fragments, 11/20/03

9:05 p.m.

Can you imagine how magical writing must have seemed 5,000 years ago? Someone could be passed a sheet of papyrus and instantly know what someone else means, but for the average looker-on the papyrus would have interesting symbols that meant nothing, had no reference. Of course reading created its own elite class! Reading is the magic of the eye.

color your world

Cave Colours Reveal Mental Leap

Red-stained bones dug up in a cave in Israel are prompting researchers to speculate that symbolic thought emerged much earlier than they had believed.

Symbolic thought - the ability to let one thing represent another - was a giant leap in human evolution.

It was a mental ability that allowed sophisticated language and maths.

New excavations show that a red colour made from ochre was used in burials 100,000 years ago, much earlier than other examples of colour association.

( Read more... )

All I can say is, Wow. (And what would Jung say?)

Brain Sees Shadow As Part of Body

Our brains respond to our shadows as if they were another part of the body, according to a scientific study.

When we see something about to come into contact with the edge of our shadow, brain activity suggest it is as if they are about to touch us instead.

( Read more... )

[...] The brain was equally capable of distinguishing between shadows cast by its body and those cast by other people.

Dr Simon Unger, a psychologist from the University of Guildford in Surrey, said that a similar phenomenon operated in other situations.

He said: "When blind people have to use a white cane, they report that it feels like an extension of their finger."