Abstraction - Origins

Origins

Thinking in abstractions is considered to be one of the key traits in modern human behaviour, which is believed to have developed between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago, probably before the modern human exodus from Africa. Its development is likely to have been closely connected with the development of human language, which (whether spoken or written) appears to both involve and facilitate abstract thinking.

The oldest known physical representations identified as symbols for abstract concepts are abstract engravings found on two pieces of ochre in Blombos Cave, South Africa, in 2001. These have been dated to about 77,000 years ago, during the Middle Stone Age.

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Famous quotes containing the word origins:

    Lucretius
    Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
    smiling carves dreams, bright cells
    Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.
    Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)

    Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.
    W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)

    Grown onto every inch of plate, except
    Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
    Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
    Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
    The origins of art.
    Howard Moss (b. 1922)