Innovating Works

EVINE

Financiado
The Evolution of Visual Information Encoding
Language leaves no trace in the fossil record. However, an important component of the human language capacity, symbolic combinatoriality, might have fossilized after all. In the Paleolithic, hominins have embarked on their journey... Language leaves no trace in the fossil record. However, an important component of the human language capacity, symbolic combinatoriality, might have fossilized after all. In the Paleolithic, hominins have embarked on their journey from Africa into the rest of the world. On their way, they have left artefacts which provide a window into their mind. Some of these bear early examples of visual information encoding: geometric signs. In the Middle Paleolithic, when Homo neanderthalensis roamed the landscape, evidence for geometric signs is scarce. It is not before the Middle Stone Age in Africa, typically associated with Homo sapiens, that the first systematic industries emerge. By the time Homo sapiens arrives in Central Europe – in the Upper Paleolithic – the practice of using stones, beads, bone fragments, and figurines as information carriers has become part of everyday life. In fact, the abundance of geometric signs in these assemblages is only gradually coming to light via large-scale collection efforts. This project proposes to marry the growing body of archaeological data with state-of-the-art tools from empirical linguistics to assess the Evolution of Visual Information Encoding (EVINE) in the human lineage. To this end, statistical measures based on information theory, quantitative linguistic laws, as well as classification algorithms need to be developed, and applied to sequences of paleolithic signs, ancient writing, and modern writing. Two core hypotheses are to be tested: First, paleolithic signs are statistically distinct from ancient and modern writing. Second, there was a combinatorial transition in the Upper Paleolithic of around 35 000 to 15 000 years ago. If the latter is verified, we would witness a major step towards modern visual information encoding – 10 000 years before the advent of ancient writing. ver más
31/12/2028
1M€
Duración del proyecto: 60 meses Fecha Inicio: 2023-12-01
Fecha Fin: 2028-12-31

Línea de financiación: concedida

El organismo HORIZON EUROPE notifico la concesión del proyecto el día 2023-12-01
Línea de financiación objetivo El proyecto se financió a través de la siguiente ayuda:
ERC-2023-STG: ERC STARTING GRANTS
Cerrada hace 2 años
Presupuesto El presupuesto total del proyecto asciende a 1M€
Líder del proyecto
UNIVERSITAT PASSAU No se ha especificado una descripción o un objeto social para esta compañía.
Perfil tecnológico TRL 4-5