Understanding the origins of socio-technical
humans and their organizations
—
Coevolution of technology, cognition, culture and
organizations
William P. Hall
President
Kororoit Institute Proponents and Supporters
Assoc., Inc. - http://kororoit.org
william-hall@bigpond.com
http://www.orgs-evolution-knowledge.net
Access my research papers supporting the work
from
Google Citations
Application Holy Wars or a New Reformation
a fugue on the theory of knowledge
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Hypertext book explores coevolution and revolutions
in human cognition and cognitive technologies leading
to the emergence of modern knowledge-based sociotechnical organizations as living entities
Last episode explains how coevolution of cognition
and technologies enabled forest-dwelling apes to
become “human” and dominate the entire planet in
something like 4 my.
Key discoveries over the last 2-3 years allow
construction of a complete evolutionary hypothesis
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Genomics
Paleontology
Paleoarchaeology
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Comparative biology
Comparative ethology
Cognitive science
Book theme: Revolutions in material technology cause grade
shifts in the ecological nature of the human species
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M = millions, K = thousands, C = centuries,
D = decades, Y = years, (A = ago)
Accelerating change in our material technologies:
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> 2.5 mya - Tool Making: sticks and stone tools plus fire
extend human reach, diet and digestion
~ 11 kya- Agricultural Revolution: Ropes and digging
implements control and manage non–human organic metabolism
~ 3.5 ca - Industrial Revolution: extends/replaces human and
animal muscle power with inorganic mechanical power
~ 5 da - Microelectronics Revolution: extends human cognitive
capabilities with computers
> 10 ya - Cyborg Revolution: convergence of human and
machine cognition with smartphones (today) and neural
prosthetics (tomorrow)
Grade shifting revolutions in human technologies repeatedly
reinvent the nature of human cognition
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Accelerating change in extending human cognition
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~ 5 mya – Tacit transfer of tool-using/making knowledge begins
to add cultural inheritance to genetic inheritance
~ 500 kya - Emergence of speech for the direct transfer of
cultural knowledge between individuals
~ 11 kya – Invention of physical counters (11 K), writing and
reading (5 K) to record and transmit knowledge external to
human memory (technology to transfer culture)
~ 5.6 ca - printing and universal literacy transmit knowledge to
the masses (cultural use of technology)
~ 32 ya - computing tools actively manage corporate data/
knowledge externally to the human brain (32 Y) and personal
knowledge (World Wide Web - 18 Y)
~ 10 ya- smartphones merge human and technological cognition
(human & technological convergence)
~ Now: Emergence of human-machine cyborgs (wearable and
implanted technology becoming part of the human body)
Some recent milestone
publications constraining
the development of an
evolutionary hypothesis
explaining how this
happened
Critical species of Homo
Dmanisi Georgia (Lordkipanidze et al. e.g.,
2013)
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Modern sibling species: analysis of highly
accurate genomes from modern sapiens and
Denisovans (Meyer et al. 2012) &
Neanderthals (Prüfer et al 2014) from
Denisova Cave, Altai Mountains, Siberia show
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Variation in H. georgicus shows H. erectus,
ergaster, & probably also rudolfensis and habilis
form one chronospecies persisting through time
erectus longest lived Homo, spread widely
through Africa and (via Dmanisi) Eurasia
floresiensis (Hobbit) lived a few thousand years
ago on Flores (Indonesia) probably derived from
erectus (Kubo et al. 2013).
Wood, B. 2012. Facing up to complexity. Nature 488, 162-–
163 - http://tinyurl.com/k53ofwy.
Evolutionary divergence ~ 300 kya,
Limited interbreeding with introgression
Hybrid infertility sufficient for effective
isolation
Fossils (1.8 my) first hominins out of Africa –
ancestor/early Homo erectus
Lordkipanidze, D., et al. 2013. A complete skull from Dmanisi, Georgia, and the
evolutionary biology of early Homo. Science 342, 326-331
http://tinyurl.com/kbnwxnn.
(Oct. 2013) 1.8 mya ~550-730 cc cranial
capacity, fully bipedal, scavanged or hunted
large game with Oldowan grade butchering
tools; first hominins out of Africa (Hertler
et al. 2013)
Individual had
been
toothless for
years before
death,
implying
strong social
support
network?
7
Lordkipanidze, D., et al.
2005. The earliest
toothless hominin skull.
Nature 434, 717-718.
Latest genomics (5 my) establishes accurate genealogy, showing
bifurcations and interspecific hybridization
Prüfer, K., et al., Pääbo, S. 2014. The complete
genome sequence of a Neanderthal from the Altai
Mountains. Nature 505, 43–49 –
http://tinyurl.com/lvg96n2.
Red arrows show interspecific hybridization with
introgression of genes and
proportion of genome
introgressed (Dec. 2013)
4500 kya
Meyer, M., et al., Pääbo, S. 2014. A mitochondrial genome sequence of
a hominin from Sima de los Huesos. Nature 505, 403–406
- http://tinyurl.com/lv6z8xo
From 300-400 kya fossil Homo
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Shows stepwise genealogical derivation based on
sequence of single nucleotide mutations (Dec, 2013)
Hominins exiting the East African homeland
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Genomic analysis shows all living
humans descended from people
living in the E or S Africa
some 70 kya. Eurasian
mDNA six steps derived
from oldest African
Neanderthal/Denisovan
ancestor (anticessor /
heidelbergensis?) entered
Eurasia before sapiens
emigrants from Africa
Eriksson A et al. PNAS 2012;109:16089-16094
Except for genes surviving
from limited introgressive hybridization where they met Neanderthals &
Denisovans, African emigrants to Eurasia replaced all pre-existing
hominins including the wide-spread H. erectus that entered Eurasia by
1.8 mya.
Behar 2008; Cruciani et al. 2011; Rasmussen et al. 2011; Oppenheimer 2012; Henn et al. 2012;
Sankararaman et al. 2012; Pugach et al. 2012; Boivin et al. 2013; Mellars 2013; Fu et al. 2013;
Rohling et al. 2013; Sankararaman et al. 2014; Vernot & Akey 2014;
Thinking about
hominid evolution
Paleoclimatology over 7 my describes a framework of fluctuating
ecological change driving hominin evolution
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Hominin evolution and
environmental
variability over the
past 7 million years.
Alternative responses
to variability
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Genetic adaptation
(change)
Cultural change
Cultural accumulation
Potts, R. 2013. Hominin evolution in settings of strong environmental variability. Quaternary Science Reviews 73, 1-13
Genes & memes – genetic vs cultural adaptation
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Genes
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Determine individual anatomical, physiological and neurological
capacities
Mutation: physical change to one or more DNA nucleotides on a
chromosome
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Change is slow multi-generational process depending on natural selection
Movement rather than increased versatility
Meme = unit of culture (an idea or value or pattern of behavior or
knowledge) that may be passed between individuals or from one
generation to another by non-genetic means
– Change often intra-generational depending on innovation, social
relationships and processes
– Transmission limited by genetic capacity to communicate detailed
information
– Essential information easily lost or corrupted over generations.
– Rate and extent of cultural accumulation depend on genetic capacity,
group size, (culturally transmitted) cultural practices
Adaptation = application of genetic or cultural
knowledge to solve problems of life
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Natural selection on genes works at the level of
individual genetic variation depending on successes of
carriers of particular genes in the population
Selection on cultural knowledge works at the level of
culturally variant groups, depending on successes of
the different groups.
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A group whose shared cultural knowledge allows it to solve
problems other groups can’t solve grows at the expense of those
other groups
Successful items of cultural knowledge may be carried by
individuals between groups to speed the evolutionary arms race
Rate of cultural evolution depends on individuals’
genetically determined capacities to understand,
remember, and transmit cultural knowledge
Niche shifts (left) vs niche expansions (right). Vertical axis
represents survival probability of particular phenotypes.
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Niche shift
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Niche expansion
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Mutation is blind
Natural selection tracks current requirements, generally with continuing
specialization
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Retain original adaptation together with adding new capabilities, i.e.,
accumulation or (very rare) cases of gene duplication and functional divergence
New mutation crosses adaptive threshold opening new adaptive landscape (i.e.,
grade shift)
Thinking about making & using tools ― Cognitively controlled
processes to kill prey with a stone-tipped spear
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Understanding cognitive demands of technologies
Thinking a stone-tipped spear
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Long sequence of steps over time to make a spear used to bring
down prey (chains of operation/cognigram)
making a bow and arrow set is at least 3x more difficult
each arrow indicates ordered application of specific knowledge
(“Chain of operations” Lombard 2012; Lombard & Haidle 2012)
Evolutionary hypothesis
―
How tool-using savanna
apes came to dominate
Planet Earth
Socially foraging, tool-using forest apes in East
African Rift Valley 5 mya
Adaptive plateaus
achieved in the Pliocene
as our ancestors became
more bipedal and better
adapted to open and arid
environments (White et
al. 2009)
(click pictures below to view videos)
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Chimps using probes to collect ants. Probe
is inserted almost to full length into earth.
Child watching mother crack otherwise inedible
palm nuts using stone hammer & anvil.
Climatic deterioration in E African Rift Valley left forest apes
stranded on grassy woodlands and savanna ~5 mya
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Chimpanzee last common ancestor (CLCA)
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Fission-fusion social structure, some transfer of cultural knowledge
High selfishness, limited cooperation in defense and hunting
Savanna ape faced survival problems
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Edible plant resources more widely scattered and harder to find
New food resources needed
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New dangers
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Big cats
Hyenas
Wild dogs
Bears
Selection pressures
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Roots, tubers, nuts
Meats
(Tattersall 2012 – “Masters of the Planet”)
Increasing need to retain and transfer cultural knowledge
Pressure to increase brain capacity: increased fine motor skills, social
learning, more cohesive and cooperative group dynamics
Cooperative defense and scavenging of carnivore kills cached in trees
gave early hominins increased access to meat on the savanna
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Savanna offers limited resource of edible plant foods but
a rich supply of grass-eating herbivore meat
Chimpanzee social defence against leopards is uncoordinated mobbing with clubs as per video (click to view)
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Simple requisites for grade shift to aggressive scavenging on the ground
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Might deter leopard from returning to tree cache
Not a pride of lions or mob of hyenas on ground
Coordinated & cooperative defense and offense using effective deterrence
Oldowan butchering tools for cutting skin & ligaments
Hominins using haak en steek branches as tools (Guthrie 2007): a. for driving big cats away from
their prey. b. for hunting - given the simple conversion of a thorn branch into a "megathorn" lance.
Impacts of environmental change and variability in E African
Rift (Olduvai, etc.) between 3.0 and 1.5 mya
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Long periods (∼130–330 ky) of
extreme moist-arid variability
between 3.0 and 1.5 mya.
Possible modes of adaptation
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Genetic adaptation
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Slow & ponderous (intergenerational)
One thing or the other not both
Cultural adaptation
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Fail to track (= extinction)
Adaptive change to track (shift niche)
Increase versatility (expand niche)
Potts, R. 2013. Environmental and behavioral evidence
pertaining to the evolution of early Homo. Current Anthropology
53(S6), S229-S317 - http://tinyurl.com/mcnje6c
Fast (intragenerational)
Cultural knowledge pertains to group only (→ group selection)
Group knowledge easily lost (depending on genetically determined capacities,
group size, structure, and dynamics)
Culturally transmitted tool using/making knowledge was grade-shifting
Savanna ape inherited limited capacity to transmit cultural knowledge
and existing culture of simple tool-making and use from CLCA
Comparative anatomy and biology: climatic pulse rapidly changing
ecology selects for increasing brain capacity
(Dmanisi)
Shultz, S., Maslin, M. 2013. Early human speciation, brain expansion and dispersal influenced by African climate pulses. PLoS ONE 8(10):
e76750. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0076750 - http://tinyurl.com/m38zfke
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Brain capacities correlate with cognitive capacities (many works over many years).
Major climatic pulse (expansion/contraction E African Rift lakes) causes rapid
ecological variation ~1.8 mya
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Proliferation hominin species
Initial colonization of Eurasia (Dmanisi)
Rapid increase in brain capacity in H. erectus (broadly defined)
Acheulean hand axes begin to appear around 1.7 mya.
With thorn branches, spears and stone butchering tools,
hominins became top carnivores on the savanna
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Oldowan tools made & used
from 2.6 to 1.7 mya
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More sophisticated Acheulean hand choppers & other tools made
& used from 1.7 mya to 0.1 mya facilitated butchering but
required greater knowledge & dexterity to make
Note exceedingly slow rate of technological change
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Hominin teeth can’t tear skin
and flesh of large prey
Anvils & hammer stones used to
access marrow from scavenged
carcasses
Kanzi the bonobo learned to
break stones & use flakes as cutting tools
Early hominin culture assimilates knowledge that broken hammer stones
can be used to cut skin & ligaments for butchering large prey before
lost to competing carnivores and scavengers
Suggests neural/social/linguistic capacity to accumulate knowledge
of complex technologies was stringently limited for most of hominin
history
By 3 to 2 mya hominin competition and dominance of other carnivores
begins to reduce overall carnivore diversity in E. Africa
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Large carnivores included lions,
Werdelin & Lewis 2013.
leopards, three sabertooth cats, large
bear, bear-sized wolverine, several large
hyenids, wild dogs, etc.
3 mya aggressive scavenging of kills
reducing food supply for some
carnivores causing local extinctions.
2 mya active hunting of large mammal
prey using spears + Oldowan butchering
tools further reduces carnivore
resources.
1.8 mya hominins in Olduvai Gorge were top
carnivores selectively hunting prime quality bovid prey (Bunn & Pickering
2010; Bunn & Gurtov 2013).
By 1.8 mya carnivorous hominins extended to Dmanisi, Georgia (Hemmer
et al. 2011; Carrion et al. 2011), and from there quickly spread across
Asia and into Europe (as H. erectus)
2 – 1.5 mya selective environment for hominin carnivores
affecting genetic & cultural changes
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Genetic enhancements to meet increasing cognitive needs
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Capacity for geographical (mental map) and natural history knowledge
Understand time & process to plan & coordinate hunting
Better neuromuscular control and knowledge of resources & planning
for tool making & use
Increased capacity for teaching & learning
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Cultural accumulation of knowledge begins to replace genetic
change as most important adaptive mechanism
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Knowledge accumulation still limited
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Facilitate master-apprentice and other social relationships
Share and direct attention to critical aspects of process & technique
Use gesture, mime and acting-out (dance)
Capacity to remember
Slow genetic evolution of more memory capacity
Technological innovations may be lost & reinvented several times & may
take hundreds of thousands of years to be consolidated
Fire users, keepers, & makers
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Opportunistic users > 3 mya ?
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Savanna burns naturally every 2-5 years
Knowing that just burnt savanna is a good source of high cuisine
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Fire keepers > 1 mya (Rolland 2004; Twomey 2011)
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Keepers much better off (cooking, warmth, deter predators)
Loss of fire potentially catastrophic to group
Maintaining fire requires social coordination
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Know how to feed and keep a fire (process knowledge)
Know how to move fire to a new place before fuel resource used up
(anticipation, planning, techniques)
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Keeping the fire is a driver to increase cognitive capacity
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Knowing how to start a fire without a natural source
Fire makers ~ 0.5 – 0.4 mya
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roast meat much more digestible than raw
Roasting makes inedible/indigestible nuts, roots & tubers edible
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Striking a spark (what rocks, what tinder?)
Using a fire stick to create friction embers
Cognitive skills needed to accumulate knowledge for niche expansion
(Vaesen 2012; Sterelny 2011, 2012a, b)
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Hand-eye coordination - fine motor control needs more neurons
Causal reasoning - time-binding; understand goals, actions, and
consequences
Function representation - associate particular tools with
particular jobs
Natural history intelligence - conscious attention to
understanding the behaviors of predators, prey, fire, other
changing aspects of environment
Executive control – anticipating, deciding & planning; not just
reacting
Social intelligence - extended childhood, social learning (imitation
not emulation), understanding of intentions of others (mirror
neurons?), focused teaching & learning, apprenticeship
Intragroup coordination
Intergroup collaboration
Language
Genetic & physiological enhancements facilitating the emergence
of language
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Triadic niche construction: neural/cognitive/ecological (Iriki & Taoka 2012)
Brocas’ Area
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Expanded area of brain involved in speech and fine
motor control
Identifiable in hominin endocasts – H. habilis
like modern humans compared to apes.
Mirror System Hypothesis (MSH) proposes
primitive action-matching system evolved
to support imitation, pantomime, manual
‘protosign’ and ultimately vocal language
FOXP2 and other speech related genetic
Red oval = Broca’s Area
changes affected Broca’s area in our common Stout, D., Chaminade, T. 2012. Stone tools,
and the brain in human evolution.
ancestors with Neanderthals and Denisovans language
Philosophical Transactions Royal Society B 367,
Food processing technologies make food more 75-87 - http://tinyurl.com/kpotjro.
digestible enabling natural selection to divert metabolic resources from
the digestive system to development of larger brains
Larger brains support increased cognitive capacity: memory, mental maps,
greater social complexity, better neuromuscular coordination
Language and the emergence of hominin groups as
higher order autopoietic systems
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Language - phenomenon of groups not individuals (one hand clapping)
Drivers for the evolution of a faculty of language
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Common language, cultural norms & xenophobia determine group boundaries
Cultural knowledge propagated among individuals between generations by language
determines group success on the adaptive landscape
An entity is autopoietic if it exhibits all the criteria (Varela et al. 1974)
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Coordinates individuals’ involvement in group activities and society
Transmits essential cultural knowledge (heritage)
Bounded (groups separated socially by cultural differences and breeding systems)
Complex (groups formed by multiple individuals playing different roles in group)
Mechanistic (interactions of group individuals determine group functions & activities)
Self-referential (group identity determined by culturally transmitted knowledge)
Self-producing (group retains its continuity beyond the lifetimes of single individuals
through individual reproduction and recruitment combined with indoctrination in and
transmission of accumulated cultural knowledge from one generation to the next)
Autonomous (group manages its own survival and continuity through knowledge-based
interactions of its individual members)
Autopoietic entities represent units of selection
Pre-linguistic groups probably qualified as autopoietic – but group identity and
adaptive variation greatly strengthened by language-assisted cultural accumulation
What enabled increasing tool complexity?
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Development of increasingly complex
stone tools (Stout 2011) correlates
with larger brain capacity and
language development.
Even with language, knowledge is
limited by what can be learned,
remembered, and passed on by
single individuals.
By < 500 kya, pace of change in the
capacity to deal with multiple
complexities is too fast for genetic
adaptation
< 50 kya increasing rate of change
suggests major innovation to support
accumulation of much larger volumes
of knowledge.
Oldowan
Acheulian
Introduction & exponential
growth of new technologies
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Indicators for the emergence of modern
cognition in Neanderthals & H. sapiens
Krubitzer, L., Stolzenberg, D.S. 2014. The evolutionary masquerade: genetic and epigenetic
contributions to the neocortex. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 24, 157-165.
Dediu, D., Levinson, S.C. 2013. On the antiquity of language: the reinterpretation
of Neandertal linguistic capacities and its consequences. Frontiers in Language
Science DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00397/
Johansson, S. 2013. The talking neanderthals: what do fossils, genetics, and archeology
say? Biolinguistics 7, 35-74.
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“All modern human populations have
language, and there is no difference in
language capacity between living human
populations. Parsimony implies that the
most recent common ancestor of all
modern humans had language, and had
all the biological prerequisites for
language” (Johansson 2013).
The common distribution of language
proxies across human and neanderthals
in genomic, paleoanthropological, and
paleoarcheological contexts show that
human, Denisovan and Neanderthal
common ancestor had a capacity for
modern language, speech and culture
(Dediu & Levinson 2013, etc.)
Schöningen
&
Bilzingsleben
Modified from Krubitzer & Stolzenberg (2014)
Two extraordinary snapshots imply that linguistic capabilities
already existed 400 kya in LCA Neanderthal / H. sapiens
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Schöningen II (single-use hunting camp 380 kya – Thieme 2005)
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Bilzingsleben (base camp 370 kya - Mania & Mainia 2005)
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Captured, butchered and processed at least 20 horses
Tools made elsewhere include 9 wood lances left (ritually?) with herd remains
4 hearths, associated tools & evidence for spit-roasting, smoking and drying
Earliest evidence for compound tools
3 x 3-4 m dia. huts with hearths all oriented against wind
Prey included fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, elephants, rhinoceros, horses,
bison, deer, pigs, lions, bears, wolves, hyenas, foxes, badgers, and martens
Spit roasting & smoking for preservation
Evidence for making & use of wide variety of stone and bone tools
Paved area with artifacts suggestive of ritual activities.
Implications
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Long-range planning (harvesting and preserving; anticipating the need)
Planning and coordinating cooperative hunting of large, dangerous animals
Wide range of natural history, tool-making and food-processing knowledge
Ritual activities/thinking
 Diversity
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and complexity of cultural knowledge for inferred activities
beyond the capacity to communicate without language.
The Middle Stone Age (Africa) / Middle Paleolithic (Europe) was
a post Acheulian technological plateau (~ 300 → ~ 50 kya)
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Primary references: Current Anthropology, Vol. 54, No. S8, Wenner-Gren
Symposium: Alternative Pathways to Complexity: Evolutionary
Trajectories in the Middle Paleolithic and Middle Stone Age (December
2013 – free to the Web)
Acheulian tools continued to be used by other hominins (e.g., H. erectus)
Technology variable through MSA / MP but no clear temporal trends
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Despite major ecological shifts between glacial and inter-glacial there is
no evidence for permanent settlements or cultural shifts from nomadic
hunting and gathering.
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Sporadic development and loss of complex technologies
Operational chains of limited length
Little technological difference between Neanderthal/Denisovan/archaic H.
sapiens in Europe, anatomically modern sapiens in South Africa, and AM sapiens
in the Levant (eastern Med.) early colonization ~ 100 kya, and permanent
colonization and spread to Eurasia ~ 70 kya
Populations limited in size to small bands, with evidence that Neanderthals &
Denisovans passed through more severe genetic bottlenecks than sapiens
Even with language, the capacity for cultural memory was limited
Slowly increasing pace of hominin technological innovation in the
East African homeland
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Even given the existence of a faculty of language, the pace of
technological innovation was very slow before 100 kya.
Use of fire in making fine
blades and points, or use of
ochre and beads may have
been developed & lost
several times before being
fixed in culture
Even where ideas can be
expressed in words, an
individual’s ability to
remember detail is limited.
Where population is divided
into small groups any
knowledge not securely
acquired by the next
generation is lost
McBrearty & Brooks 2000
Something changed ~ 70-50 kya that enabled H. sapiens to
increase its cultural capacity to store & transmit knowledge
Mnemonics – increasing capacity for accumulating knowledge in
primary oral culture differs from typographically based culture
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Master technique: the method of loci (see next slide)
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34
Ong, W.J. 1982. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. Routledge, London [eBook free
download from http://tinyurl.com/ledoljk]
Kelly, L. 2012. When Knowledge Was Power. PhD Thesis, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences,
Latrobe University, Bundoora, Vic., Australia [embargoed until Cambridge University Press book is
published - see http://www.lynnekelly.com.au/Lynne_Kelly/Research.html]
Techniques - think memorably: express knowledge in rhythm and rhyme
with common formulas and phrases, link breathing and gesture, act out,
associate with song and dance, organize by intrinsic logic, etc.
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Primary sources for understanding mental techniques used in primary
oral cultures to accurately memorize and recall large and complex
bodies of information:
May increase individual memory capacity by 10 to 100-fold or more
Use at group level to preserve and transmit cultural knowledge
Cultural capacity depends on group size – larger groups allow formation
of subgroups (i.e., “guilds”) to manage specialized bodies of knowledge
Method of Loci builds on the natural rhythms and progression of
life
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Memorable events happen in time and space (specific locus in 3D space)
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Songlines:
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hunter gatherers learned to consciously index geographic, resource & natural
history knowledge against tracks in the existing landscape where it is relevant.
Other knowledge may be indexed against loci on other shared lines (e.g., stars in
the night sky) or with stories associated with landscape features, etc
Method of loci uses an ordered sequence of memorable loci as indexing
points along existing or imagined space-time lines
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Innate way to organize memory probably common to all “intelligent” animals
Focus on the space-time locus to retrieve memories of circumstances and events
that happened at that locus
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Associates memorably expressed snippets of knowledge with particular loci in
the line
Other mnemonic techniques make snippets memorable (e.g., imagery, rhythm,
rhyme, oration, song, dance)
Group rehearsal and repetition strengthens memory traces
Group sharing adds redundancy and corrects errors in individual memory
In larger populations subgroups can maintain specialized knowledge
Becoming settled – surmounting the knowledge
capacity of nomadic life in the post-glacial era
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Nomads limited to technology they can carry or fabricate on demand
Accumulating technological knowledge enables more effective use of
smaller geographic areas – larger populations accumulate more knowledge
Becomes practical to establish core living areas with permanent goods &
structures (e.g., specialized tools, houses, and structures for cultural
activities and processing and storage of food and other property)
Reduced contact with tracks in the broad landscape combined with need
to manage more and more specialized knowledge of technology drives
development of new and archeologically significant mnemonic systems
Solution: When songlines no longer suffice, build compact monumental
landscapes that can be traversed sequentially (Kelly 2012 - e.g.,
Stonehenge, Poverty Point, Chaco Canyon Kivas, etc.)
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Early site: Göbekli Tepe ~ 11 kya southern Turkey
3 ky before the agricultural revolution
Many other sites from primary oral cultures
moving from nomadic hunting and gathering to
settled life have similar monumental structures
Mnemonics, settlement, the agricultural revolution and increasing
cultural complexity
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Current Anthropology 52(S4), Wenner-Gren Symposium: “The Origins of
Agriculture: New Data, New Ideas” (October 2011) reviews in detail the
archeological record of cultural & demographic transitions from nomadic
hunting & gathering to formation of agricultural towns
With settlement, nomadic groups become territorial villages
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Positive feedback drives ever-increasing growth rate of cultural
knowledge accumulation for ever-increasing ecological hegemony over
environmental resources
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The autopoietic entity becomes a socio-technical construct comprised of
people, their linguistically mediated communication networks, their knowledge,
their technologies and their built environment
Accumulating cultural knowledge enables more efficient/effective control of
local resources
Surplus resources enables population growth in turn providing more capacity
for cultural memory
Development of ever more sophisticated mnemonic devices
Population growth enables more specialization of crafts, trades and guilds able
to accumulate still more varied and detailed knowledge of the world
Ecological grade shifts result in demographic transitions
increasing socio-cultural/economic complexity
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Mobile hunter-gatherers (~15 – 20 adults in group – say 2-4 families)
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Part-time tool-makers & apprentices (specific resource and processes knowledge)
Organized hunting parties
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Gatherers use specialized geographic & natural history knowledge to find resources
Temporary shelter construction, child-care, fire tending, food processing
Extended networks for additional mating opportunities, knowledge exchange & barter
Settled foragers (~ 40 adults in community – say 8 families)
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Specialized tools that can be kept on hand, perhaps leading to full-time specialization
Wide ranging hunting parties transport butchered products back to home-base
Locally intensive gathering and harvesting with processing and storage
Construction & maintenance of permanent shelters & specialized structures
Need to protect valuable “capital” (community / personal ”property”)
“Tribal” networks & mnemonic systems for preserving & exchanging knowledge
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Leader/organizers + possibly specialized team members
Geographic & natural history knowledge target prey and dangers
Skinning, butchering, processing
Production of specialized goods and surplus resources encourages formal barter economy
Social norms and knowledge specialties common to interrelated communities (“tribe”)
Development of specialized “cultic” sites on neutral territory for rehearsal, standardization, and sharing of
various bodies of knowledge
The Agricultural Revolution extending human control over animal
and plant metabolism
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Major techno-ecological transitions
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Demographic revolution – egalitarian communities become hierarchically organized tribal regions
and towns (encompassing dozens to hundreds of families)
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Hunting → herding & corralling → husbandry, dairying, cheese-making, tanning, animal power & transport
Harvesting, storage, milling, baking & brewing → planting → tilling & irrigating → hydraulic engineering
Stone & mud construction → brick making & firing → ceramics, pottery & metallurgy → structural engineering
Population growth and technological innovation leads to proliferating specialization & restriction of life roles:
farmers, pastoralists, despots, leaders, warriors, administrators, traders, priests & healers, educators, masons,
artisans (e.g., tool-makers, potters, tanners, bakers, candlestick-makers, smiths, armorers), etc.
Specializations dependent on knowledge passed down via family specialization, confraternities, and guilds
Management of surpluses, specialized production, and trading leads to development of formal economies and
despotic/priestly states
Revolutionary emergence of new mnemonic and knowledge management technologies to release
cognitive demands for memorization for thinking and doing
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Indexing living memory vs representing and preserving knowledge with objective symbols
Reduction of the monumental landscape onto distinctive paths and loci sculpted/fabricated into hand-held objects
Representing reality with symbolic tokens:
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Counting and recording, the clerical accountant, taxing and contracting
Logographic writing (cuneiform), scribes
Phonetic alphabets
Tablets, scrolls, libraries, & offices
Increasing socio-economic complexity, economic speciation, and emergence of knowledge-based
autopoietic entities at intermediate levels
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Religious orders, trades, guilds, factories, chartered companies, societies
The Industrial Revolution, the replacement of human/animal
motive power, and the externalization of technological memory
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(560 ya) The rise of printing for the general recording, replication and
transmission of knowledge
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Technologies: papermaking, type founding & setting, printing, post-press,
distributing, indexing, book making, curating, etc.
Scholarly access to large volumes of general, historical, and specialist
knowledge encouraging the deliberate accumulation of knowledge
Renaissance, Reformation, & (~400 ya) Scientific Revolution
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Increasing literacy and access to technical knowledge fuels innovation
(~ 300 ya) animal and human motive power replaced with inorganic
sources
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Publication & peer review
Scientific societies
Libraries & universities
Mass production of many things, including books
General literacy, social upheaval, dislocation and gradually rising affluence
Ecological hegemony over land and sea
Exponentially accumulating knowledge
Emergence of knowledge-based economic organizations as autopoietic
The Microelectronics Revolution and the increasing
externalization and convergence of individual and social cognition
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~ 150 ya mechanical and electro/mechanical technologies for corporate/scientific
number crunching & data processing
~ 50 ya birth of electronic digital processing
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invention of transistorized logic circuits
~ 43 ya invention of integrated circuit microprocessors and automatic fabrication (Intel
4004 1971)
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~ 35 ya automated processing, storage, distribution and retrieval of personal and
corporate knowledge. (Wordstar 1979)
~ 22 ya networking knowledge with the World Wide Web (Tim Berners-Lee 1992)
Universal access to the world knowledge base
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~ 20 ya Mosaic Netscape Navigator 1994
~ 16 ya free open-source browsers Mozilla Firefox 1998
Indexing knowledge for retrieval
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Moore’s Law & the still continuing hyperexponential growth of processing power
Extending and replacing more and more human cognition
~ 14 ya one billion web pages indexed, more than two billion by end of 2000
Last decade provides instant web search, access & retrieval of virtually the entire scientific & technical literature via
Google Scholar/research library subscriptions
Majority of all English language book titles scanned, indexed, and available (if out of copyright), with smaller fractions
non-English books processed.
Networking brains directly – towards a singularity or global mind?
Interconnecting minds and cognitive processes via the cloud
“social computing” and convergent technology
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Technological convergence – mobile phone to a
cognitive prosthesis
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Email: ARPANET (1971), TCP/IP (1982), SMS text (2002),
Gmail (2005)
Internet telephony: Voice over IP (1994), Skype (2003)
Media: iTunes (2000), Amazon Kindle (2007), Google Play (2008)
Still and video imaging: Picassa/iPhoto (2002); Flikr photo/video
(2004); YouTube (2005); Panoramio (geolocated photos converging
with Google Earth/Google Maps – 2005)
Cloud storage: Napster (1999), BitTorrent (2001), Amazon S3 (2006), DropBox (2008)
Business/Office tools: Google Docs/Drive (2007)
Geospatial: Google Earth/Maps 2005
Social: chat rooms (1980); Groups/Listservers (1992), LinkedIn (2003), Facebook (2004), Twitter (2006)
Knowledge construction/sharing/broadcasting: Wikis (1994), Wikipedia (2002), Blogs/Wordpress (2003)
Human-computer interfacing
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Head-mounted displays (1960’s)
Google Project Glass (2012)
Implanted/embodied human-machine interfaces
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Cochlear implants/Bionic Ears
Retinal implants/Bionic Eyes
Direct brain stimulation
Brain simulation and emulation