The Prehistory of the Mind : A Search for the Origins of Art@@ Religion and Science Paperback – January 1, 1998

This is a wonderful book. It starts with the question of whether we are fundamentally different from chimpanzies in the way our mind works. Taking the perspective of an archaeologist, and blending that with the views of evolutionary biology and of human developmental psychology and cognitive science, Mithen spins an extroadinary tale. The earliest and most primative primates probably had most of their cognitive world "hard-wired." They had all the specific knowledge they needed for survival. Primates really took off from the rest of the mammals when we developed "general intelligence," which could learn from trial and error, and which could make generalizations based on experience. However, this general intelligence was slow in acquiring new knowledge. To accomplish that, specialized intelligences, or programs, needed to evolve.The first of these was social intelligence, which was the specialized ability to read and understand social heirarchies. Early empathy and the ability to infer from your own experience what other members of your species were thinking and feeling was the greatest power this new intelligence conferred, and became the origin of consciousness. The second specialized intelligence was that of natural biology. This was very helpful in expanding our observations of the world, and increased the food sources which were available to primitive ancestors of homo sapiens. The third specialized intelligence was technical intelligence. This enabled early man to fashion tools and to use them in ever more complex ways.To these three intelligences -- psychology, biology, and physics, so to speak -- was added linguistic intelligence. This gave the conscious mind a voice. It also enhanced the other three intelligences, especially social intelligence. Prior to the evolution of linguistic intelligence, peer communication was mostly visual and tactile. Speech was much more efficient than grooming in building and maintaining social bonds. It was also linguistic intelligence that made possible the next great leap to meta-intelligence.Linking the four specialized intelligences, there evolved during the period leading up to 40,000 years ago, a supraordinate intelligence which permitted what we might now call multitasking, or integration among the other specialized intelligences. We see the first evidence of this in the bursting forth of art and religion at that time. None of these appear to have been present prior to that time.Much like a simple computer, the earliest primates had a set of basic information. Then came a generalized processor. To this were added specialized programs for psychology, biology, physics, and language. Finally, true homo sapiens developed a metaprogram linking the others and permitting genuine creativity to take off.Unlike most popular books on science for the educated layperson, Mithen does not go in for much chit chat. This is a pet peave of mine in other books, such as "Sex on the Brain," or "Why We Age." Too much irrelevant material on the appearance and personal quirks of the scientists and not enough of the science. Not so here. The writing is only a tiny bit repetitious, and is generally excellent.A few other brief notes. Mithen explains some of the subtler aspects of upright posture, such as taking less direct sun, which permits foraging in the middle of the day. He addresses the role of a meat diet compared to a vegetarian one. He also demonstrates conclusively that while chimps and other primates have certain things in common with us, human intelligence is truly a unique phenomenon.

This book really sparked a lot of ideas on the evolution of the human brain. I especially liked the beginning sections on "what came before" where he summarizes the recent and sometimes contradictory schools of thought on the topic, rather than chosing one point of view and ignoring the others. Although I've been casually interesed in this subject for over 20 years, Mithen acquainted me with a number of researchers that I had never heard of. Very useful!

At first blush, the idea of creating an archeology of the human mind seems improbable, but Mithen actually makes compelling reading. Mithen isolates specific mental skills that most probably were used by our ancestors and traces there modifications and eventual integration to form the modern human brain.The reader does not have to buy into the specific developmental theory of the book in order to be challenged and amazed by the insights. Mithen is clearly not in possession of the final answer to questions about our intellectual heritage, but he clearly shows that it is fruitful to consider questions of the etiology of religon, art and science from an archaeological perspective.Mithen shows that there is much more that can be learned from the study of the development of human culture. Moreover, the book is well illustrated and written in a manner that opens up these concepts to the lay reader.Thought provoking and rewarding, this book makes the long history of mankind and our ancestors seem tangible. Highly recommended!

Mithen makes a valiant effort to establish the evolutionary roots of human intelligence. It's a complicated task, with so little physical evidence to support his endeavour. Still, he uses what there is with commendable ability. In presenting the development of intelligence, he falls back on three metaphorical images - the Swiss Army Knife, cathedral architecture and a dramatic play. The Swiss Army knife is a collection of specialized tools, each applied without relation to the others. You don't decork a wine bottle while trimming your fingernails. The cathedral is comprised of a central nave with connecting chapels. The chapels only connect to each other as intelligence develops. The drama is the history of hominid evolution, vague and obscure in the beginning, growing more discernible with more fossil evidence.As with most cognitive studies, Mithen's book summarizes what is known of the similarity of chimpanzee [our nearest relative] intellect and abilities in contrast with our own. As do many of his colleagues, he finds our primate cousins lacking in all but minimal skills. With the chimpanzees thus disposed of, he moves to examine the hominid record. This is the great strength of this work. Instead of the usual tactic of portraying what is known of today's human intellect and projecting backward, Mithen starts at the beginnings of human evolution to carry his argument forward. Along the way he utilizes anthropology, morphological studies, even climate and geography. He uses evidence well, assuming little and carefully building the model. Key points in the narrative are two periods of hominid brain enlargement, which he uses to enhance his model of special "intelligences."With the earliest hominids having only a Swiss Army knife array of mental tools, each segment of intelligence had to develop independent of the others. According to Mithen, this situation led to each "tool" building a separate "chapel" in the mind. Based on a central "nave" of "general" intelligence - keeping the body going, food gathering, sex - new intelligences would arise around it. These new intelligences are technical, natural, social and linguistic. Each operated independently of the others, so that tool-making enhanced "technical" intelligence, while learning about bird migration or fruiting seasons developed "natural" intelligence. The Swiss Army knife aspect prevented these intelligences from interacting until the emergence of Homo sapiens. Then, according to Mithen, a "cognitive fluidity" tore through the walls of the "intelligence chapels" to acquire the broad range of abilities the mind exhibits today. While direct evidence of all this activity is, necessarily missing, the forceful presentation and elegant logic make it all a captivating read.It's easy to critique Mithen's thesis. All you need is a competitive model of cognition. However, that would be unfair to what he has achieved, a carefully synthesized model of how human intelligence developed. Even without bringing in a competitive thesis, Mithen falls down in two important areas. After lengthy discussion of tool-making enhancing "technical" intelligence and its role in developing hunter-gatherer societies, he blithely omits any input from the "gathering" half of those communities. While rarely mentioning that tool-makers/hunters are almost exclusively male, even among chimpanzees, he restricts mention of female roles to the need to give birth to small-headed babies. He also depicts the changing of "social" intelligence associated with grooming in early hominids to the development of speech later. He ignores the possibility that speech is just as likely to have arisen within the community of females, who had greater reason to utilize it.The second major flaw is his conclusion on how modern minds evolved from earlier ones. He argues that the "social" intelligence became the tool that opened the walls of his "intelligence chapels" of the cathedral. Since there is no reason to believe that intelligence should be so pigeon-holed as Mithen makes it, "social intelligence" as an integrating force is vague at best. Although i promised not to employ a competitive thesis, it's difficult not to refer the reader to Daniel C. Dennett's Multiple Drafts model of consciousness. If Mithen had consulted Dennett's Consciousness Explained, instead of blithely dismissing it, he would have discovered that his cathedral and chapels would have been built up over time instead of needing serious renovation at the end. Mithen would have been able to use the same evidence, indeed, the same metaphors, but with progressive construction instead of building then redecorating. Knocking down mental walls is not a satisfactory technique to build intellect. Instead, Mithen should have kept the theatre metaphor, which he restricts to history, and built up his drama from a soliloquy to a full cast epic. That would have allowed him to enlarge mental capacities through new players, scenery changes, improved interaction among the cast, perhaps with himself taking the final bow. Given the work he's obviously put into this and the wealth of evidence he's considered and offered us, a smattering of applause [after a careful reading of the libretto] is not out of order.

This book is beautifully written and brilliant in it’s ability to explain the development of human consciousness. It is lively and a pleasure to read.

Steven Mithen presents a lucid and detailed account of the evolution of human mind by combining evolutionary psychology and cognitive archaeology. The book is studded with examples and pictures. The writing style is reader friendly and the target audience is general readers. It begins with the question as to how an archeologist could answer questions related to human mind, and in subsequent chapters, goes on to explore the evolution of the same through examination of traces left by Habilis, Neanderthals and Archaic homo sapiens. It's a page turner.The fonts are small but readable. The book was received on time and in a good condition. The price is substantially low as compared to books of international repute.

L'avantage d'acheter ce type de livre en anglais est qu'il y a un choix bien plus important que les livres en français sur le meme sujet. L'anglais employé n'est pas insurmontable, mais quand les concepts sont difficiles à suivre, le résultat est un lecture relativement lente... Quand on arrive à la fin, si on relit ses notes, on se dit que l'on a appris pas mal de choses interessantes. Mais il a fallu s'investir beaucoup pour en arriver là... c'est la cas avec beaucoup de livres !

Figuring out how our minds work is hard enough without also asking how they got that way. What hope is there of ever pinning down something as intangible as a million-year-old mind? And by digging up bones! What can archaeology possibly say about our almost unlimited imagination, our capacity for science, art, religion? A great deal, apparently, and the achievement of Steven Mithen in this splendid book is to make a convincing case for how stone tools, bits of bone and carved figurines can all contribute to our understanding of the modern human mind, the defining property of which he identifies as cognitive fluidity. This, put simply, is how the different parts of the mind - for example, the social, technical and natural history intelligences - are not only connected but can interact in new ways not available to an older "Swiss-army-knife mentality".Psychologists have used several analogies to understand the mind, which is like a sponge, "indiscriminately soaking up whatever information is around", or like a computer running a small set of general-purpose programs (this was Piaget's firm belief), or like a collection of specialized tools (the Swiss-army-knife or modular view). These models all have difficulty explaining the one thing the mind does that is distinctively human, its ability to create, to think of things which are not "out there", in the world. Mithen meets this challenge with his own analogy: the mind is like a cathedral, with side chapels coming off the central nave, but with the possibility of more connections being formed between the side chapels themselves. It is this connectivity that captures the ability of one part of the mind to speak to another.This ecclesiastical metaphor does not compromise Mithen's scientific approach. Creationists who believe that the mind sprang suddenly into existence fully formed - "a product of divine creation" - are plain wrong. The "mind has a long evolutionary history and can be explained without recourse to supernatural powers." When Mithen talks about cognitive architecture, the architect implied is natural selection. The time-scales are impressive: 65 million years of primate evolution, 6 million years since the common ancestor we share with our primate cousins, 4.5 million years since the oldest known human ancestor. While the evolutionary context is panoramic, Mithen's focus is on the critical period between the appearance of stone tools 2.5 million years ago and agriculture 10,000 years ago.Far from being a period of steady progress, however, the only major technical innovation made by Early Humans until around 250,000 years ago was the handaxe at 1.4 million years ago. The "bizarre nature of this record" - "the monotony of industrial traditions, the absence of tools made from bone and ivory, the absence of art" - "is the most compelling argument for a fundamentally different type of human mind". It is not the case that we differ from chimpanzees or even Early Humans only in degree. Something else is needed to account for what comes next: the "two really dramatic transformations in human behaviour" associated exclusively with Modern Humans. "The first was the cultural explosion between 60,000 and 30,000 years ago, when the first art, complex technology and religion appeared. The second was the rise of farming 10,000 years ago, when people for the first time began to plant crops and domesticate animals."The "big bang of human culture", Mithen claims, was made possible by the "final major re-design of the mind", which was transformed from a set of "relatively independent cognitive domains to one in which ideas, ways of thinking and knowledge flow freely between such domains". Anthropomorphism, for example, "is a seamless integration between social and natural history intelligence", allowing us to attribute feelings, purposes and intentions to animals. Cat owners, as they fail once again to read the mind of their inscrutable pet, may question the benefit of such thinking, but for a hunter-gatherer better able to predict the movements of prey it could mean the difference between dinner and going hungry.Our very capacity to invent analogies for the human mind is itself "a product of cognitive fluidity". "Early Humans could not use metaphor because they lacked cognitive fluidity." Our creative power has a darker side, and Mithen argues that racist attitudes are also a product of cognitive fluidity, which made possible beliefs "that other individuals or groups had different types of mind from their own" and were "less than human", an idea which lies at the heart of racism.Philosophers and psychologists have long considered the study of the mind as their own domain, and may bristle at the notion that the archaeological record, the empirical evidence, might be worth more than all their theorizing. The rest of us, with no such vested intellectual interests, can simply enjoy the science and marvel at the power of scientific inference to discover truths and discard untruths about the world. Mithen, like any good scientist, does not shrink from criticizing ideas he considers weak or outdated, however gilded with authority or ossified as common knowledge. For example, despite the verb "to ape" it seems that chimpanzees are not actually very good at imitating behaviour. Closer to home, while he acknowledges that "no one really understands consciousness", he doesn't think it beyond scientific study or so mysterious that we can say nothing about it. Following Nicholas Humphrey, he argues that "consciousness evolved as part of social intelligence" and is, at least in one important respect, a "clever trick" for reading the contents of other people's minds.Like all great science books, "The Prehistory of the Mind" tells us about the world and about our place in it, but Steven Mithen also tells us something about how we do the telling, and how that came about. We are creatures who can think about thinking, and who might "still be living on the savannah" were it not for two crucial behavioural developments: "bipedalism and increased meat eating". Something to reflect upon next time you're pacing the aisles of a supermarket, gathering food.

Mithen’s central thesis is that the development of children’s minds mirrors development of the human brain and therefore the course of evolution. The text is 250 pages long, including numerous diagrams. These are followed by 50 pages of two column closely printed notes and further reading, a source to be plundered. The thesis is like all good science to be tested and reworked.The very young child has general intelligence relying on trial and error. From aged 2, separate intelligences develop, for social, language, nature and technical intelligence. Each is “content rich” and intuitive. This explains why children pick up language so easily and why they understand the natural world as organised into plants and animals. The concept of there being different species is intuitive. Dogs have the essence of being dog like. Children do not think that objects are living. Later the separate specialized intelligences connect with general intelligence. By age 12, creativity has developed, the result of cognitive fluidity between general and the specialised intelligences. As a result they overlap.Mithen describes evolution over the longue durée, taking into account research in archaeology, anthropology, biology, cognitive science, primatology and art history.He starts with the chimp, which lives in extended family groups of between 20 and 120 animals. Chimps have a fission-fusion social organization, which can break into smaller interchangeable groups and periodically come together. The chimp brain is described as comprising spheres of general and social intelligence and an incipient nature intelligence.There were two spurts in brain enlargement.The first occurred between 2 and 1.5 million years ago. It involved the emergence of technical and nature intelligence, and the first appearance of incipient language intelligence. Handaxes are evidence for technical intelligence. To produce them, by removing flakes from a core stone, required a mental image of the finished tool. Evidence for nature intelligence is that Homo habilis developed hypotheses about carcass and predator location, unlike the chimp, which merely recognises fixed locations as sources of food.The second spurt in brain size occurred between 500,000 and 200,000 years ago. Mithen attributes this to the emergence of language. Language evolved to manage social exchanges, so specialist language intelligence overlaps with general intelligence. Social exchange also contributed to the development of consciousness, the conscious awareness of thought. If I do this, what does he think about it? What will he do? These interactions are described as “orders of intentionality”. Chimps can cope with a maximum of 2, modern humans up to 5.After a delay, the second spurt in brain size was followed by a cultural explosion, which occurred between 60,000 and 30,000 years ago. It featured colonisation of Australia, in Europe cave art and in the Near East blade cores replacing Levallois technology. Mithen attributes this delayed flowering to the emergence of creativity, resulting from cognitive fluidity between general and specialised intelligences.As a result of overlap between society and nature intelligence and cognitive fluidity between them, the culture of H sapiens hunter gatherers is very different from that of their predecessors. For modern hunter gatherers, there are not two worlds of society and nature, but one environment, saturated with personal powers and embracing man and the animals and plants on which they depend and the landscape in which they move. The cognitive fluidity explains the universality of totemism, believe in transformations between man and animal, and of anthropomorphic thinking, assuming animals think like humans. Mithen explains how this was useful in improving effectiveness of the hunt. Such fluidity clearly also contributed to the emergence of religious thought.I loved this book and intend reading Mithen’s other books on the prehistoric.

Exhaustive and insightful.