The incisions on the bone could be a message or a charm but in any event they are instances of abstract thinking.
Tag: abstraction
Child burial from 80,000 years ago shows the existence of abstract ideas
Perhaps the snail shell with the excisions gave an identity to “Mtoto” — a message to another world, perhaps, about who the child was. As more burials are found, we will start to get more answers. For example, if a number of such graves feature shells or similar objects with excisions, we can infer a symbolic intention.
Inventing the wheel was not for meat puppets after all
At Wired: The wagon—and the wagon wheel—could not have been put together in stages. Either it works, or it doesn’t. And it enabled humans to spread rapidly into huge parts of the world.