30 2 Analysing Metaphor in Texts We didn’t have metaphors in our day. We didn’t beat about the bush. (Fred Trueman, quoted in Fantoni 1998, unpaginated) It was in the Upper Palaeolithic period, a recent theory suggests, that the human brain first became capable of metaphorical thought (Mithen 1996, 1998, 2005). Up until that time, the domains that formed the main subjects of human thought were according to this theory cognitively separated from each other, so that no interaction or crossover between them was possible: quite simply, our ancestors at that time could not think about one thing in terms that were normally reserved for another (Kövecses 2005:24-5; Mithen 2005:233). During that period, however, there is ample evidence – in the form of artwork and tools that have been discovered – that human beings somehow acquired the ability to fertilise their thinking about one domain with elements taken from others (Mithen 1996:184-5, 2005:250-1). This in turn gave rise to modern humans’ advanced symbol manipulation skills, which arguably represent one of the most significant and characteristic features of the human cognitive system.