The evolution of early symbolic behavior in Homo sapiens.

How did human symbolic behavior evolve? Dating up to about 100,000 y ago, the engraved ochre and ostrich eggshell fragments from the South African Blombos Cave and Diepkloof Rock Shelter provide a unique window into presumed early symbolic traditions of Homo sapiens and how they evolved over a period of more than 30,000 y. Using the engravings as stimuli, we report five experiments which suggest that the engravings evolved adaptively, becoming better-suited for human perception and cognition. More specifically, they became more salient, memorable, reproducible, and expressive of style and human intent. However, they did not become more discriminable over time between or within the two archeological sites. Our observations provide support for an account of the Blombos and Diepkloof engravings as decorations and as socially transmitted cultural traditions. By contrast, there was no clear indication that they served as denotational symbolic signs. Our findings have broad implications for our understanding of early symbolic communication and cognition in H. sapiens.

Homo erectus at Trinil on Java used shells for tool production and engraving.

The manufacture of geometric engravings is generally interpreted as indicative of modern cognition and behaviour. Key questions in the debate on the origin of such behaviour are whether this innovation is restricted to Homo sapiens, and whether it has a uniquely African origin. Here we report on a fossil freshwater shell assemblage from the Hauptknochenschicht ('main bone layer') of Trinil (Java, Indonesia), the type locality of Homo erectus discovered by Eugène Dubois in 1891 (refs 2 and 3). In the Dubois collection (in the Naturalis museum, Leiden, The Netherlands) we found evidence for freshwater shellfish consumption by hominins, one unambiguous shell tool, and a shell with a geometric engraving. We dated sediment contained in the shells with (40)Ar/(39)Ar and luminescence dating methods, obtaining a maximum age of 0.54 ± 0.10 million years and a minimum age of 0.43 ± 0.05 million years. This implies that the Trinil Hauptknochenschicht is younger than previously estimated. Together, our data indicate that the engraving was made by Homo erectus, and that it is considerably older than the oldest geometric engravings described so far. Although it is at present not possible to assess the function or meaning of the engraved shell, this discovery suggests that engraving abstract patterns was in the realm of Asian Homo erectus cognition and neuromotor control.

Matthew baillie's specimens and engravings.

In 1799, Matthew Baillie, William Hunter's nephew, published his famous atlas of pathology. It was entitled A Series of Engravings Accompanied with Explanations which are Intended to Illustrate the Morbid Anatomy of Some of the Most Important Parts of the Human Body. The present study aims to match the illustrations to extant specimens in the collections of William and John Hunter, preserved at the University of Glasgow and at the Royal College of Surgeons of England respectively. Baillie's book contains 10 fasciculi, consisting of 73 plates and 206 figures. The specimens Baillie illustrated came from his own collection and those of ten others, including his uncles, William and John Hunter. The book was illustrated by William Clift and engraved by James Basire, William Skelton and James Heath. Excluding eight illustrations of intestinal worms where the provenance of the specimens is uncertain, a total of 98 specimens from William Hunter's collection were illustrated in 104 figures. Eight of the specimens were calculi impossible to identify specifically. Excluding worms and calculi, 72 of William Hunter's specimens illustrated by Baillie are extant in the Hunterian Collection at the University of Glasgow. All but one of the 20 specimens illustrated that had belonged to John Hunter were identified in the on-line catalog of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Baillie's own collection was destroyed when the Royal College of Surgeons of England was bombed in 1941. Baillie is credited with being the first to produce an illustrated systematic textbook of morbid anatomy and probably the first to illustrate emphysema and transposition of the great vessels. His book, however, was not comprehensive. It did not cover a number of topics such as muscles and bones and there is little coverage of the nervous system. Baillie's book, however, was an original concept as an atlas of morbid anatomy and showed his deep insight into pathology. Clin. Anat. 31:622-631, 2018. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Surprising origin of two carved bones donated to the Buchenwald Memorial Museum.

Unidentified bones were donated to the Buchenwald Memorial Museum in Weimar, Germany. The donor thought the bones may have belonged to internees of the concentration camp and had been decoratively carved by camp personnel. Non-destructive forensic anthropological examination was carried out on the bones to identify their possible origin. Comparative human and non-human bones samples were used to determine the provenance of the bones and the anatomical region they may have come from. Literature and internet searches were conducted to trace the origin of the carved motifs on the bones. The bones were determined to belong to the lower limb region of bovids. The carvings were found to correspond with those of existing bone examples found in some museums in the UK. They were traced to German prisoners of war dating to the First World War. An in-depth examination of the donated bones revealed their non-human provenance. It further showed that no link existed between the bones, internees of the concentration camp, and the time of the camp's existence. It was discovered that they belonged to the period 1914-1918 and form an important part of German prisoner of war history in the UK.

CRAFTING THE MICROWORLD: HOW ROBERT HOOKE CONSTRUCTED KNOWLEDGE ABOUT SMALL THINGS.

This paper investigates the way in which Robert Hooke constructed his microscopical observations. His Micrographia is justifiably famous for its detailed engravings, which communicated Hooke's observations of tiny nature to his readers, but less attention has been paid to how he went about making the observations themselves. In this paper I explore the relationship between the materiality of his instrument and the epistemic images he produced. Behind the pictures lies an array of hidden materials, and the craft knowledge it took to manipulate them. By investigating the often counter-theoretical and conflicting practices of his ingenious microscope use, I demonstrate the way in which Hooke crafted the microworld for his readers, giving insight into how early modern microscopy was understood by its practitioners and audience.

AN AUTOPSIC ART: DRAWINGS OF 'DR GRANVILLE'S MUMMY' IN THE ROYAL SOCIETY ARCHIVES.

In 1821 Augustus Bozzi Granville FRS unwrapped and dissected an ancient Egyptian mummy, presenting the results of his examination to the Royal Society in 1825. He commissioned artist Henry Perry to draw the process in stages; these drawings were subsequently engraved by James Basire for publication in Philosophical Transactions. This article presents the original drawings for the first time, allowing comparison with their engravings. Taken together with Granville's accounts of the unwrapping of the mummy, the drawings demonstrate the significant role of illustration and other visual practices in anatomical argumentation in the early nineteenth century, as well as the prestige that commissioned illustrations lent to the performance and dissemination of scientific expertise. Moreover, the drawings include one of the key visual tropes of race science--a skull in left-facing profile, mapped with a facial angle--and thus indicate the early incorporation of Egyptian mummies into typologies of race.

Two bullets to the head and an early winter: fate permits Kutuzov to defeat Napoleon at Moscow.

General Mikhail Kutuzov (circa 1745-1813) brilliantly repelled Napoleon's invasion of Russia. Honored as a national hero and a savior of Russia, Kutuzov has a unique medical story. He was shot in the head twice while fighting the Turks (1774 and 1788) and survived the serious injuries seemingly against all odds. The first bullet "ran through the head from one temple to the other behind both eyes." The second bullet entered the cheek, destroyed upper teeth, traveled through the head, and exited the occiput. Massot, a French surgeon with the Russian army, wrote after treating Kutuzov's seemingly two mortal wounds: "It must be believed that fate appoints Kutuzov to something great, because he was still alive after two injuries, a death sentence by all the rules of medical science." Aided by Massot's expert surgical technique, Kutuzov lived to become intimately engaged in events that altered world history. His health did, however, suffer significant effects due to the bullet wounds. In 1812, as Napoleon's Grande Armée approached, Kutuzov realized he could not confront Napoleon and he strategically retreated from Moscow, submitting the French to the harsh winter and Russian cavalry. Napoleon's devastated army retreated to Paris, and Kutuzov became the personification of Russian spirit and character. Kutuzov's survival of two nearly mortal head wounds created the legends, additional mystery, and drama surrounding him, not the least astonishing of which was the skilled neurosurgical care that probably saved his life.

Dwarfism in art.

Throughout the history of mankind the birth of a child with congenital malformation raised anxiety and torment, along with attempts to explain its origins. It is possible to find relics of such events in prehistoric rock drawings and primitive sculptures, in numerous art pieces produced through the centuries up to modern sculptures, paintings and drawings. The aim of the present article is to show how dwarfs were portrayed in a variety of art forms at different moments in the history of our world.

[The engraving of pharmacopoeia between XVIth-XVIIIth Century]. / La pharmacopée et son illustration du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle.

The pharmacopea is mainly known like a book containing descriptions of drugs and preparations of medicines. During the XVIth-XVIIIth centuries, some of these books were illustrated with engraving frontispieces. This study shows the meaning of these pictures, the composition and the artists and the messages which are incorporated.

[The reception of Vesalius in Spain and England]. / La réception de Vésale en Espagne et en Angleterre.

This paper discusses the depiction of engravings taken from Vesalius's, Valverde de Hamusco's and Casserio 's treatises in portraits during the 16th and the 17th centuries to understand better the reception of the Fabrica in Spain and England.

Medical history of the representation of rosacea in the 19th century.

Throughout the 1800s, clinical illustrations helped to formalize what was then the recently developed field of dermatology. Knowledge of skin diseases was given new dimension as artists and clinicians alike strove to accurately document the physical characteristics of numerous dermatoses. Introduction of novel processes and refined techniques advanced the clinical use of disease images. The increasingly superior quality of these images aided in the early distinction between rosacea and acne. This article highlights these illustrative contributions in dermatology, and includes key images that serve as a road map to early clinical understanding of skin diseases.

Owl-like plaques of the Copper Age and the involvement of children.

In the Copper Age, slate engraved plaques were produced massively in the southwestern corner of the Iberian Peninsula. Researchers have speculated about the function of these palm-sized stone objects for more than a century, although most have favored the idea that they represented goddesses, and served ritual purposes. The plaques are engraved with different designs of varying complexity. In some of them, the ones sporting two large frontal eyes, we clearly see owls modelled after two species present in the area: the little owl (Athene noctua), and the long-eared owl (Asio otus). These two species, living in semi-open habitats, were possibly the most abundant owls around the human settlements and surrounding cultivated fields of the Chalcolithic period. People must have been aware of the owl presence and possibly interacted with them. Why owls but no other animals have been the models may relate to the fact they are the most anthropomorphic of all animals, with large frontally-placed eyes in their enormous heads. In the iconography, owls are systematically represented, even today, with their two eyes staring at the observer, as opposed to the lateral view used for any other animal. Additionally, slate is one of the commonest surface rocks in southwestern Iberia, and it provides a blank canvas for engraving lines using pointed tools made of flint, quartz or copper. The way slates exfoliate makes easy to craft owl-looking plaques. To silhouette animals other than owls in a recognizable way would request extra carving abilities and specific tools. Plaque manufacture and design were simple and did not demand high skills nor intensive labor as demonstrated in replication experiments. Owl engravings could have been executed by youngsters, as they resemble owls painted today by elementary school students. This also suggests that schematic drawings are universal and timeless. We propose that the owl-like slate plaques are the remains of a set of objects used in both playful activities and in ritual ceremonies. The actual engraving of the plaques may have been part of the game. Owlish slate plaques were often perforated twice at the top. We interpret this as insertion points for actual bird feathers added to the plaques, right at the place where tufts emerge in live owls. The frontier among play and ritual is diffuse in liminal societies and there is no contradiction in playing with animal-like toys and, at some point, using them as offerings as part of community rituals related, for instance, to the colossal megalithic tombs so characteristic of the Copper Age.

A Left Handed Compliment: A newly discovered, early nineteenth-century lithograph by John Lewis Marks.

A newly discovered, early nineteenth-century lithograph by John Lewis Marks (b. ca. 1795-1796, d. ca. 1857-1861), entitled A Left Handed Compliment, is described. In this humorous print a young boy is using his left hand to draw the face of an elderly woman who is his grandmother, and she is shocked at the boy's suggestion that he will, "just see if I can't touch off your old Phizog left handed". The source of the joke about the left-handed compliment is obscure, but more than likely it is sexual in origin. Glued to the verso of the print are early versions of two prints by Robert Seymour (1798-1836), the illustrator of Dickens' Pickwick Papers, suggesting a possible link between Marks and Seymour. From the hatch patterns on the Seymour engravings, it appears that Seymour may himself have been left-handed and perhaps therefore the butt of the joke. An alternative possibility is that Phizog is a reference to Dickens' later illustrator whose pseudonym was Phiz. It is also just conceivable that the young boy is Marks's own young son, Jacob. The print can be placed in the context of a scatological English vernacular humour that extends from Shakespeare through to Donald McGill and into the present day.

[Jean Chièze (1898-1975), medical engraver and illustrator]. / Jean Chièze (1898-1975), graveur et illustrateur de la médecine.

As an imaginative and sensitive woodcutter Jean Chièze illustrated more than 130 books and realised many draws, paintings and lithographs and about 2000 engravings. He took part in some editions about Rabelais, Hippocrates, Galen and Ambroise Paré.

Redefining shared symbolic networks during the Gravettian in Western Europe: New data from the rock art findings in Aitzbitarte caves (Northern Spain).

The renewal of the archaeological record, mainly through the discovery of unpublished sites, provides information that sometimes qualifies or even reformulates previous approaches. One of the latter cases is represented by the three new decorated caves found in 2015 in Aitzbitarte Hill. Their exhaustive study shows the presence of engraved animals, mainly bison, with formal characteristics unknown so far in the Palaeolithic art of the northern Iberian Peninsula. However, parallels are located in caves in southern France such as Gargas, Cussac, Roucadour or Cosquer. All of them share very specific graphic conventions that correspond to human occupations assigned basically to the Gravettian cultural complex. The new discovery implies the need to reformulate the iconographic exchange networks currently accepted, as well as their correspondence with other elements of the material culture at the same sites. Thus, we have carried out a multiproxy approach based in statistical analysis. The updated data reveals a greater complexity in artistic expression during the Gravettian that had not been considered so far, and also challenges the traditional isolation that had been granted to Cantabrian symbolic expressions during pre-Magdalenian times.