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How Homo Became Docens Knowing, Learning and Teaching— How Homo Became Docens Anders Hogberg,¨ Peter Gardenfors¨ & Lars Larsson This article discusses the relation between knowing, learning and teaching in relation to early Palaeolithic technologies. We begin by distinguishing between three kinds of knowl- edge: knowing how, knowing what and knowing that. We discuss the relation between these types of knowledge and different forms of learning and long-term memory systems. On the basis of this analysis, we present three types of teaching: (1) helping and correcting; (2) showing; and (3) explaining. We then use this theoretical framework to suggest what kinds of teaching are required for the pre-Oldowan, the Oldowan, the early Acheulean and the late Acheulean stone-knapping technologies. As a general introductory overview to this special section, the text concludes with a brief presentation of the papers included. Introduction Homo special and underlined the importance of study- ing why and how the sapient minds learned to learn Homo sapiens is the only extant species that systemat- more extensively than in any other species. Others ically educates conspecifics. In so doing, we help and have focused on related areas like learning and en- encourage our children to gain extraordinary knowl- vironmental adaptation (Shennan & Steel 1999), hu- edge and skills. This enables them to do remark- man ecology, information storage and cultural learn- able things like perceiving complicated patterns that ing (Bentley & O´Brien 2013; Henrich 2004), evolution help them categorize things in the world and learn- of modern thinking and increased working memory ing connections between events that help them per- (Coolidge & Wynn 2009), the emergence of the social ceive causal structures. Much of this is achieved via brain (Dunbar 1998;Gowlettet al. 2012), co-evolution teaching. Other species are able to learn through im- of hominin tool-making teaching and language (Mor- itation and facilitation, but proper teaching seems to gan et al. 2015), human evolution in the light of ex- be absent. The intergenerational cultural transmission tant non-human tool users (Whiten et al. 2009), neuro- of skills, concepts and facts by teaching is unique to archaeology and cognition (Stout et al. 2015; Stout & humans. So something has happened during the evo- Khreisheh, this issue), the successive development of lution of Homo sapiens that also made us Homo docens. a uniquely long period of human childhood, allow- Without learning, there could be no teaching. ing imaginary play to expand (Nielsen 2011; Nowell Learning increases human knowledge and thereby 2010; this issue), stone tools and the evolution of hu- stimulates what Haidle et al. (2015) have termed an man cognition (Nowell & Davidson 2010), to mention expansion of human cultural capacity, contributing to a few of many areas (for overview, see e.g. Beaune et al. the unique human socio-cognitive niche construction 2009; Renfrew et al. 2009). However, while a multitude (Odling-Smee et al. 2003; Whiten & Erdal 2012). There of aspects of evolution and learning have been exam- are many kinds of learning, but social learning has ined, surprisingly few studies are devoted to investi- been a significant behaviour adaptation of hominins gating teaching and the specific roles teaching might throughout prehistory (Heyes 2012a). Renfrew et al. have had in human evolution (but see Gardenfors¨ & (2009, xiii) identified cultural learning as what makes Hogberg¨ submitted; Kline 2015). Cambridge Archaeological Journal 25:4, 847–858 C 2015 McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research doi:10.1017/S0959774315000402 Received 2 Aug 2015; Accepted 4 Aug 2015 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.226, on 29 Sep 2021 at 07:23:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774315000402 Anders Hogberg,¨ Peter Gardenfors¨ & Lars Larsson In this text we suggest that the evolution of hu- grown-ups (Lombard, this issue). This kind of play is man cooperation and cultural learning (Heyes 2012a, both playful diversion and preparation for integration b) may crucially rely on one important mechanism: into society’s social and material activities. the ability to teach. Other species are able to learn Recognizing that teaching is not to be thought through copying or facilitation (Whiten et al. 2009), of as formal education, we here focus on the evolu- but the process of advanced intergenerational trans- tion of cognitive capacities required to teach and to mission of knowledge by proper teaching is unique to be taught. Riede (2006, 63) points out that stone-tool humans (Gardenfors¨ & Hogberg¨ submitted). The evo- production skills in prehistory would largely have lution of teaching should thus be understood differ- consisted of routine procedures, practised repeatedly ently in comparison to other forms of social learning, from an early age and thus deeply embodied in the e.g. emulation or imitation. Palaeolithic people. Fully acknowledging this, we ar- We bring forward teaching as a bridging activ- gue that a focus on teaching will elucidate what is ity in what Sterelny (2012, 8) describes as ‘positive hidden in what Riede calls ‘routine procedures and feedback loops’ between social complexity and in- practices repeated’ in forms of social interaction. dividual cognitive capacities. Teaching goes beyond other forms of social learning and becomes a way to Knowing how, knowing that and knowing what organize society to facilitate intergenerational trans- mission of knowledge. Our suggestion is that putting Cultural learning is usually defined as processes that teaching instead of learning in focus will change the are ‘thought to enable cumulative cultural evolu- perspective from the ways individuals learned tech- tion, i.e. the non-genetic inheritance of information nological skills to the ways society arranged for tech- in a way that allows individual and group pheno- nological skills to be taught. types to achieve a progressively better fit with the de- In this text we elaborate on this theme by dis- mands of the social and physical environment’ (Heyes cussing different aspects of knowledge on the basis 2012a, 2181). Building on discussions of the role of of the concepts ‘knowing how’, ‘knowing that’ and social learning in human cultural evolution, Heyes ‘knowing what’. We also discuss different kinds of (2012a) has extended the Associative Sequence Learn- teaching, linking them to cognitive evolution. Our ing model. Using imitation as an example, she shows starting point is that human evolution should be that a task a learner observes must be translated into thought of as multi-linear (Steward 1955) and mul- individual actions to be understood in such a way that tifactorial (Shennan 2002)—a diverse set of on-going the task can be performed by the learner. This is made processes (Haidle et al. 2015) forming co-evolutionary possible ‘by direct, excitatory connections between factors that over a long time have resulted in the Homo visual and motor representations of actions’ (Heyes docens as we see ourselves today. 2012a, 2185). A learner who observes a sequence of actions, for example the production of a stone tool, Most teaching is informal generates a mental image of the sequence. Commenc- ing to perform what has been observed, the learner When thinking about teaching in present-day soci- creates an understanding of ‘what it feels like to exe- ety, activities in modern classrooms naturally come to cute the action’ (Heyes 2012a, 2185). It is the relation mind. In contrast to informal learning in traditional between observations and the experience of execution cultures, such formalized teaching is a comparatively that results in social learning. recent phenomenon and hence not our focus here. The neuro-psychological differentiation between A number of ethnographic studies show that infor- visual and motor representations of actions links mal teaching is traditionally an integrated part of ev- well to the commonplace epistemological distinc- eryday activities (Greenfield et al. 2000). In informal tion between ‘knowing how’ and ‘knowing that’ learning children are taught, by adults or peers, the (Ryle 1945). In archaeology, and especially within the conditions of their work and behaviour through play- French school of technological chaˆıne operatoire´ stud- ful participation (Kamp 2001). Even though it can be ies (Pel´ egrin´ 1990), these concepts, normally refer- organized in various ways (d’Errico & Banks, this is- eed to as ‘knowledge’ and ‘know-how’ (see Hogberg¨ sue), most researchers agree that play has a vital role 2009), are important (Tostevin 2012). ‘Knowing how’ in children’s learning. For example, in a study looking depends on muscular embodied memory. It is tacit into childhood in Inuit societies, Park (1998) empha- knowledge that is acquired through practical expe- sizes that children mimic and imitate adults in tasks rience (Apel 2001), hence linking to motor represen- like hunting, care-taking and household activities, and tations. ‘Knowing that’ is communicative, something in so doing the children actually enact the life of the that can be transferred from one person to another 848 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.226, on 29 Sep 2021 at 07:23:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774315000402 Knowing, Learning and Teaching—How Homo Became Docens through language, by speech, signs, gestures, sounds, they have emerged in evolution and that episodic etc., hence linking to visual and other sensory repre- memory is well developed only in humans. This sentation (Heyes 2012a). would explain why ‘knowing that’ is so central for The distinction between the two kinds of knowl- humans. Tulving’s thesis entails that ‘knowing how’ edge basically corresponds to the Aristotelian dis- and ‘knowing what’ are more fundamental forms of tinction between epistemˆ eˆ (scientific knowledge) and knowledge than ‘knowing that’.
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