Rock Art Research

Palaeoart constitutes the entire surviving corpus of exograms available from the distant hominin past, providing a principal resource for accessing cognitive dimensions of early humans. The potential of exogrammatic review has remained largely unexplored so far in palaeoart research. The reasons for this are explored, and the role of exograms in the development of semiotic capacities and mental constructs is examined. It is shown that, among the classes of evidence available to reason about the cognitive evolution of hominins, exograms, although truncated taphonomically, are the most comprehensive and dependable source of information. However, it also emerges that this record needs to be considered in scientific rather than simplistic humanistic terms. Its potential in exploring neuroscientific aspects of hominin evolution is investigated.