Big brains, small worlds: material culture and the evolution of the mind

New developments in neuroimaging have demonstrated that the basic capacities underpinning human social skills are shared by our closest extant primate relatives. The challenge for archaeologists is to explain how complex human societies evolved from this shared pattern of face-to-face social interac...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological sciences 2008-06, Vol.363 (1499), p.1969-1979
Main Authors: Coward, Fiona, Gamble, Clive
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Archaeological paradigms
Archaeology
Architecture
Biological Evolution
Brain - anatomy & histology
Brain - physiology
Cognition - physiology
Cultural evolution
Cultural Transmission
Culture
Evolution
Global Diaspora
Hominidae
Hominin Evolution
Humans
Material culture
Mind
Neuroimaging
Organ Size
Palaeolithic Archaeology
Paleontology
Primates
Social evolution
Social interaction
Social Networks
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Summary:New developments in neuroimaging have demonstrated that the basic capacities underpinning human social skills are shared by our closest extant primate relatives. The challenge for archaeologists is to explain how complex human societies evolved from this shared pattern of face-to-face social interaction. We argue that a key process was the gradual incorporation of material culture into social networks over the course of hominin evolution. Here we use three long-term processes in hominin evolution-encephalization, the global human diaspora and sedentism/agriculture-to illustrate how the cultural transmission of material culture allowed the 'scaling up' of face-to-face social interactions to the global societies known today. We conclude that future research by neuroimagers and archaeologists will need to investigate the cognitive mechanisms behind human engagement with material culture as well as other persons.
ISSN:0962-8436
1471-2970
DOI:10.1098/rstb.2008.0004