Peabody Fellow Shakes Belief On Prehistoric Communication

The methodology used by a Fellow in the Peabody Museum has shaken popular beliefs about the origins of human communications. The new technique involves the examination of prehistoric bone inscriptions under a microscope.

Alexander Marshack, through studies of engravings in bone by Cro-Magnon man of 8-10,000 B.C., has published his findings in a book. The Roots of Civilization, and in a report in the November 24 issue of Science magazine.

Marshack claims that, with the use of a microscope, he can determine the tool used in engraving and the order in which the engravings were inscribed.

"Cro-Magnon man was using ceremonial, ritual sacrificial and sexual images in engravings," he said yesterday.

The scientist noted that prehistorians and archaeologists had previously placed the advent of communication with the Homo sapiens sapiens, which followed Cro-Magnon in evolution.

In addition, Marshack said that engravings on a five inch section of an ox rib, in 135,000 B.C. during the Achevlian period, were of "exactly the same kind" as those during the Paleolithie period.

"The implications of this could be fantastically important in tracing the origin of language.) but these are implications of something that has only been tentatively presented." Marshack said.

"This Achevlian hunter was accumulating over a period of time a series of symbols and images. It is remarkable that he was structuring his life symbolically, and that he was coming back to the same image and using it time after time." the 54-year-old scientist said.

Marshack concluded, "The definition of an art work is an image made. What I'm finding is not an image made to be looked at, but made as a symbol to be used and added to."

"If I'm right, the origins of art are not aesthetic but cognitive and practical," he added.