Title: From Deep Patterns to the Origin of Writing and Information Systems
Subtitle: How Information Escaped from the Brain
Subject Classification:  Psychology, Anthropology, Language and Linguistics  
BIC Classification: JFC, CFC
BISAC Classification: SOC002010, PSY008000, ART015030
Binding: Hardback, eBook
Planned publication date: Sep 2026
ISBN (Hardback): 978-1-83711-922-6
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-83711-923-3

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Description

How did the human brain, a self-contained information processor, first learn to store knowledge externally? This book offers a synthesis of visual neuroscience, cognitive archaeology, and information theory to answer that question. The author challenges the traditional view of early geometric engravings as ‘proto-art’, re-framing them as the first material information systems. He argues that these marks are a direct externalisation of the brain’s innate pattern-recognition processes, a critical step in cognitive evolution where information literally escaped the brain. The book traces this development from the neural mechanisms of the primary visual cortex to the rich archaeological evidence of humanity’s first marks. It culminates by showing how this externalisation of deep patterns laid the foundation for the development of sophisticated notational systems and, ultimately, writing. This work provides an essential new perspective for scholars and students of cognitive evolution, archaeology, neuroscience, and media theory.

Biography

Author(s):  Derek Hodgson has served as a Research Associate at the University of York and a Scientific Advisor for Inscribe, an organisation dedicated to the study of early symbolic behaviour. He has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals, focusing on how the structural properties of the early visual brain provided the blueprint for humanity’s first externalised patterns, which ultimately evolved into complex information systems and writing.

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