From edges to meaning: Semantic line sketches as a cognitive scaffold for ancient pictograph invention

ArXi:2604.12865v1 Announce Type: new Humans readily recognize objects from sparse line drawings, a capacity that appears early in development and persists across cultures, suggesting neural rather than purely learned origins. Yet the computational mechanism by which the brain transforms high-level semantic knowledge into low-level visual symbols remains poorly understood. Here we propose that ancient pictographic writing emerged from the brain's intrinsic tendency to compress visual input into stable, boundary-based abstractions.