One major outcome of these new skills is the much bigger aptitude of humans, when compared to the Great Apes, to deceive and pretend, based on the capacity to pantomime and thus imitate, both for others, but also for one's self. Here we have the origins of semiosis and of the capacity to create symbols: starting with pantomime humans develop the capacity to represent, in their minds, but also for others, by means of gestures and subsequently in language, absent beings, acts and situations.23 Here we suddenly have returned very closely to the 17th-century allegories of Imitation and Dissimulation, that all draw on the human capacity for mime and pantomime; and to the advice on honest dissimulation,which can only work if the deceiver knows exactly what goes on in the minds of those she wants to deceive.
