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Researchers: Human-like ways of thinking evolved much earlier than thought

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volunteer studied while making axe/Putt

From ScienceDaily:

By using highly advanced brain imaging technology to observe modern humans crafting ancient tools, a neuroarchaeologist has found evidence that human-like ways of thinking may have emerged as early as 1.8 million years ago.

“This is a significant result because it’s commonly thought our most modern forms of cognition only appeared very recently in terms of human evolutionary history,” said Shelby S. Putt, a postdoctoral researcher with The Stone Age Institute at Indiana University, who is first author on the study. “But these results suggest the transition from apelike to humanlike ways of thinking and behaving arose surprisingly early.”

“The fact that these more advanced forms of cognition were required to create Acheulean hand axes — but not simpler Oldowan tools — means the date for this more humanlike type of cognition can be pushed back to at least 1.8 million years ago, the earliest these tools are found in the archaeological record,” Putt said. “Strikingly, these parts of the brain are the same areas engaged in modern activities like playing the piano.” Paper. (paywall) – Shelby S. Putt, Sobanawartiny Wijeakumar, Robert G. Franciscus, John P. Spencer. The functional brain networks that underlie Early Stone Age tool manufacture. Nature Human Behaviour, 2017; 1: 0102 DOI: 10.1038/s41562-017-0102 More.

Of course, that’s so long ago that one can only wonder what humans were doing in the meantime, that meant that thought didn’t evolve faster.

See also: Stasis: When life goes on but evolution does not happen

Interesting field:

Comments
There seems to be this slight overlooking of perhaps 500,000 years of simple experimentation banging rocks together. The suggestion of a SINGLE organized program that produced human stone tools is nonsense. I imagine the progress much more like: 1) finding a rock on the ground that already has a sharp edge; to 2) accidentally discovering [technically called serendipity] that a sharp edge can form when a rock is broken; to 3) intentionally breaking a rock while HOPING to make a sharp edge; to 4) having your dad or uncle SHOW you how he breaks one rock with another to CONSISTENTLY get a sharp edge; to 5) discovering ways to get DIFFERENT kinds of edges using different whacking techniques and specific kinds of rocks (um, rockite, stone-ite, hardite, randomite, etc.).vmahuna
May 31, 2017
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