The Dawn of Metaphor: From Protolanguage to Prehistoric Art: 4 Metaphor and Image — Parallel Pathways of World-Making

Language and image are not separate inventions; they are parallel expressions of the same symbolic reorganisation. Both arise from the stratification of the content plane and both operate through junctional metaphor. In speech, a word realises a congruent and a metaphorical meaning; in art, a line, shape, or gesture functions similarly, realising a token standing for a relational value within human experience. Both modalities fold the world back upon itself, making internal construal externally accessible.

The cave wall, the sand drawing, the spiral engraving, and the uttered word all share this logic. They are interfaces of meaning, points where experience is re-construed in one domain and projected into another. Just as a word can extend thought beyond immediate perception, an image can extend relational awareness beyond the immediacy of action. The bison is not only an animal; the hand stencil is not only a hand — both are symbolic conduits, linking perception, imagination, and communal recognition.

This parallelism suggests that early art did not merely reflect language but amplified its capacity, exploring dimensions of experience less constrained by temporality or embodiment. Where spoken metaphor operates fleetingly, images endure; they allow memory, rehearsal, and collective inhabitation. Art is therefore a natural extension of linguistic reflexivity: both modalities instantiate the human ability to hold multiple layers of meaning simultaneously, both congruent and metaphorical.

By understanding metaphor and image as parallel pathways, we can see prehistoric art not as decoration or utilitarian notation, but as world-making in action. The creation of images externalises the symbolic potential first realised in language, making it visible, tangible, and shareable. Humans were no longer simply enacting relations; they were construing them, performing them in matter and sound, and thereby expanding the semiotic horizons of possibility.

The junctional logic of metaphor is thus the connective tissue between mind and world, between thought and gesture, between language and art. Both modalities emerge from the stratified content plane and both produce the first symbolic cosmos — a world in which humans could inhabit meaning, manipulate it, and extend it collectively.