Le parole di Homo faber nella preistoria. Dalla lavorazione del legno alla navigazione in mare

Abstract

This contribution is inspired by the recent publication of two works by Carlo Ruta. The first is entitled "La lunga età del legno" (Ruta, 2020) and presents an extremely suggestive working hypothesis: prehistory should be rethought as the 'long age of wood'. Without eliminating traditional scansions, Ruta argues that it is necessary to speak of the age of wood, as the development in the manipulation of stone and metals is not separate from the use of wood which in many situations is a preparatory material for the creation of other objects. The second work mentioned here is "Homo faber e civiltà. Tecnologie, manualità e conquista del mare tra protostoria e storia" (Ruta, 2023). Ruta's hypothesis is that the technological explosion in the period from the late Neolithic to protohistory was so large that it determined a decisive leap for humanity. The label Homo faber is used here to emphatically show this passage. The question this work intends to answer is what contribution linguistic research can make to a deeper understanding of the period in which the evolutionary leap of Homo faber occurred, defined as above and inserted within the long wood age.