Symbolic artefacts have long been archaeology’s primary contribution to tracing the origin and subsequent development of human language. But the identification and interpretation of symbolic behaviour poses numerous interpretive problems, particularly before the Upper Palaeolithic where clearly referential forms of symbolic material are rare. As an alternative, theory of mind is presented here, detailing its intimate relationship with language and likely coevolution, alongside the factors which make it a more effective proxy. As a cognitive ability that grades in complexity and predicts linguistic skill in modern cognition, theory of mind also has the potential to denote specific syntactic and semantic features of language such as word reference, mental state verbs and complementation. The potential to detect theory of mind in the archaeological record is considered here, such as within the cultural transmission of stone tool technology and forms of complex social learning like imitation and teaching in early hominin technologies.

长期以来，符号文物一直是考古学对追溯人类语言的起源和随后发展的主要贡献。但是，对符号行为的识别和解释带来了许多解释问题，特别是在上旧石器时代之前，很少使用明确的参考形式的符号材料。作为替代方案，这里介绍了心理理论，详细介绍了它与语言的密切关系以及可能的共同进化，以及使之成为更有效代理的因素。心智理论作为一种能够在现代认知中提高复杂性并预测语言技能的认知能力，还具有表示语言的特定句法和语义特征（如单词参考，心理状态动词和补语）的潜力。