TY  - GEN
ID  - cogprints1744
UR  - http://cogprints.org/1744/
A1  - Humphrey, Nicholas
Y1  - 1998/12//
N2  - The emergence of cave art in Europe about 30,000 years ago is widely believed to be evidence that by this time human beings had developed sophisticated capacities for symbolization and communication. However, comparison of the cave art with the drawings made by a young autistic girl, Nadia, reveals surprising similarities in content and style. Nadia, despite her graphic skills, was mentally defective and had virtually no language. I argue in the light of this comparison that the existence of the cave art cannot be the proof which it is usually assumed to be that the humans of the Upper Palaeolithic had essentially 'modern' minds.
KW  - cave art
KW  -  autism
KW  -  artistic savants
KW  -  human evolution
KW  -  language evolution
KW  -  children's drawings
KW  -  modularity
TI  - Cave Art, Autism, and the Evolution of the Human Mind
SP  - 165
AV  - public
EP  - 191
ER  -

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