1 The Triggering Track-ways Theory By Kim Shaw-Williams A Thesis Submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington In Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts In Philosophy Victoria University of Wellington 2011 2 ABSTRACT In this thesis I present a new paradigm in human evolutionary theory: the relevance of track-ways reading (TWR) to the evolution of human cognition, culture and communication. Evidence is presented that strongly indicates hominins were exploiting conspecific track-ways 4 million years ago. For a non-olfactory ape that was a specialized forager in open, featureless wetland environments, they were the only viable natural signs to exploit for safety, orienteering, and recognizable social markers. Due to the unique cognitive demands of reading track-ways, as compared to scent- trails all other animals use to find each other and preferred prey species, social TWR triggered the evolution of a unique faculty for narrative elsewhere-and-when cognition in the hominin mind. Two million years later, this narrative faculty was entrenched enough to enable the rather sudden „explosion‟ of co-operative Oldowan Lithic Culture that began at 2.6mya. This cultural adaptation was a highly successful response to catastrophic environmental change. Thereafter selection for encephalization to increase neural capacity to store and co-operatively exploit socio-ecological knowledge gained from the hominin narrative faculty (via co-evolving, increasingly efficient modes of intentional communication) drove all further biological and cultural developments in the hominin trajectory towards H.sapiens and behavioural modernity. 3 Contents PREFACE ......................................................................................................... 5 Chapter One: The Triggering Track-ways Theory.............................................. 9 1.0 The Uniquely Hominin Cognitive Niche of Track-ways Reading .................................................. 9 1.1 The Qualitative Difference between the Ape and Human Mind-sets........................................ 16 1.2 The Narrative Nature of Track-ways as a Natural Sign-System ................................................. 18 1.3 Social Cognition: the Hominin Narrative Faculty (HNF). ............................................................ 22 1.4 Summary and Outline of Following Chapters ............................................................................ 25 Chapter 2: The Nature of Track-ways Cognition .............................................. 29 2.0 A Quick Lesson in Track-ways Reading (TWR). .......................................................................... 29 2.1 Scent-Trailing and TWR: The Cognitive Information Gap .......................................................... 33 2.2 The Calibration of TWR Cognition: Simple, Systematic, Speculative. ........................................ 39 2.3 Mental Applications of TWR Information: How Early Hominin Hunters ‘Thought’. .................. 44 2.4 The Pedagogy or Cultural Transmission of TWR Skills ............................................................... 49 Chapter Three: Oldowan Hunters and Gatherers ............................................. 58 3.0 Big Game Hunters or Obligate Scavengers? .............................................................................. 58 3.1 When and Why Erectus Became Scavengers. ........................................................................... 61 3.2 Erectus Hominins: Endurance Hunters ...................................................................................... 64 3.3 The Cognitive Significance of Carving Large Carcasses .............................................................. 65 3.4 TWR and the Hunting of Smaller Animals ................................................................................. 66 3.5 The Cognitive Competences of Oldowan Hunters and Gatherers ............................................. 68 3.6 Reasons for Previous Theoretical Disregard for TWR ................................................................ 71 Chapter 4. Social TWR and the Hominin Narrative Faculty ............................. 76 4.0 The Laetoli Fossilized Footprints ............................................................................................... 76 4.1 Physical and Ecological Attributes of the Laetoli Hominins ....................................................... 79 4.2 Cognitive Attributes of the Laetoli Hominins ............................................................................ 83 4.3 Why Only the Hominin Lineage Entered the Social TWR Niche. ............................................... 86 4 4.4 The Social Significance of Track-ways. ...................................................................................... 89 4.5 How Social TWR Increased Hominin Social Complexity ............................................................ 91 4.6 The Initial Entry into the Social TWR Cognitive Niche ............................................................... 93 4.7 The Self-Mirroring Effects of One’s Own Track-ways. ............................................................... 95 4.8 The Evolution of Dennett’s Second-Order Intentionality .......................................................... 98 4.9 Summary ................................................................................................................................. 100 Chapter Five: The Hominin Narrative Faculty and the Cornerstone Social Competences. ................................................................................................. 102 5.0 Introduction to the Models ..................................................................................................... 102 5.1 The ‘Evolution of Language’ Debate. ...................................................................................... 105 5.2 Overview of the HNF and the Cornerstone Competences ...................................................... 107 5.3 The Qualitative Uniqueness of the Narrative Faculty. ............................................................. 109 5.4 Developmental and Comparative Evidence of Ontogeny of the HNF. .................................... 111 5.4 Summary and Overview of Phylogeny and Ontogeny of Narrative Faculty............................. 115 Chapter Six: The Hominin Evolutionary Trajectory. ...................................... 119 6.0 The Environmental Forcing of Hominin Evolution. .................................................................. 119 6.1 Leaving the Trees Behind. ....................................................................................................... 120 6.2 Leaving the ‘Garden of Eden’. ................................................................................................. 122 6.3 The Advent of Oldowan Culture and the ‘Co-operative Explosion’. ........................................ 127 6.4 The Gestural Acheulian Era ..................................................................................................... 129 6.5 Discussion of Chronology ........................................................................................................ 134 6.6 The Lacustrine Vocalizing Ape ................................................................................................. 136 6.7 The Socio-Ecological Effects of Linguistic Communication ...................................................... 137 6.8 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 140 Bibliography .................................................................................................. 144 5 PREFACE As a child growing up in the wilderness of N.W. Canada I was encouraged to set snares for snowshoe hares to add to the family meat supply in winter. Hence, like any other hunter- gatherer child, I had begun to learn track-ways reading skills before the age of six. By the age of eight I was setting leg-traps for small fur-bearing mammals and selling their dried and stretched skins for pocket money. By then I could recognize the footprints of most local species of both small and large mammals, and discern from their track-ways what they had been up to during their daily routines. Most modern humans never need to learn how to read track-ways. But for two to three million years before sedentary horticultural civilizations began to emerge (roughly 10,000 yrs ago) all hominins were hunter-gatherers, and therefore must have begun to learn how to read track-ways from the earliest age possible. Here is a personal anecdote that I believe begins to capture the cognitive and psychological import as well as the possible evolutionary significance of track-ways reading as a cognitive/behavioural niche. At the age of twelve I once went snow-shoeing1 in late winter to investigate a certain local copse of evergreen spruce trees. There had just been a fresh fall of snow the night before, and I wanted to read the tracks in the fine dusting of fresh snow underneath their protective cover because I was looking for new sites for my traps. One purposefully reads tracks at such times (another example is after a period of rain in areas of sand or mud) because all tracks and other traces of target animals to be found must be very recent: one can be sure their perpetrators or „authors‟ are still in the territory being explored. There were tracks of some smaller fur-bearing species, but „something did not