviation to measure the validity of this general law.
It has long been recognized that functional development is a law. Efforts to
determine the modalities of that law, still empirical in most technical fields, have
reached the stage of systematic research in some others. Our nautical and astro
nautical sciences, as well as aviation, are open to the pursuit of perfectly efficient
forms. Curiously enough, the results of these efforts are often broadly comparable
to forms derived from nature. This should perhaps alert us to the possibility that the
two phenomena may in fact be the same-that the functional quality of human-made
objects, rather than being figurative, may simply represent the inversion, in the
human field, of an absolutely natural process.
Such a supposition is supported by the argument that an object achieves func
tional beauty to the extent that it is divested of its figurative content: The automobile,
which took a very long time to rid itself of the figurative representation of the har
nessed horse-carriage, has achieved relative functional adequacy only in so far as it
meets the laws that govern a solid object traveling rapidly through space while
remaining in contact with the ground. If we examine groups of objects having the
same function but belonging to different cultures, or objects having different func
tions within the same culture, we recognize the nonfigurative nature of functional
beauty. Whether we take shields, looms, hoes, fishhooks, or typewriters, we see their
300 Ethnic Symbols
function, realized to a greater or lesser degree, piercing the decorative veil that
shrouds the forms. Let us take, as functionally adequate objects, a Louis XIII armchair
and an African ruler's throne with legs in the form of human beings: in both, the func
tional forms are apparent through the figurative envelope, whether the motifs
direct translations of language-related symbols-are anthropomorphic or based on
plants. Take away the envelope and what is left is a functional formula, that of a seat
which ensures a modicum of restfulness with a maximum of dignity. The dignity
requirement is a consequence of the social aesthetics pertaining to high rank. Take
this away from both seats, and you need only take a cast of the body of the person
to be supported in a seated position in order to obtain a purely functional concave
object, a seat in the form of a shell with judiciously oriented supports, its shape
strongly reminiscent of a seashell's.
The appropriateness of natural forms is not, however, absolute. One would
have to go back to the preevolutionist naturalists and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre to
find the view that all plants or animals have the form exactly suitable for their bio
logical integration. Paleontology shows that forms evolve toward functional solu
tions that even at the end of the process are only relatively successful. Function and
form, both adrift in time, constantly interact. An equally striking fact is that at each
stage the functional solution is concealed behind a "decorative" veil--colors, appen
dages, disconcerting curves-similar to that thrown around manufactured objects,
as though also in the human the decorative function corresponded to a nonartificial
balance. The relationship of function to form is actually of a different order from that
ofform to decoration. In animals as in humans, the nonfunctional envelope is a tissue
of relics, vestiges of a phyletic origin that in the former is connected with the past of
the species and in the latter with the past of the ethnic group. The fact that the dec
orative pattern on a butterfly'S wing has mimetic value is of quite a different order
from the wing's appropriateness for travel through air: The latter can be reduced to
mechanical formulas and has the value of a physical law, whereas wing markings
belong to the uncertain world of style even if, in Darwinian terms, they perform a
protective function for a certain length of time in the history of the species. Human
decoration only confirms the general rule of substitution of the ethnic group for the
species; the same phenomena can be observed in the persistence of marks express
ing the personality of a group.
This comparison makes the nature of functional aesthetics a little clearer. It
seems to correspond to a real mechanical determinism, and to be subject to the laws
of matter rather than those of the living world-which is why its nature is the same
whether we consider plants, animals, or humans. The cells of the beehive are a per-
Functional Aesthetics 301
fect solution to the problem of the ratio between surface and volume that offers max
imum resistance to deformation, but the same solution is also encountered in
vegetable tissue and applied in human industry. Once the formula ofhexagonal cells
has been found, there is no room left for species-related or ethnic nuances; aesthetic
value lies wholly in the absolute mechanical perfection of the design.
In the living world, including the human one, perfect functional solutions are
rarely achieved because above a certain level life implies a multiplicity of functions;
functional appropriateness is reserved for organisms and objects with a single func
tion. From the point of view of mechanics, the mackerel is undoubtedly more sat
isfactory than the monkey: Its hydrodynamics are almost ideally suited to traveling
rapidly and performing instantaneous movements, travel, which is its way of finding
as well as capturing food, is its only function involving responsiveness to the outside
world. Or take the awl, a mechanically perfect tool; whether made of bone or of steel,
its cylindroconical shape has, since the end of the Mousterian period, offered a per
fect means of pierCing flexible materials. The awl is incomparably closer to a perfect
functional formula than a Swiss army knife with its scissors, corkscrew, saw, file, three
knives, and tool for taking stones out of horses' hooves. The monkey and, at least as
much if not more so, the human being are much more like the Swiss army knife than
like the awl. Most living beings and objects are balanced in a complex interplay
between (1) the evolution of each function toward satisfactory forms, (2) a com
promise between various functions whereby the forms are maintained at a more or:
less high level of apprOximation, and (3) superstructures inherited from the bio
logical or ethnic past, which are reflected in "decorative" elements. Therefore in the
majority of cases functional aesthetic analysis is Simply a matter of measuring the
degree of functional approximation.
One could, it is true, go a little further and say that the measure of aesthetic
value is the extent to which the mechanical formulas remain valid beneath the veil
of the overlying figurative values. To go back to the example of the armchair, a chair
can never achieve perfection in terms of strict functionality, for to do so, it would
have to be designed for just one individual sitting in just one position. A degree of
functional plasticity will always be present, and so will an element of style, so that the
most coldly calculated of today's armchairs is recognizable as an American, Finnish,
or Japanese product of the midtwentieth century. The same is true of automobile
deSign, where the aerodynamic element is only a very approximate trend while the
general style and the decorative features employed show great ethnic diversity.
An attempt to analyze functional characteristics separately is therefore justified,
even though a complete separation is almost always impossible to achieve. However,
302 Ethnic Symbols
in conducting our functional analysis we can, for the sake of convenience, separate
the evolution of function from that of form, materials, and rhythms. An ax is appro
priate to a certain swinging linear percussive function by its form, by the stone,
bronze, or steel of its blade and by the rhythmic movement, determined by the user's
relative weight and muscular strength, that actuates it. Its functional evolution should
therefore be analyzed at four levels simultaneously, which is impossible because of
the linearity of rational thought and of language. Even without this obstacle, it could
be argued that a sWinging linear percussive function is also to be found in the mach
ete, that the form of the ax is influenced by the same mechanical trends as other
swung tools such as the adze, the hoe, the hammer, or the club, that the transition
from flint to steel was a phenomenon that affected many things outside the category
of swung percussive tools, and that the rhythm of the ax is very much the same as
that of the scythe or the grain pounder.
Function and Fonn

In L 'Homme et la matiere I related the function of tools to what I described as
a technical "trend," a process that makes it possible, at the purely technological level,
to observe the gradual acquisition of distinct forms. In paleontology as well as in his
tory, the evidence of different stages traversed by the same functional trend enables
us to observe not only the specialization of forms but actual mutations, the function
persisting and becoming more pronounced through the emergence of new forms.
The function still represented in our society by the knife in the action of cutting any
object is a remarkable example, for the paleontology of the knife goes back without
a break to the earliest tools (figure 108). From the awkward, irregular small cutting
edge of the Australanthropian chopper it developed into the blade of the heavy
biface and that of the scraper. At the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, the oval
scraper was replaced by fine cutting blades, and the knife assumed a form that
remained essentially unchanged until the emergence of metals. Its proportions have
remained the same since the Bronze Age, which saw the completion of its functional
evolution into a blade with a handle of which its blunt edge was the extension. But
then the function, which had already gone through four or five successive forms,
passed to machines in which rotary blades or mechanical slicers converted rectilin
ear into circular motion. Many other tools, such as the series that began with the flint
burin for carving bone or wood and today includes the adze, the carpenter's chisel,
and the router, underwent a similar evolution. Mechanical engines proVide another
striking example; without going back as far as the transition from weight-driven to
a b
d e
9 j
108. Evolution o/the knife. Lower Paleolithic: (a) chopper, (b) rudimentary biface, (c)
Acheulian biface. Middle Paleolithic (about 100,000 B.C.): (d) and (e) scrapers, (f) Levalloi
sian pOint. Upper Paleolithic (35,000-10,000 B.C.): (g) CMtelperronian point, (h) Magda
lenian blade. Bronze Age (1000 B.C.): (i) knife (Siberia). Iron Age: CJ) modern knife
(Greece).
304 Ethnic Symbols
spring-driven mechanisms, we need only consider the progression, between the late
eighteenth century and the present day, from the early piston and shaft engines
through the crank and piston engine of the first locomotives to the crankshaft-coor
dinated pistons of the automobile engine, the turbine engines and the jet plane, to
grasp the importance of a phenomenon in which the relationship between function
and form appears in a different yet complementary light.
Here the function appears even more clearly as a simple physical formula,
abstract and lackii1g any base in aesthetics other than the underlying elegance of its
equations. The aesthetic "moment" is situated along the trajectory of each form at the
point where the form comes closest to the formula; the aesthetic quality of the con
junction of function and form is equally apparent in a highly developed biface, a well
made scraper, and a bronze knife particularly well suited to its purpose.
The principles of functional aesthetics are derived from the laws governing
matter and cannot, by that token, be regarded as human attributes except to a very
limited extent. The principle that perfect forms correspond to simple functions
applies as much to birds such as the albatross, whose wings tend to be no more than
flying-sails, as to a type of lance designed simply to pierce. There is a tendency today
to regard such forms as highly aesthetic because mathematics and physics count for
so much in our civilization, but most previous cultures considered perfect forms as
being aesthetically poor. The blade of the Japanese sword is a miracle of functional
balance, yet the armouries of China, India, and Indonesia teem with elaborate blade
forms designed to impress and terrify. In most cases perfect forms are modest and,
because of their commonplace nature, do not capture the ethnic imagination.
There is probably a good reason for this: The reduction of forms to bare for
mulas would have run contrary to well-balanced diversification of species as well as
of ethnic groups. Present-day efforts to prevent forms from becoming completely
desiccated as a result of excessive perfection are Significant in this respect.
What we have said seems to suggest that the origin of form lies in the pursuit
of ideal function; at the same time, however, we have seen that approximation to
functional perfection is the rule in all but exceptional cases. The reasons for this are
to be found in two opposing trends. The former lies outside aesthetics and pertains
to the "favorable environment" theory (see Milieu et techniques): Neither the mate
rial (flint) nor the technique (scraping) available to Mousterian man enabled him to
make a perfect knife; nor can we today make the perfect artificial braip, which would
probably be small in volume and relatively Simple. Efficient forms are therefore sub
ject to diversity in time and space which is related to the stage of development of the
technique concerned.
The second trend is more strictly an aesthetic one in that it involves a certain
freedom in the interpretation of the relationship between form and function. If, for
example, we consider a series of Saharan flint arrowheads, we are struck by the
extraordinary wealth of variations on the same functional formula: variations in the
relationship between length and width, the angular width of the body, and subtle
differences in the convexity or concavity of the blades. Beneath the constraints
imposed by the material one senses the individual arrowhead maker's personal way
of handling an empirically perceive� functional outline.
The same function may, in different cultures, assume equivalent forms, which,
however, will be strongly marked by the personality of the ethnic group. One of the
most striking examples is that of the dagger, specially designed to pierce coats of mail
or penetrate through chinks in armor (figure 109). To meet this purpose, the weapon
��______J •
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• II
109. Daggers: (a) European type based on the sword, (b) Iranian type based on the knife,
(c)Japanese type based on the saber.
306 Ethnic Symbols
must have a blade 30 to 40 centimeters long with a very pointed tip of square or loz
enge-shaped cross section. This functional ideal was reached between the fourteenth
and eighteenth centuries in Europe, the Near East, and Japan. The daggers of the
three great civilizations have practically identical properties in the quality of the steel
and the depth of penetration of the blade tips, but the European one takes the form
of a short double-bladed rapier, the Near Eastern one that of a straight knife, and the
Japanese one that of a short curved saber. It would of course be possible to dem
onstrate that none of the three completely meets the theoretical ideal in the depth
of penetration, and we ate obliged to resort to the concept of "functional approxi
mation" in order to describe a response to the contradictory demands of mechanical
appropriateness and the traditional aesthetics of the group. Similarly we could say
that English, Italian, and American racing cars are in a state of functional approxi
mation in that they preserve an ethnic style despite the requirements of aerodynam
ics that should, strictly speaking, make them all identical. American and Russian
rockets and satellites too have elements that strikingly reflect their respective cul
tures despite the very close functional constraints of their design.
These examples illustrate the extent to which functional and figurative aes
thetics interpenetrate in the objects produced by different cultures. Due allowance
being made for the respective technical level, the ideal function is often very close
to being achieved in many objects that nevertheless retain an unmistakable style in
the narrow margin that function leaves to form.
Form and Material

The making of anything is a dialogue between the maker and the material
employed. This opens up another margin for functional approximation. The exam
ple of the ax or the adze, whose history extends over some eight thousand years,
brings out the functional relationship between form and material with particular
clarity (figure 1 10). The polished stone ax and the steel ax correspond to the same
ideal formula, that of a short rectilinear cutting edge supported longitudinally by a
shaft capable of imparting considerable acceleration and by a head heavy enough to
enable the edge to cut into wood. This ideal seems to have been attained right from
the start, for the Neolithic axes known to us are already perfect in terms of the length
of the haft, the weight of the head, and the angle of the cutting edge. Many problems
arose, however, in connection with ensuring the effective orientation of a polished
stone edge, preventing the shaft and the head from coming apart, and achieving suf
ficiently deep penetration without the blade becoming wedged in the wood, since
a b c
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·
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·
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110. Functional adaptation of the ax. (a) New Guinea, stone blade sheathed in wood; (b)
Borneo, hammered iron blade tied to the handle; (c) Rhodesia, hafted iron blade; (d)
Bronze Age, bronze blade witb pinion to prevent loosening oftbe baft; (e) Bronze Age,
blade witb socket; (f) modern, baft witbforged collar.
308 Ethnic Symbols
to provide such a blade with a slit for the haft would be to rob it of its solidity. Other
problems arose in the Bronze Age and found solutions in line with the technique of
bronze casting. The advent of ferrous metallurgy, which meant that the blade was no
longer cast but forged, brought fresh problems. The problem of function, although
resolved from the outset, assumed a series of forms dictated by the raw materials
successively employed. This was not a matter of slowly seeking the means to satisfy
a functional requirement: Before the ax, trees were probably felled by fire and with
the scraping tool, and today, now that the age of the ax is past, they are felled with
a mechanical chain saw, which proves that the "ax" solution represents a homoge
neous stage. Neither was it a case of considerations of form interfering with mechan
ical functionality, for axes of the same type are found, immediately recognizable by
their style, in the European Neolithic, in Indian America, and in present-day Oceania,
which proves that the form of a tool is governed by the interplay of three values: the
ideal mechanical function, the material solutions to the problem of functional
approximation, which is a matter of the state of technical development, and the style,
which is a matter of ethnic figurative value.
This triple aspect of the aesthetics of products of human industry is to be found
in all areas of technology, but in varying proportions that accentuate the ambivalent
nature of functionality. In some cases, as with the awl, the form is established from
the outset, and the slow progression ofform through increasingly efficient materials
is the only development that takes place. In other cases, as with pottery, the material
presents no obstacle to the function, and the development takes place mainly
between pure function and style. Although analysis is more difficult in the case of
multifunctional assemblies, such as cities. The respective share of the theoretical for
mula and those of functional approximation and figurative symbolization can be
identified fairly readily in the ground plan, the proportions of the buildings, the
nature of the city walls, and the district layout, be it of a Mayan City, a Mesopotamian
city, a medieval European town, or a city of today. As we shall see further on, a city
is both an instrument subject to powerful material constraints and a symbolic image
of the universe.
A separation of any other than a purely theoretical nature between form and
material is difficult to uphold, both at the functional and at the figurative level, simply
because rational forms as well as those regarded as beautiful are often based on the
same physical formulas. In pottery a spherical form subtly modified toward the
mouth or the base meets Simultaneously the requirements of function and of taste.
The slightly imperfect symmetry of a developed biface is mechanically justified, but
it determines an aesthetic appreciation. Spherical or flat forms, symmetrical design
or a curved surface, are rational in terms offunction and, at the same time, attractive
in a manner that goes beyond functionality. This aesthetic ambiguity is used to advan
tage in certain modem works of art, such as the machines of Alberto Giacometti or
Jean Tinguely, which are mechanical assemblages without any rational function.
The material itself can be connected with function without being directly
related to form; this is the case with objects designed to contain or enfold. The sur
face of a pottery vessel, depending on whether it is a huge receptacle for grain, a
water jug, or a waterproof container, will be coarse, porous, or smooth; these surface
states will be directly functional, with references borrowed from physiological aes
thetics. The same is true of bark, skins, furs, textiles, or modem plastics, whose visual
and tactile properties are determined by the link between function and the material
employed.
Functional, physiological, and figurative aesthetics form what may be
described as a cycle in those products of human industry that are not purely figu
rative. The predominant element of the cycle depends on the category to which the
product belongs, but normally all three elements are present, if only in vestigial
form, each making for deeper aesthetic perception.
Rhythms
Rhythms are the creators of space and time, at least for the individual. Space
and time do not enter lived experience until they are materialized within a rhythmic
frame. Rhythms are also the creators of forms. What we have already said about mus
cular rhythmicity applies a priori to technical operations that entail the repetition of
gestures at regular intervals. A very large number of such gestures are related to the
act of hammering, which occurs in birds-those that use their beaks to break mol
luscs or seeds as well as those that find their food in the bark of trees-but is excep
tional in mammals, including even the great apes. One of the operating techniques
of human beings from the earliest stages has been the application of rhythmic per
cussive movements repeated over prolonged periods. Indeed that is the only oper
ation that marked the attainment of human status by the Australanthropians, whose
only surviving traces are choppers made from splintered pebbles and polyhedral
spherical objects produced by prolonged hammering. Manufacturing techniques
developed from the beginning in a rhythmiC setting-at once muscular, visual, and
auditive-born of the repetition of impact-making gestures. The motion of sawing
undoubtedly goes back to the same period, the purpose of hammering a pebble
being to provide it with a cutting edge, and that of scraping is probably not much
310 Ethnic Symbols
more recent. Hammering calls for swinging percussive movements, and sawing or
scraping for oblique attack (see L 'Homme et fa matiere), which in all cultures down
to the present day have formed an essential part of technics.
In the human the treading motion that constitutes the rhythmic framework of
walking is accompanied by rhythmic movements of the arm; whereas the former
governs spatiotemporal integration and is the source of animation in the social
sphere, the latter has to do with the individual's integration in what is not a time-and
space-creating but a form-creating system. The rhythmicity ofwalking led eventually
to the kilometer and the hour, while manual rhythmicity led to the capture and
immobilization of volumes, a purely human construct. The distance between musi
cal rhythm, which is wholly a matter of time and measure, and the rhythm of the ham
mer or the hoe, which is a matter of immediate or deferred procreation of forms, is
considerable. Musical rhythm generates behavior that symbolically marks the fron
tier between the natural world and humanized space, while technical rhythm mate
rially transforms untamed nature into instruments of humanization. The two are
strictly complementary, but as we have seen in the chapter dealing with the ascent
of Prometheus (chapter 5), their position on the scale of values is not the same.
Music, dance, theater, lived and mimed social situations, belong to the imagination
to the projection upon reality of a light that humanizes the zoological processes of
human situations. They are the clothing in which we dress our social and interper
sonal behavior obeying the most general biological rules; they are the intimate prop
erty of language as opposed to manual technicity. Technical rhythm has no
imagination, it does not humanize behavior but only raw matter. Thousands of years
ago figurative rhythms brought the Moon and Venus within the confines of a human
controlled world and turned them into reassuring actors upon a vast stage where
humans made and unmade their gods; but technical rhythms are only just beginning
laboriously to penetrate sidereal space. Yet the slow invasion of technology has little
by little placed the imagination in a new situation. The gradual erosion of mytho
logical thought (chapter 6) has set societies upon the course of "art for art's sake"
which disguises the crisis in figurative representation. Individuals today are imbued
with and conditioned by a rhythmicity that has reached a stage of almost total
mechanicity (as opposed to humanization). The crisis of figuralism is the corollary
of the dominance of machinism. In the next chapters we shall consider some
approaches to the problem of the survival of demystified time and space. It is striking
to observe that the greatest efforts to save figuralism through the transposition of
mythological values-historical painting, the cult of heroes of labor, the deification
of the machine-are being made i n societies where the metaphysical dimension has
been banished from the values of science and work A balance as constant as the one
that from the earliest times has coordinated the respective roles of figurative rep
resentation and technical activity cannot, it seems, be disturbed without putting in
jeopardy the very sense of the human adventure.
13 The Symbols of Society
Technical gesture is the producer of forms, deriving them from inert nature
and preparing them for animation. The arrow exists only in archery or in the images
of movement it conjures up; the marketplace is transformed from being an empty
space to the extent that it provides the nodal point from which the threads of its uni
versal social integration radiate. Human beings are only human to the extent that
they are in the midst of others and clothed in symbols that give purpose to their exis
tence. Naked and immobile, the high priest and the vagabond are no longer the vehi
cles of a symbolically human system but mere bodies of higher mammals set in a
time and a space without significance. The medieval dances of death were a pro
found reflection of the contrast between biological reality, in whjch the spiritual and
the zoological are merged, and the symbolic apparatus of our social life. The life of
animals is the progression of the individual genetic species; the life of human groups
can substitute the ethnic for the genetic order only by erecting a time, space, and
society that are wholly symbolic, interposed like the coastline of an island between
the stability required and the anarchic movement of the natural world.
The Domestication of Time and Space

The human actpar excellence is perhap� not so much the creation of tools as
the domestication of time and space, or, to put it differently, the creation of a human
time and space. Tools and language are the attributes of a new zoological group
whose earliest representative known to us was the Australanthrope. The long ascent
to the sapiens stage was yet to be made. A little before it was completed, the first
traces of graphic symbolism became perceptible in the last Palaeoanthropians.
Between the final Mousterian and Chatelperronian periods, 50,000 to 30,000 B.C., the
31 4 Ethnic Symbols
first dwellings and the first engraved signs--simple alignments of parallel strokes-
made their appearance simultaneously.
There is little doubt that the building of shelters dates back to a much earlier
time, but the fact that the earliest maintained dwellings coincide with the appearance
of the first rhythmic representations is singular. Integration within concrete time and
space is common to all living beings, as we already pointed out in connection with
physiological aesthetics. In animals, this integration expresses itself in different ways,
and particularly in the perception of safety through the individual's inclusion in the
space and rhythm of the herd, through reactions within the safety perimeter, or
through the use of a temporary or permanent enclosed shelter such as a nest or a
burrow. Our moral and physical comfort too is based on our wholly animal per
ception of the safety perimeter, the enclosed shelter, or socializing rhythms; it would
be pointless to look once again for a division between animal and human in order
to explain our own feelings of attachment to the rhythms of social life and to our
inhabited space. Just as the hand is present in the ape without there being any ques
tion �f technicity in the human sense, just as vocal signs are present at a level where
there can be no question oflanguage, so spatiotemporal perception exists at the bot
tom end of the scale and runs continuously through all the stages of humanization.
In chapters 3 and 6 we have seen how, parallel to the development of tools evidenced
by the remains of fossil industries, it is possible to calculate the rate at which lan
guage evolved among the vanished Anthropians. It should, on the face of it, be easier
to detect traces of the transition from natural to constructed space in the soil than to
do the same for language, but actually the stages are more difficult to elucidate. This
is so in the first place because, unlike tools and language, the making of shelters is
common to humans and many animals. A second reason is the inadequacy of archae
ological sources: Well-preserved habitats before the appearance of Homo sapiens
are rare, and few of them have so far been researched with sufficient precision to
yield very detailed fossil records. The little we do know is, however, enough to show
that a profound change took place at a moment which coincided with the devel
opment of the cerebral apparatus of forms close to Homo sapiens and also with the
development of abstract symbolism, as well as with the intensive diversification of
ethnic units (figures 111 to 113). These archaeological observations enable us to
identify the phenomena of spatiotemporal insertion, from the Upper Paleolithic
onward, with the symbolic apparatus of which language is the main instrument. They
correspond to a real taking possession of time and space through the intermediacy
of symbols, to a domestication in the strictest sense of the term, since they lead to
The Symbols ofSociety 315
the creation of controllable space and time within the home and radiating outward
from the home.
As a result of this symbolic "domestication" the human was able to pass from
the natural rhythmicity of seasons, days, and walking distances to a rhythmicity reg
ulated and packaged within a network of symbols-calendrical, horary, or metric
that turned humanized time and space into a theatrical stage upon which the play of
nature was humanly controlled. The rhythm of regularized cadences and intervals
took the place of the chaotic rhythmicity of the natural world and became the prin
cipal element of human socialization, the very image of social integration, to a point
where our triumphant society's framework is today a checkerboard of cities and
roads on which the movements of individuals are controlled by horary time. The link
between humanized space-time and society is perceived so strongly that for some
centuries an individual desiring to recover his or her spiritual balance has had
nowhere to go except to a monastery or a desert cave, ending up like St. Simeon Styl
ites or the Bodhisattva in a contemplative immobility that is a rejection of both time
and space.
Time
The separation of space from time is a purely technical or scientific convention.
When we say that Moscow is three and a half hours flying time from Paris, we com
municate a richer reality that if we alluded to the 2,500 kilometers that separate the
two cities: richer because it includes the concept of distance as an experience, just
as in the year 1800 it could be said that Lyons was five days away from Paris. By the
same token, when we tell the time by looking at a clock we are connecting time to
the spatial position of the clock hands. If time exists at the ethnological level, it is as
a simple abstraction, as one of the twin poles of rhythm.
The first evidence of rhythmic expression is provided by the bone fragments
or stones marked with regularly spaced incisions that appeared toward the end of
the Mousterian period and were already very abundant in the Chatelperronian
around 30,000 B.C. (figure 82). As we saw in chapter 6, the hypothesis I consider most
likely to be true is that these series of strokes corresponded to the rhythm of words.
It is difficult to imagine that they expressed distances, and there is nothing whatever
to support the hypothesis that they were in any way related to accounting. That they
represented the essential animal rhythm, that of the heartbeat, is not impossible but
cannot be demonstrated. Whatever their meaning, these records-which antedate
316 Ethnic Symbols
the first systems of measurement by many thousands of years-testify for the first
time to rhythms perceived at regular intervals. The few regular rhythms that the nat
ural world offers include that of the stars, that of seasons and days, that of walking,
and that of the heart-all of them, in different degrees, giving priority to the concept
of time over that of space. Upon these nature-given rhythms we have superimposed
the dynamic image of rhythm created and fashioned by human gestures and vocal
emissions and, lastly, the graphic records inscribed by hand upon bone or stone.
Human time is and remains an ambiguous measure because natural rhythms
are shared by all living matter. The measurement of lived time refers to phenomena
unrelated to measurement as such. The study of calendrical systems is of interest in
this respect. In all agricultural-pastoral civilizations, the complex movements of the
stars have engendered astronomic reference systems that tend, whether it be among
the Mayas, the Chinese, the Egyptians, or the Romans, to order the passage of the sea
sons geometrically within a grid established by the periodically recurrent position
in space of some of the main celestial bodies. Endeavors to ensure regularity of the
calendrical grid are inseparable from advances in computing space and quantities.
The measuring of grain or of herds, the architectural integration of the world, play
a far more decisive role in the elaboration of a system of time measurement than the
abstract concept of ideally eqUivalent intervals. If we disregard the "time specialists"
who appeared around the time when the first urban settlements were formed, the
fundamental concept of duration is apprehended only through the recurrence of
produce or operations necessary to life. The calendar of primitive peoples or of
farmers, constructed upon mythical time, is a cycle marked by the return of certain
game birds or animals, the ripeness of certain plants, the tilling of the soil; time in
such a calendar is a concrete, operational entity in which astronomical bodies par
ticipate either as copartners within the vast technicoreligious machine or as remote
dispensers. The periodic return of the seal for the Eskimo, the sprouting of corn for
the farmer, give rise to a time symbolism in which religious thought is applied in the
first place to the operational reality. The development not only of an abstract mea
surement of time but also of an ideology that attributes to the stars the role of
supreme deities came only when agricultural societies had reached a highly urban
ized stage. It was not by chance that eighteenth-century travelers unheSitatingly
described almost all the peoples they encountered as being sun or star worshippers,
while at the same time the French revolutionary calendar attempted to relate time
to the activities of agricultural and technical life. On the one hand, the thinking of
philosophers was permeated by the extraordinary importance assumed by astro-
1be Symbols ofSociety 317
nomical machines and by the millenary traditions of astrology, while on the other
the practical traditions of the farmer's year were used as an antidote to divine time.
The individualization of time reflects the gradual integration of individuals in
the sodal superorganism: Over tens of thousands of years a fabric of symbols,
extremely loosely woven in the early stages, became superimposed upon the com
plex and elastic movement of natural time. The life of animals is no less regular than
that of the nineteenth-century peasant-Uup with the sun, to bed with the fowls"
both are still integrated within a cycle governed by a trilateral contract among nature,
the individual, and sodety. But what was true of rural life until the twentieth century
had no longer been true for several centuries of the urban environment and espe
cially of its most socialized strata, the religious and military classes. For these, the
progress and survival of the social group depend upon abstract time. Their motor
and intellectual integration rests upon a vigorous rhythmic system materialized in
bells and brigles, signals of a code of integration as well as segments of time. Faced
with the need to ensure the collective's survival-for in all major religions the nor
mal course of the universe depends upon the punctuality of sacrifices-the religious
were the first, at the very dawn of civilization, both in the Old and in the New Worlds,
to divide time into ideally regular segments, thereby becoming the dispensers of
months, days, and hours. Not until recently, with the integration of the masses in a
social mechanism where any failure on the part of a specialist can cause collective
disorder, did symbolic time assume an absolutely imperative value. In earlier chap
ters we have seen on several occasions that the liberation of a faculty always leads
to accelerated improvement, not of the individual as such but of the individual as an
element of the social supermechanism. Expressed a thousand times by sodologists
of all persuasions, this fact arises from the existence, parallel with biological evo
lUtion, of the stream of material development that sprang forth from the human as
soon as language had pierced the confines of the concrete. It has led to the exter
iorization of tools (already achieved much earlier as a fundamental condition), of
muscle, and eventually of the nervous system of responsiveness. The exteriorization
of time took place Simultaneously but along different lines; time became the grid
within which individuals became locked at the moment when the system of respon
siveness reduced the period required for transmission to hours, minutes, and even
tually to seconds. In sectors where the limit has been reached, the individual
functions as a cell, an element of the collective program, within a network of signals
that not only control his or her gestures or effective mental activity but also regulate
his or her right to absence, that is, to rest or leisure time. The primitive individual
318 Ethnic Symbols
comes to terms with time, but perfect social time does not come to terms with any
one or anything, not even with space, for space no longer exists except in terms of
the time required to travel through it. Socialized time implies a totally symbolic
humanized space like that of our cities where clay and night fall at prescribed hours,
summer and winter have been reduced to average proportions, and the relationship
between individuals and their place of activity is instantaneous. This ideal has been
only partially achieved; we need only think what the urban lighting, heating, and pub
lic transport must have been like a century ago to acknowledge that much of the jour
ney is already done.
Humanized Space
We belong to the category of mammals that spend part of their existence inside
an artificial shelter. In this respect we differ from the monkeys-among whom the
most highly developed make only rough adjustments to the place where they will
spend a night-but resemble the numerous rodents whose elaborately constructed
burrows serve as the center of their territory and often as their food store. The sub
ject of human territorial behavior was discussed in chapter 5; here we shall consider
the humanized image of the territory.
Even fragmentary information about the earliest beginnings of humanly orga
nized space is lacking. The Australanthropians have not yet yielded up any habitat
that could be studied in detail, the Sinanthropians left their traces in a cave in which
concretions made observation extremely difficult, practically nothing is known until
the Palaeoanthropians. According to a deep-rooted scientific tradition, prehistoric
humans lived in caves. If this were true, it would suggest interesting comparisons
with the bear and the badger, omnivorous and plantigrade like ourselves, but it
would be more correct to suppose that although humans sometimes took advantage
of caves when these were habitable, they lived in the open in.the statistically over
whelming majority of cases and, from the time when records become available, in
built shelters.
Although records are rare, they fortunately relate to the period during which
the Palaeoanthropians evolved into Homo sapiens, that is to say, just before and just
after the advent of the first graphic symbols. It is therefore reasonable to assume that
Mousterian habitats represent the ultimate stage of the archaic Anthropians' devel
opment of space, whereas Upper Paleolithic habitats represent the beginnings of the
stage still going on today.
Exact surveys are available of three Mousterian habitats, one in the open air at
Molodovo on the Dniester and the other two in caves (the Hyena and Reindeer Caves
at Arey-sur-Cure in the department of the Yonne in France). They differ quite con
siderably in form, the Soviet site (figure 111) bc:ing a circular one about 8 meters in
diameter, which suggests the presence of a tent or hut, the Hyena site occupying a
space of 5 to 6 meters diameter, and the Reindeer site being part of a gallery, 2 meters
wide by 5 to 6 meters long (figure 112). The similarities among the three habitats
are, however, striking. Each consists of a central area where the hearths were situated
and which were found relatively free from animal remains but rich in stone tools,
surrounded by a thick peripheral ridge of scraped and crushed bones. Leaving out
ofaccount the structure which must have existed at Molodovo, the reconstituted pic
ture is rather meager: Neanderthal man lived surrounded by carcasses of his game,
which he pushed aside in order to provide himself with living space.
The contrast with habitats dating to around 30,000 B.c. is striking. The earliest
are the Chatelperronian ones found in the Reindeer cave at Arey (figli re 113). Com
parison is facilitated by the fact that they are situated at the same spot as one of the
Mousterian habitats discussed in the preceding paragraph. These habitats are the
sites of tents built at the entrance to the cave. Each forms a circle 3 to 4 meters in
diameter with a central area of clay that has been cleared of stones and compacted,
surrounded by a ring of stone slabs forming a pavement. Outside the circle vertical
holes were provided for the insertion oflarge mammoth tusks forming a frame. The
whole space was carefully maintained; a few piles of coarse rubble, and scattered on
the slope, some "rubbish bins"-small heaps of ash intermingled with discarded
scraps of flint and small bone fragments-were found outside. Thus the earliest
point in time at which figurative representation appears is also the moment when
living quarters begin to be set apart from the outer chaos. The role of the human as
the organizer of space manifests itself here in the systematic adaptation of space. This
most ancient example is confirmed by the numerous tent or hut sites-vestiges of
circular or elongated dwellings with their hearths and their bone pits--discovered
in Moravia, the Ukraine, and Russia. In France recent excavations conducted more
meticulously than in the past have resulted in the discovery of similar dwellings con
structed in caves or beneath overhanging rock. Still more recently, a very large Mag
dalenian camp site was found at Pincevent near Montereau.
Organization of inhabited space is not only a matter of technical convenience
but also, by the same token as language, the symbolic expression of globally human
behavior. In all known human groups the habitat meets the threefold requirement
of creating a technically efficient environment, establishing a framework for the
320 Ethnic Symbols
111
1 12
111. Tent or hut site, Mousterian (before 40,000 B.C.). The traces of this dwelling, discov
ered at Molodovo in the U.S.S.R., are marked by a circlefonned of animal remains.
112. Mousterian habitat in a remote gal/ery of the Reindeer cave at Arcy-sur-Cure.
The Symbols ofSociety 32 1
113. Site of huts built under the porch ofthe Reindeer cave at Arcy-sur-Cure. Cbatelper
ronian, about 36,000 B.C.).
322 Ethnic Symbols
social system, and providing a starting point for the work of ordering the surround
ing universe. The first of these properties forms part of functional aesthetics and has
been discussed earlier: Every habitat is clearly an instrument, and for that reason is
subject to the rules that govern the relationship between function and form.
Social Space
A century of sociology has taught us that the dwelling and, more broadly speak
ing, the habitat is the concrete symbol of a social system. The layouts of the camps
of Bushmen or Indians of the American southwest, or of Amazonian or New Cale
donian villages (figures 1 14, 1 15, and 116), expressing as they do the separations
between families and clans within the topographical unit, are classic examples. We
need only turn the pages of the Paris trade directory to realize how closely the same
rule still applies to a modern City.
It would be most interestirig to determine the date of the earliest traces of
social functionalism in the human habitat, and in particular to investigate the pos
sible convergences between sociospatial organization and technoeconomic evolu
tion. The evidence from late prehistoric times is perfectly obscure; nothing in the
lair of Mousterian man can reasonably be perceived to imply social divisiOns. The
perspectives opened up by habitats of the Upper Paleolithic are clearer: Their often
very poor state of preservation notwithstanding, the organically constructed char
acter of these habitats and the diversity of objects found in them can shed some light
on the question. One almost ideal case, that of the Upper Paleolithic dwellings found
at Mal'ta in Siberia, does exist (figure 1 17). These are extraordinarily well-preserved
tent sites in which the archaeologist, M. Gerasimov, was able to verify several times
over that the hearths to the right and the left of each dwelling were surrounded by
objects of a different kind, with female statuettes, awls used in sewing, and scrapers
used for working animal skins near the former and statuettes of birds, spears, knives,
and large awls near the latter. In one case at least we find, at the level ofthe primitive
economy, the two complementary elements of the man/woman couple expressing
themselves topographically through a separation between male and female furnish
ings. The present-day Bushman encampment (figure 1 14)-with its communal fire
for men and individual fires for each woman and its huts for couples, little girls, and
adolescents-reveals a very similar sociofunctional organization. The igloo topog
raphy of Eskimo households also reflects a precise delimitation of the man's and the
woman's respective spheres. The basic character of societies with a primitive econ-
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114. Encampment ofBushman hunters: (1) Central tree beneath which the men gather
and where they deposit their game; (2) the men's campfire; (3) the chief's hut; (4) hutsfor
families andgirls ofmarriageable age; (5)younger girls' hut; (6) adolescent boys' hut; (7)
visiting girls' hut; (8) visiting sisters' hut; (9) widowers, widows, strangers; (10) dancing
area (after W. H. Bleek).
115. Kanak village, New Caledonia: (1) Men's hut, (2)family huts, (3) altar, (4) women's
alleyways (family rites), (5) Men's alleyways (clanfestivals, banquets, dances) (after
M. Leenbardt).
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116. Winnebago Indian village, in two complementary halves: (1) to (4) Community cab
ins ofthe wamor (1), thunderbird (2), bear (3), and bison (4) clans. (5) Family cabins of
the upperpbratry; (6)family cabins ofthe lowerpbratry (after P. Radin).
1 1 7. Vestiges ofan Upper Paleolithic tent at Mal'ta, Siberia. The women's chattels were
grouped on one side ofthe lateralfireplaces, the men's on the other (after M. Gerasimov).
omy finds expression in an organization of space within which the dominant social
division is governed by the technoeconomic functions of the couple.
Only a few archeological records concerning the earliest agricultural economy
are as yet available. Much archaeological work still remains to be done. Until now
archaeology's main concern has been with establishing a chronology. An interpre
tation of how objects were used, of whether they were employed by men or by
women, of their position within the inhabited space must await further excavations
oriented toward a more comprehensive recording of facts. plans ofvillages exist, but
few are complete, and none is detailed enough to show the precise position of all
objects. Tombs are more clearly circumscribed and have therefore been better stud
ied. In some cases where the collective burial place mirrors the world of the living,
as in the artificial caves of the Marne, it is possible to form a sociological view. Never
theless, the time when a major part of a fossil record will no longer be lost to the
scholar lies far in the future. What we can dimly glimpse through archaeological evi
dence concerning nonurbanized agricultural societies in all parts of the globe is the
relative uniformity of inhabited elements within the village as a whole, the frequency
of very large dwellings with separate hearths, and communal burial places without
any apparent social hierarchy. Although subject to many variations, these facts are
also true of modern nonurbanized agricultural societies, particularly in America,
Oceania, and Indonesia, on the fringes of the urbanized world; they correspond to
a techno economic stage where the couple begins to yield in importance to larger
units and where the society ensures its cohesion through diverse complex kinship
systems designed no longer to protect individuals but to balance family groups by
means of matrimonial and economic arrangements. As with the evolution of the
brain or of tools, structures are superimposed on one another without being
mutually exclusive. The latest one to develop is based on the preceding one so that
the importance of the couple survives as an infrastructure just as that of the extended
family will survive, becoming added to the preceding structure, in subsequent
stages. The spatial system of elementary agricultural societies already seems very dif
ferentfrom that of primitive hunters and gatherers, for, as we saw in chapter 5, settled
existence transformed not only the social apparatus but the very image of the world.
Itinerant Space and Radial Space

We perceive the surrounding world in two ways, a dynamic one whereby we
travel through space to take cognizance of it and a static one that enables us, while
remaining immobile, to reconstitute circles around ourselves extending to the limits
326 Ethnic Symbols
of the unknown. The first offers an image of the world linked to an itinerary; the sec-
0nd integrates the image within the two opposing surfaces of sky and earth meeting
at the horizon. These two modes of perception are found separately or together in
all animals, the itinerant mode being particularly characteristic of land species and
the radial mode of birds. It could also be said that the former is connected with pre
dominant muscular and olfactory perception, while the latter principally concerns
species with a developed sense of vision; the classification is only a very rough one,
for the wolfwheri resting undoubtedly perceives the world in the form of "olfactory
surfaces." In the human the two modes are coexistent and essentially linked with
vision. They have given rise to a dual representation of the world in which both
modes operate simultaneously but in relative proportions that were apparently
reversed on settlement. The principal contents of the mythology of hunters and gath
erers are images of trajectories-trajectories of celestial bodies and the travels of
heroic figures. In many myths from various parts of the world, including the prea
gricultural substratum of Mediterranean civilizations, the universe is initially chaotic
and peopled by monstrous entities. In the course of his itinerary, the hero fights the
monsters, regulates the position of mountains and rivers, and names the animals,
thus transforming the universe into an image symbolically assimilable and controlla
ble by the human. The mythologies of North American Indians provide fine exam
ples of such "organizing" itineraries; among Mediterranean examples, the myth of
Hercules suggests that the first urban civilizations probably assimilated the remains
of an earlier ideology.
It would be particularly interesting to be able to form an idea of Paleolithic
man's image of the world. Prehistoric art ought to be of great help in this respect,
but the choice of figures in cave art and the manner in which these figures are orga
nized are at first glance baffling. Until recently cave art was seen as essentially magic
in nature, but now it appears to have been a more general figurative system, a real
mythology including couples of male and female figures, pairs of animals-for the
most part a bison and a horse-and a third animal, generally an ibex, stag, or mam
moth. The figures are distributed over several "rooms" and follow the topographical
layout of the cave in a progression, with big cats and rhinoceroses appearing in the
final room. Any layout in which the figures surround the artist who executes them
reflects something of the artist's image of the humanized universe. Nothing of the
radial mode is to be seen in cave art; the perspective needed to symbolize the two
surfaces is lacking. The organization of the figures has confused scholars for a long
time because its order is alien to ours and we have tended to view it as haphazard
and chaotic. Discovered by torchlight, the figures ofLascaux are ordered, not in sep-
arate panels, but along a trajectory and connected with one another by the link of a
theme whose meaning escapes us but which is repeated again and again until the
rhinoceros figures are reached at the very bottom of the cave. The situation is even
more palpable at Niaux, where the images forming small groups stretch over-more
than a kilometer, and more palpable still at La Cullalvera (Santander province, Spain)
where a single version of the theme is repeated, figure by figure, at intervals of sev
eral hundreds of meters over a total distance of 2 kilometers. Is Paleolithic art a real
cosmogony? The coritrary is far from being proved by the absence of any represen
tation of astral bodies after our own fashion, but neither is there anything to prove
definitively that it is. Whatever the meaning of the myths, their linear ordering and
the occurrence of repetitions are positive facts.
Radial Space
The nomad hunter-gatherer visualized the surface of a territory by crossing it;
the settled farmer constructed the world in concentric circles around a granary. The
earthly paradise was a garden laid out against the side of a mountain, with the tree
of knowledge in its middle and with four rivers flowing from it to the ends of the
earth. This image bears no relation either to the Lascaux cave painting or to the Her
culean myth. Everything within it has been named by the human being (and there
fore exists symbolically), but the naming appears to have been done on the spot,
within the Edenic center itself. The form in which the Book bf Genesis has come
down to us provides an ideal illustration of how a society at an already advanced stage
of settled agriculture sees the world. Practically the same is true of the cosmogonies
of the great American civilizations or of China, societies already marked by the trend
toward systematization that sprang from writing. It is not easy to visualize the evo
lution that took place in the five or six thousand years of the agricultural revolution
antedating all written records. The innumerable cave painting figures of Europe,
Africa, and Asia between the end of the Paleolithic around 8000 B.C. and the Bronze
Age shed only a very faint light upon the subject, but they do contain two aspects
absent from Paleolithic art, namely real scenes of the hunt, of tilling, or of animal
breeding activities, and representations in plan or in perspective (figure 93) in which
dwellings are included. Here too solar wheels and lunar crescents are seen for the
first time. Excavations byJ. Mellaart in Anatolia in 1961 revealed part of an Early Neo
lithic village dating back to approximately 6000 B.C. in which the walls of several
houses were decorated with frescoes (figure 118). These earliest known mural paint
ings represent extensive scenes in which figures of bulls and stags are surrounded
3 28 Ethnic Symbols
118. (atal Huyiik, Anatolia. Neolithicfrescoes, seventh century B.C. (after]. Mellaart).
by individuals armed with bows (hunters or dancers). The general design and the
subjects are not dissimilar to the at least 3,000 years more recent Minoan frescoes of
Crete. This extraordinary discovery demonstrates to what an extent, from the very
beginnings of agriculture, settled existence imprinted a new form upon the whole
setting of social life. The thick-walled, closely spaced quadrangular houses, with their
interior courtyards and their decorated rooms, the dead buried under platforms
which probably served as beds for the living, and walled granaries, constitute a totally
humanized microcosm surrounded concentrically by fields, forests, and mountains.
Microcosm and Macrocosm

Although records do not yet provide us with the details of an evolution, the
earliest texts reveal a system of symbolic representation of the universe which, in
broad outline, is astonishingly similar in America, China, India, Mesopotamia (fig
ures 76 and 78), Egypt, and wherever a culture was entering or was about to enter
upon the era of writing. Such a system involves siting the capital city at the inter
section of cardinal points and constructing a code of correspondences which grad
ually assimilates all creation within its system (figure 1 19).
With urban centralization, symbolic data referring to space and time assume
a preponderant value, and as we have seen, technoeconomic development leads to
119. Twelfth- or thirteenth-century copy ofa map ofthe world drawn by the monk Beatus
in the eighth century AD. The /andpart, surrounded by a drcular ocean and cut crosswise
by the Mediterranean andRedseas, consists only ofparts ofEurasia and Africa known in
antiquity. A purely logical construction, with Rome andJerusalem, located at the center,
fadng each other. Eden, with itsfour riversforming a cross, is situated at top left, separated
from Mesopotamia by the sea and Alexandria.
330 Ethnic Symbols
the concurrent emergence of the fire crafts (metallurgy, glassmaking, pottery), writ
ing, monumental architecture, and a crude social hierarchy, all of which make the
ethnic group's capital into a fully humanized kernel at the center of the territory that
feeds it. This technoeconomic process has recurred hundreds of times since agri
culture first became settled, sometimes as part of a larger historical development but
sometimes apparenrly in isolation. Its causes are connected with technical deter
minism, and therefore in theory it is as futile to look for traces of historic links
between Mesopotamia and the Mayas as it is to see in them the effect of automatic
convergence, for either may be true. The same applies to the cosmogonies or meta
physical systems proper and common to all agricultural civilizations of a technoe
conomic level corresponding to the earliest urbanization. The first settled view of
the universal order was extraordinarily logical and rational; all of its elements were
nearly ordered and interconnected; and what has been regarded as the mysterious
science of the Egyptians, the Chinese, the people of Atlantis, or the Mayas has the
same quality of attraction. It is not altogether idle to wonder why this "science"
. emerged at the same time as the penal code, the built esplanade, and money lending
against a written undertaking.
The existence of a fully humanized area and the integration of that area in the
surrounding universe give rise to problems as specific as those of the integration in
space of individuals: The collective organism must accomplish its spatial integration
in a process of movement. The integration of individuals in the urbanized organism
is accomplished by rhythms that control the conditioning of the group. Urban time,
as we have seen, is humanized time par excellence, but the integration of the kernel
formed by humans and their technoeconomic environment can only take place as
part of an effort to establish an ordered continuity between the humanized kernel
and the aureole of the natural world that surrounds it.
This ideal continuity is found in the movement of the heavens which provides
the intersection of the cardinal points or any other astral reference point regarded
as fixed. The city is then situated at the center of the world, and its immovability guar
antees' as it were, that the heavens are pivoted upon it. As the central point of the
heavens and the earth, it is integrated in the universal apparatus whose image it
reflects: The sun rises to the east and sets equally far to the west of the city, and its
inhabitants are inclined to believe that, beyond their aureole, there exist less for
tunate places much closer to the West-the home of darkness-or to the rising sun
in the East. The city's West and East are West and East par excellence, for they mark
the exits and entrances of the heavenly body in a completely humanized and sym
bolical microcosm (figure 120).
1be Symbols ofSociety 331
..
II
120. Plan ofPeking: Geometrically oriented city. The imperialpalace is in the center, the
entrancefacing south.
.
332 Ethnic Symbols
For reasons that connect architecture with writing and with spatial integration,
the city is the reference point of metrology. Land surveying plays a major role, and
the farthest confines of the earth are connected by the symbolic radii of the wheel
of distances. The result is a geometrical image of the world and of the city involving
a whole network of corresponding spatial elements. If the city gates coincide with
the cardinal points, the north gate need only be called "Winter Gate," and the sym
bolism of space will be enriched with the dynamics of time. The people of the city
need only go to each gate in turn in order to let in each season, and the result will
be not only spatiotemporal integration but also mechanical control of the universal
machine. This process, which is described here as a gradual one, is only the adap
tation of one of the properties of language-or, more broadly, of the faculty of sym
bolization-to the city regarded as an umbilicus. ' This absolutely general property
requires that the symbol shall control the object, that a thing shall exist only once it
has been named, that possession of the symbol for the object shall bestow the faculty
of exercising an effect upon the object. This attitude, which we ascribe to "primitive
societies" in their "magic" practices, is just as present in the most scientific modern
behavior, for phenomena can only be grasped to the extent that thought can, through
words, exercise an effect upon them by constructing a symbolic image that will then
be brought materially into existence.
The connection between the geographical East and the East Gate is therefore
a normal connection between the object and its symbol. It is the fundamental prop
erty of cities to provide an ordered picture of the universe. Order is introduced
through the city's geometry and through the measuring of time and space. Life is
maintained by identifying the symbols for the movement of heavenly bodies with
that movement itself or by believing that it is the symbol of plant rebirth that actually
causes plants to grow. Historians of religion have demonstrated the highly gener
alized nature of ball games as symbols of the solar year: Common in the Americas,
in China, and until recently in]apan, they have been the source of ceremonies of a
most elaborate cosmogonic character (figure 121).
In the geometrical and oriented capitals ofthe Chinese and]apanese, the impe
rial palace occupies the place of honor, its back abutting on the north wall, its fac;ade
facing southward. Within the palace enclosure, the ball-game field too is geometrical
and oriented, with a cherry tree (spring) in the northeast corner, a willow (summer)
in the southeast, a maple (autumn) in the southwest, and a pine (winter) in the north
west. Two groups of four players, arranged in a circle, must bring the ball down from
the branches of the tree of spring and kick it twice round the field in opposite direc
tions, stopping in turn at the corner of each equinox and solstice. Then each player
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121. Layoutfor the traditional ballgame (ancient China, Japanj: (a) Playingfield, position
oftheplayers and order ofplay. (b) and (c) Figures ideally described by the ball, forming
two swastikas rotating in opposite directions.
334 Ethnic Symbols
must kick the ball diagonally across the field by a series of shots zigzagging east-west
and north-south.
The movement of the universe is not only rotary but also alternating and con
trasting: cold from the north and heat from the south, youth from the east and old
age from the west, and so on, so that each part of the universe (and of the city) cor
responds to a quality as well as to a cardinal point. Once this is established, the
human being holds the key to the universe, and astonishing bodies of knowledge
founded entirely upon the play of contrasts and identities and encompassing the
whole of known reality from numbers to medicine and from architecture to music,
come into being in different but ultimately convergent forms. In ancient China there
were five elements, five heavens, five kinds of animals, musical notes, scents, num
bers, places of sacrifice, bodily organs, colors, tastes, and divinities to correspond to
the four cardinal points and the center. Obviously therefore the South, summer,
birds, the smell of burning, the hearth, the lungs, the color red, bitterness, the figure
7, and the note chou have properties in common and can be used to act upon one
another. Perfect spatiotemporal integration has been achieved, and the human is
completely safe because everything is explained, grasped, and assigned to its proper
place. Sometimes the moon cannot be prevented from eclipsing the sun, but it is
important to know that this is due to the excessive influence of the feminine prin
ciple; you can then reform the heavens by reforming the actions of the inhabitants
of the humanized microcosm. The Aztecs too had such systems, as did the Greeks
and the Egyptians. As recently as the sixteenth century, European thought was still
dominated by similar systems, and some African societies still preserve a philosophy
based on these principles. To regard them as the fruit of an incompletely formed
intelligence is as mistaken as to find in them traces of a mysterious and perfect knowl
edge that has allegedly come down to us in mutilated form. The miraculous aspect
of cosmogonic thought is all the easier to exploit as it corresponds to f=onstructs
made of completely logical and verifiable facts, develops along lines spontaneously
accessible to human reason, and leads to a set of formulas that mysteriously explains
everything. The ancient wisdom of the Egyptians, or the Tibetans, will be invoked for
many years yet, together with what survives of the Cabbala, the Pythagorean philos
ophy, and the secrets of the pyramids or the cathedrals, because it really was wis
dom-that is, reflection and the search for an explanation that might soothe human
anguish at existing, alone in the midst of nature's chaos, as the creator of order. Cos
mogonic thought is historically venerable because it accompanied Civilization
through its earliest scientific development. It is still accessible to our minds, just as
the no less ancient sickle is still manipulable by our hands, although it is difficult to
The Symbols ojSociety 335
believe that the sickle is the evanescent reminder of miraculous combine harvesters
used by the people of Atlantis to bring in the crops of their forever vanished fields.
Science, like technology, obeys the laws of a certain historical logic.
Antiquity
The integration of humanized space in the external universe takes place
according to certain fundamental laws which, not surprisingly, are met with at all
stages of human history, whatever the level of technoeconomic or ideological evo
lution of the particular group concerned. That which expresses itself in the human
through architectural or figurative symbols applies in animals to the most elemen
tary forms ofacquisitive behavior; the physical and psychic balance of species which,
like humans, draw a distinction between the refuge and the outside world rests upon
comings and goings between the shelter and the territory. It is therefore only natural
that the "shelter/territory" relationship should be the main term in the formula of
spatiotemporal representation and that the form of the shelter should not Simply
meet the practical requirements of protection and economy but also serve as the
hinge between shelter and territory, between humanized space and untamed uni
verse, the twin terms of spatiotemporal integration both static and dynamic.
As we have seen, a tremendous break occurred when the primitive world
adopted a new mode of integration in space through the settling of agriculture.

Although no change in the basiC ground plan was possible once that mode was estab
lished, major variations did take place, and they affected the ideology underlying the
choice offorms. To put it differently, once the ground plan for the most ancient cities
had been drawn, there was no reason for fundamental change throughout Antiquity,
the Middle Ages, and down to the present day. Throughout its history the city must
preserve its cosmogonic character, but the manner in which it is perceived as the
image ofthe world may be profoundly altered by ideological evolution and historical
circumstances.
Creating an artificial area within which the human is isolated as in a magic cir
cle is inseparable from being able to introduce into that area, materially or sym
bolically, the controlled elements of the external universe. Integrating the granary,
repository of nourishment, is not so different from integrating the temple, symbol
of the controlled universe. Transposing this proposition to the animal level, we can
say that there is no categorical distinction between the burrow as a refuge and as a
store of consumable goods. In the Mesopotamian city and the Dogon village alike,
the temple and the storehouse are close to one another; indeed they are linked
336 Ethnic Symbols
together within a close ideological network. 'The reason why the fabric of symbols
that covers the functional reality of human institutions exhibits such extraordinary
coincidences is precisely because the underlying forms are so deeply similar.
It is a striking fact that the cities of classical Mediterranean antiquity within the
Greek or Roman spheres of influence retain a geometrical layout directly inspired
by archaic architectural ideas, although, by the time they were built, the old ideology
of effective correspondences had already faded (figure 122). Right into the modern
era processions went on reproducing the movement of heavenly bodies and sac
rifices signaled the start of the agricultural cycle, but they did so in an intellectual
context with explanations supplied by functional realism. This is particularly notice
able in the development of the Roman world where, although every action was still
imbued with religious significance, the rational development of the sciences had
already begun to furnish a lateral explanation of the universe. A great distance
already lay between the Heraclean world, or that of Gilgamesh, and the universe of
Herodotus or Seneca. By a process already described many times, a new explanatory
mode came into being-the mode of scientific explanation which, without com
pletely eliminating the preceding stages, relegated them to halftones. A parallel with
the present situation of astronomy and astrology comes to mind: No one would
dream of questioning the scientific reality of the sidereal universe upon which our
feeling of universal integration is now founded, yet a thousand times more human
beings read horoscopes than works of astronomy. 'The old system of cosmogonic
correspondences has survived in the background. Although contact between Mars
and Earth is no,!, established in the observatory and not in the ancestral temple, there
is still a direct link between the planetary·symbol and individuals born under its sign
whom this imaginary connection provides with the essential feeling of cosmic
integration.
'The capital city remains the center of the world because its entire universe con
verges upon it. What was once a metaphysical explanation assumes forms very close
to those still known to us today. Exoticism�ur cult of exotic objects, zoos, circus
acts involVing elephants, lions, and Blackamoors-bears witness to the forms taken
by spatial integration in the ancient world. 'The city is no longer just the point of con
vergence of cosmic influences; it tends to create within itself a highly material image
of the natural universe that surrounds it. .'The problem of reintroducing nature into
superhumanized urban space is not just a problem of the city-dwellers' health; it
responds to a very deep psychological need, the need to symbolize our reactions of
freedom or aggressivity which the concentration of human masses in a completely
artificial space can no longer satisfy.
122. Plan ofPrinias showing the emplacement ofthe Hellenic city, geometrical and ori
ented at thefoot ofa barred spurforming afortified acropolis.
338 Ethnic Symbols
It is not by chance that systems of explaining the world belong simultaneously

to religion and science. The reason why these two have been seen as rivals since
ancient days is that they express, at two different levels, the same fundamental atti
tude of dynamic balance between safety and freedom. Each holds out a twofold
promise, that of material or metaphysical assurance and that of convincing explo
ration. In prescientific times both aspects flowed into one within the former; the
microcosmic configuration of the human city was perceived as tangible evidence of
metaphysical reality. At the scientific stage the separation is merely apparent; indi
viduals whose integration is incomplete, when they do not turn to science for a meta
physical demonstration of an immaterial reality, more or less consciously expect
metaphysics to furnish them with material assurance of the reality of another world,
which is still perceived as being located in the sky. The opposition of safety to free
dom is also that of order to chaos, which is not disorder but the promise of effective
organization: It is the opposition of the rhythmicity of daily actions to an escape into
exceptional ones-the very foundation of the economics of progress which pre
supposes that a routine broken up by innovations is the basis for survival. By suc
cessive stages, from the highest to the lowest, we arrive at the same alternative, the
same two-way flow or the same cycle that joins immobility to movement, safety to
freedom, comfort to acquisition, the shelter to the territory. Upon these values
human development constructs successive systems of symbols which, although
increasingly complex, have a common origin.
The Middle Ages

It is interesting to note that the Middle Ages saw a major change in the form of
the city. Mediterranean traditions had resulted in a geometric layout applied to the
terrain more or less without regard to its topography. The foundations were laid in
a cosmogonically significant oriented checkerboard pattern, but it was architectural
volume that made the city. Thus the Roman city or encampment was from the very
start an example of completely humanized form. European medieval traditions are
different in nature, having developed from the elementary agricultural habitat
from the village whose houses are huddled together within a rounded enclosure that
itself hugs the shape of a promontory or a hill. Orientation is observed, and the medi
eval city, like those of Mesopotamia or of the Aztecs, is coupled to the sky by means
of two cross streets laid out in the direction of the points of the compass (figure 123).
The sanctuary is situated at or near the central intersection and a cross, or sometimes
a black stone, marks the ideal center of the urban space. The church itself is oriented
b c
123. (a) Idealplan ofJerusalem after a thirteenth-century Icelandic manuscript. (b) and
(c) Plans ofthe medieval cities ofRothenburg and Egisheim. Note thepersistence ofcruci
form streetpatterns in a circular area with a nongeometric layout. The main axis has been
displaced because the directional church stands asidefrom the main streets.
340 Ethnic Symbols
and its spatial integration fits into the traditional ground plan. The ideological con
tent is different from that of antiquity. The symbolism of the cross informs the
humanized space, but the underlying schema is the same and extends to the whole
of the known universe. Jerusalem, a circular cruciform city, is situated at the center
of a circular world cut crosswise by four seas, with four cardinal winds and with the
heavenly bodies rotating round it. Every city is circular, at least ideally, and cut across
by its four cardinal streets. The medieval cartographers' Jerusalem enclosed Calvary
within its space, just as Mesopotamian temples had enclosed the ziggurat and pre
Colombian cities the pyramid. One of the urban microcosm's permanent functions,
besides that of providing a link with the cardinal points, is to connect the center with
the sky. In Christian ideology the connection is purely mystical, but the place of
Christ's ascent to Heaven and descent into Hell corresponds to the center of the
Christian world.
The consistency of the image of the world from the earliest cities until the Mid
dle Ages, the frequency with which it recurs in different parts of the world and at
different moments in history, suggest that what is involved is a basic trait of human
behavior, as characteristic as manual activity or language. Integration in the cosmos,
though relegated over the centuries to contexts increasingly far removed from the
elemental, remains intact as a human need. From the earliest dawn of humankind
until our Middle Ages it expressed itself in a religious cosmogonic vision. In modern
times it reappears in the cold light of science.
The Eighteenth Century

With the Renaissance . the Gothic schema was abandoned and ties were re
established, in appearance at least, with the classical past. Architecture recovered its
long perspectives, and town planners sought inspiration in antiquity. The effect of
this development upon the layout of our older capitals is difficult to trace. In many
of them, like Paris, the circles of the medieval city are superimposed upon a still per
ceptible Roman ground plan, with neoclassical urbanism merely adding a few broad
esplanades. But the integration of space in newly created towns, generally fortified
ones like Neuf-Brisach or Brouage, is very characteristic. The indented fortifications
dictated by the demands of artillery enclose a space rigorously divided on an East
West, North-South pattern with geometrically laid out streets (figure 124).
The building of new capitals such as Washington and Saint Petersburg in the
eighteenth century marked the peak of an urbanism undoubtedly reminiscent of
antiquity but, above all, dominated by the search for a rational balance of space
a
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124. (a) Plan ofNeuf-Brisach, department ofHaut Rhin, France, a seventeenth-centuryfor
tified town. The city walls are geometric as an artillery defense measure. The town has no
orientation, but the traditional layout has been respected (b) Eighteenth-centuryplan of
Washington, DC Note the double welt (cardinaland diagonal) and the disappearance of
the crudform layout.
342 Ethnic Symbols
humanized by construction. No metaphysical concerns are discernible in Pierre

L'Enfant's plans for Washington or Jean Baptiste Leblond's for Saint Petersburg,
whose orientation is dictated only by the nature of the terrain and by a systematic
humanization which, precisely as in the earlier instances we have discussed, leads
to the establishment of a geometric network of main streets with right-angled inter
sections. At the dawn of industrial civilization, spatial integration was still conceived
of as the antithesis to the untamed universe-that is to say, as an intransigent order
to be imposed upon the chaos of nature.
It was an order that did not entirely escape from the principles of cosmogony.
The eighteenth century was so steeped in ideas of comparison between religions, so
fascinated with the search for a metaphysics of nature, that some sort of "neocos
mogonism" was bound to emerge. It reached its peak in the work of the architect
Claude Ledoux, who dreamed of urban developments ordered like the solar system.
His plans for a "canon forge" or for the saltworks at Chaux (partially executed) antic
ipate present-day industrial urbanism using means of symbolic expression not even
dreamed of by the emperors of ancient China (figure 125). But when all is said and
done, these projects once more reduced urban space to a geometrically patterned
area dominated by circular or quadrangular elements and situated at the intersection
of four major arteries.
The Disintegration of the City

From the late eighieenth century onward, the character of spatial integration
became confused. The effects of industrialization gready accelerated the humani
zation of land space. The natural universe was crisscrossed by a network of railways
and roads that determined a specific mode of growth (figure 80) comparable to that
of microorganisms invading a tissue. The city became an "agglomeration" of utili
tarian buildings, with connecting arteries provided as the need arose. Vast inhumanly
humanized areas came into being, the individuals inside them exposed to the two
fold effect of these cities' technical and spatial disintegration. The two chief imper
atives of human well-being--creative activity, on the one hand, social and spatial
integration, on the other-seemed completely to escape the control of a century
beset by social crises. This anarchic development is still going on today, and its con
sequences are still· felt in many city centers.
At no time in history has the link between acquisition and spatial integration
perhaps been more clearly apparent than during the past century and a half. The
human animal's venturing forth from its refuge in order to take cognizance of the
b
125. (a) Isometricprojection ofthe saltworks at Chaux, France, designed in the eighteenth
century by Claude Ledoux. (b) Ledoux's plan for a cemetery at Chaux inspired by cosmic
symbolism.
344 Ethnic Symbols
outside world is biologically connected with domination, victorious possession,

annihilation of the consumable or simply destructible Other. Living in space and con
suming in order to survive are one and the same thing. That is why it is so difficult
to distinguish between symbols of birth and death in Paleolithic art, where the spear
merges into one with symbols of virility and the mortal wound is indistinguishable
from the female sex organ. In the course of his world-organizing travels, the hero
of preagricultural myth in America or the Orient does not merely name rivers and
mountains: He kills, and thereby immobilizes, the monsters who are rivers and
mountains. The ideally cosmogonic city of the Mediterranean of proto-historical
times and Antiquity was not merely an image of the universe, it was also the starting
point for quests in search of domination and the place where precious metals and
bronze were processed. The spatial conquest of the West, from the discovery of
America to the assimilation of the last unexplored square mile, conducted in the
name of the acquisition of gold and furs, spelled the death of the primitive human
and animal world. If the rules of spatial integration that govern the forms of urban
architecture and the functions of its various parts could be completely separated
from urban architecture itself, aesthetics would be seen to play a rather minor role
in the relationship.
Until the nineteenth century the forms of urban units-both large and small
were well-balanced even where their texture had been rendered highly complex by
growth. The fact that balance of form could be maintained was largely due to urban
distances, which from the earliest times had been adapted to the pace of walking.
Eighteenth-century towns were still microcosms within which the individual dimen
sion was respected in both space and time. Even eighteenth-century capitals were
aggregates of parochial microcosms whose design was perceptible at walking speed,
whether on foot or on horseback. Encircled by their walls or their boulevards, these
cities could still be physicallyfelt by their inhabitants.
The nineteenth-century agglomerations and the urban monstrosities that still
survive (figures 80, 81, and 126) in the midst of our century's population explosion
were the expression of a crisis undoubtedly caused by fundamental changes in social
and economic values but actually touched off by factors relating to transport. For
almost a century, while traditional urban centers and new industrial ones were rap
idly becoming linked by railway networks, masses of people were still going about
their lives at walking speed. The most important upheaval in the human adventure
the development whereby humans acceded to an individually planetary mode of
spatial integration-has taken place within the space of five or six generations and
is of such an order that its effects are still not felt by the majority of human beings.
126 Fez, Morocco, where some evolution toward a relatively geometricplan is discernible
in the haphazard agglomeration ofthe Arab, Jewish, and European settlements.
346 Ethnic Symbols
Since the midnlneteenth century, society's technical apparatus has adopted a

scale of distances out of proportion with the orbit within which humans had always
found their functional balance. The radius of the Magdalenian's hunting grounds, the
area over which the farmer's fields are scattered, the rural baker's, or letter carrier's
rounds, the urban shopkeeper's delivery area, all these are zones of personal grav
itation measured by the rhythm of walking on foot or on horseback. From the mid
nineteenth to the second third of the twentieth century such zones have become
increasingly disproportionate to the dimensions of the universe of railways, the tel
egraph, and the telephone. In a constantly expanding urban environment, individ
uals are gradually having to trace their own personal orbits upon a topographical
ground that is consistent with the new means of communication but anarchic in rela
tion to the space and time behavior of the zoological human.
Livable space is an ordered space whose limits we can encompass within a
period of time compatible with the rotation of our daily activities. It is also a space
that meets certain fundamental aesthetic requirements, one in which the humanized
area stands in a certain ratio to the sky and nature. Ever since humans erected the
first shelter in the middle of their territory, humankind has lived in a state of balance
between the artificial and symbolic universe and the sources of material and mental
energy found in the material world. A transposition of the natural into the artificially
constructed, such as a garden city, is perfectly conceivable: But our formless city lack
ing any semblance of logic, with its girdle of factories and its grid of utilitarian streets
under a sky of toxic filth, can only be regarded as the result of pathological distur
bance. That efficient tool of social production, the nineteenth-century city-still alive
in most parts of the world-represents an alarming break with the laws of biological
harmony upon which our humanness is surely founded.
The Present-day City

The ideal formula for the individual's satisfactory integration in the urban
microcosm of today is simple and has been found empirically by many city planners:
Each family unit provided with an autonomous shelter at the center of a personal
territory constituted by a piece of nature-wild or domesticated-with individual
means of transport capable of bringing the "hunting ground," or workplace, within
reach as rapidly as before the transport revolution. This formula, conceivable below
a certain population level, has become inapplicable except for the most privileged
families anywhere in the world, and city planners have had to resort to a crude trans-
position by providing cellular dwellings in blocks of flats set inside a border of lawn
within reach of a bus stop.
Present-day urbanism undoubtedly has the capacity needed for the reconsti
tution of a balanced universe, and in places where the insoluble problem of housing
an exponentially growing mass of people does not arise too acutely city planners
have actually been known to hit upon new ways of meeting the biological impera
tives ofintegration in time and space. Up to a certain threshold, the town with its cen
tral monuments, its museums, parks, and zoological gardens, continues to be a
cosmic reflection of the universe-a reflection that in turn reflected in the names of
the town's streets and hotels invoking neighboring provinces and friendly or con
quered lands. Roads leading out of the city are called "North" or "South," railway sta
tions are named after starting points in the network within which the accessible
universe is enclosed. There is no radical difference between the Babylonian city and
a modern capital, for it is not gratuitous intellectual refinement that makes a city into
the image of the world (figure 127).
The Argentinian, Siberian, and Polynesian suburbs ofthe future capital ofEarth
will doubtless be crossed by avenues named after Mars, Sirius, and Alpha Centaur.
We may be sure that a schematic picture of the human universe by time sectors will
be preserved in its archaeological museums. A place will be found in them for all the
precious remains of the integration in time of previous generations, from Pithecan
thropus to the twentieth-century television set. And zoo directors will exchange
among themselves the newborn members of a population of elephants, crocodiles,
and Normandy cows which will exist only behind the bars of cages protecting them
from the human masses uniformly spread over the earth's surface.
At this stage the basic data of spatiotemporal integration will not have changed;
the same assemblage of animal, vegetable, and human, though in different propor
tions, will doubtless continue to ensure the individual's links with the universe. Inte
gration will be all the more total as, seated in their armchairs dozens of miles from
the nearest scrap of real nature, millions of human beings will at the same moment
experience the same passive escape into the depths of a tropical forest projected on
a screen in its true colors, sounds, relief, and odors. The point may be reached when
superhumanized space will contain only such samples of nature as are necessary in
order to maintain within the human mass, by audiovisual techniques, outside of any
kind of lived reality, a perception of a human connection with the universe from
which remote human ancestors drew their reason for being and doing.
348 Ethnic Symbols
127. Diagrammaticplan ofpresent-day Moscow showing an attempt to establish a system

radiating concentrically around the Kremlin and surrounded by a green belt.
The Symbols ofSociety
The spatiotemporal system in which we have imprisoned the natural universe

is, as we have seen, directly connected with the most fundamental fact of biological
existence, that of integration in an environment in which and on which the individual
has to survive. At the techno economic level the nature of human integration is no
different from that of animals having territories and shelters. It is quite otherwise at
the aesthetic level, integration being based on purely symbolic references accepted
by society under a rhythmic convention that puts days and distances within an arti
ficial network. The separation between free time and space, on the one hand, and
domestic time and space, on the other, remained reasonably wide until quite
recently, except in urban environments where a completely humanized framework
was always a token of the efficiency of the -city's apparatus. The infiltration of urban
time has taken place within a few decades, initially affecting only long intervals of
time through the regularly periodic character of transport facilities but now spread
ing to all moments of the day to suit the rhythm of radio and television broadcasts.
A superhumanized space and time would correspond to the ideally synchronous
functioning of all individuals, each specialized in his or her own function and space.
Human society would, through spatiotemporal symbolism, recover the organization
of the most perfect animal societies, those in which the individual exists only as a
cell. Because of the development of its body and brain, through the exteriorization
of tools and of the memory, the human species seemed to have escaped the fate of
the polyparium or the ant. But freedom of the individual may only be a stage; the
domestication of time and space may entail the total subjugation of every particle of
the supraindividual organism.
The space-time system is only one of the elements of the social fabric. It does
not involve relationships of individual identification. In all living systems beyond a
certain degree of functional complexity, cohesion of the group is ensured by a sys
tem of interindividual references. This system, well-developed among mammals and
birds, includes bodily, visual, or olfactory signals, attitudes of submission or supe
riority, and vocal signals. In these three forms, or with one form predominant over
the others, the system governs the relations between the sexes, between the young
and adults, and between competing males, as well as the gregarious behavior of
herds. Together with territorial integration, it organizes most of intraspecies exis
tence, and it covers almost all behavior that does not strictly pertain to the acquisition
of food. The most extraordinaryactivities of birds are deployed in their mating finery,
displays and nuptial dances, and in their song which has as much to do with pair
350 Ethnic Symbols
forming as with the organizing of territory, with defense, and with relationships
between individuals of the same species. Mammals show considerable range and
flexibility in their attitudes, mimicry, tail movements, and vocal signals, and the
higher species, carnivores or primates, have a whole gamut of expressions that not
only normalize intraspecies relationships but also constitute a highly efficient code
of interspecies communication. This code of signals of prohibition, submission, or
sympathy leads to the establishment of a hierarchy among the component parts of
various social sitUations within the species or between different species. Within the
human species the problem is not very different. The set of elementary signals is the
same and performs the same role, that of normalizing the relationships of individuals
within the same ethnic group who are of different sex or have a different material
or moral potential. The gestures and mimicries that express simple feelings of sat
isfaction or dissatisfaction, or domination or submission, belong to a code which the
human shares with a part of the animal world, though their variety is greater, as might
be expected in view of the more complex human organization. But-as is normal
for the human-this code underlies an extremely dense symbolic superstructure.
Like tools, it is exteriorized in a system of references that relates to the ethnic group,
not the species, and that expresses itself in dress, bearing, language, and the social
setting.
Dress
The protective value of the animal's pelt or plumage is not more important to
the survival of the species than are the visual or olfactory signals attached to them.
In humans the protective value of clothing is equaled by its form; it is clothing and
its decorative accessories that provide the basis for the first degree of social rec
ognition. Imagine, within our own code, a man wearing spurs with espadrilles, a
priest's cassock, and a flowered straw hat: The rigid nature of our system of refer
ences would be revealed by such a person's prompt withdrawal from social circu
lation! Every individual, male or female, though all are clad in a three-piece suit or
a dress, sports a certain number of precise indications of social status--color of tie,
type of shoes, quality of the cloth, floral buttonhole, or perfume. And what is true of
our society is just as true in Melanesia, in China, or among the Eskimos.
The value of dress is primarily ethnic: It proclaims the individual's member
ship in a group. For a century the wearing of European clothes has symbolized
advancement toward civilization, the assumption of an ideally human social persona.
Conversely, the last scraps of the feeling of integrally belonging to a group cling to
folk costume, vestige of the distinctive garb once worn by the inhabitants of a rec
ognizable area.
The function of clothing and of its adornment relates to many aspects of social
organization. Exactly as among birds, it consists in announcing the wearer's ethnic
group and, at the same time, his or her sex. Simultaneous identification determines
the register of the relationship: A meeting with strange men involves the relationship
between dominator and dominated; a meeting with male or female relatives sets off
affective reactions according to the standard applied within the group. Whether in
the case of Papuans on a journey or of two modem armies facing each other, rela
tionships begin with identification of clothing or of weapons. It may seem pointless
to stress so commonplace an aspect of human existence, but the aesthetics of cloth
ing and adornment, despite its wholly artificial character, is one of the biological
traits of the human species most profoundly linked to the zoological world. Morality
systems notwithstanding, anything that touches upon aggressive or reproductive
behavior must naturally stay close to the source. Such discontinuity as there is will
be found only in the human ability to develop new symbols of fear or allurement,
to bring to the art of killing or of lOVing-those two central pivots of history-an
intellectual finesse peculiar to our species.
Dress everywhere is conditioned by war, love, and the individual's position in
the social hierarchy. By adding the distinctive signs of each age group, we obtain a
classification grid that tells us all we need to know about the social function of cos
tume. The age-group factor is not a constant one; only some societies possess an
explicit or impliCit code of clothing for separate age groups. In]apan, for example,
feminine costume shows a strict progression according to age as regards the length
of sleeves, the size of the flowers in floral patterns, or the brightness of colors. Similar
conventions exist in traditional European society. The progression is further accen
tuated by fashion; the dress of old people may be symbolic of their age group and
at the same time morphologically archaic, one or the other of these elements being
predominant depending on the society and the individual concerned.
Besides the symbols of sex and age, there are those of social status. In primitive
as well as all other societies, these relate, first, to the major stages of life-initiation,
marriage, the widowed state. They also refer to the individual's technoeconomic
status, offering an infinite variety of costumes and adornments of warriors of differ
ent rank, chieftains, merchants, artisans, and all other representatives of the mosaic
of functions upon which the material life of the group is founded.
At the stage of development of European societies a century ago-less in the
case of other societies with agricultural-pastoral economies-all individuals, male
352 Ethnic Symbols
and female, wore on their bodies the means of their identification for purposes of
establishing contact and making appropriate use of language and gesture in accor
dance with the relationships between different categories within the group. The tra
ditional symbolic equipment has been considerably modified by industrial
technoeconomic development. Thanks to an ideological evolution assisted by the
mass media, social permeability has increased while the number of social models
has diminished, with European dress symbols tending to replace regional ones all
over the world. Loss of national and craft costume is the most striking sign of ethnic
disintegration. Far from being a minor accident in the course of a major process of
adaptation to new conditions, it is itself one of the main conditions of adaptation and
one that often precedes full adaptation by more than a generation. In Africa the Euro
pean intellectual's eyeglasses were a symbol of development long before the mod
el's scientific level was reached, and there are countries where the necktie came in
before the shirt.
Dress, truly the symbol of humanness , is a precise measure of ethnic and social
organization, and what is happening to dress at present deserves careful attention.
In Europe and America the standardization of dress has reached an advanced stage;
masculine and feminine costume hardly varies from one social class to another
except by its greater or lesser costliness and the immediacy of its adaptation to fash
ion. This may denote across-the-board social advancement, the disappearance of
social barriers, and higher levels of culture and information, but it is also a sign that
the individual is losing his or her links with the framework of the group within which
he or she is personally integrated. Living in the costume of your province or craft
makes you feel that you are an individual element of your own group and, at the same
time, reminds you that you do not belong to other groups. Living in a standardized
human uniform implies a high degree of interchangeability of individuals as parts
of the universal macroorganism. The standardization of dress symbols may mean
acquiring a planetary consciousness, but it also means losing the relative indepen
dence of your ethnic persona. The disappearance of carnival disguises is another
symptom of the same development. We may, depending on where we stand, be
alarmed because the individual is losing the signs of his or her reality as a member
of a society on a human scale or welcome the fact that humankind is being reduced
to a single type of human ideally suited to the sole function of serving as a production
cell: No matter, the fact remains that the development of the symbolism of dress
reflects the transition to a humanity different from the one still remembered by living
generations.
Vestimentary models persist in fiction; the press, television, and films seek to
make up for the individual's loss by briefly enabling the spectator to dress up in his
or her imagination as the hero or heroine. As in all areas of the imagination today,
the number of models is limited and monotonous: A Sioux Indian, a cowboy, a mus
keteer, an ancient warrior of indeterminate origin, a soldier from our own latest war,
and an astronaut just about exhaust our stock of aggressive symbols; then we have
the bespectacled scientist in a white coat, the financial mogul, the gangster, the
femme fatale, a few Tibetans, some uniformed Asians, a detective, and a handful of
"savages" adorned with feathers. The register of sentimental literature is naturally
somewhat different, although it borrows a few of the symbols just listed. Its favorite
costumes are those of the nobility of recent centuries, the society of high finance,
reigning families, Oriental princesses, and film stars. The permanent process of
exteriorization would seem to operate here as in all other fields: Instead of actively
playing the hero's role in some ethnic adventure, the human now satisfies a natural
need to belong by watching the performances of a few conventional stand-ins.
From being a biologically determined feature, identification symbols thus tend
to become interchangeable and strictly intellectual instruments. They survive in their
earlier form only in certain narrow environments and under exceptional circum
stances: state occasions, law courts, academic ceremonies, horse races, sports. The
wedding dress still has a certain vitality, but symbols of initiation, such as first-com
munion dresses, and symbols of mourning are disappearing fast. At the end of the
universal planing-down process, the mass of individuals are left only with profes
sional uniforms--essential elements of the mechanic's or the deep-sea diver's eco
nomic effiCiency-and the stubborn vestiges of marriage costume.
No mention has yet been made of religiOUS costume. This has two mutually
opposed aspects. The first is the normal one of the social status symbol: In all reli
gions, religious vestments are designed to convey the most solemn possible image
of the officiating cleric's function. The Siberian shaman's, African dancer's, Buddhist
monk's, or Roman Catholic priest's costume has as much to do with figurative rep
resentation as with social aesthetics: Like the costume of a civil or military chief, it
forms part of a setting and has only incomplete meaning in isolation. The other
aspect involves the personal identification symbols that distinguish the clergy from
the laity.
The ordinary dress of lay people is subject to constant changes of detail which
in all civilizations mark the passage from one generation to another and which con
stitute fashion. Often this process affects the general structure of clothing only very
354 Ethnic Symbols
slowly (the main items of our costume have hardly varied in a century), but because
of its direct connection with sexual attraction it forms an area of strong competition
and produces innumerable variants, its rate of development being continually
renewed by the sexual maturing of fresh groups of individuals. As in the zoological
world, fashion in clothing remains linked to the meteorological seasons and is sub
ject to annual renewal.
Professional costume develops in accordance with an entirely different
rhythm. It does not follow the general fashion too closely and may continue
unchanged for several generations if the function remains constant. The warrior's
costume develops at the rate of successive wars and always shows a certain conser
vatism, further reinforced by traditions of prestige. In institutional dress this con
servatism is still more pronounced; the dress of public dignitaries, diplomats, and
legal and academic authorities is always at least a century behind that of the rest of
the population. Major political upheavals generally lead to a renewal of certain parts
of the official wardrobe and fairly often to the creation of new items that are, how
ever, always reminiscent of the past for prestige reasons.
Because religion claims to be stronger than time, tradition is all-powerful in
religious costume which should ideally be invariable so as to convey majesty and
permanence. In practice, religious costume worn for purposes of personal identi
fication is exposed to the delayed influence of lay fashions, undergOing either
changes of detail or abrupt major transformations followed by long periods of sta
bility. Ceremonial costume is far more conservative, with centuries-old forms sur
viving in Roman Catholicism, Buddhism, and Shintoism alike.
The most interesting aspect of religious dress is a negative one. As we saw ear
lier, individual enfranchisement-breaking out of the circle of social operations
is achieved by rhythm-controlling techniques: control of physiological rhythms
through ascetic practices and of normal operating rhythms through practices reg
ulated by a strict and invariable timetable. Social identification is controlled by refus
ing to accept the symbols of sexual and hierarchical recognition. The ascetic goes
naked or almost naked, or else he dresses in defiance of convention, the fabric, form,
or color of his clothes placing him outside the code of technoeconomic assimilation.
Just as he defies time by staying awake and fasting and defies space by living in the
desert, in a cell, or in the dust of a city crossroads, so by refusing to adopt the dress
code ofsocially organized humanity he defies social classification. Religious morality
being, at its extreme, a morality of individual liberation, unlike social morality which
is based upon collective commitments, its symbols are normally the reverse of those
of SOciety. To a different and variable degree, attempts to break out of the standard-
The Symbols ojSociety 355
ized social pattern entail the adoption of special symbols, which may be individual
like the extravagant garments sported by artists or collective like the black leather
jacket of the young men of today.
Attitudes and Language

Although clothing is in itself sufficient to ensure recognition and orient sub
sequent behavior, it cannot in normal practice be dissociated from attitudes and lan
guage which serve to supplement recognition and organize responsive behavior.
Besides clothing, travelers in the past were interested above all in social attitudes and
forms of politeness. Most descriptions we find in the earliest works of ethnography
are devoted to costume, ways of greeting, conduct during meals, or manners toward
social superiors or inferiors. Eighteenth-century descriptions of strange peoples,
like the same period's writings on natural history, were based on external identifi
cation and on very general lines of responsive behavior. The reason is that knowl
edge generally stopped at t..'1e outer shell within which the real life of groups takes
place. This makes it all the clearer, however, that among the Chukchis or the Tupi
nambas, manners come second only to clothing as a means of identification both
within and outside the group.
Attitudes and language of responsiveness are situated at the limits of the sphere
of figurative representation. Members of the group engage in a nonstop perfor
mance of their own ethnic drama through the rhythms of social life, through social
space, attitudes, and status symbols. The whole of ethnic life is a matter of figurative
representation, for the individual is incorporated in the group only to the extent that
he or she dons the uniform of gestures, behavior patterns, and clothing symbols
which identify his or her nature as Homo sapiens with a particular culture. The rep
resentational element becomes more and more pronounced in its progression from
elementary, mechanical practices to exceptional ones, from technical to social and
religious operations, culminating in ceremonial activities where the dividing line
between the social and the figurative is extremely blurred.
In modern societies the separation between lived experience and figurative
representation has become more clear-cut. We are unlikely to confuse a ball with a
ballet or a mass with a performance of a passion play. In the great traditional festivals
of the imperial courts of China or Japan, the distinction between civil or religiOUS
ceremonial, on the one hand, and theater or a sporting contest, on the other, is less
easy to draw. In societies whose hierarchical systems do not provide for strict com
partmentalization of the places for, and the participants in, social ceremonies and
356 Ethnic Symbols
figurative representations, respectively, such separation becomes altogether impos

sible. When the actors are drawn from a crowd of courtiers, the temple or palace with
its dignitaries, the stage and its actors flow together. In the ceremonies all partici
pants-at whatever level-are alternately spectators and extras until, under the
sheer weight of numbers, a passive group becomes separated from the mass and
becomes a real "audience" of the spectacle: But even then there would be no spec
tacle without the "audience's" assistance.
Thus figurative representation in its most primitive form appears indissociable
from the social events that maintain the ethnic group's continuity. From this aspect,
the degree of figurative participation is consistent with the group's technoeconomic
characteristics. Figurative specialization and the separation between actors and spec
tators are at a maximum in modern mass participation, where the majority of indi
viduals are no longer required to perform as extras in social events but where all
prestige occasions have been reduced by television to the status of pure spectacle.
Conversely, where the carnival still exists, all participants may still sometimes fill
both roles Simultaneously.
In primitive or traditional societies, figurative behavior of a socioreligious
nature includes all possible transitional stages between the role of the isolated indi
vidual, such as the shaman who enacts before a crowd his voyage in search of a sick
person's soul, and the society of initiates offering the highly elaborate spectacle of
its dances, or a whole Australian tribe acting out its myth.
Figurative behavior is so deeply a part of human nature that it is difficult to
adopt a systematic view without losing sight of its reality. The difficulty appears to lie
in the fact that social figurative representation also has extremely solid roots in zool
ogy. The humanness of attitudes and insignia is not a matter of their nature but of
their connection with ethnic specificity. Since the days when Buffon described the
dances of Numidian cranes, zoological research has revealed a multitude of facts
showing that bodily attitudes and insignia dominate the relationship behavior of
birds and mammals in terms both of the hierarchy of individuals and of relations
between members of the two sexes. Most social relationships are connected with
those two complementary aspects of biological behavior. The relationship between
dominator and dominated and nuptial displays, or relationships of prestige and rela
tionships of coquetry are, once again, the species and ethnic forms of the same phe
nomenon. In humans, there is the symbolic superstructure, but it really is a
superstructure-in other words, there is no fundamental difference between the
cock's comb and the plume on an officer's helmet, the cock's spur and the saber, the
-
nightingale's song or the wooing pigeon's bowing and scraping and the village
dance. But there are as many variations as there are ethnic groups in the world, suc
cessive generations within each ethnic group, and social categories within the group.
The various elements of social behavior-setting in space and time, dress, atti
tudes, and manners--form a whole whose parts develop, by categories, at rhythms
that must be compatible with ethnic survival. The participation of all levels of the
body social, from the individual to the group as a whole, in the evolutive process is
a matter offunctional balance. Systems designed to ensure religious or legal stability
contain the greatest possible number of symbols of permanence. The buildings, vest
ments, and liturgical language of the great official religions are at least a thousand
years old, bearing witness to the continuity both of the civilization concerned and
of the divine order associated with it. Legal language dating two or three centuries
back, employed in a setting filled with figurative symbols of strict balance by a deper
sonalized individual dressed in the traditional costume of the upholder of the law,
gives courtroom events that element of continuity which is necessary in order to con
vey the sense that a socially vital obligation is being discharged. Conversely, in the
sphere of procreation or, more broadly, of individual life, where collective survival
is founded upon renewal, the individual derives his or her sense of belonging to a
system from symbols flexible enough for each age group to recognize itself in its
uniqueness.
Thus we see that the biological lines of the figurative grid that is peculiar to
humans are common to all living beings. The striking fact about modern evolution
is the loss of most of our social symbols. The disappearance of ethnic or professional
costume and accessories, the impoverishment and uniformization of the language
of responsiveness may be a commonplace, but we have so few development criteria
to work with that we cannot afford to ignore such a break with the traditions which
seemed best to circumscribe the social nature of the human being. One wonders
whether the emergence of a universal type, if not perhaps in terms oflanguage, then
in terms of dress, gestures, and ways of speaking-a type originally based on the
characteristics of well-to-do Europeans-is just a stage beyond which another div
ersification will take place or whether, on the contrary, the process will eventually
lead to male and female characteristics too becoming ideally identical with one
another for purposes of ideal interchangeability within the production process. The
coming into being of a single megaethnic group with uniform components is not
inconceivable-indeed it has been the expliCit or implicit ideal of a number of phi
losophers and sociologists from ancient times-though it would doubtless have to
be preceded by the emergence, taking several centuries, of a partial and antagonistic
macroethnic group. This macro-ethnic ideal is already reflected in the Western, Rus-
358 Ethnic Symbols
sian, Chinese, and Arab worlds of today. Short of imagining that the idea of humanity
may supplant that of mastery over the universe, one fails to see by what mechanism
micro-ethnic individuality could be restored. Seen from this angle, the dilemma is
between the individual as the motive force of a social microcosm built to human
scale, a microcosm in which the individual commands the full gamut of aesthetic and
technical possibilities, and the individual as a cog in the infinitely perfectible
machine of a completely socialized society.
Obviously human development is heading in the direction of mega-ethnicity
a global unit of measurement rather like the "megadeaths" devised to express the
destructive power of atomic weapons. We therefore might well ask ourselves what
continuing means of escape the zoological flux will have at its disposal-for com
plete dehumanization would eventually become prejudicial to the efficacy of the
social machine, and it must therefore be kept in a sufficiently "sapient" state. In other
words, we may wonder whether yet another process of exteriorization-this time
the exteriorization of social symbolism-might not be taking place. In fact the pro
cess is already so advanced that we can clearly see the direction it is taking. Artisanal
methods are dying out in social life, as they are in crafts and war; the tendency toward
exteriorization is felt to the same degree in all these fields, a fact that is reflected in
the indirect handling of masses of material at an increasingly limited number of
points. The time is not far off when all our manufactured iron will be processed in
a small number of centers by entirely automatic methods; this has already happened
in the case of oil, where the diverSity of products is not great enough to hamper the
development. We can see the time coming when government will no longer have to
call upon the uncertain services of artillery, and the megadeaths will instead be pro
cessed indirectly from electronic control panels. This in fact is already feasible. As
for the social sphere, modern audiovisual techniques, imperfect as they are, already
provide a most convenient staging-post. The age we live in is still filled with survivals
from the past. The city worker still goes out to watch a soccer game, catch a fish, or
attend a parade, and still has a life of responsiveness, restricted.it is true but one that
may stretch to taking part in the activities of a club. If we exclude the vital cycle, activ
ities involving direct response are increasingly confined to adolescence and the pre
conjugal period, when direct participation is necessary to collective survival. Until
we get to the stage already reached by the species of domestic animals that are best
suited to productivity-the stage of artificial insemination-it would, for the time
being, seem that a modicum of social aesthetics will continue to surround our years
of social maturing. In insect societies, by the way, that is the only period when the
reproductive minority shows some illdependence of behavior.
Social Aesthetics and Figurative Life
Finally, we might wonder whether humankind has completely escaped the risk
inherent in the perfection of the ants and the bees, that of practically complete social
conditioning. The role of functional independence in human development has been
sufficiently stressed in the preceding chapters. We know that the present stage was
reached by gradually refining an apparatus that has remained open. It is not easy to
judge the present point in the evolution of the human race, when many individuals
are barely a generation away from the times of artisans, farm laborers, village wed
dings, bands of strolling players, a whole social setup whose traces have not yet dis
appeared from many parts of the globe. But the process of exteriorization becomes
more and more accentuated as the years go by, and millions of individuals already
living today represent something new for the ethnologist. A minimum of social prac
tices exists in order to keep these individuals in day-to-day working order: An infra
structure takes care of their personal leisure, preconditioned by holidays with pay,
roads, hotels, camping grounds, and anything else needed for a few weeks of
"channeled freedom"; a light superstructure enables them to accomplish the rites of
passage, be born, get married, die with the necessary modicum of emotion or spec
tacle. Their scope for personal creativity is smaller than a nineteenth-century wash
erwoman's, their entire productive function consists in clockwork precision
precision in waking, traveling, performing stopwatch-timed gestures at work. Were
they indeed like this, the outlook for future generations might almost be a reassuring
one, for the genetic impetus would be strong enough to resist dehumanization. But
it seems that our destiny still lies in evolution. In actual fact the social partiCipation
is the same as that of our ancestors, indeed it has been considerably improved:
Through the window of the television set, through the lips of the transistor radiO, we
can be present, not at a village ceremony, but at parties in the homes of the great,
not at the wedding of the baker's daughter, but at those of princesses; the football
teams we watch are the continent's very best, and we watch them from the very best
seats. The snows of Canada, the sands of the desert, Papuan dances, the best jazz
bands come to us through openings in magic boxes.
In chapter 6 we spoke of the problem of the relationship between language
and audiovisual techniques. Here another aspect and another consequence of the
same problem become apparent in the context of social operating sequences.
Between the period now ended and the one just starting, the proportion of genuinely
creative individuals to the mass of people has remained much the same; we may be
sure that some will still sing with their oWn voice, take part personally in an impor-
360 Ethnic Symbols
tant ceremony, kick a real leather ball with their own foot, or even cut the wood for
their own chair from a real tree trunk. But such people are the exteriorized element
of the social apparatus; their function consists in providing the multitudes with their
necessary ration of social participation. As for the multitudes, no, they will not sing
at weddings nor walk in torchlight processions; on their short walk to the bus stop
they can already avoid direct contact with birdsong by turning up the volume of their
transistor.
Isolated inside their micro-ethnicity, the group's members had to make their
own shirts and construct their own social aesthetic as best they could, losing so much
time in the process that the profit to the community as a whole was only slight. A
considerable saving is obviously achieved in a system where the producing individ
ual's life is divided between productive ' activity and passive reception of his or her
share of community life, a share chosen, measured, prethought, and lived by others.
Like the freeing from culinary art through caruied food, freeing from social opera
tions through television is a collective gain. The gain is offset by a risk of social hier
archization probably more pronounced than heretofore; a process of stratification
by rational selection will skim off the rare elements in the mass of society and make
of them the purveyors of remote-controlled adventure. An increasingly small minor
ity will plan not only society's vital political, administrative, and technical programs
but also its ration of emotions, its epic adventures, its image of a life which will have
become totally figurative-for the transition from real social life to one that is purely
figurative can take place quite smoothly. The first step was taken with the first hunt
er's tale told by a Palaeoanthropian, and with the first novel and the first traveler's
tale the path widened. Our society's emotional ration is already largely made up of
ethnographic accounts ofgroups that have ceased to exist-Sioux: Indians, cannibals,
sea pirates--forming the framework for responsiveness systems of great poverty and
arbitrariness. One may wonder what the level of reality of these images will be when
their creators are drawn from a fourth generation of people remote-controlled in
their audiovisual contacts with a fictitious world. The imagination, which is nothing
other than the ability to make something new out of lived experience, is in danger
of declining appreciably. The mediOCrity of our popular literature, illustrated mag
azines, radio, and television is an interesting pointer. It reflects a natural selection of
authors and subjects, and we may assume that the statistical majority of consumers
are getting the emotional food they need and can assimilate. But our world lives on
a capital of survivors with which it may be able to recapture some degree of lived
reality. Ten generations from now a writer selected to produce social fiction will
probably be sent on a "renaturation" ' course in a park a comer of which he or she
will have to till with a plough copied from a museum exhibit and pulled by a horse
borrowed from a zoo. He or she will cook and eat the family meal at the family table,
organize neighborhood visits, enact a wedding, sell cabbages from a market stall to
other participants in the same course, and learn anew how to relate the ancient writ
ings of Gustave Flaubert to the meagerly reconstituted reality, after which this person
will no doubt be capable of submitting a batch of freshened-up emotions to the
broadcasting authorities.
Such an oudook might be thought exaggerated and overpessimistic. But it rep
resents an aspect of development that does not seem so far to have attracted much
attention. In the most optimistic scenario the problems of manual work will have
been resolved within a few generations and war and political divisions will be a thing
of the past, which means that our humble physical adventure will be over and the
reasons for maintaining an epic ideology will have gone. The earth will be densely
peopled by healthy, well-fed human beings actively employed in ensuring the sur
vival of a definitively stabilized mass. The seas, forests, and mountains will offer no
more adventures except by way of accident. The twofold obsession of our popular
press with the love affairs of royalty and film stars, on the one hand, and with disas
ters, on the other, is symptomatic in this respect. If we transpose the present situation
into a pacified world peopled by men and women identical in their way of life and
their tastes, we are left with a sense of emptiness as regards one of the specific attri
butes ofHomo sapiens, the capacity of the body, hand, and brain to exercise the indi
vidual privilege of material and symbolic creation. Neither the Teilhardian nor the
atomic apocalypse provides a solution, for both may be deferred to a geological
future, whereas the human race may very Soon be confronted, not only with the
problem of its demographical balance, but also with that of its rehumanization.
14 The Language of Forms
Figurative behavior cannot be dissociated from language: It forms part of the

same human aptitude, that of reflecting reality in verbal or gestural symbols or in
material form as figures Just as the emergence of language is connected with that of
:
hand tools, figurative representation cannot be separated from the common source
from which all making and all representation spring. Therefore we should not be
surprised to discover a close parallelism in paleontological development and, in par
ticular, to note a swift and profound change in materials at the moment Homo sapi
ens emerges from the last Palaeoanthropian stage.
It is not easy to arrive at a formal definition of figurative behavior, for while the
difference between theater and painting or easel painting and Wallpaper is perfecdy
clear to us today, the distinctions become blurred when we attempt to deal with ear
lier periods or with different ethnic forms. Earlier we saw the profoundly figurative
character of social aesthetics; ceremonial and theater are not categorically distinct
from each other, and events represented in stage decors or temple frescoes may be
either mythological or historical.
Neither is it an easy matter to formulate a hypothesis about the precise moment
in the life of a SOciety at which ceremonial as lived experience becomes theatrical
representation or when figurative representation perceived as essential to life
becomes pure decoration. At an Australian corroboree, with its costumes and props
and its episodes in which dancers mime a mythical animal's behavior, ceremonial
and drama are not distinct from each other; the Upper Paleolithic, with its art known
to us through thousands of records, offers equally good examples of figurative rep
resentation on walls or slabs as of utilitarian objects embellished with decorative
motifs. The same lack of differentiation is characteristic of all primitive peoples today
and at the very beginning of the existence of Homo sapiens. To discover the point
364 Ethnic Symbols
of divergence between the religious, the social, and the dramatic, it is surely not
enough-except perhaps in the realm of fiction-to go back in time and along the
scale of technoeconomic hierarchies; in the real life of all societies, different forms
coexist and merge imperceptibly into one another. Whether one is talking about a
sacrificial rite, a political address, or a play, the relationship between the individual
performing the representation and the matter being represented is less important
than the values that the performer and the audience hold in common, for these val
ues make it possible to graft an aesthetic apparatus attuned to the appropriate emo
tions upon an operating sequence of a religious or social nature. It is this emotional
language, some of whose values have a very general biological origin but whose
code of symbols is highly specific, that really constitutes figurative art.
All art then is utilitarian: the scepter, symbol of royal power, the bishop's crook,
the love song, the patriotic anthem, the statue in which the power of the gods is cast
in material form, the fresco that reminds churchgoers of the horrors of Hell, all
undeniably meet a practical necessity. The gratuitousness of art does not lie in its
motivation but in the flowering of the language of forms. It was an astonishing aber
ration on the part of late-nineteenth-century prehistorians confronted with Paleo
lithic works to invent the theory of an original "art for art's sake": In reality Lascaux
was no less part of the social and religious life of its contemporaries than the Sistine
Chapel was of sixteenth-century Rome. Like the language ofwords, that of forms may
or may not be rich or eloquent, but its fundamental purpose is to signify. An art that
has lost its purpose is antithetical. The antithesis is justifiable as a means of escape
from the excessive power of the imagination, but it cannot deny the primary role of
Significance. It is not an accident that so many contemporary artists today are trying
to find their way back by decorating chapels.
The language of words and forms, of rhythms, of symmetrical or asymmetrical
contrasts of frequency or intensity, is the realm of human freedom. It is tied to the
biological base and rests upon pragmatic, social significance, for speech and figu
rative representation are the cement that binds the constituent elements of the ethnic
cell. At the same time-and this is exclusively human-it offers the individual artist
or spectator a liberating escape while holding them safe within the collective men
tality or the nonconformist dream.
The twofold nature of art-collective and personal-makes it impossible to
separate the functional completely from the gratuitous, to separate art for some
thing's sake from art for art's sake, just as it makes impossible (except at their
extremes) a radical separation between figurative and decorative art.
The Language ofForms 3 65
The Origins and Early Development ofFigurative Behavior

We have seen in the first chapters of this book that available technical evidence
offers an unbroken series of records from the Australanthropians to our day. This
material, in conjunction with data concerning the development of the brain, has
been used in an attempt to draw an outline of a paleontology of language, for which
no evidence exists before the earliest written forms. There is no material at all for
a paleontology of figurative behavior from the earliest times until the Upper Paleo
lithic, but from that date the figurative evidence covers some thirty thousand years,
as against the mere five thousand or so years ofwritten evidence for the development
of language. The fact that graphic figurative representation appears to be as old as
the Homo sapiens species is extremely helpful. The problem lies in choosing an
appropriate hypothesis for the behavior of earlier anthropoids. One possibility con
sists in inquiring whether all figurative activities (motor, vocal, or instrumental) are
similar to graphic representation: if so, we cannot expect to find anything before the
last Neanderthalians. Another possibility is to try to unravel the relationship between
figurative representation and language, an approach that may provide a slim but valu
able clue based on the development of the brain.
Figurative behavior, as we have seen, does not extend either to functional aes
thetics or to the senses incapable of symbolic reflection, namely smell, taste, and
touch. Its only possible vehicles are hearing, Sight, and the physical faculty of ges
ticulation. Given what we know of the apparatus of the higher mammals and humans,
these dominant reference senses (sight and hearing), together with motor function,
indicate that figurative behavior forms part of the system of responsiveness. In other
words, its instruments are the same as those of technics and language: the body and
the hand, the eye and the ear. The activities we distinguish as dance, mime, dram 'a!
mUSic, and graphic or plastic art all spring from the same source as the activities con
nected with technics and language. This common origin notwithstanding, the
paleontological approach, which enabled us to show the development of the cortical
areas of conscious motor function and the contiguity of the areas in which technical
and verbal sequences are integrated, does not seem to be indicated, except perhaps
as a means of confirming that language and figurative representation stem from the
same human aptitude, the aptitude to abstract elements from reality and from those
elements to reconstitute that reality'S symbolic image. But whereas the purpose of
verbal figures--words and syntax-iS, like the purpose of tools and manual gestures,
their eqUivalents, to provide an effective hold on the world of relationships and of
matter, figurative representation belongs to a different biological field, that of the
366 Ethnic Symbols
perception of rhythms and values, which all living beings have in common. Thus we
see that tools, language, and rhythmic creation are three contiguous aspects of one
and the same process.
The data that derive from this contiguity can be applied only very indirecdy to
anthropoids earlier than Homo sapiens. We have seen that rhythmic percussive
actions of a technical nature were already being performed by the Australanthro
pians, the earliest known anthropoids. The first tools were made by series of impacts
arid were employed through repeated percussive actions. Sonar rhythms of a tech
nical rather than a figurative nature can be assumed to have existed from the very
beginning: Rhythmic swaying and repeated sound signals are well enough attested
in the higher mammals to be credited to the earliest anthropoids. Of the motor and
sonar forms of figurative representation it can be said that they have existed virtually
from the moment of emergence of the earliest anthropoids, just as it cari be said of
metallurgy that it has existed from the moment when, with ore already known as a
coloring agent, fusible ores and the high temperatures employed in pottery had only
to come together for metals to be born. Because the separate elements existed
before the specific phenomenon, no precise point in time can be established for the
emergence either of motor figurative representation or of metallurgy. In the process
of geological development, voiced and gesticulatory figurative rhythmiCity probably
emerged, like language, Simultaneously with the development of techniques.
There is no reason to suppose that the level of figurative activity at the Austral
anthropian and Archanthropian stages was any different from their technical level.
A period of several hundreds of thousands ofyears lay between the first chopper and
the last biface. As we saw in chapters 4 and 12, forms had to evolve extremely slowly
toward symmetry and functional balance before the tools of the period began to
show anything that can be interpreted as a concern with regularity of curves or with
careful finish. Even if the concern was not yet conscious (in a worker who was still
only a Pithecanthropianl), even if the balance offorms the worker was able to achieve
must be viewed simply as the expression of a zoological property, the fact that he or
she possessed the means of foreseeing the form in the material and of bringing it to
the threshold of aesthetic perfection should suffice to make us suppose that humans
earlier than Neanderthal man had achieved a corresponding level of figurative activ
ity. We can be certain that this level still fell short of engraving or painting, for these
are barely foreshadowed in Neanderthal man even at the end of his long career on
earth. But very rudimentary forms of dancing, singing, and percussion can reason
ably be imagined, for if the roots of technics go back as far as the Australanthropians,
The Language ofForms 367
there is no scientific reason why the roots of language and of rhythm should not do
likewise.
The Earliest Images

The place of figurative behavior in the sphere of motor function and sound will
always be a matter for conjecture. It is practically certain that Palaeoanthropians sang,
but what figurative elements did their vocal exercises contain? One would be
inclined to suppose that the expression of feelings outweighed the formulation of
complex ideas. One could advance the hypothesis of hunting songs, but it would be
as gratuitous as to postulate funeral chants. All we know is that Palaeoanthropians
y
hunted and that the cared about their dead. On the other hand, the earliest signs
of fossilizable figurative representation are not lost to us, for while we know but little
of the Archanthropians' and the early Palaeoanthropians' dwelling places, dozens of
sites of Neanderthal dwellings have been uncovered. Between these sites and those
of the Upper Paleolithic lies the birth of the art of engraving, painting, and sculp
ture-a birth so gradual that we can be completely sure that these were their
beginnings.
The earliest fragments of red ocher found go back to the end of the Mousterian
period, around 50,000 B.C., but no works exist to prove that this ocher was being used
as a coloring agent. We may suppose that it served to decorate human bodies or to
coat objects or surfaces, but the only positive fact that emerges is that this was hap
pening at least twenty thousand years before the first known explicit figures were
created. A few engraved lines or cupules hollowed out of stone are known to belong
to the same period. Piles of spherical stones have also been found in Tunisia and
France. Thus the first glimmerings appear a little before Homo sapiens, and their
character becomes more clearly defined with the discovery of some objects that
Neanderthalians brought into their caves at Arey-sur-Cure, a very advanced Mous
terian habitat. These objects are two lumps of iron pyrites formed of rough agglom
erated spheres, a cast of a large fossil gastropod shell, and a spherical polyparium
from the Mesozoic era (figure 128). No descriptive significance can be perceived in
these vestigial finds conSisting of a few spherOids and a spiral, but they represent the
first attested evidence of shape recognition. They are also the first sign, and a most
important one, of human fascination with the fantastical in nature. Our aesthetic feel
ing for the mystery of strange forms-shells, stones, teeth or tusks, fossil imprints-
368 Ethnic Symbols
128. Natural objects gatbered by Mousterians, Arcy-sur-Cure, Yonne, France. From left to
rigbt: gastropod mussel, spbericalpolyparium, lump of iron pyrites.
is rooted in a very deep stratum of human behavior: Not only is it chronologically

the first attested aesthetic sentiment, it also represents the adolescence of the natural
sciences, for the dawning of science in all civilizations took place amid the bric-a
brac of so-called curios. A connection between this predilection and magic can easily
be established, but for the present the bare fact is Significant enough: Before figu
rative art proper, there was already something more obscure or more general that
corresponded to a reflective recognition of forms. Unusualness of form, a powerful
mainspring of figurative interest, exists only when individuals can set objects enter
ing their field of perception against an organized picture of their universe of respon
siveness. Objects that do not directly belong to the living world but exhibit its
properties or a reflection thereof are unusual in the highest degree. The living world
of animals, plants, heavenly bodies, and fire, immobilized in stone, is to this day one
of the sources of the modern interest in paleontology, prehistory, and geology. Con
cretions and sparkling cyrstals go to the very foundations of human reflective
thought-they correspond in nature to what words or thoughts are to us, symbols

of form or movement. Unusual forms are mysterious and even disturbing because
in them we discover a kind of congealed reflection of thought in nature.
It is very interesting to note that throughout human experience the first origin
of every spontaneously figurative aesthetic, whether in individuals or in whole cul
tures, has been the same. Gold, diamonds, and precious stones derive from the same
source as the curiously shaped stones of the Mousterians: the fascination had already
reached its peak in Neanderthal man. Whether he already connected his "curiosities"
with magic is difficult to tell, but we can be sure that this was so a few thousand years
later. An unbroken line leads from the first curios to the antique-shop window of
today. Prehistory tells us that the Upper Paleolithic began in the ancient Western
world, in the Chatelperronian or Aurignacian periods around 35,000 B.C. The dating
is not fortuitous; we have already seen that the ten millennia in which our human
universe was constituted were marked by several facts of capital importance-the
loss of the prefrontal ridge, intensive diversification of technical products, complex
habitat structures, the earliest figurative records. We have seen that rather than being
a sudden upheaval, the development had been long in preparation among the
Palaeoanthropians and that, from a certain level of maturity onward, human societies
were rapidly transformed by the mUltiplicity of possible new associations.
The Chatelperronian, the Aurignacian, and the Magdalenian, between 35,000
and 10,000 B.C., provide very extensive evidence offossils and minerals (ammonites,
belemnites, trilobites, quartz and galena crystals, iron pyrites) gathered by humans.
There is a direct connection between these and the countless examples of curiously
shaped stones and unusual objects found among both primitive and civilized peo
ples. Historical evidence as well as lived experience teaches us that the value con
notations of this type of heterogeneous material in the post-Paleolithic world stem
from a complex intellectual whole made up of aesthetics, magic, and pharmaceutics,
whose separate strands it is practically impossible to disentangle. Art found in nature
forms part of the same order of concerns as human art, and there is no reason to
suppose that it is any more "gratuitous." The development of the aesthetics ofnatural
forms in the great civilizations is of special interest in this connection, the cabinet of
curiosities playing exactly the same role for the Chinese and the]apanese as for Euro
peans. Between the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century a strong collecting tra
dition rooted in the aesthetic enjoyment of rare and spontaneous forms sprang up
in Europe. It was no longer wholly oriented toward magiC but, via traditional phases
such as alchemy, toward evolutive forms ofmagical knowledge-the pharmacopoeia
370 Ethnic Symbols
and the natural sciences. Our own "museum," heir to the cabinet of curiosities of
earlier times, remains to this day a storehouse for strange objects, monstrous and
exceptional natural forms, and bodies that fail to meet the criteria of "normalcy."
In the process of exteriorization or liberation characteristic of contemporary
arts, our art today,
like that of the Far East for centuries past, approaches natural forms
from a purely aesthetic angle. At an aesthetic level, "art brut," oddly shaped stones
or roots, crystals, fishes pressed between two sheets of shale, have something in com
mon with the Chinese garden of hundreds of years ago, but a connection-which
reassures us about the unity of the human race-also exists between them and the
late Palaeoanthropians' predilection for curious natural forms.
Figurative Rhythm
Reference has already been made to those mysterious bone fragments or sticks
bearing regular incisions which are known as "hunting tallies" (figure 82). Their first
appearance may date back to the late Mousterian period, and they were certainly
already frequent in the Chatelperronian and continued until the end of the Mag
dalenian. The significance of these parallel inCisions, which are also found on slabs
of stone or on large bones, is unknown. They have been interpreted as a system of
counting game, or of keeping a calendar; at the present stage of knowledge, the
answer hardly matters. Elusive as they are, these marks denote deliberate repetition
and, consequently, rhythm. From the time of the earliest figures, rows of lines or
cupules are associated with female symbols, a fact that does not preclude rhythmic
figurative representation. Whatever the meaning of the rows of lines, they are the first
evidence-some 35,000 years B.c.--of figurative representation.
A little before the beginning of the Solutrean, hollow bones bearing perfo
rations at regular intervals appear upon the scene. Records are rare, the best being
those found in the Isturitz cave in the French department of the Lower Pyrenees; a
similar object was also found at a Magdalenian site (Molodovo Y.) in the U.S.S.R
These objects, dating back to about 20,000 B.C., would appear to be the earliest
known musical instruments. This does not mean of course that they were the first
such instruments made but only that the bone used in making them was capable of
being preserved; we are free to imagine the whistles, flutes, or harps made of wood,
osier, or mammoth-hair that will doubtless remain unknown forever. The evidence,
though very slender, is conclusive: Between the 35th and the 20th millennia B.C. the
human had already mastered the figurative representation of rhythm.
Graphic and Plastic Figuralism
The prehistoric human's music, dance, and poetry are no doubt lost beyond
retrieval; the furthest we can venture to go is to suppose that their average level was
not below that of the painting or sculpture of the same period. To recognize this is
to regret their disappearance even more keenly. Available records of the visual arts
are, however, so abundant and so precise that we are entitled to speak of an evolutive
trajectory, the longest known in all the arts, for it stretches from about 30,000 to about
8000 B.C.
With the exception of a single site near Lake Baikal in Siberia, Paleolithic art is,
at the present stage of knowledge, confined to temperate Europe between the Urals
and the Atlantic. Its figurative unity in space and time is remarkable, for it invariably
represents a group of male and female human figures and animals, for the most part
horses and bison. We need not, in our present context, discuss the apparently highly
complex system in which these symbols are organized, although it should be empha
sized that both the figures painted on cave walls and those engraved on slabs express
a form of coherent religiOUS thought and that these works are certainly not fortuitous
accumulations of disparate figures. Statistical analysis of several thousands of cave
paintings or art objects reveals the existence of a central theme: man/woman and (or)
horselbison, expressed in a manner that met the prescribed conditions for render
ing what was probably the content of a myth. Notwithstanding considerable varia
tions between one region or period and another, this content prevails uniformly
from the Urals to the Dordogne and Spain. The conditions are therefore as good as
those offered by Christian iconography for the study of the evolution of figurative
behavior between the second and the twentieth centuries A.D.
It is also important to note that technical constraints are independent of time.
Art is a better instrument than science for measuring the progress of humanity.
Although thirty thousand years had to pass before the intelligence of the Aurigna
cians could be applied to electronics, their ground ocher and manganese made good
paints, the hair of animals they hunted made good brushes, and their flint gravers
were so strong that they could have been used on steel. In other words, their artist's
materials provided them with means of expression equal to those available to us
today. These materials had already begun to come into existence in the late Mous
terian, but from around 50,000 to about 30,000 B.C. they were not yet being applied
to naturalistic figurative representation. Gravers were employed for working bone
and coloring agents used for purposes of a no doubt decorative nature ofwhich we
know nothing.
372 Ethnic Symbols
This pre-jigurative period includes the earliest activities-collecting curios;

engraving parallel lines or rows of cupules, widespread use of dyes-but there is no
record of any figurative work. It extends over the Chatelperronian and continues into
the Aurignacian. During the latter period, between 30,000 and 25,000 B.C., the first
figures begin to appear.
The first stage of development is attested by a few precisely dated sites in
France and Spain, one ofwhich (the Cellier shelter in the Dordogne) was the source
of a series of chronologically distinct Aurignacian works and two others (La Ferrassie
and Isturitz) of works ranging in time from the Aurignacian (around 30,000 B.C.) to
the middle Gravettian (around 23,000 B.C.). In addition to these three main sites, tal
lying evidence has been found at half a dozen others; in my previous writings I have
referred to these records under the heading of "style I" or primitive Period.
So far as their execution is concerned, these early works are just what might
be expected of a first attempt. They consist of slabs of limestone bearing incisions
of parallel strokes or rows of cupules, clusters of intertwined lines, and curves
roughly organized into animal heads and female symbols (figures 84 and 85).
Between the Chatelperronian and the middle Gravettian the figure drawing
becomes more mature; the figures stand out more clearly and the animals become
zoologically identifiable.
The first fact that strikes us is that although rhythmic markings precede explicit
figures in time, these figurative visual symbols appear to belong to the same context,
as though added on for greater clarity. The explicit forms are, first, oval female shapes
(figure 129) (representations of the tomplete female body were to come later) and
heads or front parts of animals of unidentifiable shape. At all the well-preserved sites,
especially the Cellier shelter, the figures are grouped systematically as follows: rhyth
mic marks-vulva-animal. The same elements, almost unrecognizable in terms of
realism and skill, would still be there ten thousand years later at Lascaux and fifteen
thousand years later in Sicily-the relationship between the periods concerned
being somewhat like that between, say, paleo-Christian graffiti, the Ravenna mosaics,
and the frescoes of a twentieth-century basilica.
There is no word more appropriate than "primitive" to describe the first
known art works. We thus see that primitive art began in abstraction or even in the
pre-figurative. The works were not, as is still sometimes claimed today, a kind of
explosion of enthusiasm that occurred spontaneously when prehistoric hunters
answered the promptings of inspiration or appetite by drawing the forms of their
naked goddesses, the mammoth, or the reindeer. They reflect the very slow devel
opment-lasting more than 10,000 years-of efforts to render with the hand a con-
129. Engraved stone ofthe Aurignacian ofDordogne, on which arefemale symbols and
rhythmic incisions.
tent that verbally had already been mastered. The reason for Paleolithic man's
endeavors to construct his assemblages of symbols was that he had something to
express. In chapter 6 I attempted to bring the first graphic works into relationship
with language; here it may become clearer that art was abstract at the very start and
that its origins could not have been otherwise..
AbstractArt To abstract, in the strict etymological sense, is to "isolate mentally;

to consider a part by isolating it from the whole." This definition perfectly fits the
earliest forms of prehistoric art, which first selects some expressive feature (phallus,
vulva, bison's or horse's head) and then assembles them in order to translate a myth
ological whole into symbols-to create a mythogram. In the history of all arts,
abstraction is resorted to either at the initial or at a late stage--or at any stage, for
reasons of practical necessity, as with writing, heraldry, or advertising. It is precisely
the freedom, or rather the relative freedom, of its evolution that differentiates fig
urative art from technics.
The first conclusion to be drawn with certainty from the available facts is that
figurative art came into being in a logically consistent manner, somewhat like a grad
ually outcropping geological stratum: The tip of symbolizable thought appeared first,
long before any realistic organization of figures was possible. The event we witness
during the millennia that follow is the slow rise of realism.
374 Ethnic Symbols
Realism and Schematization A completely satisfactory definition of these

terms is difficult to find. I shall try to restrict the meaning of "realism" to an advanced
trend toward figurative representation that is "accurate" as regards form, movement,
and detail. Certain late Magdalenian engravings of reindeer or horses will stand up
to having photographs of the same animals in similar movement superimposed
upon them. We may therefore speak of "realism" in their connection. But the term
is always, in a sense, misleading: Some detail of an animal's coat may, for example,
have been overlooked, in which case a certain degree of schematization will enter
into play. Another peculiar phenomenon that may occur, and frequently does in the
case of figures on wickerwork or fabric, is geometrization, the reduction of images
to triangles or other geometric forms, the original meaning of the figure often being
lost to the artist. As for stylization, the term would be useful were it not applied so
carelessly, generally as a synonym for "schematization," whereas in fact it ought to
connote the imprint of a particular place or epoch. A Chinese horse from the time
of the Han dynasty is "stylized" according to a formula in which the realism of form,
movement, and detail undergoes a certain schematic distortion entirely peculiar to
a Han horse. The term "stylization" is of little value unless it connotes a specific pro
cess; otherwise it is preferable to speak simply of "style."
Another value that should be considered is decoration, a practice common to
all arts-plastic, musical, and gestural-consists in filling whatever blank spaces the
composition may contain with suitable decorative matter. All these terms-realism,
schematism, geometrization, decoration-are in common use and are defined here
only to avoid misunderstandings. All these elements played a part in the develop
ment of paleolithic art and can therefore provide us with a vital lead.
In quite another field, mention should be made of spatial integration, which
has to do with both composition and perspective. Lastly, figurative expression has to
take up a position vis-a.-vis the real universe, at any rate as it is analyzed by the senses.
Figurative representation, whatever its means, can conform to commonsense real
ity-in which case it will tend toward perfect realism-or it may seek to achieve fan
tastic ultrareality as in surrealism, or infrareality as in nonfigurative art.
The frequency of possible combinations of all these different terms are vari
able. Realism in all the arts must include some degree of schematization, but it
excludes geometrization, except possibly by transposing it to the compositional
level and turning it into the chief element of spatial integration. Decoration often
entails the fantastic-without excluding realism--or tends toward geometrization in
its elements or in their composition. The paleontology of forms is brief because it
does not begin earlier than the emergence of Homo sapiens. But the available rec-
ords do seem to imply a real beginning, and it is of interest to inquire to what extent
the common values of historic times apply to an art that had already been in a fossil
state for seven thousand years when the earliest roots of Greek art began to grow.
Paleolithic Realism
Developed realism in its threefold aspect of form, movement, and detail is
acquired very slowly; truth to tell, it represents a rather disturbing form of maturity
in the life of the arts: We need only think of archaic Greek statuary, classical sculpture,
the statues of the Hellenistic period, and those of our public parks and war monu
ments. Egyptian or Chinese art could easily give the same impression. Individual tal
ent apart-for individual talent can produce masterpieces at any stage of an art's
development-it would seem that with the passage of time every formula in art tends
toward the point of coincidence between the image and reality. In other words, it
seems that there exists in the arts a phenomenon similar to that of functional approx
imation in technics (see chapter 12). The time drift brings in imperceptible correc
tions that steer the art work toward an ideal state in which it will no longer be
distinguishable from its model or toward a balance ofvalues so miraculous that only
repetition or a decline can follow. Then, it seems, a new cycle begins and the con
ditions for expression change. The parallel between the two phenomena is not, how
ever, complete. In technics objects really do proceed toward functional perfection,
thanks to the emergence of new raw materials. The examples we have Cited show
that their development is made up of sections of a trajectory telescoping into a single,
steadily rising curve. The situation with regard to the arts is different: The role of
material means is negligible-red ocher is still being used by painters, and it is no
better than the red ocher of the Aurignacians. New materials need not emerge, and
art may remain turned in upon itself for long periods, as has been the case with
Chinese art during the past few centuries. The way out then lies in radical changes
p
of direction, sometimes even in com letely fresh departures upon a new trajectory.
These are practically always caused by upheavals of a socioeconomic nature, for the
arts rarely survive a radical change within the group's internal environment. These
insights derived from history would of course be greatly enhanced if theywere con
firmed by a possible trajectory of Paleolithic art, and this, it seems, can now be
established.
As we have seen, style I figures testify to a departure into abstraction; their sche
matism is such that the forms are only just identifiable provided you have a key to
them. Style II extends over the late Gravettian and early Solutrean, with the midpoint
376 Ethnic Symbols
situated around 20,000 B.C. The separation from style I is arbitrary, there being no
noticeable break between the two styles, but collectively the works of the successive
periods show considerable evolution. Style II is illustrated by several caves, such as
Pair-non-Pair in the department of the Gironde (figures 130 and 131) or Gargas in
the French Pyrenees, as well as by very numerous statuettes in the U.S.S.R (figure
132), Czechoslovakia, Austria, and France. In these works the mastery of the burin
is complete, and not the smallest suspicion of clumsiness attaches to the authors of
the Kostienki, Willendorf, or Lespugue "Venuses." Moreover, the multipliCity of
examples and their geographical extension show that figurative "canons" were iden
tical in Russia and the Dordogne, a striking fact which is of considerable help in
defining their characteristics.
If we take realism to mean the striving for precision of forms, movement, and
detail, there is very little realism in the works of style II. Women, bison, aurochs,
horses, are all executed according to the same convention whereby identifying at
tributes are attached to a central nucleus, the body. The result is that the head and
limbs are often merely hinted at and, at best, are out of scale with the mass of the
body. In the animal figures the dorsal contours are almost identical for all species;
horns, a beard for the bison, a mane, and a more delicate muzzle for the horse make
for unequivocal identification, but with a maximum of economy. The female figures
are curious statuettes which have been called "Aurignacian Venuses" or "Steatopy
gous figures," thought by some to represent a portrait of paleolithic Woman. Enor
mous breasts are attached to a massive body, the head is without detail, the arms are
barely sketched in, and the thighs end in short, schematic tapering legs. Viewing the
figures from the two extremes of Europe side by side, it would be hard to find a more
conventional, more stereotyped art-and this fits in with what we have already said,
namely that in the Upper Paleolithic the fragmentation of cultures was as yet little
advanced. No movement is perceptible in either animals or human figures, except
in the arabesque lines which often have admirable vigor. Detail is practically non
existent or barely hinted at. Certain works, viewed within this conventional frame
and without prejudice as to their accuracy, are admirable. The most conventional of
the "Venuses," the Venus of Lespugue, is one of the great plastic works of all time.
Style III is still richer in records and includes bas-reliefs like those of the
Roc de Sers in the department of the Charente as well as profusely decorated caves
such as Le Gabillou or Lascaux in the Dordogne. It has 15,000 B.C. as its midpoint and
covers the late Solutrean and the beginnings of the MagdaIenian. This period rep
resents the apogee of the archaic trajectory. As a stage it might be said to correspond
to the Han period in Chinese art, fourth dynasty Egyptian art, archaic Greek art, and
130 13 1
a
1 32
130, 131. Horse and bison ofstyle II. Engravingsfrom the Pair-non-Pair cave, Gironde,
France.
132. Late style II statuettes. (a) U.S.S.R., Kostienki I; (b) Haute-Garonne, Lespugue.
378 Ethnic Symbols
Roman and Byzantine art. The parallel is not based on a mere impression but on
strongly pronounced internal features. The representation of living beings is subject,
not to a precise transposition of proportions, but to a purely affective interpretation
of anatomical characteristics. The canon is still primitive; the bulls and horses of Las
caux (figures 133 and 134) are inflated like bladders in spite of the flexibility of the
contour lines, the limbs seem to be plugged into the body in what is sometimes a
very rudimentary manner, the perspectives are purely conventional. Each figure lives
on its own, and each part of each figure plays its role with the barest minimum of
connection to the whole. The execution is served by a perfect mastery of color and
of the graving tool. Like those of the arts cited in comparison, style III works give an
impression of vigor and youth not to be recaptured in succeeding stages (figure 135).
The impression is due precisely to the fact that their realism is an evocation, not a
copy. The mysterious life of archaic figures is like the life of curiously shaped stones
or roots. It leaves a margin of freedom, an appetite for more; it opens up suggestive
vistas. It is a phenomenon of the same order as the introduction of a very slight warp,
even of some small deliberate imperfection, in Chinese or Japanese pottery. There
can be no doubt that old portrayals of galloping horses are more alive, and conse
quently more real, than the cold precision of instantaneous photography, for the only
way to instill motion into the immobile is by juxtaposing different tempos or by por
traying movement that is illogical. No one can tell precisely what movements the Las
caux artists wanted to render; the way their animals do move is odd, as if they were
swept up by a two-way whirling motion.
But realism of movement is already coming through: Some animal limbs are
twisted to express movement; one of the horses is actually rearing while others are
quite convincingly shown to be trotting, but then these works belong to a rather late
stage of style III. As for realism of detail, it too is already emergent. In the course of
Lascaux's history, some of the horses had their ears repainted two or three times
(figure 136), and some archaic stags' antlers were washed away to make room for
antlers drawn in corrected perspective. The gradual ascendancy of realism is notice
able in the care with which the figures are filled in and modeled, the horses' manes
drawn in detail, the eyes and nostrils meticulously spelled out.
At the time it entered upon style N, Paleolithic art still had a fairly long way to
go before declining into academism. The period covers the middle Magdalenian and
late Magdalenian (early and late style N, respectively); that is, it extends from roughly
13,000 to 11,000 and from 10,000 to 8000 B.C. Several tens of engraved or painted
caves, including Altamira in Spain and Niaux in France, are its high points, and thou
sands of decorated objects provide a very solid documentary basis as well as dem-
·
1
·
·
·
·
·
·
·
134 ·
·
!
!
!
136
133, 134. Aurochs and horse, style III. Cavepaintings, l£lscaux, Dordogne, France.
135. A pair of ibex. Paintingsfound in the Cougnac cave, Lot, France. Theproportions and
ceroicodorsal curves and theperspective ofthefemale's horns are highly characteristic of
style III.
136. Engraved horse's head. l£lscaux. The ears and <yes werepainted twice at different
stages ofstyle III.
380 Ethnic Symbols
onstrate, with regional variations, the remarkable unity of the traditions. This is the
period of classical splendor. The manner of representation is still just sufficiently out
of true with flat reality to bring out the rich savor of the figures. The execution has
a subtlety that already borders upon anecdotal liveliness. Art already possesses very
ancient traditions of skill, and realism is becoming more pronounced at every level.
Realism of action, however, is still almost entirely absent. Until late style N the com
positional elements of the decorations still exist independently of one another and
of their framework. There are only three or four examples of "scenes," all of them
borrowed from a single theme, that of a man attacked by a bison or a bear. Realism
of form, movement, and detail begins to come through more and more clearly. The
bisons ofAltamira (figure 137) are still as though suspended in an unreal space. But
the bulls and cows are rendered with precision despite the absence of primary sex
ual detail, and the figures of bisons rolling in the dust are already very real. At Niaux
the animals' feet already appear to be standing on the ground, and their attitudes
have assumed a strongly descriptive character (figure 138). The evolution is still
more marked in the detail of the animals' coats and the play of light on the pelts. In
both the mural and the movable arts we witness the creation of a real code used uni
formly throughout the Franco-Cantabrian region to render the pelt of the ibex, the
bison, the horse (figure 139), or the reindeer, a code so precise that the animal can
be identified from a mere fragment of a sculpture.
From this point Paleolithic art has only two or three more thousand years to
go and the best is already over. Some beautiful works of the late Magdalenian are
known, but no great ones. The large cave paintings fall into obsolescence, the sculp
ture disappears, and the animals engraved on slabs of stone or on reindeer antlers
show at best a photographic realism (figures 1 40 and 14 1). Paleolithic art died out,
together with the earlier conditions of life, toward 8000 B.C. Its legacy may perhaps
have lived on in the proto-agricultural communities which were beginning to form
near the Mediterranean, but it had become unrecognizable and new arts were setting
out on new cycles of their own.
The development of realism in Paleolithic art shows-literally in slow motion
and under ideal conditions because cultural crosscurrents are slight or nonexis
tent-that figurative representation is subject to a maturing process whose stages are
connected with a phenomenon similar to that of technical invention: All graphic or
plastic innovations are oriented toward an increasingly close apprOximation to phys
ically accurate rendering. Except in the masterpieces, the increased accuracy is
accompanied by a weakening of the impressions conveyed by the works. Skill comes
gradually to occupy a more important place, and art becomes irreversibly launched
139 1 41
1 40
137. Altamira, Santander, Spain. Early style N bison, modeled two-tone painting.
138. Niaux, Ariege, France, early style N bison, painted black with reliefsuggested by
hachures.
139. Ie Pore4 Ariege, France, early style N horse, painted black with reliefsuggested by line
markings.
140. Teyjat, Dordogne, France, late style N wall engravings ofa bull and cow. Note the
realism ofmovement andform (after H. Breuil).
141. Schwitzerbild, Switzerland, late style N horse engraved on bone. Realism of move
ment andform.
382 Ethnic Symbols
upon a course leading to academicism and insipidity. The culminating section of the
trajectory is that in which the technique is mature but visual integration is not yet
completely subordinated to the physical reality of the portrayed object.
The phenomenon ofgeometrization is well established in the historical field.
For practical reasons, such as the constraints ofweaving or wickerwork, the contours
of figurative elements become angular and gradually dissolve into geometrical fig
ures devoid of any meaning. Pottery offers other forms, dictated by the application
of decorative matter round the vase or the application of figures by rapid brush
strokes, which gradually wear away into geometricism. This evolution normally
affects only decorative procedures in which the rhythm is more important than the
subject, and all the arts since the Neolithic can be said to include areas in which geo
metrization plays some part.
In Paleolithic art the process appears in two different ways. The first is the usual
one, and it confirms the general rule. Decorated objects between the Aurignacian
and the late Magdalenian fall into three categories. There are figurines, which carry
their meaning entirely within themselves, and there are objects serving a technical
purpose of a long-term nature, such as pierced rods, or of a short-term nature such
as spear tips. The long-term objects are elaborately decorated with engraved or
sculpted designs and show a degree of realism consistent with their period. The
short-term objects are sparingly decorated with highly simplified engraving often
reduced to geometric forms--segments of circles, crosses, lozenges, and so on. As
in subsequent cultures, the geometrization of decorative matter is thus determined
by technical constraints. The resulting evolution is comparable to that of writing,
which is to say that it involves the gradual loss of the subject represented and the
forming of a series of signs (figure 142). Geometrization therefore appears as an
aspect of extreme schematization.
There was also a second way by which, under certain very special conditions,
Paleolithic art arrived at geometrization. We have already said that underlying all
European Paleolithic art there is a mythographical theme, obscure to our modern
intelligence, involving the presence of a man, a woman, a bison, and a horse within
the same group. We know that in style I males or females were sometimes repre
sented by realistically drawn sexual symbols (figures 84 and 85). Very early, perhaps
already at the pre-figurative stage, the male symbols began to blend into the series
of vertical strokes or dots, although realism made occasional comebacks until the
Magdalenian. Female symbols were consistently expressed by ovals or triangles with
or without a median line. From style II onward, however, these figures were fre
quently replaced by nested ovals or by circles. In style III it is the quadrilateral figures
2
3 � \1/ \V
------. /� /1\
I � , ----...
\.'/ \> \') 'V-

---- a ----- 142 b ---
() \I II )
\I
o
1 43
142. Middle and late Magdalenian decorativepatterns engraved on reindeer bone or
antler (spears or sticks). (a) Geometrization ofthe theme ofa row ofhorses. Theprobable
stages 4 and 5 defy direct identification. (b) Unidentified geometric themes. Motifs 3 and 4
are veryfrequent, motifs 4 and 5 may relate to the row ofhorses.
143. Variations on the male (a) andfemale (b and c) theme, illustrating the abstract char
acter ofsexual representation during the majorpart of the Upper Paleolithic.
384 Ethnic Symbols
that may be covered with a checkerboard pattern, as is the case with the Lascaux
"coats of arms" (figure 143). Although the underlying concern of Paleolithic art was
very generally connected with reproduction, and although ithyphallic human figures
or figures of male animals with primary sexual attributes are sometimes met with,
the vast majority of figures are without such signs, and nothing other than differences
in animals' coats or horns or in size distinguishes the males from the females despite
the fact that they are often represented in couples. No scene of human or animal cou
pling is attested with certainty. A strong moral or magical constraint would appear
to have operated in this field, which explains why, especially during style III and the
early part of style N, sexual symbols are disguised in almost undecipherable geo
metrical forms. The esoteric in figurative representation is practically contemporary
with the birth of art itself. Far from being a late phenomenon, it is directly connected
with the fact that the figures are symbols, not copies. One of the mistakes made by
historians of Paleolithic art has been to assume from their modern point of view that
works of art had to be simple because they were primitive and gratuitous because
they were artistic. But simplicity is not a matter of counting every hair in a mam
moth's tail so as not to forget how many of them there are, it is a matter of connecting
the language of words with the language of forms. The best proof-were it still nec
essary to supply one-of the existence of language in the Upper Paleolithic is pre
cisely that words had to exist for the figures to be intelligible. It is therefore very
important to note that as far back as 20,000 years before our era, figures could depart
from realism of even the most relative kind and assume the form of signs as con
ventional as those used in writing.
Decoration This term covers a multitude of meanings. Decoration is often a

matter of the artist's intention rather than of the actual elements employed: An
antique marble sculpture that was the compositional center of a temple may be just
one of a number of decorative elements in a park The decorative intention itself is
elusive, a great edifying fresco in a sacred shrine being as much an element of dec
oration of the shrine as are garlands of leaves. The common factor would seem to
be that decoration introduces the concept of composition and integration in space
but, in doing so, introduces a hierarchy of values, a distinction between major and
minor forms in figurative art. The question we must ask ourselves is whether the con
cept of decoration was already present in the Paleolithic in both its aspects-which
as a rule are complementary-of organizing flat surfaces and volumes with the help
of figures whose nature or position is secondary.
Decorative elements are completely absent from mural art, which we shall con
sider later from the point of view of composition: The caves are like churches from
which all superfluous elements other than statues and frescoes, all "padding" such
as column capitals, moldings, and gilt have been removed. Filling-in of flat surfaces
with geometrical motifs is, however, to be found in works dating most closely to our
own time, those of the Neolithic constructions of Catal Hiiyiik in Anatolia (figure
144), separated from the Magdalenian by about 2,000 years, and there is also a great
deal of other decorative material on Paleolithic chattels. Some of these objects dating
as far back as the Aurignacian, such as punches and pierced sticks, are covered in
what appear to be purely decorative realistic or geometrical figures. Later, in the
Solutrean, throwing devices, spears, and harpoons became added to these objects,
and we can imagine the Magdalenians decorating their weapons and their tools as
we used to do not so long ago and as is still done in most parts of the world. The
aesthetic aspects of such supposition are not in question. The decorations on the
tools are carefully composed and in balance with the shape of the object, and the
extraordinary artistic perfection of most of the works means that the reqUirements
of integration of the decorative elements are fully satisfied. But the other aspect with
which we associate decoration, that of its gratuitous nature, is surely erroneous, for
144. Geometric decorative patternsfrom the neolithicfrescoes of (arat Huyiik

(afterj. Mellaart).
386 Ethnic Symbols
the decorations not only had a meaning but also fulfilled a function, and the deco
rations covering the humblest spear did not differ in this respect from the most
splendid cave wall painting. The reason why bison were drawn round the hole of
the pierced stick and why the handle was decorated with horses appears to be that
the object's hole corresponded to the bison, a feminine symbol, and its handle to the
masculine symbol of the horse. This is confirmed by the fact that many pierced sticks
are not decorated with couples of animals but with symbols of the human couple.
Spears, which enter the wound as the male organ enters the vulva, are decorated with
rows of horses which become schematized into geometrical figures; harpoons are
decorated with fishes, which are also masculine symbols. These facts are consistent
with what we know about the relationship between language and figurative repre
sentation: From the Aurignacian onward, the objects "speak," and they continue to
do so in most cultures where meaning has not yet become divorced from figurative
representation. To a certain extent, this remains true of the great Civilizations: A]ap
anese scroll painting of chrysanthemums would not be unrolled in spring, any more
than a Christian bishop's crook would be decorated with bacchantes, or a French
academician's ceremonial sword with mandolins. In the Far East, as in the Mediter
ranean world, the divorce between allegorical themes and decorative material was
completed in antiquity.
Composition Composition has to do both with the meaning of the figures and
with the balance of forms in space. We have seen that Paleolithic people used piC
tures as mythograms, and we may therefore suppose meaning-related composition
to have been present at the very beginning of figurative expression. Figurative syntax
is inseparable from the syntax of words. The earliest known figures, those at
La Ferrassie or the Cellier shelter, which date to the Aurignacian, already include sev
eral sets of the animals, rows of lines or dots, and female oval shapes which were to
reappear later on innumerable cave walls; they thus appear to meet the first part of
the requirements of composition. A striking feature of the hundreds of known exam
ples, however, is the freedom with which the elements are assembled, a freedom
long mistaken for a total absence of order: Swarms of bison, horses dotted here and
there, a stag appearing out of nowhere, were enough to confuse the modern eye. The
spatial balance of forms, if it exists at all, is not of the same nature as has been known
since Neolithic times. This is, once again, entirely as it should be, for, as we have seen,
settled agriculture completely transformed the human image of the world. In other
works I have described my attempts to identify, on the basis of topographical statistics
of mural paintings, the principles underlying the complex cave paintings of Lascaux
�
and Altamira. These principles of composition in space are of a rather singular
nature, but they completely coincide with the very starting point of art. The "statis
tical" cave (figure 1 45), a cumulative diagram representing eighty actual caves,
appears to be decorated in the same manner as the objects, a male/female symbolism
prOViding the basic theme and the topography of the place adding touches of inspi
ration. Narrow passages and cul-de-sacs are used as female symbols to complement
the male ones--rows of dots, horses, ibex, deer. At the very back of the cave, in the
last of the successive "rooms," are the most powerful masculine symbols-an actual
man, a lion, a rhinoceros. Even the emptiest walls of the intermediate rooms have
the complete bovine-equine mythogram painted on them, as well as male and female
symbols often surrounded by additional male symbols, mammoth or ibex (figure
1 46). The organization of space in these compositions is related to meaning, not to
the search for balance which comes after many centuries of civilization. The distri
bution of figures in space is not anarchic-it is adapted, often very felicitously, to the
nature of the surfaces--but it is never rigid. The syntax is revealed when we see, sev
eral times over as at Lascaux, bulls and a horse confronting a group of cows and a
crowd of little horses, the bulls being accompanied by isolated male signs and the
cows by female signs supplemented with short straight lines. The intellectual inte
gration of space is therefore perfect, but spatial balance, like realism, is a later acqui
sition barely perceptible in the late Magdalenian.
The subtle interplay of symmetry or asymmetry in the groups of figures, the
fields, and perspectives appears to follow the realism of movement implied by the
asymmetrical interplay of limbs perceived in the painting as a whole. Yet, as we have
seen, realism of movement-that is to say, the construction of the isolated figure
was still rare and incomplete before the late Magdalenianj at best, lively movement
is conveyed separately for each limb. Sophisticated composition and movement, like
realism of form, are elements laboriously acquired in the maturity of art. A light
sketch of a few trees or a village, even just a horizontal line used as a ground stroke,
would have brought Paleolithic art to the level of Assyrian art, but one of its distin
guishing feature is precisely the absence of all elements unrelated to the mytho
graphiC theme.
Paleolithic art does not disclose any narrative theme. Except in the case of the
man knocked over by the bison (figure 1 47), it does not represent any action other
than animal movements that are also animal attributes, such as the "leaping" bisons
of Altamira which, in reality, would appear to represent males rolling in urine
sprayed dust in preparation for staking out their territory by rubbing themselves
against trees (figure 1 48). Subsequent arts, even those of recent primitive peoples,
388 Ethnic Symbols
JI
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b
145. Statistical representation of cave decorations: (a) inplan; (b) total area. I: decorations
begin; II: the cave na1Tows; III: entrance to central secondary caves; N: decorations end
(bottom of cave); v: centralparts ofthe "rooms" orpassages; VI:periphery ofthe central
parts; VII: interior ofthe central secondary caves. The numbers indicate thepercentage of
figures in each ofthe above-mentioned locations; the use ofmale andfemale signs is
strictly conventional.
1 48
146. Pech-Merle, Lot, France, composition on the aurochs-horse + mammoth theme,
painted in black. Four aurochs are represented: One is zn the mzddle,jlanked by a dia
grammatic horse and a mammoth, a second one appears to befalling vertically, a third (at
the bottom end) has wound marks equivalent tofemale signs, the last (on the right) bears a
virility symbol (booked rod).
147. Lascaux, man knocked down by a bison. This is a theme known by several examples.
It isprobably more ofa mythographical assemblage than an account based on experience.
148. Aitamira, male bison rolling on the ground in order to stake out its territory, known
as "the leaping bison. "
390 Ethnic Symbols
show nothing truly comparable to the Paleolithic figurative system. Mural paintings
like the African ones which represent figures of animals grouped together in a still
somewhat rudimentary fashion might come close, but they also include human fig
ures engaged in actions of various kinds, scenes of war, plant gathering, and family
scenes; they are composed works, mythographical in nature but fill ed with identi
fiable narrative content. The cave engravings of southern Italy, whose inspiration was
certainly the same as that of the French and Spanish works but which belong to the
last stage of the Paleolithic, suggest a turning point (figure 149): The pairs of aurochs,
horses, and deer are still represented in the same apparent disorder, but they exhibit
a highly developed realism of form and movement; some of the groups are placed
on imaginary ground lines, and the men and women who appear in these engravings
are shown armed or dancing, walking, seated, or lying on the ground.
In a different sense the arts of primitive peoples are brimful of painted,
engraved, or sculpted mythograms. But the figures have already been thoroughly
hieraticized (like the totem poles of British Columbia or African statuary) or the ste
reotyped elements are repeated by accumulation (as in the mural art of Australia or
of the Dogons), or else the composition is organized in narrative scenes (as in
Eskimo pictography or Red Indian painting. One of the most interesting aspects of
Paleolithic art is connected with its proximity to the origins of figurative represen
tation: Starting from zero with images that are no more than abstract assemblies, and
never achieVing a higher degree of composition than the simple consistency of the
figures, it gradually evolved-in individual figures-toward photographic realism.
The next stage, in which narration came to form the framework of composition, had
barely begun by the time Paleolithic art disappeared.
Perspective If the compositional stage was only partially reached by the same
process of evolution as that which produced realism of forms and movement, per
spective followed exactly the same course, for realism of forms, composition, and
perspective are closely connected with one another. Perspective for isolated images
was achieved as early as in style III, as many examples from Lascaux demonstrate. It
was reflected in the manner of drawing animals' horns and ears and of modeling
bodies and limbs. This use of perspective had certainly been acquired during style
III , some 1 5,000 B.C.; as we have already noted, some of the Lascaux figures were
repainted later in an optically truer perspective. In style N horns and ears were ren
dered in a perspective very close to that of the great civilizations, and the manner of
modeling bodies had become completely conventional (figure 150). A most singular
feature of Paleolithic art is that except in styles I and II, individual figures were ren-
1 50
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149. Cave at Addaura, Sicily, assemblage offigures showing multiple-action realism. The
complete workfrom which tbisfragment was obtained is oriented toward the aurochs
borse + stag tbeme, but tbe bumanfigures are a new pbenomenon.
150. Evolution ofperspective drawing ofborns and antlers during the Upper Paleolithic.
392 Ethnic Symbols
deredwith a degree of optical accuracy achieved by the great civilizations of the Med
iterranean and Asia only at a late stage, whereas the level of collective organization
of the figures remained surprisingly elementary. Animals or signs were distributed
across the painting in such a way as to meet, first, the requirements of the mythogram
and, second, those of an aesthetic balance of masses, yet there is no trace of concern
with the distribution of planes, no scenography even at a level comparable to that of
the Australian churingas, still less any trace of foreshortening or representation in
plan as in African mural art, or of effects of transparency by means of which an ani
mal's organs are seen through its body, or of diminishing-scale effects. The com
position is optical so far as the figures are concerned, though any attempt to organize
them scenographically is lacking. The engravings of the Addaura cave in Southern
Italy, Paleolithic in content, already belong to a different world in terms of the posi
tioning of the figures, which suggests a circle of men dancing and an oblique line of
individuals walking.
We could ask ourselves whether there is any connection between the perfec
tion of the separate elements and the rudimentary way in which they are articulated
with one another, on the one hand, and the evolution of language, on the other.
While the horse hunters' technical vocabulary was already highly appropriate, their
syntax may have been very elementary. A study of Paleolithic art oriented along these
lines might yield some unexpected results in the field of linguistics.
We have seen under what paradoxical conditions the earliest figurative art
came into existence: These conditions cannot have recurred other than very excep
tionally, for art was never again obliged to develop in isolation. The cycles followed
one another, but probably never again did they start from scratch; even the Australian
aborigines had some contact with Melanesian ideologies and symbols. There would
be little point in discussing every aspect of the "primitive" arts of historic times in
our present context, but it is useful to compare classical art with its real diametrical
opposite. The comparison, which still fails to bring out completely the essential traits
of primitive figurative structure in the absolute sense, disconcerted the prehistori
ans. What they expected to find were still somewhat simian men who, supposedly
by magic or as a pastime, drew game animals and women, pregnant mares, and
wounded bulls without any problems of composition because the figures were set
down pell-mell on the cave walls, gradually coming to form haphazard groups. This
idea was so deep-rooted that it took the work of Madame Laming-Emperaire to show
that the apparent chaos of Lascaux was in fact constructed. After eight thousand years
of agriculture and other scientific pursuit of exactitude we are very ill-equipped to
understand the primitive. In chapter 1 we saw to what extent our image of fossil man
was derived from scholars who were themselves often conditioned by their child
hood reading. The discovery in Nigeria twenty years ago that the ancient art of Ife
was more "developed" than contemporary African art caused much surprise. The fea
ture that proved most immediately striking in Paleolithic art discovered at the end
of the nineteenth century was the extraordinary anatomical accuracy of the animal
drawing-a real enough accuracy from the middle Magdalenian onward but, before
then, as relative as that of, say, Assyrian art. A fact that escaped notice was that the
paintings were symbolic assemblies of juxtaposed elements, and that the figurative
elements, both animals and human beings, were themselves produced by assem
bling characteristic anatomical elements whose complete integration had taken
thousands of years of unconscious refining, as well as of small individual artistic
inventions. Technical obstacles had been mastered very early, but the figurative syn
tax had remained at a level corresponding to that of the intellectual capital as a whole.
The Fantastic Paleolithic art offers very few examples of what might be con
strued as flights of the imagination. Its monsters can be counted on the fingers of
both hands (figures 151 and 152). The creation of monsters in the art of more recent
times derives more or less exclUSively from two processes. In the first, a normal
theme is transfigured by the addition of decorative elements or by schematization
followed by reworking. The jaguar theme in South American art or the sculptures of
New Mecklenburg in Melanesia are good examples of this process. The other is the
merging together of disparate symbolic figures. There are two ways in which this
process normally takes place. The first consists in adding animal attributes, such as
a lion's teeth, a bull's horns, or an eagle's wings, to the human figure. The second,
a widespread and major source of the fantastic in art, is the merging ofanimal figures
to make a mythographic whole. In two separate works published some thirty years
ago, I commented on the way in which, in Chinese art and in the arts of northern
Eurasia, symmetrical figures arranged stripwise became telescoped together to
make a monster, how the very widespread theme of a bird of prey, a feline, and a
herbivore attacking one another merged to produce the chimera, the griffin, and the
winged bull and how a combination of the eagle and the snake led to the dragon.
It is interesting to inquire whether any such processes took place in the course
of the long story of prehistoric art. Some known cases, such as that of the cat-tailed
bear of Rouffignac or the bison-horned horse of Combarelles, were probably the
result of coalescence: The bear and the lion are male symbols found in the deep
1 53
151. Pech-Merle, Lot, France, "antelope"panel. Unidentifiable animals made up ofdispar
ateparts ofseveral species.
152. Ie Gabillou, Dordogne, France, the "giraffe. " Among thousands ofrepresentations of
paleolithic animals, the threefound here are almost the only ones to resist zoological iden
tification. Tbisparticular one even lacks identifiable details.
153. Lascaux, Dordogne, France , the "unicorn."
recesses of caves, and it was almost natural for them to come together. The homed
horse panel at Combarelles included only one incomplete mythogram (horse +
mammoth); the bison was barely perceptible, and it seems as though the horns had
been added to the horse at a much later date so as to restore meaning to the whole.
One of the best known monsters was the Lascaux "unicorn" (figure 153), improperly
so named because it appears to have two rectilinear horns (which are undoubtedly
not its own). No satisfactory explanation is available for the rest of the figure: It occu
pies a place where a cat might be placed, and it might well be a figure of a panther
(an animal which, although rare, existed at the time) drawn according to oral tra
dition, as giraffes and rhinoceroses were in the Middle Ages. Some anthropomor
phous figures, on the other hand, are clearly monsters produced by coalescence. The
most famous is the "sorcer:er" of the Trois-Freres cave, who has a fairly human trunk
and legs, but arms and genitals reminiscent of a cat's, a horse's tail, and the ears,
beard, and antlers of a reindeer; his eyes and beak are probably an owl's. What makes
Paleolithic monsters different from griffins or hydras is their intellectual-verbal
origin. Chimeras and dragons, sirens, and centaurs are born mechanically, and we
can trace their genesis up to the moment where the secondary oral context gives
them an existence of their own. The sorcerer of Trois-Freres, by contrast, depends
on a context of which he is one of the possible interpretations-an interpretation in
conformity with the very nature of Paleolithic figurative representation, which is, fun
damentally, a significant assemblage. So far as the position of the figure is concerned,
the problem of assembling elements having a male significance could have been
resolved in twenty different ways by the use of horses, ibex, deer, or reindeer, and
soon, isolated or in groups: The stroke of genius lay in creating a perfectly symbolical
synthetic creature.
That Paleolithic thought should have reached so advanced a point may seem
paradoxical because we find it difficult to distinguish that which is intrinsically
human in ourselves from what is the product of collective maturing. Expression
through syntheSized symbols is human from the very beginning ; obviously, however,
the picture of a vulva and a phallus scratched into a block of stone by Aurignacians
is not pornography, a stage in figurative representation that took all the maturity of
the somewhat overripe civilizations of pre-Colombian America, India, China, and
Europe to reach. Most probably our Aurignacians did not even mean to represent
copulation-no human or animal figures exist to prove that they did-but rather a
more general fact connected with their conception of a universe in which contrasting
phenomena supplement each other. All reference systems are ultimately based on
the alternation of opposites--day/night, heat/cold, fire/water, man/woman, and so
396 Ethnic Symbols
on. The handling of symbols by equivalent groups or by complementary pairs fits in

with whatever deliberate composition we can detect in Paleolithic art. The early
development of fantastic images proceeded along both tracks, that of combination
of equivalents in the "sorcerer" of Trois-Freres and that of binary complementarity
in the androgynous images which, although rare, appear to have been executed.
The Nonjigurative
The Paleolithic paradox consists to an appreciable extent in the fact that images
of masterly technique and of appealing form can seem to represent nothing of any
coherence. To the modern eye, the swarms of animals and signs signify no action
except of a most fragmentary kind, and no narration can be detected. We may wonder
whether this is so simply because we cannot read or whether there really was no
figuratively represented action. The study of comparative art shows that large-scale
compositional procedures led all groups to employ explicit narrative forms when
representing actions of a technical nature. The mural art of Eurasia and Africa is filled
with scenes of hunting, fishing, and gathering and of various domestic activities.
Herds have their shepherds or their hunters, men are engaged in dOing. Religious
activities are less often represented figuratively; metaphysical concepts are repre
sented abstractly. But our living arts do not include a single example where the attri
butes of narrative appear without its form; concentrations of actors without action
or stage never occur. A further reason for thinking that what we see in Paleolithic
frescoes is represented only abstractly is that they contain several examples of a sin
gle theme, that of a man killed by a lion (figure 147), which show that in this case,
at least, narrative composition existed in the same forms as everywhere else. If, like
manyAmerican, Oceanian, or African arts, Paleolithic art had employed only hieratic
figures, often schematized to an extreme degree, the problem would have appeared
simpler, and we should have been entitled to suppose that art developed in two
directions-toward a very conventional figurative representation of entities or con
cepts, on the one hand, and toward a more realistic figurative representation of
actions, on the other. The question is particularly important in relation to recent
twentieth-century art. The long road traveled by realism in the Mediterranean civi
lizations has finally brought it to Puvis de Chavannes and the comics. Parallel to this,
abstract art has also enjoyed a long career in the symbolism of religious and astrolog
ical signs and in heraldry, eventually becoming detached from its original meaning
and transposed into an art whose schematized forms seek to suggest a meaning out
side and beyond optical truth. Further than this there appears to be nothing-except
perhaps the rejection of all figurative representation. Surrealism proceeded by

assembling normally realistic objects in such a way that the final assemblage con
stituted the negation of realism. Aside from the refusal of Significance manifest in
certain works, this approach is relatively close to that of the Paleolithic, in that the
meaning resides in certain key elements composed in an ultradimensional space but
lacking syntax. The fact that surrealism coincided with a passionate interest in prim
itive arts is obviously not fortuitous. Trying to find a way out by going back to the
beginnings of time goes together with rejecting that part of the development of art
during which symmetry and perspective were developed and values became
ordered in a narrative succession. The difference between the beginning and the end
is, however, that the Paleolithic artists were innovating whereas the Surrealists tried
to renovate, that is to say, they tried to construct something unconstructed out of
scraps of obsolescent material. A really new beginning would require humankind to
forget the art of the Mediterranean cultures (which has now become planetary) and
cease to understand ancient Greece, medieval Italy, the Flemish, the moderns, all
painting-even if it is at odds with tradition-and all music inspired by the maturing
of centuries. The social memory exists, its reason for existence is larger than but
inclusive of aesthetics, and far from rejecting the past, to day's cultures encourage
understanding of all the arts, from the prehistoric to the Araucanian. The rise of a
new art, an art that would blaze a trail through unexplored country, is an important
matter because human dynamism is connected with the creation of upbeat rhythms.
The loss of manual discovery, of the personal encounter between human and matter
in the exercise of a craft, has closed one of the doors to individual aesthetic inno
vation. At a different level artistic popularization enables the human masses to live
passively on the planet's cultural stock. But art will eventually go the same way as
adventure, and Chinese paintings and Mayan sculptures will pall like the cowboys
and the Zulus Simply because a feeling for art calls for a minimum of participation.
The problem of this modicum of the personal in art is as important to the future of
Homo sapiens as that of the deterioration of human motor function.
The need for a creative solution is already expressing itself in the pursuit of
nonfigurative art and concrete music. Since it is apparently impossible to shake off
the weight of six thousand years of civilized art, the solution can only lie in the most
uncompromising opposition, comparable to that of the ascetic who denies time by
refusing sleep and the social order by living naked in the desert. Counter-art is the
rejection of realism, form, and the faintest trace of figurative representation, with
only the elementary core of rhythm and of contrasting values still being preserved.
Taken to its extreme in paintings that are completely white or completely blue, it is
398 Ethnic Symbols
a rejection even of rhythm, or, in paintings executed with a spray gun, a rejection of
the hand.
Paintings made by throwing, by burning, by lacerating the canvas, and sculp
tures made of crushed motor cars genuinely represent a return to pre-Homo sapiens
structures in that, like art which uses uncut stones or roots, they succeed in creating
an aesthetic situation similar to that which existed at the time of Neanderthal man,
when forms were products of the play of natural forces. The paintings executed by
anthropoid great apes, obtained by training though they are, bear witness to a still
more intensive thrust toward the very depths of aesthetic behavior, a reimmersion
in a rhythm born of the crossing of chance with psychophysiology. These facts are
of great interest, for although the bizarre in nature has always aroused strong artistic
reactions, the use of chance as the basis for a counterfigurative aesthetic is a fact of
typically contemporary importance. In the Far East aesthetes of an ascetic bent have
been known in the past to contemplate a garden that was only a surface of white sand,
but a surface broken up rhythmically by a black rock that restored it to the scale of
a complete universe. That is an example of figurative art pared down to the point of
imminent abstraction, and its strength resides in this constantly deferred imminence.
Take away the black rock, and no one who has ever lived will see more than a blind
ing surface, philosophically a paradox but aesthetically a desert. Is the work of today's
"painters of emptiness" a sign of rebirth? A sign of weariness it certainly is, but just
as certainly a blind alley of creativity. The art of the age-old Eurasian agricultural civ
ilizations will have traveled to the point of total refusal, a point beyond which res
urrection is no longer possible and only the birth of a new cycle can follow.
Figurative representation is the language of visible forms. Like the language of
words it holds humanity by the root, and the human solution has to be based on the
construction of historical trajectories that support the creative urge in a long ascent
followed by a fall and by other, newer trajectories. The search for the figurative is
therefore written into the future of humankind. The current crisis would become
alarming only if, as has happened in the social sphere, the relationship between the
mass of passive consumers of art and the creative elite caused the vigor of the search
to weaken. At the end of the eighteenth century the transformation of a world that
had existed since the beginnings of agriculture began with technics. The great crisis
of today was triggered, the forms of society began to change, and, soon afterward,
music became the first of the arts to suffer a sea change. Visual art followed more
slowly, and it was not until just before the end of the nineteenth century that a shift
became perceptible. The situation of the past eighty years is therefore quite normal:
It fits into the development as a whole, pretty allegorical frescoes receding into
archaeology just as the mail coach did a little earlier. Today's profusion of art move
ments, the impossibility of telling whither art is heading, the counterfigurative exper
iments under way, are all signs that the world has entered upon an innovative stage.
The future, however, is not without problems. With the coming of photography and
especially of the action photograph, optical realism has lost its role as a driving force
in most of the older visual arts. The simple forms of primitive symbolism adopted
by the great painters and sculptors of the past half-century are transitional forms. The
next stage in the arts ought in principle to border on archaicism, with an as yet uncer
tain mastery of the new relationships deployed in the construction of great monu
mental works. The art of the new edifices being erected all over the world suggests
that such a stage may already have begun. The erudition stored in the world's col
lective memory encourages reminiscence and so prevents us from recognizing the
full meaning of an evolution which, after a short century of reorientation, is taking
us back to the stage of the immediate predecessors of the painters of Lascaux.
15 Imaginary Freedom and the Fate of Homo sapiens
Imaginary freedom . . . the chapter title could serve as an expression of the pes
simism engendered by certain aspects of human evolution. In the case of the wolf
and the dog, the price paid for liberation from the natural environment is the dog
collar: "social security" tends to restrict not only tge risk of too rapid deterioration
of the individual's living conditions but also the uncontrolled exercise of personal
aptitudes. Freedom, that fragile element of the human edifice, rests upon the imag
ination, both in the sense of illusion and in that of emancipation through the use of
symbols. The Australanthropians' world was already an imaginary one to the extent
that it was founded upon the first materialization of what were in effect symbols tak
ing the form of tools; so is the world of an average person of today all of whose
knowledge is derived from books, newspapers, and television and who, using the
same eyes and ears as our remote ancestor, receives the reflection of a world that has
expanded to the proportions of the universe but has become a world of images, a
world the individual is plunged into but cannot participate in except through the
imagination. Human life being a matter of the interplay between all parts of the body
and the mind, we may well inquire whether the human ofthe hundredth century will
still be identical with the traditional human-and whether the human of today still
belongs inside the category of Homo sapiens or has already gone beyond it.
Several chapters ofthis book have been devoted to the search for in-depth con
nections. From our consideration of the zoological part of human nature it has
emerged that the zoological human not only continues to share with other mammals
the physical organization peculiar to warm-blooded animals but also behavior,
which, beneath the veneer of humanization, is still the behavior of an omnivorous
social animal for which the constraints of territory, food acquisition, and reproduc
tion remain thinkable and interpretable in zoological terms. Such a view-which
could be dismissed as a statement of the obvious or attacked as an expression of crass
402 Ethnic Symbols
"bestialism"-appears justifiable for two reasons. The first is that in the course of the
ascent of the human, and especially since the invention of writing, a dematerialized
image has been formed-an image essential to mental development and to progress,
but one which, in the human sciences especially, has led to the denial of any con
nection between the human and the rest of the living world. When discussing the
ape-ancestor in chapter 1 , we tried to describe the difficulties with which the search
for the real image of the human ancestor has had to contend during the past century.
The second reason is that today's widening distance between the human, rapidly
becoming the only land mammal of any numerical importance, and the rest of the
living world compels us to inquire into the real nature of Homo sapiens, born to
hunt wild horses in the steppes and gradually adapted to locomotion in a seated posi
tion in an atmosphere of burned petrol. Human paleontology and prehistory, whose
appeal to human curiosity far exceeds the interest in science, acquire the value of
applied sciences when they reveal that the rise of all civilizations was achieved by
the same physical and intellectual human that once lay in wait for the mammoth, and
that the medium for our barely fifty-year-old electronic culture dates back to forty
thousand years ago. We must of course have confidence in the possibilities of further
adaptation, but the discrepancy remains. No one can deny the contradiction between
a civilization whose powers are almost unlimited and a civilizer whose aggressivity
has remained unchanged since the time when to kill a reindeer was to survive.
All psychomotor evolution since the first vertebrates has been achieved
through the addition of new territories that did not eliminate the functional impor
tance of the preceding ones but preserved their role, increasingly overlaid by higher
functions. The pyramid thus formed was already of considerable size in mammals,
but until the great apes it remained geometrically consistent: The neuromotor inte
gration cortex is the apex of a system which, marvelous though it is, remains strictly
animal. At the stage of the primitive Anthropians it was as though the tip of a new
pyramid-inverted (or, to use the Teilhardian image, "reflected"), more and more
gigantic, made up of all the equipment exteriorized in culture-had come into exis
tence on top of the animal pyramid which is and remains the pedestal whereon all
human behavior rests. Whereas the base on which we stand is and must remain the
osteomuscular system of the last stage of the animal world, the superstructure is
wholly artificial and imaginary, born of the interaction taking place externally
between the two poles of creative activity-the face and the hand-in technics and
language.
One of the things the simultaneous study of the human from the biological and
ethnological points of view has shown is that motor activity (whose most perfect
Imaginary Freedom and the Fate of Homo sapiens 403
agent is the hand) and verbal activity are inseparable from one another. Technics and
language are not two distinct typically human facts but a single mental phenomenon
neurologically based on contiguous areas and expressed joindy by the body and by
sounds. The extraordinary acceleration of progress that followed the unbarring of
the prefrontal areas was due to two facts: the incursion ofreason into technical oper
ations and the subordination of the hand to language in the graphic symbolism that
eventually led to writing.
That is why we must ask ourselves where Homo sapiens as a thinking animal
is going. After some hundreds of thousands of years when technics and language
were balanced within an evolution that proceeded in step with zoological evolution,
Homo sapiens established a circular balance in which spoken thought became cou
pled with thought set down in the form of mythograms and later of writing-which
inCidentally, until the present century, impinged only upon a tiny statistical minority
of humankind. The social pyramid promotes intellectual progress through rare indi
vidual elements supported by a human mass still balanced in the manner that can be
described as "humanly normal," that is to say, an existence where the imagination
operates at the level of bodily participation in ceremonies and, in figurative repre
sentation, at the level of the mythogram. For a somewhat larger minority, writing has
retained its original role; as a process of practical information, rather than as an
instrument of speculative thought, it has served to set down laws, keep accounts, and
direct the bulk ofideological activity: In all civilizations with writing, religious read
ing matter, the code of laws, and the handling of figures were the sole diet of the
literate masses until the awakening of the eighteenth century. For a short period
which, though declining, is not yet over, the prospect of planetary literacy appeared
as the eqUivalent of social and intellectual advancement. The complete subordina
tion of mental activity to the linear process of writing is a promise that can only be
fulfilled by a minority having special aptitudes; for most people, reading short
inscriptions of a practical nature is the normal thing, while the application of thought
to a text--even of a concrete nature--calls for a process of image restitution which
remains mentally exhausting. Despite the intensive work of several generations, the
paleontological balance soon began to be restored, and as literacy spread to the
working classes, the mythogram, in the form of illustrations, reinvaded the reading
matter of the nineteenth century. The strip cartoon entered into popular imagery,
which had at first been purely mythographic in the larger compositions, and soon
pervaded it in the form of small pictures integrated in the text. The linearization of
illustrative drawing developed in step with the spread of reading among the masses,
reaching its peak in the reading matter of today. Radio, television, and films have
404 Ethnic Symbols
completed this return to oral literature and visual information, bypassing any
recourse to imaginary forms.
Oddly enough it is by no means certain that audiovisual techniques are really
changing traditional anthropoid behavior. We may wonder too what will be the fate
of writing in the more or less distant future. There can be no doubt that for several
thousand years, quite independently from its role as keeper of the collective mem
ory, writing has by dint of its one-dimensionality provided the analytical instrument
indispensable to · our philosophical and scientific thinking. The preservation of
thought can now be envisaged otherwise than in books, which will not offer the
advantages of qUick and easy manageability for very much longer. Preselected and
instantaneously reconstituted information will soon be delivered by a huge magnetic
storage facility with electronic selection. For centuries yet, reading will go on being
important-although significantly less so for the majority of human beings-but
writing is probably doomed to disappear rapidly, to be replaced by dictaphonic
equipment with automatic printing. Should we regard this as a return to the state that
preceded the phonetic subordination of the hand? I am inclined, on the contrary, to
view this as one of the aspects of the general phenomenon of manual regression (see
chapter 8, last section) and as a new "liberation." As for the long-term effects in terms
of forms of reasoning, or of a return to diffuse and multidimensional thought, they
are at present still unforeseeable. Scientific thought is undoubtedly somewhat
cramped by the linear constraints of typography, so a process whereby the subject
matter of all the chapters of a book could be presented Simultaneously would be of
considerable advantage to both authors and readers. But whereas scientific reason
ing probably has little to lose through the demise of writing, literary and philo
sophical forms will surely have to evolve as a result of the same process. This is not
especially to be regretted, since the curiously archaic forms employed by thinking
human beings during the period of alphabetical graphism will be preserved in print.
As for the new forms, their relationship to the old ones will be that of steel to flint:
A steel tool is no sharper than a tool made of flint, but it is more manageable. Writing
will enter the infrastructure without changing the functioning of the intellect, as a
transitional stage that will have been dominant for a few thousand years. The loss of
manual activity and the reduction of the human physical adventure to a passive one
will cause more serious problems.
The adaptability ofHomo sapiens is largely conditioned by the social environ
ment. It is safe to say that until the present period, the majority of humans enjoyed
normal conditions for the balanced exercise of physical and mental aptitudes in the
performance of agricultural, pastoral, artisanal, and warlike tasks. With the primi-
Imaginary Freedom and the Fate o/Homo sapiens 405
tives, and a fortiori with Paleolithic man, environmental selection operated in the
sense that all individuals-with the possible exception of those living in the border
area between the natural and the supernatural, such as healers or sorcerers-had to
have a certain minimum of psychophysical balance below which survival became
precarious. Nothing is known, by the way, about this category of individuals during
the Paleolithic but the example of recent primitives suggests that they are unlikely
to have lived entirely on the exercise of their functions.
The most profound change in behavior based on the balance between the
psychic and the physical was brought about by the transition to city life. The urban
environment ensures the survival of categories of individuals-priests, scribes, mer
chants-whose manual function is all but completely masked by one that is, in the
widest sense, verbal or intellectual. Lawyers and traders in all civilizations prepared
the way for the long-term regression of the hand or, more precisely, for a transpo
sition of the technical field allowing only very limited scope for manual operations.
But all ofthem used writing; their hands formed words and punctuated their speech;
the forelimb had lost none ofits importance in intellectual synergy, and we are there
fore entitled to speak of a transposition. The centuries have shown that large social
groups can adapt and reproduce themselves in a psychophysical balance of the
"cerebral" type, but certain major compensatory phenomena have to be taken into
account. Active individuals regained a degree of normal balance by traveling on foot
or on horseback or through hunting, and social events called for participation of a
complex nature. The nonartisanal or nonproductive classes found their anthropoid
balance at a slower rate. It should also be remembered that not a few members of
the "cerebral" classes failed to adapt and turned to war, overseas trade, vagrancy, or
piracy. Lastly, certain classes, especially those involved in the performance of reli
gious functions, were made up of individuals drawn from their original environment
by predisposition. Consequently in a traditional civilized environment the exercise
of the fundamental behavior patterns of Homo sapiens remained identical with the
original behavior. Only the range was wider, and individuals physically or intellec
tually outside the normal run found their place in life as soldiers or philosophers.
Despite the many individual failures of adaptation determined by the social systems,
society appeared to be benefiting from the full range of aptitudes of the species.
Even today the situation does not appear very different: Society continues to
enjoy the use of all its means, though these are increasingly being transposed to arti
ficial organs. The past fifty years with their growing mechanization and control of the
terrestrial world have seen a significant reduction in the range of individual aptitudes
in many parts of the world. Diminished means of individual creativity and the
406 Ethnic Symbols
increasing lack of outlets to the world of adventure have brought into existence new
compensations that are gradually moving further and further away from real life. The
rebalancing role played by sports and hobby handicrafts, together with the annual
interruption created by organized "adventure" on motorways and in camping
grounds, is reaching an increasing number of individuals every year. Even hunting
is today practiced on semidomesticated boar and deer, penned rabbits, and pheas
ants imported by air after being synthetically fed. Overpopulated countries are con
stantly faced with the problem of balance. Yet today's situation is not even a foretaste
of what will be our future only a few generations away. The worker's and the peas
ant's tasks have been only partially mechanized; nature is still present on some
beaches, in some forests. War, which for want of the hunt offers an outlet to the least
adaptable minority, remains Singularly archaiC; wars are scattered over the conti
nents like little safety valves, their gangs of misfits knee-deep in mud forming a
strange contrast with the silent controllers of atomic rocket launching towers thou
sands of miles away. But the man hunt has become a myth that supports the pre
military training of millions ofyouths, the most gifted among whom will perhaps one
day pull the handle which will automatically release the bomb at the precise starting
point of a trajectory selected by an electronic computer. The conquest of unknown
lands too has become a myth, and it is practiced-with the proportions appropriately
changed--on the north face of a mountain peak or on a thirty-meter rock face at
whose foot the adventure-seekers must wait in line for their weekly treat. The uni
verse has surrendered, cosmic space is open for exploration, but society does not
need ten billion cosmonauts; for the ordinary Homo sapiens, space travel became
a mythical compensation before it was really born. We can seriously expect a time
in the near future where only such transpositions will be known and where a cor
porate body of illUSion-making experts will be required to study the psychophysical
dietetics of the human masses. Elements of this new discipline are already in exis
tence: so many open spaces, zoological gardens, sports grounds, supported by the
vitamin-rich diet of radio arid television broadcasts, to balance each period of seden
tary productivity. Each year the ration is supplemented by a stay in the countrySide:
larger open spaces, nature reservations, playgrounds, freedom to put up a tent or
sleep in a camper, freedom to heat up a can of food over a gas flame on the ground.
A certain margin is still there-it is not yet inconceivable that one might grill a fish
one has caught oneself over a wood fire laid and lit by oneself-but in the past ten
years such wasteful use of the common stock of treasures has become almost excep
tional, and in another ten years' time it will be proscribed as an offence.
Imaginary Freedom and the Fate oJHomo sapiens 407
We must therefore expect a completely transposedHomo sapiens to come into

existence, and what we are witnessing today may well be the last free interchanges
between humans and the natural world. Freed from tools, gestures, muscles, from
programming actions, from memory, freed from imagination by the perfection of the
broadcasting media, freed from the animal world, the plant world, from cold, from
microbes, from the unknown world ofmountains and seas, zoological Homo sapiens
is probably nearing the end of his career. Physically the zoological species has a cer
tain future. Given the rate at which it has developed over the past 30,000 years, it
would seem to have at least as much time ahead of it, although paleontology is not
very helpful on this point: Species do not age, they are transformed or disappear. In
any case the future that lies before us goes far beyond the rate of human sociotech
nical evolution.
The great problem of the world as it already exists calls for a solution: How
shall this archaic m ammal, with its archaic needs that have been the driving force of
its ascent, continue to push its rock up the hillside if one day it is left with only the
image of its reality? At no time in its development has this species yet had to break
away from itself since the days of the Australanthrope. Homo sapiens lived his inter
minable adventure concretely; today the human is on the point of exhausting the
resources of the planet, and already the myth of human transplantation into space
has sprung up. But there can be no going back over the ground already covered. We
can dream that when arriving on a distant star, the human will encounter Pithecan
thropus and the southern elephant but will not revert to flint knapping.
Not to have confidence in the human species would be unnatural, but it is dif
ficult to know in which direction our imagination should be allowed to run. There
are several possible solutions to human planetarization. The first, which though
never clearly formulated is in the minds of many, is that atomic processes will bring
the human adventure to a full stop. That is a hypothesis to be rejected, for the simple
reason that, should the accident occur, all hypotheses past and present would have
been useless. We do better to gamble on Homo sapiens. For the same reason we
should be inclined to regard the Teilhardian vision as a powerful mystical approach
that bears, however, the hallmark of all apocalypses. Humankind may well have to
wait thousands ofyears for '.'point omega" and, while waiting, it will have to organize
itself and carry on liVing, just as it did in the year 1000. A third solution consists in
the view that the individual is infinitely socializable and that an artificial world func
tioning toward the well-being of all its cells is more desirable for the individual than
the world of the cavedweller, whose freedom to set out in pursuit of a meal was
408 Ethnic Symbols
always threatened by the possibility of a chance encounter with a reindeer or a lion.

If that is to be the solution we shall, I am sure, have to change the name of our species
and find another Latin word to combine with the generic Homo. Last of all, we can
imagine the human of the near future as being determined by a new awareness and
the will to remain sapiens. In such an event the problem of the individual's rela
tionship with society will have to be completely rethought: We must face up squarely
to the question of our numerical density and our relations with the animal and plant
worlds; we must stop miming the behavior of a microbic culture and come to grips
with the management of our planet in terms other than those of a game of chance.
Whatever the value of the first three solutions, something of the fourth will inevitably
be attempted in the century to come unless we decide that humankind has really run
its course. Our species is still too closely bound to its origins not to strive sponta
neously for the balance that made it human in the first place.
Notes
Part I
1. Lucretius. De natura rernm (lines 1282-1285)
Anna antiqua, manus, unques, dentesquefuerunt

Et lapides, et item sy/varumjragmina rami
PosteriusJerri vis est, aerisque reperta:
Sedprior aeris era!, quamJerri cognitus usus.
(They fought at first with hand and nails and teeth
Stones, branches and [a little later] fire
And then they learned the use of iron and bronze-
Acrually bronze came first.)-Lucretius, The Way Things Are: The De Rerum Natura
oJTitus Lucretius Carus, translated by Rolfe Humphries (Indiana University Press,
1968).
This quotation has been piouslyhanded down for almost the whole of the past century, and I would
not wish to break with the tradition. It must be pointed out, however, that in the context in which
they are usually cited these lines mean absolutely nothing. In putting bronze before iron, Lucretius
was observing a tradition still alive at his time, but the interpretation given to the two lines in which
he is credited with having intuited a Stone Age is overly generous. When he says that humans at first
used their nails and teeth, Lucretius'is making a supposition which, incidentally, is mistaken, since
absence of claws and fangs was a characteristic of the earliest anthropoids. When he speaks of
"stones," he is certainly thinking of rough stone only. We have absolutely no grounds for construing
lapis to mean "!mapped stone." Fragmen, on the other hand, does very clearly mean "broken piece,"
which indicates beyond a shadow of doubt that Lucretius meant to say only this: 'The weapons of
the ancients were their hands, their nails, their teeth, stones [which they picked up for throwing]
and branches which they broke off in the forests." That is a very long way from the prophetic state
ment attributed to the "free-thinking poet of Rome" by G. de Mortillet in 1883.
2. N. de Maillet died in 1738. His manuscript was published in Amsterdarn in 1748 under the
title Tel/lamed, an anagram of the author's name. He was therefore a writer of the first third of the
eighteenth century, and this makes his theories all the more remarkable. In the form of a conver
sation between an Indian philosopher and a missionary, the author-who had been consul in Egypt
and was a fervent lover of the natural sciences-tackles the problems of the nature of our planet
and the origin of our species. Presented in a form that is certainly not in advance of the geological
knowledge of the early eighteenth century, the views on evolution in this work, which precedes the
works of Buffon, are singular in all respects. The thickness of strata and the presence of fossils are
regarded as a sign of vast upheavals of considerable age; de Maillet does not hesitate to opine that
410 Notes to Pages 7-83
each of the six days of Genesis may have lasted a hundred thousand years! On the subject of the
origin of animals, the book opens curious perspectives by suggesting-in a theory whose terms it
is easy to criticize but whose substance is today unassailable-that all land animals, including
humans, descended from sea animals. The manner in which he imagines their adaptation to land
life to have taken place is rather summary, and when he comes to the human he is obliged to resort
to mermen as a transitional stage . . . Yet when, three-quarters of a century later, Lal:narck spoke of
the hereditary nature of acquired characteristics, he was only expressing the same thought, albeit
with the arsenal of scientific data available at his time, which today in its tum has been left far behind.
Geological speculation in the early eighteenth century could only be applied to a concept of time
still completely lacking in depth, and it is therefore quite natural that Telliamed makes short shrift
of the transformation into birds of the fish unfortunate enough to have been stranded at the edge
of ten-ajinna: ". . . the tubes of their fins . . . grew longer and became covered with barbs . . . the
growth formed by these pellicles lengthened in tum, the skin became imperceptibly covered with
down, the small fins they had under the belly . . . became feet . . . " (Taillamed, 1755 edition, p. 167).
The fabulous aspect of the book, its deliberate challenge to the scientific gospel truths of its time,
made it the object of vigorous attack. It was easy to demonstrate in the mideighteenth century that
suns could not give birth to planets, that humans had not come out of the sea, and that fossils were
uncontrovertible proof of the Deluge. Later on, scientific progress made the ideas ofTaillamed read
like the ravings ofa madman. But if we consider them within the intellectual context of their period,
we can hardly deny de Maillet the merit ofhaving understood that the structure ofheavenly bodies
can evolve, that geological time is incredibly long, that humans followed the same track as the rest
of the living world, and that all land vertebrates had evolved from fishes.
3. Boucher de Perthes. Portrait de l'homme antediluvien. Antiquites celtiques, vol. 2, 1857, p. 90:
This must be true of the human before the Deluge. Without being less intel
ligent than us, he might show that intelligence in an outward form other than ours,
and, like us, be the very peak of earthly creation. Here, longer or less long arms, thin
ner or less thin legs, even a less or more jutting jaw prove nothing, either for or against
There have been geniuses who could have been taken for cretins if judged by their
physical makeup alone. . . .
Vol. 3, p. 459:
We have adopted the hatchets, we will also believe in the tools. I am convinced
that there are great discoveries to be made in this field, and that one day the collection
of our first utensils and tools will be viewed with all the attention it deserves, for these
tools are our first proof of reason, our first title to the rank of human, title of a kind
no other creature on earth can claim.
4. The term "anthropomorphism" is employed here in its strict sense, so-called anthropoid or
anthropomorph apes being covered by the expression "pithecomorphism." Anthropomorph really
means "human-shaped" and applies to all anthropoids, Australanthropians included.
5. The anatomical facts expounded in this chapter have been condensed from the author's doc
toral thesis Mechanical balance of the skull and land vertebrates, defended at the Faculty of Sci
ences of Paris in 1955. They were chosen from among other data as being relevant to a perspective
of evolution toward humanity, and developed within that perspective.
6. Anthropologists distinguish between the cranium, which is the entire skull including the
mandible, and the calvarium, which is the skull without the mandible but with the face. They also
speak of the calvaria, which is the brainpan·without the face, and the calva, the calotte without the
base. I employ this terminology purely as a matter of practical convenience.
7. The interest attaching to the study of technicity in the animal world or to the handful of exam
ples of tools such study has revealed cannot be overemphasized. We should, however, beware of
adopting an anthropocentric attitude, which tends to falsify problems.
Notes to Pages 83-88 411
Cases of animals using tools are extremely rare. Reference is often made, piously and i n the
same breath, to the Arnmophila and its grain of sand, the Galapagos finch and its little stick, the nan
nygoat scratching itself with a branch held in the mouth, Darwin's female monkey which used to
crack nuts with a pebble, monkeys that throw stones, and the gardener bird. The only reason why
these examples strike us as spectacular is that they resemble human activities. In no essential par
ticular do they differ from the technicity of the animal world at large, including humans, and to mar
vel at them is simply to revert to the eighteenth cenrury's naive pronouncements about the
industrious bee and the economical ant One might as well take bipedal walking and, instead oflim
iting the comparison to the rare moments at which the gibbon walks upright, lump together the
bipedal dinosaurs, the armadillo, the pangolin, the jerboa, the kangaroo, and the trained dog-sim
ply show one of the solutions to the problem of walking which we share with the vertebrate world.
Listing such solutions held in common is an indispensable means ofpinpointing a part of the human
problem, of demonstrating in what respect we are just one particular case among others, but it only
establishes one component of an answer. Another can be defined by conSidering our position
among species with a pronounced manual activity, a third by examining our position in relation to
the general tendency of all nervous systems to increase in complexity. Still other components could
be established before arriving at the conclusion that we constirute a whole that is unique in the ani
mal world although composed of elements each of which is extensively shared with other species.
8. The phrenology of the German physician Franz:Josef Gall (1758-1818) has enjoyed a success
that in terms of popularity and duration can be rivaled in the field of biology only by those of the
theories of Cuvier and Darwin. Gall's theory, which he developed in a number of works, is for
mulated in the title of the most important among them: Anatomy andphysiology ofthe nervous .sys
tem in general and of the brain in particular, with obseroations concerning the possibility of
recognizing several moral or intellectual dispositions of men and animals through the configu
ration of their brain and their head. It was violently attacked from the first, and the ridicule its
detractors heaped upon it accounts for much of its persistent success. Gall's methods of demon
strating his theory and the character of the affective criteria he emploYi'!d leave little room for any
illusion as to its objective value. Anatomists and physiologists lost no time in giving it the treatment
it deserved, but the attraction it exercised upon less scientific minds was great. The "bumps" of phil
oprogenitiveness, kindness, conscientiousness, or destructiveness, to be detected on the skull,
offered plenty of scope to the irony of some and the thirst for scientific mystery of others. The
expression "to have a bump for something" (for travel, say, or for cleverness) has entered the
language. -
It would be interesting to analyze the reasons for the long survival of the phrenological
theory. The mystery of the makeup of geniuses, criminals, and cretins, like the secret of the ape
ancestor, has to do with the larger problem of human destiny which is always present in our minds.
The violence of scientific attacks upon Gall and his repeated rerum to popular favor spring from
the same psychological source. But we might also ask ourselves whether the phrenological theory
does not develop an obvious parascientific truth.
Having jettisoned the whole of Gall's demonstrative apparatus, which is completely without
foundation, we are left with several assertions that are not lacking in value at their starting point.
Gall defended the specialization of different areas of the brain; this today is a commonplace fact.
He claimed that each organ finds extension in the nervous system all the way to the cerebral cortex;
this is at present recognized. He believed that many psychological traits are conditioned by the indi
vidual's physical constirution; this is also an unassailable view. We are free to choose whether to
regard him as a madman or a forerunner. His work, like N. de Maillet's in the mideighteenth cenrury,
appears ridiculous and SCientifically useless today, but he was a man of large-scale ideas and pen
etrating insights. It can be said of all those who embark upon the advenrure of science that in their
inruitive perception of a connection between facts of two different orders, they are obliged to resort
to demonstrative methods that are generally childish in narure: The same reproach can be
addressed to the pioneers of evolutionism or of human paleontology.
412 Notes to Pages 112-160
9. The legend of the "apophysis gent' offers a good example of wanting to explain everything
with what happens to be available, however little that may be. The apophysis geni is a formation on
the inner surface of the chin into which the genioglossal muscle, one of the muscles that activates
the tongue, is inserted. The manner in which insertion of the muscle is achieved varies a good deal
from one mammal to another, but whereas the apophysis geni is found only in anthropoids, the
genioglossal muscle itself plays a most important role in the mobility of the tongue in, for instance,
ruminants. Apophyses geni in anthropoids are subject to considerable individual variation; some
Palaeoanthropian mandibles show more developed ones than others; in the La Naulette jaw found
in 1866, they are small. This Palaeoanthropian mandible, the only one known at the time, provided
the basis for the theory of language that G. de Mortillet advanced in Ie Prtfhistorique, 1883, p. 250,
in the following surprising terms:
All men, even the most inferior, possess the power of speech, but was this
always so?
The La Naulettejaw says: No!
Having thus obtained a declaration from the speechless jaw, the author adds: "Articulated
speech is produced by a series of movements of the tongue. These movements are effected prin
cipally by a muscle inserted in the apophysis geni. In animals incapable of speech, the apophysis
geni is lacking. The fact that it is also lacking from the jaw ofLa Naulette means therefore that Nean
derthal man, Chellean man, was bereft of the power of speech. . . . "
One is at a loss what to admire more-the sleight of hand whereby the apophysis geni
becomes the necessary and sufficient precondition for speech, the author's absolute contempt for
the laws of phonation (which by 1880 were known well enough), or the paradox which-since the
genioglosses forms the major part of the lingual muscle-ends up by denying the chimpanzee or
the cow the possession of the organ of a tongue. The unconcern with which the man to whom we
owe the first rational classification of prehistoriC periods flies in the face ofhis own system byequat
ing Neanderthal man with Chellean man is no less surprising.
10. A theory on the Simultaneous development of techniques and language has been put forward
by the Russian anthropologist V. V. Bounak: in terms not unlike those I am proposing. However, this
theory is based on very general technological data and attempts to reconstitute the stages from
sound signals to grammatically constructed language. It is particularly interesting to note that the
entirely different approach adopted here, which is based on the integration of the gesture with the
phonic symbol, leads to relatively similar results. (See Bounak: 1958.)
11. The wordprimitive is employed here to designate the technoeconomic condition of the ear
liest human groups, that is to say, exploitation of the natural environment in its wild state. The term
thus covers all prehistoric societies preceding agriculture and animal husbandry and, by extension,
the very few societies whose primitive state has maintained itselfthroughout history until the pres
ent day. EthnologiSts have for a long time been critical of this term, which is continually contradicted
by social, religiOUS, or aesthetic facts, and for that reason "primitive" has taken on pejorative over
tones. But they have not abandoned the term. No other term has been found to designate all peoples
who have no writing and have stood aside from the so-caIled great civilizations. Quotation marks
are, however, employed in most cases. In the present context the meaning is precise and weII
founded: The term is not applicable to any group whose economy is based on artificial exploitation
of the natural environment, and it also reflects certain common characteristics particular to groups
that subsist exclusively by hunting, fishing, and plant gathering.
12. The emergence or adoption of animal husbandry is connected with the overlapping of two
systems of values: the biological and biogeographical characteristics of the species bred and
the technoeconomic level of the breeder. Biological characteristics explain why the dog, a game
scenting and game-raising animal, was domesticated in preference to felines, whiCh as game-stalk
ers are of no use to humans in this exercise. The same is true of Cervidae, which scatter when pur
sued, as opposed to Bovidae which stay together and can therefore be herded. Geographical
Notes to Pages 160-233 413
characteristics are important when we compare the brief period of migration to a higher altitude
required by herds of Lapland reindeer with the immense latitude of migrations of American cari
bou. The role of the technoeconomic system is noticeable, for example, in the case of reindeer,
which are bred differendy by the Chukchis-who are actually proto-breeders-and by the Tungus
or the Southern Lapps, real breeders influenced by the proximity of Siberian or Scandinavian farm
ers. The very small number of species used shows that the preconditions for stockbreeding are
strict, that animal husbandry sprang up spontaneously in only very few places, and that only some
well-determined kinds of animals are eligible.
13. For purposes of agricultural economics, animal husbandry can be subdivided as follows:
A Connection between the breeder and an animal in its natural biotope and with its nat
ural behavior. This is theproto-breeding situation, with plant gathering and hunting still playing a
very important role, and today it is confined to a few groups of reindeer breeders in Eastern Siberia.
B. Connection between the animal and a nomadic breeder in symbiosis with agricultural
communties. This is pastoral stock-breeding-with oxen, sheep, and camels as the predominant
species and donkeys, horses, arid goats as associated ones-and it is confined to the grassy plains
of the Old World. It implies a farmer-stockbreeder symbiosis between two distinct, normally exog
amous ethnic groups (Turks, Mongolians, Touareg, Peuls, Saracatsans of Eastern Europe).
C. Connection between the animal and a sedentary breeder:
a Semipastoral breeding. The animal is kept in a large collectivity (herd). The spe
cialist herder is secreted by the agricultural society, either temporarily or permanendy (Malagasy,
the Massa of Chad, Alpine and Pyrenean herdsmen and shepherds, American cowboys or gauchos).
b. Agricultural stockbreeding. The animals are kept in small collectivities. SpeCialists
in supervising the animals within the perimeter of the farm (cowherds, shepherds) are partially
assisted by the family (children, old people). This is the most widespread form of European animal
husbandry but is also cornmon in many societies outside Europe.
c. Agricultural domestication. Animals kept singly or in a very small collectivity. The
animal is integrated within the domestic system and fulfills the function of a technical implement
(oxen, donkeys, and horses in many societies of Eurasia and Africa north of Chad).
Part II
14. In this book the term "memory" is used in a very broad sense. It is not a property ofthe intel
ligence, but, whatever its nature, it certainly serves as the medium for action sequences. That being
so, we can speak of a "species-related memory" in connection with the establishment of behavior
patterns in animal species, of an "ethnic" memory that ensures the reproduction of behavior pat
terns in human societies, and Similarly of an "artificial" memory in its most recent form that-with
out referring to either instinct or thought-ensures the reproduction of sequences of mechanical
actions.
15. This fact is as true of, and as important in, primitive societies where children and adolescents
form a potentially isolated social group, with young people cohabiting separately, as in modem soci
eties where school is perceived as a powerful means of shaping behavior. The ideological aspects
of education tend to make us overlook the operational aspects, although these constitute a fun
damental part of the collective personality. Ideological indoctrination, if it is to be total, must rely
on elementary operating behavior; educational programs aimed at turning out individuals ideally
in conformity with the collective ideal-from the Spartans to the British public school or the social
ist educational system-have always included the creation of mechanical action sequences. The
humorous example ofthe Englishman dressing for dinner alone in the jungle provides a good illus
tration of the personalizing manner in which elementary sequences work at both the individual and
the ethnic levels.
414 Note to Page 239
16. In mammals the relative proportions of labiodental and lateral or bilateral manual grasping
vary a great deal. They are governed not only by the degree of freeing of the anterior limbs but also
by the degree of development of the motor cortex and by the manner of food acquisition. In the
rabbit, despite the animal's seated posture, manual grasping is nonexistent; in the agouti it succeeds
labiodental grasping, the manual action being bilateral and confined to holding the food. In rodents
with a highly developed grasping ability such as the beaver, the marmot, the hamster, the squirrel,
or the rat, labiodental grasping when seated leads immediately to coordinated action with both
"hands," which are suffidently independent to be able to turn the object so as to present it con
veniently to the teeth. Primary use ofthe hands in order to seize the object is observed, even if rarely.
In grasping carnivores such as felines, lateral or bilateral manual grasping alternates with labio
dental grasping depending on the action involved Bilateral manual grasping predominates when
the prey is captured by pouncing; when it is seized in a stationary or tripedal seated position, lateral
manual grasping is dominant In eating, olfactory recognition is connected with labiodental grasp
ing in a crouching quadrupedal pOsition. In the bear, in plantigrade Mustelidae such as the badger,
or in Procyonidae such as the raccoon, for which locomotion in trees plays an important role, the
pattern, while similar to that observed in felines, is more subtly differentiated and already close to
that of primates: The bear can pluck an object with one hand, carry it to the nose for recognition,
and then grasp it seconEiarily between the lips for eating, both hands being used to assist the oper
ation. In monkeys, although the predse proportions vary considerably from one spedes to another,
manual action (often lateral) is primary and labiodental action secondary, as in humans.
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Index
Numbers in italics refer to illustrations Altamira cave paintings, 191, 378, 380,
381, 386-387, 387, 389
Abominable snowman, 21, 24 Amphibiomorphism, 38, 41-45
Acheulian, 16, 95, 99-100, 134, 135, 138, Animal husbandry, 163, 412-413n.12,
143 413n.13
Addaura cave art, 391, 392 Animals. See also Organization of animals
AdvertiSing, 196, 199 four-handed, 55-56, 60
Aerial respiration, 39-40 and humans, 219-220, 234
Aesthetics, 271-275 and tools, 411n.7
of clothing and adornment, 351 Animal sociology, 273
counterfigurative, 398, 399 Anterior field, 28, 29, 31-36
and ethnic style, 276-279, 306 and motor functions, 84
functional, 20, i78, 299-311 tactile organs in, 295
of natural forms, 369 Anthropoids, 21, 61, 69-70, 122, 410n.4
physiological, 20, 282-297 Australopitbecus as, 65 '
Ajricantbropus, 94 bipolar technicity of, 187
Agricultural Civilizations, 316, 325, 328 brain of, 71, 75, 79
Agriculture digestive system of, 149
in collective memory, 260 and evolution of head, 67, 75
and freeing of technician, 168-171 and figurative representation, 365
and future, 183 intelligence of, 107
integration in space through, 335 language of, 86-89, 1 13, 114, 115-116
and Neolithic murals, 328 and motor function, 85-86
proto-agriculture, 161-163 qualifying conditions for, 67
and proto-stockbreeding, 160-161, 164, as social beings, 145, 156-157
413n.13 and technicity, 86
settled vs. nomadic groups from, 164, vs. pithecomorphs, 63
166-167 Anthropology, and attitudes toward
and stockbreeding, 163-167, 413n.13 religion, 9
and tool requirements, 137 Anthropomorpb, 38, 39
transition to economy of, 157-160, Anthropomorphism, 61-{53, 410n.4
163-166 Anthropopitbecus, 10, 11, 12, 16, 18, 21,
Aigues-Mortes, plan of, 177 63, 75
422 Index
Antbropopithecus hypothesis or myth, 9, 16 development of techniques in, 131

Antiquity, symbolic representation of diet of, 149
universe in, 335-338 hammering by, 309, 366
Ape-ancestor myth, 12, 15, 16, 17, 21, 23, and humanized space, 318
402 and imaginary world, 401
Ape-human legend, l l-13, 15, 94 pyramidal cortex in, 84-85
Archanthropians, 69, 94-95, 122 technical equipment of, 240
aesthetics of, 272 and technical evolution-brain relation,
brain of, 87, 94 138
and brain-technical evolution relation, tools of, 92-94, 99, 106, 313
138 Australanthropus, 75, 79, 87
development of techniques in, 131 Australian aborigines, 74, 153, 155, 195,
figurative activity of, 366 196, 219, 241, 244, 291
and language, 114, 1 15 Austra!opitbecinae, 16, 18, 64, 90, 100,
technical equipment of, 240 109, ll4
tools of, 95-98, 99, 141 Australopithecine revolution, 13
Arcy-sur-Cure site, l l , 14, 109, Ill, 319, Austra!opitbecus, 18, 19, 64, 75, 90
320, 321, 367, 368 Automata or robots, 248, 249, 249-250,
Art. See also Figurative representation or 257, 262
behavior Automatic machine, 247-251
abstracr, 192, 373, 396 Automotive machine, 246-247
cave, 326-327, 376-380, 385-390 (see Axes, 95 , 96, 97, 99, 135, 302, 306-308
also Cave paintings) Aztecs, 203, 334, 338
as collective and personal, 364
culinary, 292, 360 Backbone, and criteria of humanity, 19

and ethnic diversification, 142, 144 Balance, psychophysical, 405
and ethnic style, 278-279 Ball games, 332-334
evolutive trajectory of, 371 Bear cult, 108
in nature, 369 Bifaces, 93, 95, 96, 97, 99, 103, l l4,
nonfigurative, 396-398 134-136, 143, 144, 308
origins of, 190 Bilateral symmetry, of animals, 27-28
Paleolithic, 190, 191-192, 196, 215, 275, Biology of societies, 145-147
326, 327, 344, 363-364, 371-397 Birds, and forelimb, 32, 33
participation in, 397 "Bone cults," 108-ll0
present innovations in, 398-399 Bone industry, 90, 139-141
and religion, 200 Boucher de Perthes, Jacques, 8, 16, 21
"Art for art's sake," 364 Boule, Marcellin, 13, 17, 71, 99
Artisans, 172, 176, 178-179 Brain, 146. See also Cranial structure
Atlanthropians, 16, 69, 95 of anthropoids, 71, 75, 79
Atlantbropus, 69, 94 of Archantropians, 87, 94
Attitudes, and figurative representation, areas of, 79
355-357 artificial, 265
Audiovisual language, 212-216, 404 of Australopithecus, 64
Australanthropians, 64-65, 94, l l6, 122, 132 . in carnivores, 54
brain of, 71, 76 "coiling" of, 71, 76, 86
cranial strucrure of, 65-69 cortical fan, 76-83, 85, 88-89, 137
Index 423
and criteria of humanity, 19, 19-20 Chaux, saltworks and cemetery plan for,
and evolution, 37, 47, 50, 59-60, 81, 342, 343
117-118, 130-132 Chinese writing, 204-209, 261
exteriorization of, 252 Choppers, 92, 93, 95, 97, 99, 1 14, 134,
and face, 72 24� 244, 249, 302, 309
and functional adaptation, 31 Christian cultures, 288, 296
in functional paleontology, 37, 38 Churingas, Australian; 188, 189
and hand, 255 Cities, 176-179
hOminid, 83-84 disintegration of, 342, 344-346
of Homo sapiens, 19, 87, 242 and functional aesthetics, 308
and human of future, 129 and industrial revolution, 179-184, 346
and language, 86-89, 113 plans of, 165, 1 77, 182
and locomotion, 26 present-day, 346-349
of monkey, 79, 81-83, 84, 87 and psychophysical balance, 405
motor functions in, 84-86 in symbolic representation of universe,
Neanderthalian, 71, 79, 99, 111 328-332, 334, 335-336, 337,
Neanthropian, 130-132 338-342, 347
number of connections in, 78 Civilization, 171-184
and operating behavior, 232 Clothing, 104, 220, 350-355
paleontology of, 75-76 Composition, 386
and phrenology, 411n.8 Conjugal group, 151-153
prefrontal areas of, 130-131, 403 Control, visceral, 284-286
and technical evolution, 131, 137, 138, Convergence, 30
141 Cortical fan, 76-83, 85, 88-89, 137
Breuil, Abbe Henri, 15, 95 Cosmogonic thought, 332, 334, 335. See
Broken Hill, fossils from, 14, 66, 67, 70, also Symbolic representation of
120, 121 universe
Broken Hill man, 16, 17, 71 Cranial structure, 29, 38-39. See also Skull
Buddhism, 208, 286, 287, 288, 296, 315, of arnphibiomorphs, 42, 43
354 of Australanthropians, 65-69
Buffon, Georges, 7, 356 of Homo sapiens, 124
Burial places, of Palaeoanthropians, of Palaeoanthropians, 70
110-111 of primates, 56-58
Bushmen, 151-153, 155, 291, 322, 323 of sauromorph, 46
Criteria of humanity, 18-21, 42, 83-84, 294
Canstadt, race of, 10, 11, 12 Cro-Magnon man, 4, 120, 121-122, 124,
<;atal HiiyUk site, 157, 158, 165, 328, 385, 210, 252
385 Cultural characteristics, 277. See also
Cave paintings, 191, 196, 197, 326-327, Ethnic groups
376-380, 381, 385, 386-390 Cuvier, Georges, 8, 10, 16
at Lascaux, 191, 213, 326-327, 364, 372,
376, 378, 379, 384, 386-387, 389, Daggers, 305-306
390, 392, 394, 395 Dart, Raymond A, 18, 64, 90
Caves, as prehistoric habitat, 102, 318, Darwin, Charles, 8, 10
319 Daubenton, Louis, 7, 36, 130
Cellier shelter, 193, 372, 386 Decoration, 374, 384-390
424 Index
Dentition, 36-37, 38 psychomotor, 402

regression of, 124,
125-127, 128 and rational imagination, 294
and theromorph reptiles, 48, 49, 50 as search for conscious contact, 59
Determinism, technoeconomic, 147-149, technical, 132-144, 167-168 (see also
185 Technical evolution)
Diet, and group organization, 149-150 Evolutionary theory, 7, 8, 9, 10, 59
Dress (clothing), 104, 220, 35(}-355 Exchanges, among primitive groups, 152,
Dubois, Eugene, 12, 15, 18 154, 155
Durkheim, Emile, 148 Exploration, and image of humans, 6
Exteriorization, 359-361
Early written transmission, 259-263 of brain, 252
Egisheim of intellectual thought, 248
plan of, 339 of nonconcrete symbols, 1 1 5
remains from, 1 1 i n sentimental literature, 353
EI Guettar site, 1 1 1 of social symbolism, 358
Encyclopedias, 262 of time, 317
Engis cave, 9 vs. animal organization, 349
Eoantbropus, 17
Eoliths, 91 Face
Eskimos, 1 53, 155, 155, 194, 200, 291, and criteria of humanity, 18-19, 42
316, 322, 390 of Homo sapiens, 1 24-128
Ethnic diversification, 141-144, 232, 304 i n monkeys vs . humans, 84-85
Ethnic groups, 20, 232-233, 269-270 of Neanthropians, 1 1 8
and clothing, 35(}-352 transformation of, 71-74
and cuisine, 292 Fantastic, in Paleolithic art, 393-396
and figurative representation, 355-357 Fetus, modem human as, 128, 129
and macroethnic group, 357-358 Fez, Morocco, 345
style of, 276-279, 306 Figuralism, graphic and plastic, 371-375
Ethnocentrism, in prescientific vision, 5-6 Figurative representation or behavior, 273,
Evolution, 30, 58-59 355-357, 363-364, 398
of anterior field, 31-36 first evidence of, 370
of ax, 302, 306-308 graphic and plastic figuralism, 371-375
biological vs. social/technical, 173, origins and early development of,
184-185, 269 365-370
and brain, 37, 47, 50, 59-60, 81, paleolithic realism, 375-396
117-118, 13(}-132 participation in, 403
and imaginary freedom, 401 and religious costume, 353
and intelligence, 106 and rhythm, 365-366, 370
of knife, 302, 303 and technical invention, 380
as liberation, 25-26, 1 17 Films, silent vs. sound, 213
material, 6 Fire, domestication of, 175
and mobility, 26 Fire crafts. See Furnace crafts
and monkey, 1 1 , 14, 74-75, 116 Fish, 28-30, 31-33, 44
of Neanthropian types, 122-124 Flaked pebbles, 9(}-92, 93
of operational sequences, 253-254 Fontechavade, skull of, 17
of operations and gesture, 251-253 Foods, and taste, 289-291
Index 425
Forelimb, 19, 31-36 Hand(s), 146

intellectual use of, 405 action peculiar to, 238, 242
of marrun� , 33-36, 51 and anterior field, 34, 84
of monkeys and anthropoid apes, 239 and brain, 255
and sensorimotor cortex, 80 and criteria of humanity, 18-19, 19
Form evolution of, 255
and function, 300, 302-309 in functional paleontology, 37, 38
natural, 299-300, 367-370 intellectual use of, 405
Freedom, 224-227, 338, 401 and language, 209-210
Functional adaptation, 30-31 in marrun� , 51
Functional aesthetics, 20, 278, 299-311 in monkeys vs. humans, 84-85
Functional independence, 359 and motor function, 243-249
Furnace (fire) crafts,. 169, 173-176, 179, of primates, 62 .
180, 330 . and speech. 35-36

Future, human of, 129-130, 168, 185, and technical gestures, 240, 242
403--408 Harmonization of diameters, 124
Head. See Face; Skull
Gargas engraving, 193 Hieroglyphics, 201
Gastronomy, 289-291 History of collective memory, 258-266
olfactory, 291-293 History of views on human being, 4-18, 94
visual, 293 Hominid brain, 83-84
Gender specialization, 151, 153 Homofaber, 97-98
Geometrization, 374, 382, 383 Homo presapiens hypothesis, 15, 16, 112
Gesture(s) Homo sapiens, 20, 94, 145
elementary analysis of, 238-242 brain of, 77, 79, 87, 242
motive, 242-24� and cultural diversification, 144
"Taylorization" of, 253 and dental regresssion, 74
technical, 240, 242, 313 forehead and face of, 71
and toolli, 237-238, 242-243 future of, 129-130, 168, 185, 403--408
Gibraltar man or skull, 9-10, 11, 12, 14, graphic profiles of, 119, 120
70, 138 and graphism, 188
Gourdan, remains from, 11 and habitats, 314
Graphic and plastic figuralism, 371-375 Linnaeus's classification of, 7
Graphic profiles, 119-122 physical development of, 124-128
Graphism. See also language; Writing and present-day human, 401
birth of, 187-190 skull of, 67, 68, 69, 73, 1 18-119, 124,
early development of, 190-192, 193 128
linear, 209-210 technical culture of, 133
Grasping, 51-52, 55-56, 238, 239 and technicity, 137, 139
labiodental vs. manual, 239, 414n.16 HOUSing (habitats), 102, 104, 314, 318-
and Sight, 294 325
and technicity, 80 Human being (humanity)
Gregory of Nyssa, 25, 35-36 and anirn�, 219-220, 234
criteria of, 18-21, 42, 83-84, 294
Habitats, 102, 104, 314, 318-325 of the future, 129-130, 168, 185,
Harny, ]ules, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 17 403--408
426 Index
Human being (cont.) Khorsabad, plan of, 177

history of views on, 4-18, 94 Knife, 135, 302, 303
and symbols, 234-235, 313 Krapina, skeleton of, 13
Humanized space, 318-322
"Hunter of Sinanthropians," 15-16 la Chapelle-aux-Saints site, 13, 70, 98-99,
Hunting tallies, 188, 189, 370 119, 138
Hyoid skeleton, 46 la Cullalvera site, 327
la Ferrassie site, 13, 66, 67, 70, 71, 74,
Ichthyomorphism,.37-39 120, 193, 372, 386
Ideogr.uns, 202, 204, 206, 207, 209, 213 lamarck, Jean Baptiste, 8, 9, 10
Ideology, and technoeconomic factors, 176 la Naulette site, 10, 11, 17
Implements. See Tools or implements Language, 1 12-116. See also Graphism;
Index cards, 263-264 Writing
Indians, American, 162-163, 195, 322, 323, and aesthetics, 273-274, 279
324, 326, 390 of anthropoids, 86-89, 113, 114,
Industrial city, 180-183, 346 115-116
Industry. See also Tools or implements of anthropoids vs. great apes, 114
and automatic machines, 249-251 and chOice, 226-227
bone, 90, 139-141 and figurative representation, 355-357,
furnace (fire) crafts, 169, 173-176, 179, 365
180, 330 of hearing and of sight, 195
and historical continuity, 184 and Paleolithic, 215, 392
and Neanderthals, 102, 104, 112 reading, 404
origins of, 92, 93 and technics, 215-216, 403
Paleolithic, 97, 169 la Quina site, 9, 13, 138
second stage of, 96 lascaux cave paintings, 191, 213, 326-327,
stone, 91-102, 133-139 364, 372, 376, 378, 379, 384,
third stage of, 101 386-387, 389, 390, 392, 394, 395
Infant, modern human as, 128 Leake� Louffi, 18, 64, 89
Instinct, 220-227, 235, 258 Ledoux, Claude, 342, 343
Integration, spatiotemporal or spatial, Le Gabillou cave, 376, 394
296-297, 314, 332, 334, 347, 349, Le Porel, 381
374 Les Combarelles engraving, 193
Intelligence, human, 75, 99, 104, 106-108, Les Eyzies, man of, 15, 24
221-224, 227, 233, 235 Leva110ffio-Mousterian technique, 99-102,
Invention(s), 157, 168, 169, 173 103, 136, 135, 138, 143
Isturitz cave, 370, 372 Levi-Strauss, Claude, 148, 154
Itiner.ant space, 325-327 Levy-Bruhl, Lucien, 148
Liberation
Jacquard loom, 250, 264 evolution as 25-26, 1 17
Japanese writing, 207-209 indirect motor function as, 245
Jarmo site, 157, 158 language as, 227
Java man, 17 from writing, 404
Jawbone cult, 109-110 Linear graphism, 209-210
Jellyfish, 30 Linearization of symbols, 200-202, 203
Jerusalem, ideal plan of, 339, 340 Linnaeus, Carl, 7, 10
Index 427
Locomotion, 26, 36, 38, 40-41, 44. See and erect posture, 19
also Mobility hand and face of, 84-85
and anthropomorphism, 61, 62 and human evolution, 1 1 , 14, 74-75,
and cranial development, 29 116
and grasping, 55-56 posture of, 75
Lucretius, 6, 409n.1 and prescientific period, 5
skull structure of, 56, 57
Machines, 246-249, 270 Monsters, in Paleolithic art, 393
Macroethnic group, 357-358 Monte Circeo site, 14, 70, 109, 1 10, I l l ,
Mal'ta, Siberia, 322, 324 120
Mammals Moral apparatus, 229-230
and forelimb, 33-36, 51 Mortillet, Gabriel de, 10, 12, 18, 75, 91
grasping, 51-52, 55 Moscow, plan of, 348
and olfactory identification, 292 Motive gestures, 242-243
quadrupedal, 50-55 Motor functions, 84-86, 242, 243-249
walking, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55 Mousterian period. See also
Maps, from previous centuries, 4-5, 329 Leva11oiso-Mousterian technique
Maodsm, 148, 184, 225-226 and graphism, 188
Material, and form, 306-309 habitats of, 102, 318-319, 320
Material evolution, and explorations, 6 natural aesthetic objects of, 369
Mauer man, 13, 69, 94, 112 and Neanderthals, 98-99 (see also
Mauss, Marcel, 148 Neanderthal man)
Mayan manuscript, 203 and Palaeoanthropians, 133
Memory, 413n.14 red ocher in, 1 1 1 , 367
animal vs. human vs. mechanical, 258 and rhythmic expreSSion, 315
electronic, 264-265 skeleton of, 13
history of collective, 258-266 and social divisions, 322
as instinct vs. language, 220-221 Muscular senSibility, 286-289
moral, 230 Music, 260, 273, 287, 370
operational, 230-234 Mythographic writing and mythograms,
social, 227-230, 235 191, 193, 196, 197, 199, 200, 202,
Metallurgy, 169, 173-176, 180, 183, 330 205, 210, 261, 373, 382, 390, 403
Microliths, 134, 135, 136-137 Mythology, 195-196 .
Middle Ages, and symbolic representation
of universe, 338-340 Natural forms, 299-300, 367-370
Missing link, 13, 83 Neanderthal man, 3, 98-99. See also
Mobility, 26, 27-28. See also Locomotion Mousterian period
Mohenjo-Daro, 165 brain of, 71, 79, 99, III
Molodovo site, 319, 320, 370 and burial, I I I
"Monkey" issue, 9 classic portrait of, 70-71
Monkeys clothing of, 104
anatomical and gestural possibilities of, diet of, 149-150
238, 239 discovery of remains of, 9-10, 12, 13,
and anthropomorphism, 61 17, 109, 367
brain of, 79, 81-83, 84, 87 and figurative aCtivity, 366
demon as, 22 habitat of, 102, 104, 319
428 Index
Neanderthal man (cont.) in transition to life on land, 39-41

and industry, 102, 104, 112 in vertebrates, 28-31, 50
intelligence in, 99 Ostracoderm fish, 28-29
language of, 115
and legend of ape-human, 11-13, 15, Pair-non-Pair cave, 376, 377
23 Palaeoanthropians, 69-70, 74, 98-99, 122,
natural aesthetic objects of, 369 132
and nineteenth century, 8 aesthetics of, 272
and Palaeoanthropians, 69-70, 98 affective life of, 1 1 1-112
paleontologists' analyses of, 13-'14 "bone cults" of, 108-1 10
posture of, 17-18 burial places of, 110-111
Neanthropians, 121, 122 and fire, 175
brain of, 130-132 graphic profiles of, 119, 120
evolution of, 122-124 and humanized space, 318
and facial frame, 118 industry of, 99-102
graphic profiles of, 120, 121 language of, 1 1 5
succession leading to, 118-119 living arrangements of, 104
Neolithic era, 135, 137, 163, 306, 327- and Neanderthals, 69-70, 98
328 singing of, 367
Nervous system, 30-31, 50, 78, 80, 146. See skull of, 66, 67, 69, 70-74
also Brain and social divisions, 322
Neuf-Brisach, plan of, 340, 341 and spreading of cortical fan, 77
Niaux, cave paintings of, 191, 197, 327, and technical evolution-brain relation,
378, 380, 381 138
Nonfigurative art, 396-398 and technicity, 100, 107, 133, 141
Paleolithic, 10, 369
Olduvai Gorge, 89 and agricultural economy, 157
Olfactory gastronomy, 291-293 art of, 190, 191-192, 196, 215, 275, 326,
Operational behavior, 225, 226, 230-232, 327, 344, 363-364, 371-397
234, 239, 253-254, 287-288 habitats of, 318
Operational memory, 230-234 industry of, 97, 169
Oral transmission, 258-259 and knife, 302
Orangutan, 23 and language, 215, 392
Oreopithecus, 19, 63 psychophysical balance in, 405
Organization of animals, 26-27 representation in, 195
amphibiomorphism, 38, 41-45 tools of, 139, 140, 143, 144
and anterior field, 28, 31-36 (see also Paleontology, 3-4, 9, 13
Anterior field) Parantbropus, 64
bilateral symmetry, 27-28 Pebble culture, 90-92, 93, 135, 138, 143
and elements of functional Pech-Merle cave painting, 389, 394
paleontology, 36-37, 38 Peking, plan of, 331
ichthyomorphism, 37-39 Peking man, 15
pithecomorphism, 38, 39, 55-58, 61, Perspective, 390-393
41On.4 Physiological aesthetics, 20, 282-297
sauromorphism, 38, 45-47 Pictograms, 192, 194, 200, 206, 390
theromorphism, 38, 44, 47-55 Piltdown man, 16-17
Index 429
Pithecanthropians, 17, 69, 95 Quatrefages, Jean Louis, 9, 10, 1 1 , 12

Pithecanthropus, 12-13, 14, 18, 23, 69,
94 Race of Canstadt, 10, 1 1 , 12
and medieval mind, 4 Racial variations, 122
and nineteenth century, 8 Racism, and Renaissance ethnocentrism, 6
reconstitution of, 14-15 Radial space, 325-326, 327-328
and technical evolution-brain relation, Reading, 404. See also Language
138 Realism, 374-375
tools of, 95 Paleolithic, 375-396
Pithecomorphism, 38, 39, 55-58, 61 , Religion, 200, 338, 371
41On.4 Religious dress, 353, 354
Plesianthropus, 64, 65, 67 Reptiles, 44, 48-50
Posture Rhythms, 309-311
and central nervous system, 146 control of, 284-286, 354
as criterion of humanity, 18, 19, 42 and domestication of time and space,
and facial structure, 18-19, 42, 72 314, 315-316, 317
of monkeys vs. anthropoids, 75 and figurative representation, 365-366,
of Neanderthals, 17-18 370
Pottery, 169, 173, 175, 180, 308, 330 and muscular sensibility, 286-288
Prdmost, skull X from, 120, 121 and visceral sensibility, 282-284
Prefrontal areas of brain, 58, 130-131, Robots or automata, 248, 249, 249-250,
403 257, 262
Prefrontal bar or ridge, disappearance of, Roc de Sers site, 376
131, 141, 156, 369 Rodents, 33, 34, 51, 238, 239, 295, 318
Prehominids, language of, 1 12-1 13 Rothenburg, plan of, 339
Prescientific period, 4-6 Rousseau, Jean�acques, 10, 148
Primates
anatomical and gestural possibilities of, Saccopastore fossils, 14, 18, 70, 98, 138
238, 239 Saint-Hilaire, Etienne Geoffroy, 8
brain of, 81 Saint Ouen at Rouen, church of, 22
cranial structure of, 56-58 Sauromorphism, 38, 45-47
and evolution of anterior field, 34-35 Schaaffhausen, H., 10, 12
hands and feet of, 62 Schematization, 374-375, 382
and locomotory apparatus, 56 Schwitzerbild wall painting, 381
Primitive group, 149-157, 166, 412n. l l SCience, and religion, 338
Prinias, plan of, 337 Sensibility
Printing, 261-262 muscular, 286-289
Privation, visceral, 284-286 visceral, 283-286
Profiles, graphic, 1 19-122 Sensory apparatus, 281, 282-283
Progress, 252 Sergi, Giuseppe, 17-18, 98
Prometheus, myth of, 176 Shanidar site, 157, 158
Proto-agriculture, 161-163 Sinanthropians, 17, 69, 108-109, 175
Proto-stockbreeding, 160-161, 164, 413n.13 Sinanthropus, 69, 94
Psychoanalysis, 21, 275 brain of, 79, 87
Psychophysical balance, 405 domestic arrangements of, 104
Punched-card system, 243, 264 and humanized space, 318
430 Index
Sinantbropus (cont.) Style

and "hunter of Sinanthropians," 15-16 ethnic, 276-279, 306
reconstitution of, 14-15 and form of tool, 308
and technical evolution-brain relation, Surrealism, 397
138 Swanscombe, skull of, 17
Skhul, skull V from, 120, 121 Symbiosis, and primitive groups, 154-157,
Skull(s). See also Cranial structure 166
and evolution of brain, 81 Symbolic representation of universe,
of Homo sapiens, 67, 68, 69, 73, 328-335
118-119, 124, 128 in antiquity, 335-338
Neanderthalian, 99 cities in, 328-332, 334, 335-336, 337,
Palaeoanthropian, 66, 67, 69, 70-74 338-342, 347
of primates, 56-58 in eighteenth century, 340-342, 343
suspension of, 36, 38, 42, 43, 44, 45- and habitat, 319, 322
46 in Middle Ages, 338-340
of theromorph reptiles, 44, 48, 49 Symbols
of vertebrates, 43 as controlling object, 332
of walking mammals with cranial and domestication of time and space,
appendages, 52, 53 314-315
Skull cult, 108-109 of dress, 350-355
Slaughtering and skinning techniques, of exteriorization of, 358
Palaeoanthropians, 104, 105 in fantastic art, 393
Smell, sense of, 291-292, 293-295 and freedom, 226
Social classes, 168 and human being, 234-235, 313
Socialist ideology, 183-184 linearization of, 200-202, 203, 216
Social memory, 227-230, 235 loss of, 357-358
Social space, 322-325 natural objects as, 369
Societies and organization of relationships, 350,
animal and human, 219-220, 234 356-357
biology of, 145-147 and sensation, 281
Sociology, animal, 273 spread of, 192, 194-200
Space, 313-315, 318-322 Symmetry, of animals, 27-28
and city plan, 332
itinerant, 325-327 Taolsm, 285-286, 288
livable order in, 346 Tarzan, 21, 248
radial, 325-326, 327-328 Taste, sense of, 289-291
social, 322-325 Technical brain, 1 17�1 18
Spatial integration, 374 Technical evolution, 132-133
Spatiotemporal integration, 296-297, 314, and artIsan, 172
332, 334, 347, 349 and brain, 131, 137, 138, 141
Speech and diversification of ethnic groups,
and hands, 35-36 141-144
and structure of amphibians, 46 and diversification of products, 139-141
Statuettes, Paleolithic, 377 and hIstory, 167-168
Steinheim, fossils from, 14, 70, 98 and paleontology, 146
Stockbreeding, 163-167, 413n.13 and stone industry, 91-102, 133-139
Stone industry, 91-102, 133-139 vs. biological evolution, 168, 173
Index 43 1
Technical gestures, 240, 242, 313 Topinard, Paul, 11, 17

Technical multivalence, 153-154 Touch, sense of, 295-296
Technician, freeing of, 168-171 Traditions, 220-221, 228-229, 290
Technicity. See also Operational behavior; Transmission of programs, 258-265
Tools or implements Trois-Freres cave, 395, 396
and aesthetics, 274-275, 279
as anthropoid characteristic, 86 Urban life. See Cities
and artisan, 172
of Australanthropians, 92, 94 Val Camonia rock painting, 197
.
bipolar, 187 Vaucansson, Jacques de, 250, 262
as criterion of humanity, 83-84 Vertebrates, 28-31, 50
and grasping, 80 Visceral sensibility, 283-286
in Homo sapiens, 137, 139 Visual gastronomy, 293
individual level of, 254-255
and intelligence, 106-107 War, 167-168, 406
and language, 215-216, 403 Washington, DC, plan of, 341
of Palaeoanthropians, 100, 107, 133, 141 Weidenreich, Franz, 15, 98
Technoeconomic infrastructure, 147-149 "Wolf children," 231
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, 15, 59, 146, Writing, 179, 200-202, 259-260, 273, 328,
166, 361, 402, 407 403. See also Graphism; Language
Territory, 150-153, 335 and agraphia, 1 13
Teyjat wall painting, 381 and audiovisual techniques, 2 12-216,
Theromorphism, 38, 44, 47-55 404
Thought, constriction of, 210-212 Chinese, 204-209, 261
Thumb, opposable, 38, 61, 62, 75 and constriction of thought, 210-212
Time, 3 13-318 future of, 404
urban, 317, 318, 330, 332, 349 and pictograms, 192, 194, 200, 206, 390
Tools or implements, 239-240, 91. See
also Industry; Operational behavior; Yoga, 285
Technicity
animal use of, 411n.7 Zawi-Chemi site, 157
of Archanthropians, 95-98, 99 Zinjanthrope, 18
of Australanthropians, 92-94, 99, 106, Zinjanthropus, 1 1 , 64, 67, 69, 89-90, 128
313 and brain, 76, 83, 131
as criterion of humanity, 19 domestic arrangements of, 104
and ethnic diversity, 142-144 language of, 89, 1 15, 1 16
evolution of, 134-137, 139 skull of, 65, 67, 68-69, 71
and functional aesthetics, 299-3 1 1 technical culture of, 92, 133
and gestures, 237-238, 242-243 and tools, 83
in great apes vs. anthropoids, 1 14 Zoological continuity, 7-8
and human evolution, 251-252
and language, 113
Levalloiso-Mousterian, 99-102, 1 03
and pebble culture, 90-92, 93, 135,
138, 143
simplicity of, 244
of Zinjanthropus, 89-90

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KOC University Library

�II�W��II��I�����II�I Gesture and Speech

translatedfrom the French by Anna Bostock Berger

and introduced by Randall White

The MIT Press

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Broodthaers, edited by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh

AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism, edited by Douglas Crimp

Aberrations, by Jurgis Baltrusaitis

Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges Bataille, by Denis Hollier

Painting as Model, by Yve-Alain Bois

The Destruction of Tilted Arc: Documents, edited by.Clara Weyergraf-Serra and

The Woman in Question, edited by Parveen Adams and Elizabeth Cowie

Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century,

Looking Awry: An Introduction toJacques Lacan through Popular Culture, by

Cinema, Censorship, and the State: The Writings ofNagisa Oshima, by

The Optical Unconscious, by Rosalind E. Krauss

Gesture and Speech, by Andre Leroi-Gourhan

Introduction by Randall White xiii

I Technics and language

1 The Image of Ourselves 3

2 Brain and Hand 25

3 Archanthropians and Palaeoanthropians 61

4 The Neanthropians 117

The Evolution of Neanthropian Types 122

5 The Social Organism 145

6 Language Symbols 187

The Constriction of Thought 210

II Memory and Rhythms

7 The Freeing of Memory 219

8 Gesture and Program 237

9 The Expanding Memory 257

III Ethnic Symbols

10 Introduction to a Paleontology of Symbols 269

Ethnic "Style" 276

11 The Body as the Source of Values and Rhythms 281

12 Functional Aesthetics 299

13 The Symbols of Society 313

14 The Language of Forms 363

The Earliest Images 367

15 Imaginary Freedom and the Fate of Homo sapiens 401

My goal, in this brief introduction to the first English translation of Le Geste et

Those who view him as a rather conventional structuralist point to Treasures

Humans."3 Thus Leroi-Gourhan was present during the dynamic transformation of

3. Quoted in Gaucher, op. cit., p. 303.

• a sophisticated theory of hominid biocultural evolution;

In retrospect these intertwined aspects of Leroi-Gourhan's own thought and action

explicitly to the manual creation of a material culture that is extracorporal. Gesture

The focus on operational sequences in the analysis of human material culture

Figurative behavior cannot be dissociated from language: It forms part of

The SOciocultural diviSions that make a particular technical operation

Clearly, when Leroi-Gourhan speaks of a paleontology of language, of figura­

changes that followed. When it comes to tools or visual representations, operational

The Prescientijic Period

haunted by monsters, practically all of which are humanized animals. Ethnocentric

The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

parable to the development of astronomy in the sixteenth: A vast area of universal

The Nineteenth Century

The History of the "Prehuman"

�II�W��II��I��II�I Gesture and Speech

Clearly, when Leroi-Gourhan speaks of a paleontology of language, of figura

anthropus o r Pithecanthropus were mosaics made u p o f fragments taken from dif

11-14. Stagesfrom swimming to quadrupedal offthe-ground locomotion infish, amphibi

esis of a language whose complexity and wealth of concepts corresponded approx

technical specialization, opened up unlimited possibilities of generalization

51. Graphicprofiles ofPalaeoantbropians and ofHomo sapiens. Theprofiles were estab

of a facial balance no longer based on canines as well as molars, though predomi