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Name: Susan R. Sheridan
Affiliation: , unaffiliated scholar
Email: susan.sheridan9@gmail.com
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Abstract Title: Scribbles: The Missing Link in a Biobehavioral Model of Human Language with Implications for Human Consciousness

Abstract: Bipedal locomotion in australopithecines exerted a cascade effect on primate body and brain evolution. Endocasts of primate skulls reveal some of the brain changes necessary for speech, while we can only infer the prehistorical sources of literacy from pre-Ice-Age notational bone-carvings.

If a pre-Ice Age precedence for men's notational systems can be inferred from the archeological record, the same can be inferred for women and children; the ethno-neuro-biological scene for notation-based brain chang es was set by the entire species identified as early Homo. Just because thousands and maybe millions of years of children's scribbles and mothers' notations are unavailable for scrutiny because they appeared on impermanent surfaces - dust, unbaked clay, m ud, skin, leaves - does not mean that children's and mothers' mark-making did not occur.

As part of the natural unfolding of normal developmental mental/motor behavior, children scribble and draw; meaningful marks are intrinsic to human neurobiology. Se nsory motor maps support a neurological link between manual dexterity and speech. It is this paper's position that it was manual dexterity applied to mark-making (notational, pictorial, symbolic or decorative) that contributed to the elaboration of speech via literacy in a synergistic gestural/vocal/notational enterprise. Hominid brains diverged from other primate brains around marks of meaning. Human behavior, human brain morphology, and, presumably, human brain waves became discontinuous around mar ks o f meaning.

One tenet of human neurobiology is that brains capable of language are energy-hogs, requiring substantial cooling systems. It is this paper's position that endocasts revealing increased vascular networks are only part of the big brain/ho t bra in evolutionary story; marks of meaning, including the multiple literacies we identify as art, literature, mathematics and music, played important neuro-evolutionary roles in connection with cooling across quantum/cognitive levels. In fact, a quantu m theo ry of scribbling can be proposed based on the system-wide benefits of special "SIT"consciousness states of self-induced transparency induced by marks of meaning.

Paradigms shift. The stock psychological male model for fear and stress as a two-resp onse, f ight-or-flight system, is making room for a female, tend-or-befriend stress-model; the position that men are "cool under fire" while women panic has been overturned by research proving that motherhood produces a braver, more resilient brain: the anthropological paradigm for a sudden flowering of Paleolithic art and human consciousness is giving way to a more gradual pre-Ice Age model based on notational systems engraved on bone.

A shift in attention to the quotidien effect of mothers' care-giving, children's play, and shared speech around marks of meaning provides new insights on hominid brain evolution in connection with language, emotion, and literacy, underscoring the importance of notational systems to human consciousness and well-being. A model of human language requires a theory of intelligible marks, including scribbling, as significant neuro-bio-evolutionary behavior, as well as the importance of maternal support for children's scribbles and drawings, including speech around scribbles and drawings.

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