Steven Mithen - The Prehistory of the Mind [1998][a]

A PHOENIX PAPERBACK First published in Great Britain by Thames and Hudson Ltd in 1996 This paperback edition published in 1998 by Phoenix, a division of Orion Books Ltd, Orion House, 5 Upper StMartin's Lane, London WC2H 9EA Copyright© 1996 Thames and Hudson Ltd, London The right of Steven Mithen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 0 75380 204 X Printed and bound in Great Britain by The Guernsey Press Co. Ltd, Guernsey, Channel Islands

For my children Hannah, Nicholas and Heather

Contents

Preface

1 Why ask an archaeologist about the human mind?

1 4

2 The drama of our past

14

3 The architecture of the modern mind

31

4 A new proposal for the mind's evolution

65

5 Apes, monkeys and the mind of the missing link

79

6 The mind of the first stone toolmaker

105

7 The multiple intelligences of the Early Human mind

129

8 Trying to think like a Neanderthal

166

9 The big bang of human culture: the origins of art and religion

171

10 So how did it happen?

211

11 The evolution of the mind

223

Epilogue: the origins of agriculture

248

Notes and further reading Bibliography Illustration credits Index

260 310 349 351

Preface

I

t took millions of years for the human mind to evolve. It is the product of a long, gradual process with no predestined goal or direction. During the final 2.5 million years of this process, our ancestors left traces of their behaviour such as their stone tools, food debris and paintings on cave walls. They only left written records towards the very end of this period, starting a mere 5,000 years ago. Consequently to understand the evolution of the mind we must look at our prehistory, for it was during that time that the distinguishing features of the human mind arose, features such as language and an advanced intelligence. To gain an understanding of the mind leads on to an appreciation of what it means to be human. I hope, therefore, that The Prehistory of the Mind will be of interest not just to archaeologists and psychologists, but to any moderately inquisitive and reflective reader. I have tried to write a book that makes the evidence from prehistory accessible to readers who may never previously have heard of an australopithecine or a handaxe. But this book also tries to put forward a new theory for the evolution of the mind. The academic audience who must judge this theory will need to see it supported at a level of detail that is perhaps tedious for the general reader. I cater for those scholars with extensive notes to provide additional support for claims made within the text. These will also be of value to students trying to get to grips with the complexities of the archaeological record and human evolution. Although the evolution of the mind was a slow, gradual process, there were nevertheless key events which acted as turning points for how the mind evolved. Similarly the evolution of this book has been a gradual process, but one for which I can see three defining events. Without these it wquld either not have been

2

Preface

written, or, like the mind, have remained in a rather primitive state. After having my initial interest in prehistoric cognition stimulated by reading the work of the American archaeologist Thomas Wynn, the first of these defining events was in 1988 while I was a Research Fellow at Trinity Hall in Cambridge. At lunch one day the Master of the college, Sir John Lyons, casually asked me whether I had ever read The Modularity of Mind by Jerry Fodor. I hadn't, but did so immediately. And thus an idea about the prehistory of the mind was sown within my mind, although it remained there with little growth for the following six years. Then- the second event- one evening in April1994, after having left Cambridge and joined the staff at Reading University, I had dinner with Leda Cosmides, John Tooby and Michael Jochim in a beach restaurant in Santa Barbara, California. Leda and John bombarded me with their ideas about an evolutionary psychology, and gave me a list of books to read, each of which became critical to the development of my work. Finally, a few months later, I chatted with a colleague of mine, Mark Lake, as we ate at a motorway service station somewhere on the M6 in the middle of the night while driving to my excavations in Scotland. We talked about archaeology, the mind and computers and I realized that it was time to get the prehistory of the mind out of my mind and on to paper. The opportunity to do so was granted by my colleagues in the Department of Archaeology at Reading University who allowed me to take a period of research leave, between January and March 1995, during which the first draft of this book was written. I am grateful to my Reading colleagues not only for this period of leave but for having provided such a pleasant and stimulating environment for developing my version of cognitive archaeology since joining them in 1992. Richard Bradley, Dick Byrne and Clive Gamble kindly read that draft and provided many perceptive criticisms and words of encouragement. While re-writing the book many people provided me with new references, their unpublished papers and simply their time - often no more than a few words in conversation which, unknown to them, were of such value to me. Others have been most helpful in my research on ancient minds during my time in Cambridge and Reading. I would particularly like to thank: Leslie Aiello, Ofer

Preface

3

Bar-Yosef, Pascal Boyer, Bob Chapman, Michael Corballis, Led a Cosmides, Nyree Finlay, Bill Finlayson, Robert Foley, Chris Knight, Alexander Marshack, Gilbert Marshall, Paul Mellars, Richard Mithen, Steven Pinker, Camilla Powers, Colin Renfrew, Chris Scarre, Rick Schulting, John Shea, Stephen Shennan, James Steele, Chris Stringer and Thomas Wynn. Throughout that time, Mark Lake has been a sounding board for my ideas and to him I am particularly grateful. I also owe a debt to the editorial staff at Thames and Hudson for their help during the final stages of writing. And I would like to thank Margaret Mathews and Aaron Watson for the line drawings. Most of the writing for this book was undertaken on the dining room table at home in the midst of the burly-burly of my family life. Consequently my biggest thanks must go to my wife, Sue, and to my children for suffering the piles of books and my constant tapping at the word processor. It is indeed to my children, Hannah, Nicholas and Heather, that I dedicate this book as thanks for having such lively and thoroughly modern young minds.

1 Why ask an archaeologist about the human mind?

T

he human mind is intangible, an abstraction. In spite of more than a century of systematic study by psychologists and philosophers, it eludes definition and adequate description, let alone explanation. Stone tools, pieces of broken bone and carved figurines - the stuff of archaeology - have other qualities. They can be weighed and measured, illustrated in books and put on display. They are nothing at all like the mind - except for the profound sense of mystery that surrounds them. So why ask an archaeologist about the human mind? People are intrigued by various aspects of the mind. What is intelligence? What is consciousness? How can the human mind create art, undertake science and believe in religious ideologies when not a trace of these are found in the chimpanzee, our closest living relative? 1 Again one might wonder: how can archaeologists with their ancient artifacts help answer such questions? Rather than approach an archaeologist, one is likely to turn to a psychologist: it is the psychologist who studies the mind, often by using ingenious laboratory experiments. Psychologists explore the mental development of children, malfunctions of the brain and whether chimpanzees can acquire language. From this research they may offer answers to the types of questions posed above. Or perhaps one would try a philosopher. The nature of the mind and its relation to the brain -the mind-body problem - has been a persistent issue in philosophy for over a century. Some philosophers have looked for empirical evidence, others have simply brought their considerable intellects to bear on the subject. There are other specialists one might approach. Perhaps a neurologist who can look at what actually goes on in the brain; perhaps a primatologist with specialized knowledge of

Why ask an archaeologist about the human mind?

5

chimpanzees in natural, rather than laboratory, settings; perhaps a biological anthropologist who examines fossils to study how the brain has changed in size and shape during the course of human evolution, or a social anthropologist who studies the nature of thought in non-Western societies; perhaps a computer scientist who creates artificial intelligence? The list of whom we might turn to for answers about the human mind is indeed long. Maybe it should be longer still with the addition of artists, athletes and actors - those who use their minds for particularly impressive feats of concentration and imagination. Of course the sensible answer is that we should ask all of these: almost all disciplines can contribute towards an understanding of the human mind. But what has archaeology got to offer? More specifically, the archaeology to be considered in this book, that of prehistoric hunter-gatherers? This stretches from the first appearance of stone tools 2.5 million years ago to the appearance of agriculture after 10,000 years ago. The answer is quite simple: we can only ever understand the present by knowing the past. Archaeology may therefore not only be able to contribute, it may hold the key to an understanding of the modern mind. Creationists believe that the mind sprang suddenly into existence fully formed. In their view it is a product of divine creation. 2 They are wrong: the mind has a long evolutionary history and can be explained without recourse to supernatural powers. The importance of understanding the evolutionary history of the mind is one reason why many psychologists study the chimpanzee, our closest living relative. Numerous studies have compared the chimpanzee and human mind, notably with regard to linguistic capacities. Yet such studies have ultimately proved unsatisfactory, because while the chimpanzee is indeed our closest living relative, it is not very close at all. We shared a common ancestor about 6 million years ago. After that date the evolutionary lineages leading to modern apes and humans diverged. A full 6 million years of evolution therefore separates the minds of modern humans and chimpanzees. It is that period of 6 million years which holds the key to an understanding of the modern mind. We need to look at the minds

6

Why ask an archaeologist about the human mind?

of our many ancestorsJ during that time, including the 4.5-millionyear-old ancestor known as Australopithecus ramidus; the 2million-year-old Homo habilis, among the first of our ancestors to make stone tools; Homo erectus, the first to leave Africa 1.8 million years ago; Homo neanderthalensis (the Neanderthals), who survived in Europe until less than 30,000 years ago; and finally our own species, Homo sapiens sapiens, appearing 100,000 years ago. Such ancestors arc known only through their fossil remains and the material residues of their behaviour- those stone tools, broken bones and carved figurines. The most ambitious attempt so far to reconstruct the minds of these ancestors has been by the psychologist Merlin Donald. In his book The Origins of the Modern Mind (1991), he drew substantially on archaeological data to propose a scenario for the evolution of the mind. I want to follow in Donald's footsteps, although I believe he made some fundamental errors in his work - otherwise there would be no need for this book. • But I want to tum the tables on Donald's approach. Rather than being a psychologist drawing on archaeological data, I am writing as an archaeologist who wishes to draw on ideas from psychology. Rather than having archaeology play the supporting role, I want it to set the agenda for understanding the modern mind. So here I provide The Prehistory of the Mind. The last two decades have seen a remarkable advance in our understanding of the behaviour and evolutionary relationships of our ancestors. Indeed many archaeologists now feel confident that the time is ripe to move beyond asking questions about how these ancestors looked and behaved, to asking what was going on within their minds. It is time for a 'cognitive archaeology'. 1 The need for this is particularly evident from the pattern of brain expansion during the course of human evolution and its relationship - or the lack of one - to changes in past behaviour. It becomes clear that there is no simple relationship between brain size, 'intelligence' and behaviour. In Figure 1 I depict the increase in brain size during the last 4 million years of evolution across a succession of human ancestors and relatives whom I will introduce more fully in the next chapter. But here just consider the manner

Why ask an archa~logist about the human mind?

·-

0

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The drama of our past

30

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