Sub sections:
Homo floresiensis on Flores: some early implications for the evolution of language and cognition
Semester I 2005
Dr Dorothea Cogill-Koez
dcogill@une.edu.au
(Education 108, 6 June 2005, 12 noon)
Abstract
This paper focuses on the possible significance of new finds on Flores for modelling the evolution of language and cognition. It will briefly review a limited, relevant selection of existing lines of argumentation as regards cognitive and linguistic abilities in ancestral hominins; it then reviews new evidence from Homo floresiensis on these same points. The combination of morphology, behavioural evidence and dating found in the 'hobbits' is unprecedented. It appears to overturn previously undoubted positions on the relationship between morphology and cognition in the hominin lineage, and focuses attention strongly on the question: what is 'language'?
As this topic is by its nature highly cross-disciplinary, the input of LCRC members and others from other disciplines would be greatly welcomed.