On the cognitive development of hominids

The study of human evolution has largely focused on skeletal developments and on the stone tools of successive technological traditions. The cultural and cognitive evolution of hominins has been comparatively neglected. Here it is proposed that beads and pendants provide some of the most reliable evidence for our nonphysical (cognitive) evolution. The available corpus of such finds from the Middle and Late Pleistocene periods is presented and reviewed. It is shown to demonstrate not only the use of complex symbolisms several hundred millennia ago, but also the application of concepts of perfection and self-awareness. This finding agrees with other indicators of hominin cognition, but it clashes with the dominant notion that “modern” human faculties appeared with a hypothetical replacement of Europeans by Africans just 40,000 years ago. This notion is reviewed and shown to be based on fake datings and misidentifications of numerous human fossils, on questionable genetic contentions, and on inadequate consideration of the available empirical evidence.

In the interior of their ancient cave dwellings found all over the world, prehistoric hunter-gatherers had recorded the realities of their world as perceived by them in beautiful images that survive to this day. Whether used as part of shamanistic rituals or for their hunting, in these images, for the first time, ancient men and women had used symbols to represent their thoughts about the world inhabited by them. Symbols played a definite role in shaping man’s cognitive abilities and were integral to the evolution of human consciousness. Art, which is based on the use of symbols, along with language gave our ancestors a distinctive identity that was recognizably human. Man’s psyche has been shaped by millions of years of experiences through evolution. Human mind retains the memory of its evolution through time and its contents are not limited only by the knowledge and experience gained through life. A large part of the mind lies within the unconscious self that speaks through symbols often generated and expressed through our dreams. Use of symbols is therefore universal, as also the convergence in interpreting their meanings across cultures and religious boundaries. Mind is the most important element in our attempt to understand nature. History of scientific developments indicate that the more we explore into the depths of our mind, the more we grasp of our external world, as if by looking deeper into our own minds, we are able to understand the underlying nature of our external reality. Symbols, being spontaneous and natural, can be used to express that reality much more potently than words.

Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2019

Using a model of cognition as extended and enactive, we examine the role of materiality in making minds as exemplified by lithics and writing, forms associated with conceptual thought and meta-awareness of conceptual domains. We address ways in which brain functions may change in response to interactions with material forms, the attributes of material forms that may cause such change, and the spans of time required for neurofunctional reorganization. We also offer three hypotheses for investigating co-influence and change in cognition and material culture. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 785793.

Among all the evidence archaeology is capable of providing about the cognitive evolution of hominins, beads and pendants are perhaps the most instructive. Other reportedly symbolic remains can in many cases be challenged, but perforated objects that are too small or too fragile to have served as pulling handles or similar can be safely described as beads. Several hundred such specimens have been excavated from Lower Palaeolithic strata in Libya, Israel, Austria, France and England. In many cases specific microwear has been detected on them that indicates that they were worn threaded onto string for prolonged periods of time. Their study and replicative experimentation have also provided empirical information about their technology, how they were made. But their most important scientific testimony is what they can tell us about the cognition of their makers and wearers. Beads and pendants demand self-awareness and a theory of mind in their users, as well as complex meanings of individual status, and research has shown that concepts of perfection were clearly involved in their production or use. The same applies to the oldest currently known rock art, located in India, which suggests that Lower Palaeolithic humans had developed relatively sophisticated cultural practices and advanced cognition several hundred millennia ago. This finding, confirmed by several others, shows that the hitherto dominant model of cultural evolution during the second half of the Pleistocene must be false, and that essentially modern human behaviour did not appear in the last third of the Late Pleistocene, but much earlier, during the Middle Pleistocene period.

Cognitive archaeology has undergone a quiet revolution in the past three to five years. What was once the study of a paltry prehistoric record is now open to the unlimited potential of modern neuroscience. Cognitive archaeology seeks to answer one of the most difficult questions in archaeology: What were these people thinking? In the distant past of the origin of genus Homo, the archaeological record reveals precious little information. The dawn of the modern human mind, perhaps the most important event in the history of life, was shrouded in unsolvable mystery. Until recently we were limited to a very narrow field of inquiry: the symmetry of tools, the spatial organization of sites, the first evidence of symbolism, and the growing complexity of technology. In 1976, Alexander Marshack argued for a very early origin of symbolism in the Mousterian, replete with personal adornment and ritual shamanism. The early origin of symbolism is supported today by Francesco d'Errico and Joao Zilhao, who have provided ample evidence for Neanderthals' and other archaic Homo advanced cognitive abilities, expressed in their symbolic material culture. At the same time, Margarent Conkey began the modern era of Paleolithic art interpretation by critiquing anthropologists' artificial categories. In 2000, McBrearty and Brooks summarized the evolution of human cognition and the history of cognitive archaeology in their article "The revolution that wasn't: a new interpretation of the origin of modern human behavior." Their conclusions align with Marshack's of 25 years earlier, that around 300,000 years ago the modern human mind began to appear in the archaeological record, and that behaviors that were previously limited, by predominant theories in archaeology, to the European 3 Upper Paleolithic were easily visible in the African Middle Stone Age. Determining what 'modern behavior' itself is has been half of the debate.

While anthropology is often concerned with the question of how humans make meaning in the world, paleoanthropologists tend to avoid questions of human dis-tinctiveness. This is not to say that there are not many hypotheses explaining human origins, only that there is a tendency to see the answer in terms of a specific evolutionary change. This research agenda is often couched in terms of the origins of 'behavioral modernity' as the key event making 'us' human. Here we present a brief overview of how researchers have used the concept of a 'symbol' to contextualize the debate. Then, we move to examining the archaeological record for indicators of when members of the human lineage began to produce and expand their cultural niche via symbolic means. Over the course of our evolution humans developed distinctive capacities to navigate social networks, live in complex communities, and interact with the biotic and abiotic world through symbol making. We propose that this process, in part, can be described as the evolution of human wisdom.

American Journal of Psychiatry, 2005

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2012

This article cites 84 articles, 30 of which can be accessed free Subject collections (286 articles) neuroscience (508 articles) evolution (237 articles) cognition Articles on similar topics can be found in the following collections Email alerting service here right-hand corner of the article or click Receive free email alerts when new articles cite this article-sign up in the box at the top http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/subscriptions go to: