Formation of speech and consciousness in anthropogenesis: evolutionary drivers and socio-psychological mechanisms

Abstract

The work is aimed at the theoretical reconstruction of the genesis of articulate speech and main abilities of consciousness based on evolutionary regularities and socio-psychological mechanisms. The basic concepts of the conceptual apparatus of reconstruction are presented: “abilities”, “attitudes”, “interiorization”, “interactive ritual”, “niches”, “social orders”, group and individual “concerns”, “communicative concerns”, “supporting structures”, including "magic wands" with a special potential for flexibility and multifunctionality. In ontogeny, human attitudes and abilities are formed through the mechanisms of interiorization (according to Leo Vygotsky) and interactive ritual (according to E. Durkheim, E. Goffman, R. Collins). To reconstruct human traits folding in anthropogenesis is to represent a regular stepwise transformation of the most ancient hominids’ initial ingredients, probably like the apes’ features. Particular attention is paid to pre-rituals that form the internal and behavioral attitudes of apes, as well as their abilities for sign communication and learning new signs. It is shown what sequence of challenges and responses, new concerns and supporting structures led hominids to the formation of joint intentionality (M. Tomasello), self-domestication (D. K. Belyaev, R. Wrangham), normative rituals, the first group rules and internal normative attitudes (C. Lovejoy, D. Dor et al.). This complex phenomenon of normativity, the corresponding social orders and renewed communicative concerns became the main drivers of articulate speech development and closely associated with it consciousness abilities.