ArticlePloS one2018
Speech, stone tool-making and the evolution of language.
Article in PloS one, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 75 citations in OpenAlex.
- The co-evolution of hominins and Stone Age culture.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2026Review
- Costs of Early Stone Toolmaking cannot Establish the Presence of Know-how Copying.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- Lessons for Theory from Scientific Domains Where Evidence is Sparse or Indirect.Computational brain & behavior · 2024Article
- Preverbal infants produce more protophones with artificial objects compared to natural objects.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- The cultural evolution of teaching.Evolutionary human sciences · 2023Review
- Early knapping techniques do not necessitate cultural transmission.Science advances · 2022Article
- Stone toolmaking difficulty and the evolution of hominin technological skills.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- The origins of human cumulative culture: from the foraging niche to collective intelligence.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- The evolution of high-fidelity social learning.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Learner-driven innovation in the stone tool technology of earlyEvolutionary human sciences · 2020Article
- Development of social learning and play in BaYaka hunter-gatherers of Congo.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- No Country for Oldowan Men: Emerging Factors in Language Evolution.Frontiers in psychology · 2019Review
- A Brain for Speech. Evolutionary Continuity in Primate and Human Auditory-Vocal Processing.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2018Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The 'technological hypothesis' proposes that gestural language evolved in early hominins to enable the cultural transmission of stone tool-making skills, with speech appearing later in response to the complex lithic industries of more recent hominins. However, no flintknapping study has assessed the efficiency of speech alone (unassisted by gesture) as a tool-making transmission aid. Here we show that subjects instructed by speech alone underperform in stone tool-making experiments in comparison to subjects instructed through either gesture alone or 'full language' (gesture plus speech), and also report lower satisfaction with their received instruction. The results provide evidence that gesture was likely to be selected over speech as a teaching aid in the earliest hominin tool-makers; that speech could not have replaced gesturing as a tool-making teaching aid in later hominins, possibly explaining the functional retention of gesturing in the full language of modern humans; and that speech may have evolved for reasons unrelated to tool-making. We conclude that speech is unlikely to have evolved as tool-making teaching aid superior to gesture, as claimed by the technological hypothesis, and therefore alternative views should be considered. For example, gestural language may have evolved to enable tool-making in earlier hominins, while speech may have later emerged as a response to increased trade and more complex inter- and intra-group interactions in Middle Pleistocene ancestors of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens; or gesture and speech may have evolved in parallel rather than in sequence.
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