Beyond animal communication and quasi-communication in the body and in primitive
forms of life (bacteria) evolutionary semiotics concerns the transition to symbolic
behavior and languages in a narrow sense (i.e. possessing complex grammars and a
large lexicon). There is still some controversy about a protolanguage which came
into existence either with the upright going Australopithecus (3 to 4 my BP), the
Homo erectus (since 2 my BP) or somewhere between the Homo ergaster
in Africa and Homo sapiens (possibly already before the lines of Homo neanderthalensis
and Homo sapiens separated (some 500,000 y BP). As all living humans descend from
the Homo sapiens evolved ca. 200,000 y BP, the language capacity underlying all
human languages must have been in place at that time. Further developments due to
cultural dynamics have probably changed the functionality and variability of human
languages which can be observed in the large range of human grammars today.
Human symbolic behavior is clearly manifested in the rock engraving and rock paintings
found in many areas of the world (since 50,000 y BP), i.e. after the last Out-of-Africa
and the inner African migration.
First vestiges of “writing” (graphical book keeping or expression) are
found in the abstract signs accompanying mimetic Paleolithic cave paintings (cf.
Wildgen, 2005). The origin of clearly referential writing (so called object language)
took place in the Neolithic period and the first large civilizations in Mesopotamia
and Egypt developed several full fletched writing systems.
Beyond the evolution of language as a symbolic medium (cf. Wildgen, 2004a) evolutionary
semiotics considers the symbolic forms of artifact design and manufacturing (documented
since Homo habilis, ca. 2.3 my BP), of art (body art and rock art), clothes
and attires (cf. vestimentary
semiotics), music (musical instruments) and myth (rituals, oral traditions,
religions). Some of them are linked to the celestial bodies (cf.
cosmological semiotics). The high level of Paleolithic cave paintings documents
the artistic capacity of Homo sapiens (cf.
visual semiotics); parallel literary capacities may have existed but they
were only documented after the invention of writing (i.e. in the first civilizations
and classically in religious texts and Greek epos and drama (cf. literary semiotics).