Palaeoart and Archaeological Myths

Abstract

This article addresses the question of human symbolic behaviour in the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic. Bednarik argues that the case against such early symbolic behaviour usually relies on untestable propositions about the stages of human cognitive development, and that too little attention has been paid to the full range of evidence for Lower and Middle Palaeolithic symbolism. He urges that the same criteria should be applied in assessing this evidence as in assessing the more widely accepted evidence for Upper Palaeolithic symbolism. In their following reply, Chase & Dibble observe that many quite reasonable hypotheses in the historical behavioural sciences cannot be refuted absolutely, and that where competing hypotheses are presented it may be difficult to decide which is most probable. Finally Davidson, also replying to Bednarik's criticisms, concludes that their different views of the evidence for early hominid symbolic behaviour arise from different objectives and conventions of understanding