Homo Habilis was
past the scavenging stage and well into foraging, hunting, and
fishing during the pre-agricultural pragmatic frame. What for
other species became only a limited food supply, and resulted in
mechanisms of drastic growth control (through famine,
cannibalism, and means of destroying life), in the human species
resulted in a broadening of resources. In this process, the human
being became a working being, and work an identifier of the
species.
Language acquisition and the transition from the natural
experience of self- constitution in survival to the practical
experience of work are co-genetic. With each new scale that
became possible, sequences of work marked a further departure
from the universe of action-reaction. The observation to be
made, without repeating information given in other chapters, is
that from signs to incipient language, and from incipient
language to stabilized means of expression, the scale of
humankind changed and an underlying structure of practical
experiences based on sequentiality, linearity, determinism (of
one kind or another), and centralism established a new pragmatic
framework. Individual syncretism was replaced by the syncretism
of communities in which individuals are identified through their
work.
Writing was a relatively late acquisition and occurred as part of
the broader process of labor division. This process was itself
correlated to the diversification of resources and types of
practical experiences preserving syncretism at the community
level.
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