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Part III: the Human Mind PART III: THE HUMAN MIND CHAPTER 9 THE EVOLUTION OF BODY, BRAIN, BEHAVIOR, CULTURE, AND MENTALITY FROM THE PALEOLITHIC TO THE NEOLITHIC Emergence of Reflective Consciousness 9.1 The Idea of Man's Cultural and Mental Evolution: A Brief History ......................... 530 9.1.1. Early Ideas of Human Cultural and Mental Evolution ................................. 530 9.1.2. The Anthropological Theory of Culture, and Stages of Cultural Evolution ................................................................. 531 9.1.3. The Multidisciplinary Approach to the Study of Prehistoric Cultural and Mental Evolution .................................................. 533 9.2. Cranial and Skeletal Evolution from Hominoid Apes to Homo sapiens: The Paleontological Evidence ................................................................................. 535 9.2.1. From Apes to the Evolving Hominoids ....................................................... 535 9.2.2. The Evolution of Hominids: The Early Australopithecines ......................... 537 9.2.3. The Evolution of Hominins: Homo habilis and Homo erectus ..................... 540 9.2.4. The Evolution of Humans: The Robust and Gracile Homo sapiens ............ 541 9.3. Cultural Evolution from the Early Paleolithic to the Neolithic: The Archeological Evidence .................................................................................... 552 9.3.1. Cultural Evolution Reflected by the Succession of Improved Stone Tool Industries ................................................................................... 552 9.3.2. Early Paleolithic Cultures: The Production of Simple Oldowan Tools ....... 553 9.3.3. Middle Paleolithic Cultures: The Manufacture of Advanced Acheulean and Mousterian Tools ................................................................. 554 9.3.4. Late Paleolithic Cultures: The Production of Special Purpose Tools .......... 558 9.3.5. The Mesolithic Transition: Decimation of the Megafauna and Establishing Settlements ..................................................................... 560 9.3.6. The Neolithic Revolution: Building Permanent Villages and Domesticating Plants and Animals ............................................................ 561 9.3.7. Archeological Evidence for the Evolution of Art ........................................ 567 9.3.8. Archeological Evidence for the Evolution of Religion and Morality .......... 571 9.4. The Cultural and Mental Evolution of Hominids and Hominins: An Interpretation Based on the Material Evidence .................................................. 576 9.4.1. Stages in the Mental Evolution of Animals Relevant to Man's Ancestry ..... 576 9.4.2. Hominid and Hominin Evolution: A Recapitulation of the Paleontological and Archeological Evidence ................................................ 577 9.4.3. Hominid Cultural and Mental Evolution: The Early and Late Australopithecines .......................................................................................... 578 9.4.4. Hominin Cultural and Mental Evolution: Homo erectus and Homo Heidelbergensis ................................................................................... 583 9.5. The Contributions of Anthropology to our Understanding of Human Cultural and Mental Evolution ................................................................................ 588 9.5.1. The Anthropological Perspective on Human Mental Evolution .................. 588 9.5.2. Culture and Mental Development: The Role of Institutions, Conventions, and the Social Order .............................................................. 588 9.5.3. Ethnological Descriptions of Societies Analogous to the Upper Paleolithic and the Mesolithic ........................................................... 593 9.5.4. Ethnological Descriptions of Societies Analogous to the Neolithic .............. 599 9.6. The Cultural and Mental Evolution of Homo sapiens: A Synthesis of the Archeological and Anthropological Evidence ......................................................... 604 9.6.1. Cultural Evolution of Homo sapiens from the Late Paleolithic to the Neolithic ................................................................... 604 9.6.2. Mental Evolution of Homo sapiens from the Late Paleolithic to the Neolithic ............................................................................................. 618 9.6.3. The Emergence of Reflective Consciousness .............................................. 625 9.6.4. Our Paleolithic and Neolithic Legacies ....................................................... 626 530 © J. ALTMAN: NEURAL AND MENTAL EVOLUTION 9.1. The Idea of Man’s Cultural and Mental Evolution: A Brief History 9.1.1. Early Ideas of Human Cultural and Mental Evolution. Cultural and mental evolution is a relatively recent idea. The prevalent ancient belief was that man’s past is a record of regression or degeneration. An example is Hesiod’s (8th century BCE) fanciful account of the prehistory of the Greek people. In his Works and Days, Hesiod (1978) described five ages (“races”) in Greek history—beginning with “Lost Paradise under Knossos,” followed by Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron Ages—implying a cultural decline from earlier ages. Regress rather than progress was also the gist of the Biblical myth of human origins. Having been created in the image of God, the first human, Adam, led a blissful life in the Garden of Eden, but after he succumbed to temptation and sinned, his progeny were born wicked and needed divine grace to be saved. This view of human degeneration persisted throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. In his Scienza Nuova, originally published in 1725, Vico (1961) described three periods in mankind’s history: the age when the gods ruled, the age when heroes were the masters, and his own age. However, Vico no longer viewed this historic succession as degeneration but rather as the progressive liberation of mankind: from the tyranny of gods (theocracy), from the rule of heroes (aristocracy), to the governing of society by reasonable princes. The idea of human progress became the guiding principle of the French Enlightenment. Based on an interpretation of human history, as it was then known, Turgot proposed in his Progrès Successifs de L’ésprit Humain, published in 1750, that mankind advanced from predominantly irrational barbarism to predominantly rational civilization. A similar idea of mankind’s cultural evolution, with many more stages, was sketched later by Condorcet in his Esquisse d’un Tableau Historique des Progrès de l’esprit Humain, published in 1795 (Condorcet, 1955; Goodell, 1994). These early ideas of cultural and mental evolution were elaborated and systematized in the 19th century by Comte (1851-1854). Comte described three stages in the historic evolution of mankind: the theological (or fictitious), the metaphysical (or rational), and the positive (or scientific). (i) The theological stage referred to early times when men believed in supernatural powers and uncritically accepted myths and legends as truths. Comte distinguished three successive phases in this theological stage: fetishism, polytheism, and monotheism. (ii) The metaphysical phase referred to the emergence of rational thinking, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophers who questioned the validity of popular myths and legends and formulated naturalistic hypotheses of what goes on in the world we live in. (iii) The positive stage referred to the emerging new scientific age, as physicists, chemists, and biologists were beginning to use observation and experimentation to formulate the laws that govern natural phenomena. Thomsen (1848) offered the first empirical theory of human evolution. To classify an extensive North European archeological collection available to him, Thomsen proposed three stages in the technical advancement of mankind: the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. Lyell (1863) and other geologists garnered evidence that some Stone Age people were contemporaries of extinct animals, establishing the idea of man’s great antiquity. Combining the available archeological evidence with anthropological observations, Lubbock (1865) divided the Stone Age into two periods: the Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The Paleolithic period was characterized by stone artifacts without pottery, probably the culture of nomadic hunters and gatherers. The Neolithic period was characterized by abundant ceramic remains, probably the culture of sedentary villagers. Westropp (1872) coined the term Mesolithic, which he thought Chapter 9: Human Mental Evolution from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic 531 was a period between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic. Based on the different workmanship of stone tools that were unearthed from older or younger geological strata, archeologists subsequently divided the Paleolithic age with progressively improved stone flaking techniques into Early (Lower), Middle, and Late (Upper) periods, and identified the Neolithic with the manufacture of polished stone tools. 9.1.2. The Anthropological Theory of Culture, and Stages of Cultural Evolution. This new way of thinking began when seafarers, naturalists, and colonizers discovered that nomadic hunters and sedentary farmers in Africa, America, Australia, and some Pacific islands were less developed industrially and socially than themselves. Those observations led to the anthropological theory of man’s cultural diversity and of successive stages in cultural evolution. THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE. Anthropologists use the term
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