Special Issue: Innovation and the Evolution of Human Behavior.The Vital Sense of Proportion: Transformation, Golden Section, and 1:2 Preference in Acheulean Bifaces.

Abstract

The manufacture of all complex artifacts depends upon the maker’s ability to control individual variables and their interactions. All such artifacts are multivariate in nature, and often they can be made at different sizes—in consequence it is vital for the maker to possess a sense of the proportions involved, in order to make the necessary transformation. This ability is keenly developed in modern humans, and also is apparent in Acheulean bifaces. There it has been noted particularly in highly controlled Breadth/Length relationships, although it also features in other dimensions. Several authors have commented on the recurrence of the proportion 0.61/1 (Golden Section) in the bifaces. Its presence is evaluated here in the context of various biface assemblages from Africa and Europe. Many of them have mean B/L values of 0.61. But some of them are quite clearly not made to Golden Section (e.g,. the Spanish assemblage of San Isidro, where the mean is 0.53). A case is set forward here that the ratio of 0.50 (1:2) is preferred for long bifaces. Thus any innate preference for the 0.61 ratio, or any other, appears to be a relatively weak one that can be overridden. Early artifacts demonstrate remarkable early human abilities to control dimen-sions, and also to impose allometric adjustments, but despite the frequent recurrence of the Golden Section value, it is far from universal. The results imply that the very acute modern human sense of proportion has a history in earlier Homo going back more than one million years. It seems likely that ranges of preference for particular pro-portions existed in earlier Homo, somewhat comparable to those observable in modern humans. The “Innovation and Evolution” workshop was held at the Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins, Uni-versity of Southampton, United Kingdom; workshop papers guest edited by Hannah Fluck (University of South-hampton; and, Landscape, Planning and Heritage, Hampshire County Council), Katharine MacDonald (Faculty of Archaeology, University of Leiden), and Natalie Uomini (School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, University of Liverpool). This is article #7 of 7.