The Editors: Marcel Bax is Associate Professor of Discourse Linguistics, University of Groningen. His research includes studies in historical pragmatics, semiolinguistics, and discourse analysis. He has published articles, books, and edited volumes on ritual language, cognitive pragmatics, and (applied) linguistics.Barend van Heusden is Associate Professor of Semiotics of Culture, University of Groningen. His research interests focus on literary theory, the semiotics of culture, and biosemiotics. His publications include books, book chapters, and articles on literary semiosis, literary culture, and the evolution of culture.Wolfgang Wildgen is Professor of German and General Linguistics, University of Bremen. His main research areas are semantics, sociolinguistics, semiotics, and mathematical linguistics. He is the author of books and articles on dynamic semantics, renaissance semiotics, and language evolution.

• Contents: Barend van Heusden: A bandwidth model of semiotic evolution – Guido Ipsen: Evolution of culture and the history of the media – Edwina Taborsky: The evolution of semiosic dynamics – Dirk Siefkes: Semiosis as evolution in the development of mind and culture: Computer science as technical semiotics – Martina Plümacher: Dealing with the diversity of sign systems in human culture – J. Raymond Zimmer: Semiotic questions raised by the evolution of talk and the emergence of complex society – Wolfgang Wildgen: The Paleolithic origins of art, its dynamic and topological aspects, and the transition to writing – Marcel Bax: Out of ritual. A semiolinguistic account of the origin and development of indirect language behavior – Valérie Bonnet: From alchemy to chemistry. A chapter in the evolution of chemical symbol systems – Bernhard Ridderbos: Mythic - religious - esthetic. Experiencing Bellini’s Brera-Pietà – Anne Magnussen: (Re)construction of the past as constitution of the present: The representation of francoism in Spain, 2000 – Elizabeth J. Brouwer: License to kill. Epistemological frames and animal consciousness – Michael Boyden: Culture is/as code? Semiotic and systemic perspectives – Marcel Bax/Barend van Heusden: Controversial issues in evolutionary semiotics: Epilogue.