Origins of pictures

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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.