The ensemble hypothesis proposes that language is but one of five cognitive capacities that separate human cognition qualitatively from other animal cognition as a result of their interactions. The ensemble consists of an episodic memory capable of mental time travel, mentalizing to augment social cognition, language for overt communication, advanced executive attention for governing working memory, and inner speech for thinking in the form of causal inference. The order in which each of these components arose in hominin evolution is addressed here. It is proposed that the flourishing of symbolic artifacts during the Upper Paleolithic occurred because, for the first time, all five components were in place and interacting in anatomically modern Homo sapiens.

中文翻译：

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不仅仅是语言：心理时间旅行、心理化、行政注意力和人类起源的左脑解释器。

集合假设提出，语言只是五种认知能力之一，它们通过相互作用将人类认知与其他动物认知定性地分开。该集合包括能够进行心理时间旅行的情景记忆、增强社会认知的心智化、用于公开交流的语言、用于管理工作记忆的高级执行注意力以及用于以因果推理形式进行思考的内在言语。这里讨论了这些成分中的每一个在人类进化中出现的顺序。有人提出，在旧石器时代晚期，象征性人工制品的盛行是因为所有五个组成部分第一次在解剖学上的现代智人中都到位并相互作用。