The Prehistory of the Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion and Science

by Steven Mithen

Here is an exhilarating intellectual performance, in the tradition of Roger Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind and Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct. On the way to showing how the world of our ancient ancestors shaped our modern modular mind, Steven Mithen shares one provocative insight after another as he answers a series of fascinating questions:

Were our brains hard-wired in the Pleistocene Era by the needs of hunter-gatherers?
When did religious beliefs first emerge?
Why were the first paintings made by humankind so technically accomplished and expressive?
What can the sexual habits of chimpanzees tell us about the prehistory of the modern mind?

This is the first archaeological account to support the new modular concept of the mind. The concept, promulgated by cognitive and evolutionary psychologists, views the mind as a collection of specialized intelligences or "cognitive domains," somewhat like a Swiss army knife with its specialized blades and tools. Arguing that only archaeology can answer many of the key questions raised by the new concept, Mithen delineates a three-phase sequence for the mind's evolution over six million years—from early Homo in Africa to the ice-age Neanderthals to our modern modular minds. The Prehistory of the Mind is an intriguing and challenging explanation of what it means to be human, a bold new theory about the origins and nature of the mind.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, History, Psychology, Anthropology, Archaeology, Prehistory

288 pages, Paperback

First published October 17, 1996

About the author

Steven Mithen is Professor of Early Prehistory at the University of Reading, having previously served as Pro Vice Chancellor and Deputy Vice Chancellor. He received a BA in prehistory and archaeology from Sheffield University, a MSc degree in biological computation from York University and a PhD in archaeology from Cambridge University.

Reviews

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was the great breakthrough for the British archaeologist Steven Mithen (° 1960). He published it in 1996 and it immediately caused a stir in archaeological circles, but also far beyond. Indeed, Mithen was quite ambitious. He puts forward a bold hypothesis about how the human mind very gradually evolved, from about 2.5 million years ago to the great cognitive leap sometime between 100 and 50,000 years ago. Mithen makes extensive use of the psychological sciences, but uses them to create his own view, which he tries to substantiate as much as possible with archaeological findings. Centerpiece of his theory is the growth of 'cognitive fluidity' between the different domains within the human mind.

Obviously, his theory remains highly speculative, but it does offer an interesting, transparent explanation for the emergence of the 'modern mind'. And unlike many other developmental psychologists, anthropologists and philosophers, he is at least making an attempt to fit in the empirical material. But it remains a theory of a very speculative nature, and by now (25 years after publication) probably outdated. More on that in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Sense of History]

Roughly between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago, the evolution of humans (our species, the homo sapiens) suddenly took a leap. In archeological findings the first evidence of more sophisticated tool making, of artistic and symbolic behavior (the rock paintings, the burials with grave gifts) emerges, becoming much more abundant between 60,000 and 30,000 years ago. That is quite late in human evolution, especially when you know that about 2 million years ago the first specimens of the homo-species walked on Earth, and at least 200 to 150,000 years ago the first representatives of sapiens appeared.

For a long time this was explained by referring to the greater brain content each time a new hominid species appeared on the scene. But this is chronologically inconsistent with the much later leaps in tool production. It was not until the 1980s that attempts were made to find an explanation through theories of the social sciences. The anthropologist Robin Dunbar was one of the first to do this, with his these about the size of the social group in which mankind lived and the growth of complex social behavior that accompanied it.

The British archeologist Steven Mithen includes Dunbar's findings in his story, but he focuses in particular on the development of the human mind. That concept of mind is more than just the brain, it's the whole cognitive functioning of man (or woman for that matter). Mithen is inspired by views in developmental psychology, evolutionary psychology and cognitive psychology, that were launched and much debated in the 1980s and 1990s. In a very difficult 3rd chapter he outlines the different theories in those domains and partially distances himself from them.

In its place Mithen puts forward his own thesis of increasing "cognitive fluidity" of the mind. That sounds abstract, indeed, but he uses a clever architectural metaphor: he represents the human mind as a cathedral, consisting of a central nave and several side chapels, at first almost completely separated from each other. The central nave represents the general intelligence that hominids have in common and on which they mainly relied on to interact with their environment, certainly in the beginning of human evolution. Gradually, more specialized departments developed in the brain (the chapels), each devoted to a behavioral domain (social intelligence, technological intelligence, natural history intelligence and linguistic intelligence). This evolution was driven by darwinistic principles: "With the joint effects of variation caused by random genetic mutations, inheritance, differential reproductive success, and constant environmental change, the suite of architectural plans evolved. In other words, it was shaped by natural selection.”

On the basis of the available archaeological material Mithen sketches the jumps that the successive hominids made in those specialized domains. Gradually the special "side chapels" took over functions of the central nave and increasingly connected with each other. It was only between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago that the human mind must have reached a situation of cognitive fluidity: a pattern of thinking, behaving and problem solving in which all domains were connected. This resulted in a sudden leap to more symbolic behavior, which Mithen calls the "modern mind". According to him, it was the development of language and speech that forced the breakthrough, connecting the various domains and creating a reflexive consciousness. Of course, I sketched only a very abbreviated version of this theory, Mithen's argument is much more elaborated.

I find Mithen's theory absolutely insightful and transparent. It certainly does an creditable attempt to explain why complex social behavior (as expressed in tool making, art and religion) came so late in the development of humankind. But (and you could feel that coming) there are a few fundamental weaknesses built into it. For example, in my opinion, he explains far too little what exactly he means by that concept of "general intelligence" and what place it has in the cognitive functioning of the first hominids. The author also is a bit too inventive in his attempt to fit archaeological findings into his theory. Throughout the book you constantly find twists and turns such as “my guess is”, “it is likely that”, “few can doubt”, and so on. That is Mithen's Achilles heel: his theory remains a theory, a very interesting hypothesis that more or less explains the evolution of the human mind, but is very difficult to prove with empirical material, and at times even clearly speculative.

I notice that colleagues of his, such as Clive Gamble (whose book Settling the Earth: The Archaeology of Deep Human History, 2013, I read before this one), refer to Mithen, but do not really adopt his theory. And that is no shame: the development of science has always been accompanied by the launch of theories that remain plausible until a better one is found. Mithen's book now is 25 years old, and with what I have read in more recent works by Gamble, Dunbar, and Yoffee outdated; both archeology and the cognitive sciences have moved on. But with his theory he may have challenged other scientists, and that certainly is to Mithen’s credit.

[Nebuchadnezzar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Evolutionary psychologists could use a lesson from Steven Mithen. The Prehistory of the Mind is sweeping in its scope, synthesizing material from a whole array of fields from biology to psychology, and (of course) archaeology. Unlike your average work of evolutionary psychology, Mithen's account is heavily informed by his background in archaeology and the paleoarchaeological record. (In other words, tethered to some semblance of reality.)

However, Mithen trips up a bit when it comes to neuroscience, not so much getting it wrong as likely not having dug deep enough into the field. I find his argument that the breakdown in modularity of the mind led to "cognitive fluidity" to be very unlikely on the neurobiological level. Though I find his conception of a massively modular mind with cognitive fluidity to be far more realistic than the neo-phrenology of the orthodox evo psych crowd, even if it's not quite right.

The book is also starting to show its age, as Mithen argues this cognitive fluidity was the impetus for the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic revolution or "behavioral modernity" some 40-50,000 years ago. In the last 10-15 years or so, much revisionist work has been done demonstrating the occurrence of "modern" behavior before this point. I think John J. Shea has really put the nail in this coffin: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/6...

Prehistory of the Mind is still a groundbreaking book, though. The way Mithen puts such a vast amount of knowledge in evolutionary and historical context is what makes this book invaluable, if dated.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagine for a moment that our ancestors, many tens of thousands of years ago, all trooped up a gangplank and then flew by spaceship to a different planet. Well, in effect, that’s exactly what we’ve done as a species—the Earth of today is as different from that earlier Earth as an alien world (and it’s us who have largely changed it of course, to suit ourselves and at the expense of nearly everything else that lives here). But inside our heads we still have the original brains and minds: the human mind wasn’t shaped by this modern alien world, and to understand much of why it is the way it is it makes a lot of sense (or so it seems to me at least) to look back at the world which did shape it.
    By the time The Prehistory of the Mind was written (1996) evolutionary psychology was already on its way to becoming a subject in its own right—psychologists drawing on archaeological evidence. Steven Mithen was an archaeologist doing all this the other way around: “Rather than having archaeology play the supporting role, I want it to set the agenda … 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.”
    The book spans the period from the time of our last common ancestor with other apes (about six million years ago or so); then the australopithecines (between six million and two); then the various Homo species: habilis, erectus, neanderthalensis, sapiens. And, broadly speaking, it divides this period into the three main phases Mithen claims the human mind has passed through: first, a generalised intelligence; then something more modular with specialised capabilities (one of those Swiss Army knives is a good way of picturing this); and finally, these modules partly coalescing into something more flexible, more cognitively fluid. On the one hand, some of the reasoning here (but it is only some of it) does have a decided house-of-cards feel to me—minds aren’t themselves fossilised, obviously, so you’re inferring. But on the other hand, what did impress me was just how much you can infer: from the fossilised skeletal remains themselves and footprints in fossilised mud; from ceremonial burials, the detritus of worksites and campfires; from artefacts of all kinds (weapons, implements, ornaments and tools for making other tools); from cave paintings, carvings and dwellings—from all these physical remains you can infer behaviour, and from behaviour to a surprising amount about the minds behind it.
    Mithen’s book was an early attempt at this sort of reconstruction, so inevitably has by now become a bit out of date. A really interesting read though all the same.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Steven Mithen proves that we weren't the weird ejaculation of a supernatural force by showing how it was quite the opposite: religion (and art and science, all of our favorite things) sprang out of our long-developed cognitive fluidity when the time was just right to start anthropomorphizing things and hating Thog and Oog, the same-sex couple a few caves down.
The main argument, grounded in social psychology and child development science and a slew of other disciplines, is brought together in Mithen's estimation (he's an archaeologist) that it was a crossover of various modules of varying kinds of intelligence (social, technical, Natural) that led to consciousness that led to the modern mind. He uses the analogy of a swiss-army knife for this: early human brains had different separate functions that were used in different contexts; it was only when they call started to melt together, under various social and environmental pressures, that it became more of a centralized and highly adaptive mind that our predecessors possessed.
I'm no scientist. I can barely name the planets (Earth, Mars...the Sun?) Nevertheless I found Mithen's argument compelling. He uses the archaeological record (read: what we DO know) to back up this argument for the modular theory of mind and it's pretty darn neat, even if he's not always spot-on. Books like this are also fun because they probably piss a lot of people off. I thought it was fun and a little wacky.
Note: a must for the Planet of the Apes completist.

[C. B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gloriously punchy little book which lays out Mithen's theory for the evolution of the modern mind. I'm not someone who's in a position to pick a lot of holes in his reasoning, as my knowledge of science is truly deplorable. But it all gelled very well for me, logically. One gets a strong feeling for the sheer amount of time that Mithen has spent thinking about this issue, and he's clearly deeply passionate about his work. A pleasure to read from cover to cover; I've been left with a lot to mull over.

[Liam Porter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a excellent book, appropriate for any general reader who is not deeply versed in the subject, such as I was not. Mithin writes with respect for the reader, explaining complicated ideas and interpretations of evidence without ever intimidating.

The book's theory deals with the birth of the modern mind, which Mithin says took place in 3 distinct phases. These "phases" represent the growth of the mind, which are deduced from the evidence of anthropologists and archaeologists. To illustrate this passage of time, Mithin paints a picture in the mind of a play in 4 acts, each act representing a different era of pre-human life, beginning at the common ancestor with chimpanzees.

In act one, "we must leave the stage bare" in "total darkness." There is nothing known about the common ancestor of chimps and humans 6-4.5 million years ago, except for what we can deduce from the two animals today.

In act two, 4.5-1.8 million years ago, we meet the first distinctly un-chimp-like ape fossils, animated on stage: "Lucy is such an impressive character, adept at both walking upright on two legs and climbing trees, that the lack of props - tools - is hardly noticeable." A second scene of act two introduces more characters of a similar kind, however thinks must still be very dark as "some commentators discern just a single actor, homo habilis, but it is likely that three are present."

These acts correspond with the first phase of the mind, which involves the same kind of intelligence as what we see in chimps today: "minds dominated by a domain of general intelligence: a suite of general purpose learning and decision making rules." (p.75)

With act 3 "the pleistocene begins" and a new ape and new mind springs up and amazingly "her arrival seems to be practically simultaneous in three parts of the world, East Africa, China and Java." We now have abundant "props," identical hand axes, which "Soon after [appearing] in East Africa, at around 1.4 million years ago, become pervasive in almost all parts of the world except for south-east Asia," where axes were perhaps made from bamboo. Finally there are other character who use the props: "by 150,000 years ago a new actor has appeared in Europe and the Near East, Homo neanderthalensis"

Things get interesting here as we enter phase 2: in which we find "minds in which general intelligence has been supplemented by multiple specialized intelligences, each devoted to a specific domain of behaviour, and each working in isolation from the others." (p.75). Tool-making is just one of these isolated intelligences that is separate from, say, social intelligence: apes in phase 2 cannot think to use tools to adorn themselves for social ends. He explains this well in this passage:

Chimpanzees seem to use any means possible to gain social advantage - but in fact they don't. For they do not employ material culture to this end. No chimpanzee has ever been seen wearing or using material items to send social messages about status and aspiration. Imagine if our politicians acted with the same self-restraint in their competitive posturing; no pin-striped suits and no old school ties. Material culture is critical to the Machiavellian social antics of modern humans, but it is strangely absent from those of chimpanzees. If social status is so important to them, why not use tools to maintain it? Why not display the head of a little monkey that one had killed, or use leaves to exaggerate the size of one's chest? The failure of chimpanzees to act in this way seems another missed opportunity at this awkward cognitive interface between social behaviour and tool use. There sems to be a brick wall between social and tool behaviour - the relationship between these lacks the fluidity that exists between foraging and tool use. p.106

Finally, we reach "Act 4: 100, 000 years ago - present day. [Upper Paleolithic]":

Scene 1 of Act 4 covers the period from 100,000 to around 60,000 years ago, although we will see the boundary between Scenes 1 and 2 is rather blurred. But the start is clear cut: a new figure enters - our own species, Homo sapiens sapiens. [...] Perhaps surprisingly there is no major change in the props as a whole this time: our new actor continues making the same range of stone tools as his forebears of the final scene of Act 3 [...] but there are hints of something new. In the Near East we see Homo sapiens sapiens not only burying their dead within pits - as indeed are the Neanderthals - but they are placing parts of animal carcasses on to the bodies seemingly as grave goods. In South Africa they are using lumps of red ochre [...] and grinding pieces of bone to make harpoons. These are the very first tools made from materials other than wood or stone.p.26

We have reached "Phase 3: Minds in which the myltiple specialized intelligences appear to be working together, with a flow of knowledge and ideas between behavioral domains" (p.75), and this potential quickly flourishes:

Scene 2 of this final act begins at around 60,000 years ago with a remarkable event: in south-east Asia Homo sapiens sapiens builds boats and then makes the very first crossing to Australia [...] long thin slivers of flint are being removed that look like, and indeed are called, blades. And then quite suddenly - at around 40,000 years ago - the play becomes transformed in Europe, and in Africa. The props have come to dominate the action. p.26

In phase three we have a symbolic, fluid way of thinking. To me this must be the emergence of true, syntactic language. The words of course have not been fossilized but the art has indeed remained for us to see, evidence of their sudden intellectual awakening:

Art remains rare, or even absent in several regions of the world until 20,000 years ago. But that is just 20,000 years after its first appearance in Europe / an almost insignificant amount of time when set against the more than 1.5 milion years that Early Humans lived without art.

[...]The archaeological record shows us that Stone Age art is not a product of comfortable circumstances when people have time on their hands; it was most often created when when people were living in conditions of severe stress. The florescence of Palaeolithic art in Europe occurred at a time when environmental conditions were extremely harsh around the height of the last ice age. Yet there is unlikely to have been a human population living under more adaptive stress than the Neanderthals of western Europe. But they produced no art. They lacked the capacity to do so.

There can be little doubt that by 30,000 years ago this capacity was a universal attribute of the modern human mind. What does it entail?[...]

1. The form of the symbol may be arbitrary to its referent.
2. A symbol is created with the intention of communication.
3. There may be considerable space/time displacement between the symbol and its referrent.
4. The specific meaning of a symbol may vary between individuals.
5. The same symbol may tolerate some degree of variability [for example in] peoples' handwriting. p.185

I find this very fascinating: the list reads just like a list of criteria for language. It disappointed me that Mithin did not discuss the Chomsky Hauser Fitch theory that language was originally a single mutation in a single individual, but the fact the theory is so compatible with Mithin's book, despite not being influenced by it, is just better recommendation for the theory's strength.

The symbolic working of our mind is even better evidenced by a short insert regarding mythology, citing the work of a certain Howard Murphy's studies of aboriginal mythological art. Murphy describes how this combination of a circle and two parallel lines:

(a)(b)
O====

...in fact contains two "loci", (a) and (b). What is special is not just that these hold meaning, but that they can hold alternative meanings simultaneously when viewed from different angles. To me this recalls the ambiguity of sentences:

At locus 9a), the following meanings are encoded: "well" "lake" "vagina"> At locus (b) the meanings "digging stick" "river" and "penis" are encoded. Consequently three different interpretations of this image would be a river flowing into a lake, a digging stick being used to dig a well, and a penis going into a vagina. All three of these are "correct" interpretations, but each is appropriate in a different social context. Moreover, the interpretations may be connected with a single mythic sequence:

A kangaroo ancestor was digging a well with a digging stick. When he finished, a female wallaby bent down to drink the fresh water, and the kangaroo seized his opportunity to have sexual intercourse with her. The semen flowed out of her body and into the waterhole. Today a river flows into the lake at that place and the kangaroo's penis was transformed into a digging stick which can be seen as a great log beside the lake. p.186

Something about the fluidity of our thinking means that solutions can be found to problems by equating two very different domains and findings what is common to them both. Here Mithin brings in the recent debates in the history and philosophy of science about to what extent our modern scientific culture is an extension of our everyday thinking:

Thomas Kuhn explained that the role of metaphor in science goes far beyond that of a device for teaching and lies at the heart of how theories about the world are formulated. Much of science is perhaps similar to Daniel Dennett's description of the study of human consciousness - a war of competing metaphors. Such a battle has indeed been fought in this book. If we could not think of the mind as a sponge, or a computer, or a Swiss army knife, or a cathedral, would we be able to think about it and study the mind at all? p.252

If I dare to make a criticism, it is on the point of language. Mithin mentions the arguments about the descended larynx. I personally find it empty to say that this evolution "allowed" us to do anything. Firstly, language is available through vision (reading and sign language) just as much as hearing, the capacity for language is not a matter of being able to project our voices. Secondly, our language is only comparable to other varieties of human language, and other comparisons to non-humans have been fruitless. Why, therefore, imply that we have "high quality" and "fine" use of our vocal tract for language? It could be better, and it could be worse. We could carry our voices for a miles like a lion's roar, for example, or be able to distinguish 20, rather than actually 10, places of articulation in the mouth, for the sake of "fineness.":

Just as the tree-climbing ancestry of the australopithecines enabled bipedalism to evolve, so too did bidpedalism itself make possible the evolution of an enhanced vocalization capacity among early Homo- and particularly H. erectus. This has been made clear by Leslie Aiello. She has explained how the upright posture of bipedalism resulted in the descent of the larynx, which lies much lower in the throat than in apes. A spin off, not a cause, of the new position of the larynx was a greater capacity to form the sounds of vowels and consonants. [...] Increased meat-eating [...] changed the geometry of the jaw, enabling muscles to develop which could make the fine movements of the tongue within the oral cavity necessary for the diverse and high-quality range of sounds required by language. p.244

Mithin is, however, fair in giving opposing evidence from other anthropologists, and in turn offers his arguments, leaving the conclusion to the reader. Here is an example where he takes a paper which suggests that perhaps chimpanzees are just as apt toolmakers as some humans (or that some humans are as bad as chimps at toolmaking), which would seem to contradict the claims that the phases are distinct leaps forward that determine behaviour:

In an (in)famous article written in 1987, he directly compared the toolkits of chimpanzees to thoe of Tasmanian Aborigines and concluded that they were at an equivalent level of complexity by counting "technounits", each of which is simply an individual component of a tool, whatever material that component is made form and however it is used. So a hoe used by, say, a peasant farmer, comprising a shaft, a blade and a binding, has three technounits. [...] When McGrew measured the technounits in the tools of the Tasmanian Aborigines and those of the Tanzanian chimpanzees he found that the mean number of technounits per tool was not substantially different. All chimpanzee tools and most of the Aboriginal tools were made from a single component. The most complex Aboriginal tool, a baited hide, had only four technounits. [...]

[However] Aborigines regularly use a production principle of "replication" when making their tools. THis is the combining of several identical elements, as in a bunch of tied-up grass. McGrew argued that chimpanzees also use this in principle, but the only example he could find was that of a leaf sponge, a crushed mass of essentially identical leaves. Aborigines also regularly use "conjunction", which is the joining of two or more technounits together. But only one single example of conjunction by a chimpanzee has ever been witnessed [...] two stones for nutcracking, one for the hammer and one for the anvil. p.88

This book is a treasure trove of information and is written to be understood. It is a shining example of popular science on conceptions only just coming to light. Mithin manages to express the excitement and reverence he has for the subject, eschewing jargon, hedging and academic understatement.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is exactly the type of thing I love to read. Mithen does a great job of setting out his theory in an accessible way, supported by copious notation, and even some dodgy-looking illustrations.

This is not to say I'm completely won over by his argument. Compelling though it is, I have some issues: for instance, I only half-understand what Mithen means by 'general intelligence'; the whole idea is too vague, especially when he introduces his 'Swiss army knife' modulated mind model. I don't think the modulated model stands up to scrutiny - it's all too easy to break down the 'areas of specialisation' such as linguistic, technical, social and natural history intelligences, into even more specialised modules (e.g. Technical intelligence -> tool-making intelligence -> flint knapping intelligence, etc., which makes the idea of the umbrella 'technical intelligence' seem arbitrary). I'm probably wrong in my interpretation of this - it just doesn't seem to fit right though. But anyway, I don't think it is made clear how 'general intelligence' differs from specialised intelligences (is it qualitatively different, or just different in the degree of specialisation?), and indeed how 'general intelligence' differs from 'cognitive fluidity'.

But still, this book deserves lots of stars because it introduced me to plenty of interesting things. The whole idea of 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny' at first seemed like some intuitively crazy mumbo jumbo until you actually think about it. Also, Mithen didn't spend as much time as I'd have liked talking about Sperber's 'module of metarepresentation', a great idea that I must investigate further.

Mithen also has a great way with metaphor. Though some may find it a bit forced, I really like the 'mind as cathedral' analogy - the backbone it provides the work is invaluable from an explanatory point of view and keeps the book focused.

Also, despite the misgivings I have about the mind-modularity model, the theory is admittedly beautiful. The idea of art and religion arising from a blurring of natural history, technical and social faculties is genius, and the epilogue was a bit of a lightbulb moment for me. I'd always thought how strange it was that farming only popped up relatively recently in human history, but the psychological explanation - that farming requires a blurring of social, technical and natural history faculties that was simply not possible in archaic Homo Sapiens or Neanderthal minds - is elegant.

I could say so much more but I'd probably end up giving the whole book away. Suffice it to say that Mithen takes you on a great journey, and while the book could probably benefit from being a bit longer (the majority is dedicated to building a model of the mind and the actual explanation of the origins or art, religion and science is almost an afterthought), Mithen has convinced me that you should definitely ask an archaeologist about the mind. I'll be reading more of his work.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good, clear, interesting. It’s a shame it came out in 1996 and so misses an analysis of Gobekli Tepe and other pre-agriculture megaliths that kind of flip the Durkheim theory of social development, which the author generally follows, on its head.

As a quibble I find that the concept that complex non-social language first developed from the need for pregnant and nursing people to ask for and encourage material support to be pretty convincing, but the author’s decision to root that firmly in ‘relationships between the sexes’ is both problematic and wrong. In modern hunter gatherer societies, quite often people considered to be ‘female’ or equivalent are the closest with each other and represent the most developed social relationships within a group. Support from other nursing people is absolutely essential in the process of raising children. This is also not to mention the vital role of post menopausal people in communities like this, who do a lot of the labour required to support pregnancies and childcare. So to identify the unique needs of the human reproduction cycle and what impact that could have in language development is a good idea! To argue that ‘females, in particular, may have needed [this] when developing their social relationships with males’ is not so good. Ignores a lot of evidence from analogous societies today and enforces a sex/role segregation that there is no material evidence for.

[moi, k.y.a. · Rating 3 out of 5]

insanın bilişsel evrimini arkeoloji üzerinden yorumlayan, homo türünün bilinçli bir canlıya dönüştüğü süreci arkeolojik izler üzerinden sürmeye çalışan güzel biʼ eser

[Kim Symes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was published in 1996 so it does not contain considerations of the latest findings and evidence in the field. However, it does give an interesting and comprehensive theory as to the origins of modern human mentality, and provides a huge compendium of further reading, including all the classic works in the field.

Steven Mithen clearly likes analogies and metaphors. He compares the mind to an old cathedral, as it has been assembled in different sections and at different times. He likens the mentality of archaic Homo sapiens to a Swiss-army knife (different modules for different functions). He compares human prehistory to a stage play with four main acts: 1) Proconsul to Australopithecus; 2) Australopithecus to Homo erectus; 3) Homo erectus to archaic Homo sapiens; and 4) Archaic Homo sapiens to modern humans. The early acts are 'poorly lit' ie: there is little material evidence for what is going on, but clues become more numerous as time goes by.

Mithen proposes that the mind went through stages where generalised intelligence was supplemented by new specialised modules before finally developing cognitive fluidity when the barriers between these modules broke down.

The first specialised module was social intelligence, which is evident in our closest living relatives, chimpanzees - and therefore probably present in our common ancestor 6 million years ago. During later phases of our evolution, specialised modules dealing with natural history (behaviour of animals and resource distribution), and technical knowledge and skills (toolmaking) were added. However, these modules were initially 'sealed off' from each other. This, Mithen claims, is why we see puzzling phenomena during act 3 of our evolution: a high degree of technical skill as evidenced in the symmetrical Acheulian handaxes, yet no change or development in the style or shape of tools for hundreds of thousands of years. This paradox is explained (Mithen says) by the fact that in archaic humans, their technical intelligence was sealed off from their social and natural history intelligence: they didn't make connections between these different realms.
By 100,000 BCE we begin to see evidence of a breakdown in these barriers - first between the social and natural history modules and later between social and technical intelligence. This communication between different cognitive modules is what allowed the Upper Palaeolithic explosion of art and material culture to occur.

One omission from this wide-ranging, yet concise account is the discovery of fire 1.7 - 2 million years ago. It is strange that Mithen doesn't mention this key event which would have provided a range of new opportunities, from avoiding predators to cooking otherwise inedible materials. The creation and control of fire could be seen as a purely technical achievement; a straightforward addition to the toolkit of early humans. But the exploitation of the power of fire, by using it to cook, would have involved some connection between natural history and technical intelligence at a time when Mithen says these functions were completely separate in the mind.

While aspects of this theory seem speculative and based on tenuous assumptions, the overall logic of the argument is plausible. It does however seem unlikely that the content of earliest human languages would have been purely social. Surely early humans - or even their forebears must have had words for the animals they feared or hunted. Even vervet monkeys have been shown to produce and recognise different alarm noises for different predators (Seyfarth and Cheney 1982). The first word may well have been 'mama', but surely the second would have been 'lion!'

[Jonathan Pearl · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the questions Mithen raises are among the most fascinating around, his approach leaves much to be desired. It is intriguing indeed to view cognitive issues from a variety of viewpoints. In fact, Cognitive Science itself is an amalgam of a great many fields. In some sense, the "new" cognitive science is a reformation of the old "psychology", a general purpose, and intentionally overarching field.
Mithen, an archeologist by trade, makes compelling arguments for his inclusion in the discussion of the evolution of human consciousness and cognitive abilities such as complex tool making and language.

However, as his argument continues, his theory fills out more and more, his metaphors for the modularity of mind - compared to the many rooms in a medieval cathedral - and his over-reliance on a vague concept of "general learning" begin to wear on the seeker of understanding. Where in all this, are the hints of scientific evidence? What supports his assertions regarding modularity in the first place? And just what is this amorphous beast: "general intelligence"?

Without anything to back up those fundamentals in his argument, the whole edifice of his cathedral is nothing more than the ruins of some building long decayed. Can the stones uncovered by such excavation truly assert themselves into the magnificence they may have once engendered, or must we piece them together according to our own preconceptions of what the structure must have been?

One leaves the book with a strong feeling that archeologists are well among those who should take part in the search for understanding our cognitive origins, and the path on which we currently tread; but also with just as much conviction that alone they are lost.

While Mithen intimates that his book is in some sense an archeologist's answer to the wonderful book by Merlin Donald "Origins of the Modern Mind", there is little similarity in the approaches or scope of these two works. In large part, it is the strength of support for ideas and arguments (as well as the humility to acknowledge the areas where such is lacking) that distinguishes Donald from his would be interlocutor Mithen.

[Stephen Palmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I first read this book I really enjoyed it, but perhaps didn’t quite ‘get’ it. A second reading has persuaded me that it is a very significant piece of work.

Mithen’s objective is to piece together a viable evolution of our mental abilities from the archaeological (and some other) evidence available to him. This is quite an ambition, given that often it’s quite difficult to piece together archaeology from archaeological evidence… But you have to admire the man’s insight and courage.

This is in fact a remarkable book, whose central hypothesis is that three or four naturally occuring kinds of intelligence – visible in chimps, our nearest living relatives – evolved over about six million years. Using a clever analogy, that of chambers a cathedral, he shows that these separate intelligences could have evolved in social circumstances into something far more complex, which then, perhaps only in the last 40,000 years, but certainly not before 100,000 years ago, came together in ‘cognitive fluidity.’ Mithen follows Nicholas Humphrey’s social intelligence theory, using it with verve and skill to show how consciousness evolved only for the social intelligence of primates, not the technical or natural history intelligences, but then overlapped with the other kinds of intelligences so that all our insight and understanding flowed out into the non-social world.

Quite an achievement then. Certainly a significant and enduring contributing to our understanding of how we evolved.

[Brett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first discovered Steven Mithen’s The Prehistory of the Mind in 2007 when doing work on the philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. I found Mithen’s interdisciplinary approach as an archaeologist refreshing and new.

Revisiting the book after 15 years (and 26 years after it was originally published) I noticed that some of what we know about prehistoric humans has seen significant advancement and change in recent years and the new discoveries we have made in archaeology, psychology, and linguistics needs to be taken into account when reading this book decades later.

Additionally, Mithen himself has continued to evolve his thinking on this matter in such books as The Singing Neanderthals (where he emphasizes music as a fundamental component of human cognition).

All that being said, I think the book is still useful in its organization, writing, and large number of diagrams and illustrations that liven up and inform the ideas presented. This book is clearly a product of mid-90s thinking, but its interdisciplinary nature and the useful ideas and illustrations are still useful for the reader to ponder and re-evaluate when consulting more recent and modern sources. Even as my research on this continues to grow beyond what is presented in this book, I plan to continue to look back on this book simply due to its scope, imagination, and clearly presented concepts.

[Michael Holm · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a speculative attempt by Dr. Mithen to explain the rapid 'cultural explosion' by Homo sapiens sapiens about 30,000 years ago in contrast to the relatively slow evolution of technologies before then. He adopts a view of consciousness promoted by Daniel Dennett which proposes that human consciousness is an experience generated by several functions (intelligences) of the brain. William Calvin called it the cerebral symphony. These intelligences may include linguistic, musical, logic & mathematics, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, introspection, and empathy. Mithen proposes that hominid cultural evolution was very slow such as the australopithecines, Homo habilis and Homo erectus because their minds were fragmented into four specific 'intelligences': technical (tool making), social, natural history (geography, mapping), and language. Mithen uses a model of a cathedral with several chapels surrounding the main nave, the chapels being specific functions. The hominid mind consisted of the chapels or intelligences functioning independently of each other.

Then we tour the hominids from Lucy through the early Homo species to modern humans, examining their capabilities as suggested by archeological findings to assess their minds. I found this to be an interesting tour. Mithen lumps the australopithecines together and the early Homo species together to simplify his study. Because the brain size of the australopithecines is so similar to chimpanzees and they are our cousins, he uses chimpanzee behavior to analyze Lucy's mind. Not a new idea, but I learned that chimpanzees are very socially oriented. They find social standing in their band or group intensely interesting. This interest is duplicated in human society and it occurred before language evolved. Access to sexual partners, finding food, care of the young and defense against predation are the bonds of their association.

Tool-making and bipedal locomotion are factors involved in increased meat consumption by Homo habilis and Homo erectus. Climate influence is barely mentioned and considered aside from the Pleistocene era. Perhaps that is well-known by professional archeologists and not necessary to explain. The hominid group size probably became larger for protection from predators and competitors for carcasses. So social issues became more demanding and perhaps selected for increased brain size. Homo erectus may have developed very rudimentary language. Why was tool-making fixated on hand-axes by Homo erectus for almost a million years? Mithen lists puzzles or questions about each subject examined. He also mentions ideas from other professionals and uses them in his analysis.

Early modern man, those replacing Homo erectus, include Neanderthals which he examines more closely because there is more evidence available to study. It is a complex point in human evolution, probably because we know more about them. DNA analysis is able to contribute to our study of them, but Mithen does not include a lot of DNA analysis, possibly because he wrote this in 1996.

The explanation for the florescence of human culture about 50,000 to 30,000 years ago is then attributed to full language development. Language (cognitive fluidity) then bridged the gaps between the various intelligences and promoted 'transfers' between them which resulted in anthropomorphism and totemism in art objects and religion (as revealed in burials). There are in my experience individuals who seem to do their thinking out loud, by talking. Perhaps a lot of talking and listening accelerates cultural development. But why suddenly after thousands of years of little change?

I wonder if Daniel Dennett agrees with Mithen's proposal and analysis. Early modern humans appeared about 100,000 years ago and the thoroughly modern man about 60,000 years ago, according to Mithen and Wikipedia articles. Neanderthals are believed to have used language and did so for at least 40,000 years. When I reflect on all the changes in the last 1,000 years in western civilizations, 40,000 years seems like plenty of time to make significant changes. Think of the many 'geniuses' that have advanced our culture. It seems very likely that very intelligent people advanced language usage during those 40,000 years. I believe that climate change in eastern Africa spurred the exodus from Africa and simultaneously pressured modern man to develop new technologies. There does seem to be a significant advancement 50,000 years ago but a sudden leap in language usage does not seem to be an adequate explanation. The long periods of no or little evolution in body and culture may be attributed to success in securing food and refuge. Success encourages conservatism. Why fix what isn't broken? Desperation encourages experimentation. Drought and competition can explain desperation.

I found the book to be very interesting. The subject is quite challenging with so little evidence available. We do not even agree how to understand our own consciousness and mind, much less that of our predecessors. But this book is an admirable effort to understand ourselves better. It is not so much science as it is contemplation, but it presents a lot of what has been learned from archeology by one who is very familiar with the field.

Dr Mithen is a practicing archeologist and professor at University of Reading. He also authored 'The Singing Neanderthals' in 2003.

[Justin S · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredibly well-written and accessible text on human evolution and archaeology. Steven Mithen demonstrates the importance of having an archaeological perspective on the cognitive evolution of the human mind. Taking the long view of the development of the human mind from 65 million years ago through primate and hominid evolution and up until the advent of the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago allows for a much broader appreciation of how the brain evolved.

[Samuel Liske · Rating 4 out of 5]

Caught my eye at McKay’s the other day. Either Mithen is a poor writer or his copy editor is a poor copy editor, or both. Still, this book changed my paradigm on how human thought has developed, and how human thought works in modernity. There is less focus on the evolutionary psychology of art/science/religion; instead the book focuses on the pressures and events that have facilitated the way we think over the past 6m years, and even touches on our rodentesque ancestors ~60m years ago. Great read, but it’s depressing to think of yourself and your fellow specimens as little more than highly evolved apes. :)

[Bart Jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Prehistory of the Mind
september 30, 2023 by barthopkinsjr, posted in uncategorized
A REVIEW
The Prehistory of the Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art and Science, written by Steven Mithen, was published nearly thirty years ago, in 1996.

His daunting self-set task: to explain the evolution of the modern human mind.

Mithen is an archaeologist who has access to and studies artifacts from the prehistoric past. While there are many, in absolute terms, their number is comparatively small when looking at the vast ranges of time involved.

One question has often troubled those who study human development. The last great increase in human brain size occurred some 500,000 years ago. However, the earliest evidence of a great change in human thinking happened only some 100,000 to 30,000 years ago. Why did it take so long for modern thought to develop?

Evolutionary psychologists, such as Robin Dunbar, came up with an arresting theory of human development. They believe that humans developed their intelligence not so much to deal with the natural world but with each other. And when you think about life today, that makes a lot of sense. After all, we humans are the most complex beings known. And, the groups we belong to often have a great influence on our thoughts and actions.

Humans have nearly always dealt with, and been defined by, their groups, especially in prehistoric times. Groups were small with almost no privacy. (There was probably very little concept of privacy.) People knew each other extremely well in nearly every way. But after language developed, there arose an important additional way to communicate and learn about each other.

Humans gossip. A lot. Some of it may be malicious, but there can be great value in having information about other humans. It often gives us a heads-up that helps us singly, or as a group, in the ways we interact.

But before you have gossip (or just language), a human needs to have awareness of how other people think. That may not sound like a huge achievement, but it really is. When we meet somebody, almost all of us judge their appearance, their actions, their clothing, their speech: in short, everything about them.

Most of us do that unconsciously, without much thought. But this ability is based upon self-knowledge. We are aware of ourselves. Self-knowledge leads to greater awareness of how others will likely act, and that leads to greater self-knowledge, in a cycle. This “theory of mind” would have been necessary before language even developed.

And, as is true today, much of our personal communications involve actions, gestures, movements, and posture, and we pay a huge amount of attention to those. As Merlin Donald famously outlined, we have numerous skills involving rehearsing actions. We learn to mimic. We learn by imitation. People often can only teach skills by showing how something is done.

Could it be that human intelligence arose mainly so we could deal with each other? And that human consciousness developed as a tool of awareness as we did so?

Mithen thinks it is very possible, and so do I.

Now, his theory also posits several different modules in the mind, areas that work almost independently. There is much evidence that at least some of these exist. They would include a module for physics, the aforementioned social intelligence module, a module for living things in natural history, and a module for artifacts.

These modules exist in very young children today. How do scientists know that? Very young babies don’t talk. They do, however, look at things, and show surprise by looking longer at the unexpected. Many clever experiments show that babies know that objects and living things act differently.

Also, the Autism spectrum observed in modern times often shows a deficit only in the theory of mind, as opposed to general intelligence. Temple Grandin is a famous example. She had no natural ability to discern the thinking of others but had to work logically to figure humans out. She was outstanding, however, in discerning how different animals thought, and became famous for her work with cattle.

In a nutshell, Mithen’s theory is that natural history and technology were in separate modules in the prehistoric mind and that social intelligence didn’t reach those areas until language came along.

Of course, people had some general intelligence, just as the smarter animals do today, driven by association and trial-and-error learning.

But, basically, the social intelligence was separate and prior to that of these other modules. For that reason, developments in hunting and foraging skills lagged behind social skills. Only much later, when language came along, did the expanded range of concepts that words allowed breach the walls between these modules.

This led to increased exchanges of thought between these modules. This is the beginning of “cognitive fluidity” and modern thinking. It is the period when art and religion began to flourish.

This gave humans greater insight into the creatures they hunted and improved their results. Combining conscious thoughts in the domains of natural history and technology led to the creation of better weapons, targeted for specific prey.

This “cognitive fluidity” also led to art. As Mithen notes: An artist must have some kind of template in mind to create a template usually displaced from the actual scene. The ancient cave wall paintings are often complex and beautiful, dating from some 40,000 to 50,000 years ago. They also often imparted information about the terrain and the animals hunted.

Dates constantly change as new archaeological discoveries are made. But Mithen’s experience and study of the way ancient humans developed are very apparent in this book. His nuts-and-bolts theory tells us a lot about the way modern thought could have developed.

Did it happen this way? We can’t know for sure about the distant past. But, as a student of humans and human thought, I can tell you that something like this is a very likely scenario. In this short review of Mithen’s work, it is impossible to give the detailed flavor of his knowledge about human prehistory. I heartily recommend a thorough study of this book.

[Siri Olsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best paleoanthropological books I've read in a long while. It is well-written, but still easily understandable, and the argument is very compelling. Mithen tries to establish the way in which the modern human brain has evolved by looking at the different kinds of intelligence one may suppose that our ancestors (as well as other human species) had based on the current archaeological evidence. From there, he tries to explain why changes to our intelligence may have taken place, at what time and in what species. An excellent read for anyone interested in cognitive evolution, which is one of my favourite subjects. Highly recommended.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is all a bit crap, the archaeology is fine but this guy attempts to shoehorn Karmiloff-smith's developmental theory into an account of the development of mind in Homo sapiens and you very quickly realize that he has not a clue about cognition or computation or, indeed, what he is talking about. There are so many explanatory and evidential holes in it that it gave me the howlin fantods. This is not the right answer to the question of how the mind evolved.

[Jack Bates · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm particularly interested in the development of the mind and books about 'what makes a modern human' and the beginnings of art, and whether we're 'wired' to experience things in a spiritual or religious way - in other words, do humans look for God because of the way our brains work? Mithen is a great writer, and an archaeologist (his book about Mesolithic middens in the Hebrides is more fun than it sounds), and this is a well researched and thoughtful book.

[Paul Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

A natural partner to Sapiens. More analytical, scientific and academic in its approach it nonetheless retains the general reader's interest and articulates (the highly plausible) archaeologist's perspective on the evolution of the human mind including two interesting observations on humour and racism; the natural concomitant of "cognitive fluidity".

[Adarsh Mishra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-structured, but lengthy and repetitive. At times, boring for someone who's not reading it for Academia. While this one was a part of my course-work, I chose to read it in totality and not skim through. Not a bad decision, tbh.

Gives interesting insights into the human mind and it's evolution; and Mithen's staunch defence of 'Natural Selection' as the only plausible process of evolution.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very engaging read and a fascinating hypothesis of how human cognitive abilities evolved. I particularly enjoyed Mithen's thoughts on the possible differences between the mind of modern humankind on that of Neanderthals.

[Rhett Talley · Rating 4 out of 5]

An A for effort.

[Riversue · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one was extremely interesting if a bit dated. I like the way he developed the concepts of the various type of intelligences and how they evolved.

[Robert Frecer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mithen uses a very scarce fossil and archaeological record to construct his argument about the development of the modern mind. At times, the inferences from material were so vague or subtle I had trouble accepting how they lead to his conclusions - and I couldn’t fully dial in to his hypothesis as a result.

Nevertheless, Mithen’s metaphor for the mind as a cathedral with chapels of specialized intelligences, and how these specializations gradually started coopertating to form “cognitive fluidity”, is a good explanation. It could have just happened that way, maybe.

[Sandrine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very compelling and interesting hypothesis which myself as a daughter of a very modern hunting father finds believable as to the development of the human mind. I guess most of the author’s theory holds up in view of the most recent finds pushing back the boundaries.

[Richard Stevko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reviewed in parts as read. Overall premise and accomplishment admirable

[Alvaro VN · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este excelente libro explora desde la Arqueología la evolución del cerebro antropoide al sapiens sapiens, investigación vital para el que desee adentrarse en la mente y la consciencia moderna.