UDC

130.2:008

DOI

10.37482/2227-6564-V022

Authors

Ol’ga A. Pechurina
Saint Petersburg State University of Industrial Technologies and Design; Voznesenskiy prosp. 46, St. Petersburg, 190068, Russian Federation;
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2177-9044 e-mail: pechurina2002@mail.ru

Abstract

This paper hypothesizes about the origin of some non-verbal signs based on the material of the use of weaving artifacts. Weaving technologies are cultural universals that originated thousands of years ago. As a result of the analysis of extensive ethnographic material related to weaving, the author identified and classified the symbolic meanings of the thread and the rope. It was found that these meanings coincide with the functions that the artifacts performed in everyday life and labour technologies. Humans could convey their thoughts about social relationships in the community by means of objects that in their opinion were able to express these thoughts. An object as a sign in the early history of humankind had a scope of meanings equal to its purpose and function in everyday life and served as a materialized abstraction. Thus, for lack of an actual word, a material thing whose purpose in human activity was known to all the members of the community could play the role of social abstraction. The sign and its symbolism could help to explain the thought and supplemented the verbal language. The use of these artifacts as signs for expressing thoughts reflected the specifics of thinking and communication at the early stage of human history. If humans resorted to a non-verbal sign-symbolic communication to objectivize a new thought, then, perhaps, no words existed at that period that could express it. In order to understand how non-verbal signs were used for conveying certain thoughts, one has to go beyond the culture of one ethnic group. We can ask ourselves the following question: what signs are used by different peoples for expressing the same thought related to certain sociocultural universals? The mystery of the origin of non-verbal signs and their symbolism can be solved in cross-cultural studies, which are sure to be at least as effective as comparative studies of verbal languages.

Keywords

thread symbolism, rope symbolism, weaving technology, non-verbal sign, verbal sign, social abstraction

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