Establishing Criteria to Support my Hypothesis

The Protoglyphic Hypothesis

1. There is a common set of fundamental patterns shared by all humans that is used as a basis for thinking and understanding our world.

2. The patterns represent primary concepts about our world, and also act as structures to organize information.

3. The patterns are simple, abstract and geometric.

4. Each pattern has both a general meaning and a range of specific meanings - just like a word has a common popular meaning as well as a range of different meanings, based on context or juxtaposition.

What criteria would support this hypothesis?

1. Geographically Pervasive
The patterns are found throughout the word, in many different locations, on many different surfaces and artifacts.

2. Culturally Universal
The same patterns are found in many different cultures.

3. Temporally Persistent
The patterns are persistent in human culture, over time. From prehistoric to modern times, we see evidence of these fundamental patterns.

4. General, yet also Specific
We would not expect to see exactly the same specific meanings assigned to the same patterns found in different cultures. We would expect to find common general meanings assigned to the same pattern in different cultures.

5. Macro and Micro
The patterns are scalable. They exist at the micro level and at the macro level to represent movement and physical organization of matter and space.

6. Common across Disciplines
The patterns exist as primary structures in all disciplines: science, art, mathematics, physics, language...