Anyone talking about pictures by necessity refers to those using pictures. It is therefore essentially the competence of using pictures that has to be considered. Such competence is not common among higher developed mammals, at least as far as we know today. This fact raises the question whether and to what extent that ability has to be conceived 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 primary goal of the conference was to present empirical findings of the origins of picture uses, considering in particular research in paleo-anthropology, archeology, cultural anthropology, and developmental psychology. Furthermore, those findings were to be related to philosophical considerations concerning the conditions of the conceptual formation of picture competence.

Klaus Sachs-Hombach, Jg. 1957, ist seit 2011 Professor für Medienwissenschaft (Medieninnovation / Medienwandel) an der Universität Tübingen. Jörg R. J. Schirra, geb. 1960, studierte Informatik, Physik, Philosophie, Linguistik und Psychologie an der Universität des Saarlandes. Gegenwärtig arbeitet er mit einer Gruppe von Bildwissenschaftlern an einem online-Glossar der Bildphilosophie.

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