Anyone talking about pictures by necessity refers to those using pictures. It is therefore essentially the competence of using pictures that they must consider. Such a competence is not a common ability even among higher developed mammals, at least as far as we know today. This fact raises the question yet unanswered whether and to what extent that ability has to be conceived of as a strictly anthropological one. In an interdisciplinary approach,the first international conference of the Society for Interdisciplinary Image Science (GiB) titled Origins of Pictures has taken a closer look at the role of pictures for the conditio humana.The goals pursued at the conference were first to present empirical findings of the origins of picture uses. In particular, research in paleo-anthropology, archeology, cultural anthropology, and developmental psychology has been considered. Furthermore,those findings have been related to philosophical considerations concerning the conditions of the conceptual formation of picture competence.

KLAUS SACHS-HOMBACH, born in 1957, studied philosophy, psychology and German language and literature at the University of Münster. After his PhD in 1990 at the University of Münster and his habilitation in 2003 at the University of Magdeburg he was appointed professor of philosophy, focussed on cognitive science, at the TU Chemnitz in 2007. Since October 2011, he holds the chair of media studies at the University of Tübingen. JÖRG R. J. SCHIRRA, born in 1960, studied computer science, physics, philosophy, linguistics, and psychology at the University of the Saarland. After an extended research stay in Berkeley, California, he was responsible for establishing of programme of computational visualistics at the department of computer science at the University of Magdeburg where he later gained his secondary doctorate (habilitation). He is currently representative head of the chair for philosophy and cognitive science at the Technical University of Chemnitz and part of a visual studies team working on an online glossary of visual philosophy.

Klaus Sachs-Hombach / Jörg R. J. Schirra Introduction I. Methodological Aspects of Picture Anthropology Iain Davidson Origins of Pictures: An Argument for Transformation of Signs Jean Clottes Consequences of the Discovery and Study of the Chauvet Cave Lambros Malafouris Learning to See: Enactive Discovery and the Prehistory of Pictorial Skill Christa Sütterlin Early Face Representation as Proto- or Archetype of Generalized Human Face Perception II. Relation between Empirical Anthropological Investigations and Synthetic Philosophical Investigations Søren Kjørup Resemblance Reconsidered: Confessions and Concessions of a Conventionalist Jörg R. J. Schirra; Klaus Sachs-Hombach The Anthropological Function of Pictures III. Archeological and Paleoanthropological Perspectives on the »First« Pictures Christian Züchner Symbols and Signs of the Earliest Art of Ancient Europe Nicholas J. Conard; Harald Floss Early Figurative Art and Musical Instruments From the Swabian Jura of Southwestern Germany and Their Implications for Human Evolution Ekkehart Malotki The Road to Iconicity in the Paleoart of the American West Ellen Dissanayake Born to Artify: The Universal Origin of Picturing Tilman Lenssen-Erz The Dark Ages of Picturing: Does Art Originate from Caves? A Synopsis IV. Picture Competence in Developmental Psychology and the Role of Gestures and Facial Expressions Göran Sonesson The Picture Between Mirror and Mind: From Phenomenology to Empirical Studies in Pictorial Semiotics John Matthews Seven Spots and a Squiggle: The Prehistory of Pictures Dieter Maurer Early Pictures in Ontogeny and Phylogeny: Preliminaries to a Comparison Sabine Völkel; Peter Ohler Understanding Pictures in Early Childhood V. Cultural Anthropology: On the Origins of Pictures and Picture-free Societies Derek Hodgson Ambiguity, Perception, and the First Representations Joachim Knape Image Textuality, Narrativity, and Pathos Formula: Reflections on the Rhetoric of the Image Philipp Stoellger The Image – As Strong as Death? On Death as the Origin of the Image Helge Gerndt When Do Images Emerge? Religious Image Practices in the Late Middle Ages Hans Dieter Huber Images of the Dead Ekkehard Jürgens Pictures ­– What For? Seven Hypotheses on the Origin of Art The Authors