Talk:Behavioral modernity

untitled
Some sources 'looks scholarly' but ZERO found in Google scholars, no traceable references. 76.16.176.166 (talk) 15:10, 18 June 2009 (UTC)


 * It's the same as what's called the "Great Leap Forward" in The Third Chimpanzee, etc. AnonMoos (talk) 18:27, 18 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Behavioral modernity is a widely cited term given a Google scholar search--288 mentions many in the title such as "The invisible frontier. A multiple species model for the origin of behavioral modernity" Fd'Errico - Evolutionary Anthropology; "Analysis of Aurignacian interstratification at the Châtelperronian-type site and implications for the behavioral modernity of Neandertals" Zilhão --PNAS. "Behavioral modernity". The citations of the article are not that good but the point about WP is that articles are always open to improvement. I might give some attention when I have time--LittleHow (talk) 03:05, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

"Anatomical modernity"
This phrase from the edits that were recently reverted might possibly be useful, since one of the basic problems or mysteries of Behavioral Modernity seems to be that even after the skeletal remains of early humans become basically indistinguishable from those of modern humans (within the range of normal variations), they didn't start to show the typical range of modern human behaviors until many thousands of years later. This should be explained in the article. AnonMoos (talk) 18:59, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

I think I got it...
Fish contains phosphorus, which is good for the brain. And they didn't start consuming fish on a large scale until 50,000 BC, when bone-tools were first discovered/invented. I think this explains the sudden jump in human development and subsequent expansion around that time. — What do you guys think? — C. Lucian. -- 10:26, 8 July 2010 79.113.229.2


 * Human brain size had been increasing by stages for a long time prior to 50,000 B.C., and something like consumption of fish is unlikely to explain the transition to fully modern language from some form of communication system which was not quite as developed as fully modern language (which is what "behavioral modernity" likely represents). AnonMoos (talk) 13:37, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

KYA
KYA is a new term for me and I'd rather not have to learn it. Does anyone else agree that plain English is better than archaeological jargon? How about introduce the term but then go back to ",000 years ago"? DBlomgren (talk) 01:10, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Its a useful abbreviation that comes in handy when several dates from similar time periods are discussed. See Year. It cuts out the monotony of having to add ",000". Wapondaponda (talk) 03:57, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Something not mentioned
I have read in a paper and numerous times in secondary sources that there is a major gap between the discovered anatomically modern human's in Europe and the evidence of modern behaviour. It mentions in this article that those who believe in the great leap forward think that this advancement allowed modern humans to wipe out the Neanderthals and until recently it was contended that they did this violently by scholars such as Jared Diamond.

However, evidence from the Max Planck institute showed that there was probably some genetic transfer from Neanderthal to modern humans that most likely occured in the Levant ~160kya. Yet there is still no evidence that modern humans arrived in Europe until 32kya and behavioural modernity explodes in Europe ~40kya. This gap has been laballed as a major hole in the theories of the Great Leap Forward and by some in the continuity camp as evidence that behavioural modernity is not related at all to biological modernity. This theory states that other archaic hominids were capable of behavioural modernity but then disappeared over time for other reasons.

This I believe should be put into the article, especially considering that the demonstratable gap between us and other primates is closing as we better understand Bonobo's. This Great Leap Forward may still be valid but species like the Neanderthal are looking more likely to have been capable of modern behaviour as we discover more about them.--Senor Freebie (talk) 12:21, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

the specifically human
Looks like I put the text with the incorrect universal qualification. But for the exceptions listed in the edit log, the elements in the current list of attributes do have animal analogues. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 20:13, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

consensus
It's my understanding that there is something like a consensus, a majority report anyway, for point mutation, the first listed hypothesis, a sudden evolutionary event. I know Chomsky holds or held this view and I believe there are others that could be sources. Article should make this known and also that times much more than 50K year ago present the issue of missing expected cultural evolution. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 00:57, 12 November 2010 (UTC)


 * However well-respected he may be in other fields, Chomsky is actually fairly well-known for not having had much of anything useful to say on the evolution of language over a number of decades. The Chomsky, Hauser, and Fitch paper has provoked some interesting debate, but in and of itself it's a somewhat peculiar entity, and one of its authors recently departed Harvard under a cloud.  Origin of language states "on this issue he stands quite isolated among his academic peers"... AnonMoos (talk) 01:01, 2 March 2012 (UTC)


 * If anything consensus is against a single mutation and in favor of continuity. And yes Chomsky has nothing useful to say about Evolution as it doesn't really interest him - before the Chomksy, Hauser Fitch paper his only proposal was was that language might have evolved as a spandrel.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:05, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

removed word
Removed unnecessary word "basically" [x] from phrase:

The second theory holds that there was never any single technological or cognitive revolution. Proponents of this view argue that modern human behavior is [x] the result of the gradual accumulation of knowledge, skills and culture occurring over hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution.

Forgot to log in, sorry. Jjjjc —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.72.23.67 (talk) 20:27, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Alternative theory: "Homo sapiens emerged once, not as modern-looking people first and as modern-behaving people later"
Hello, i am by no means a specialist of the question and want to submit to you this article

http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/id.11845,y.2011,no.2,content.true,page.5,css.print/issue.aspx Not knowing if the page is here to stay i saved it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?sgwpoi7qq81g9f5

This article can work as a summary: http://ts-si.org/biology/28962-early-or-late-humans-not-so-different

So i wonder if this article's sentence: "Whether modern behavior emerged as a single event or gradually is the subject of vigorous debate" could or should be changed to something along the lines of (i am not a native English speaker, i know that the following sentence is not very good, but i hope it will convey my idea) "Whether modern behavior emerged as early as the first modern humans, as a single later event or gradually is the subject of vigorous debate." --06:44, 18 February 2011‎ 82.237.254.76


 * There's nothing wrong with the English of that particular sentence as reworded by you, but it adds an additional variable that wan wasn't present in the original sentence. So it would be WP:OR or SYNTH at the very least. Firejuggler86 (talk) 05:37, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Thread copy 'n' pasted here for others attention
 The following thread was posted to my Talk page and copy 'n' pasted here for others attention 


 * Contrasting ability to "invent" and "adopt" in the evolution of modern human behaviour.

Dear Gareth,

You recently edited an entry of mine in "behavioral modernity", with the reason that it did not add any relevance. I'd like to explain the reasons why I'd say it is highly relevant.

As an -in absurdum- example: Chimpanzees can play simple computer games like pac-man etc. If one imply that if someone can be taught to apply/use behaviour invented by others as a definition that it therefore must be genetically capable of inventing the same, then one is implying that Chimpanzees are humans. Please note that it is an absurd example, only used to prove a point.

When it comes to modern human behaviour, there is no scientific evidence at hand to say when humans genetically arrived at a point where they could be -taught- modern behaviour, such as religious beliefs. There is an evolutionary abyss between inventing and adopting. Even today, only a very small subset of humanity has the capacity to produce genuinely novel ideas and concepts, but nearly all humanity can readily adopt those ideas and concepts once explained to them.

To my contributions, as the page was written, it implied rather sly that because artefacts, etc, were discovered at certain site locations, the people there must also have been genetically able to invent them! This is simply not possible to state. I'm citing the text as written: "Proponents of this view base their evidence on the abundance of complex artifacts, such as artwork and bone tools of the Upper Paleolithic, that appear in the fossil record after 50 kya.[11] They argue that such artifacts are absent from the fossil record from before 50 kya, indicating that earlier hominids lacked the cognitive skills required to produce such artifacts." They are implying that "producing" and "inventing" are interchangeable, which it is not. There is no reason to believe that people from 10 000 years ago would not have comparable capacity as humans of today to study at University and adopt the latest scientific results.

The only thing we know is that modern behaviour can readily be taught to people who are not able to invent it independently. We also know that around 80-50 000kYA there was a great increase in the development of human behaviour. These two statements implies that one cannot state that the presence of artefacts -proves- that those people invented them, they could have learned them from others.

This distinction is very important for people interested in finding out when humans developed the ability to -invent-, in contrast to developing the ability to -adopt-, modern human behaviour. With the evidence at hand, it could have been more than 50 000 years between the events! And, further, it is not necessary for "all" humans to have the ability to "invent". It's perfectly OK to have a huge increase in complexity of human behaviour, even if less than 1% of humanity has the genetic ability to "invent", since the reminding 99% has no problems with adopting those inventions.

Please feel free to adjust my previous contributions as you see fit. And please add my explanation here to the "talk page". I'm not very familiar with how these discussion pages work.

Best regards,

Dr Mattias L. Åslund — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.108.147.64 (talk) 21:22, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for posting here and offering such a splendid explanation. I have restored your revisions on the article and shall copy this thread to the article's discussion page for other interested editors perusal. Please leave a note here when you have read this reply. With kind regards, — &#124; Gareth Griffith-Jones &#124; The Welsh &#124; Buzzard &#124; — 00:05, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Dear Dr. Åslund,

added paragraph distinguishing between evolution of "inventing" and "adopting" modern human behaviour
"There is also an important distinction to be made between when humans developed the ability to -invent-, in contrast to developing the ability to -adopt-, modern human behaviour. As a modern analogy, there is no shortage of musicians in the world trying to compose new music, but only a handful every year that successfully manage to compose lasting world wide hit songs (with analogous undertakings in science and technology etc); yet essentially all of the other aspiring composer musicians can almost trivially learn to play those hit songs once they've heard them. A dramatic and sudden increase in complexity of human behaviour is thus fully plausible even if significantly less than 1% of humanity developed the genetic ability to "invent", provided that the reminding 99% had no significant problems with adopting those inventions. There is potentially an evolutionary abyss between -inventing- and -adopting-; for instance, Homo erectus and Homo ergaster produced with little advancement essentially the same sharpened stone tools for over a million years, but there is no scientific evidence at hand that could prove that they were incapable of producing composite stone tools, such as spears, if shown how to do so."

Please feel free to shrink/change it if you feel that it needs to fit better with Wikipedia style guide. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.111.100.250 (talk) 01:22, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

I've removed this rather weird unsourced OR paragraph as well as the next one which is equally unsourced (the citations following it were actually in the article before it's insertion and refer only to the preceding half sentence that used to be it's own sentence before being butchered) and clunky. I believe the section is now much more readable and far less confusing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:8108:1E40:12A0:61A5:CCDC:7101:42E6 (talk) 21:59, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Neanderthals
Removed two mentions of some kind of Neanderthal interbreeding hypothesis, which is unsourced and prima facie quite implausible (since Neanderthal interbreeding did not affect Africans). AnonMoos (talk) 05:56, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

New Sections/References
Hello,

I am currently working on an edit of this page by adding a few more sections and a variety of more up-to-date references. A draft is available for your consideration in my sandbox. I am relatively new at editing for Wikipedia so let me know if there is anything you would like to change and/or add to the Behavioral Modernity page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:GalenMillerAtkins/sandbox

Best, GMA

GalenMillerAtkins (talk) 03:37, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

These pages are basically the same, people.
Good god, they really are. So quit bickering and JUST FREAKING START A MERGER PROJECT!!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.7.81.126 (talk) 18:28, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

"Stoned Ape" theory
Why do we have this fringe stuff in this article? Since "McKenna's 'stoned ape' theory has not received attention from the scientific community and has been criticized for a relative lack of citation to any of the paleoanthropological evidence informing our understanding of human origins," why is it in Wikipedia? Sorry for jumping in without checking the archives, but I see no reason to have this nonsense in the article. See WP:FRINGE/PS.
 * Didn't realize I wasn't signed in. YoPienso (talk) 05:46, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

80,000 years ago
I have read this article from Foley and Lahr (Mode 3 Technologies and the Evolution of Modern Humans) but I did not explicitly find that "some authors pushed back the appearance of fully modern behavior to around 80,000 years ago in order to incorporate the South African data". There is a figure on page 10 showing blade technology development and stars symbolizing mode 4 industry attributed to modern humans. The star for south Africa is about on the level of 80 ka. Is that your argument? EternalAsker (talk) 13:41, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Stone tools
Another aspect of behavioral modernity discussed by Jared Diamond (and probably others) is that among earlier hominin species, the stone tools were pretty much identical among all populations of the same species, and techniques only changed over evolutionary timescales (i.e. often remained basically static for tens of thousands of years at a time and more). This covers the Oldowan, Acheulean, and Mousterian tool types. Tool techniques only started showing cultural variability and more rapid rates of change after behavioral modernity... AnonMoos (talk) 00:51, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Behavioral modernity and it's cognitve (intelligent) capabilities
So is behavioral modernity the reason to how we have always been on this level of intelligence? Such as understanding and teaching of good and bad/right and wrong? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mjfantom (talk • contribs) 12:59, 16 February 2019 (UTC)


 * In all probability, Behavioral modernity marks the final development of fully modern human language (as opposed to earlier not-quite-as-developed hominid communication systems), with an accompanying increase in culture (i.e. knowledge and skills passed down within each group). There might have been an increase in intelligence, but it's also possible that a language-caused increase in the ability to use intelligence for social purposes was as important as (or more important than) such an individual intelligence increase... AnonMoos (talk) 10:26, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

The article begins with "Behavioral modernity is a suite of behavioral and cognitive traits". I been looking up the word cognitive and it relates to cognition. If you type in cognitive in the search box and hit enter, it redirects to COGNITION. so in other words, the definition of cognitive and cognition has everything to do with mental abilities and process of acquiring knowledge as in learning. Intelligence is a cognitive process, without cognition, one cannot show intelligence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mjfantom (talk • contribs) 15:51, 22 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Language is very much part of what is studied in the field of Cognitive psychology. If you had a species of organisms that were all individually super-intelligent, but lacked any communication system comparable to human language, then there would be no way of handing down knowledge from one organism to another, except by one organism observing what a second organism does, and trying to figure out what the purpose was.  This means that accumulation of knowledge would be slow... AnonMoos (talk) 16:24, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

Name that tunetable
Today's fill-in-the-blanks bonus challenge:

Underlying these behaviors and technological innovations are cognitive and cultural foundations that have been documented [by whom?] experimentally and ethnographically.

These human universal patterns include cumulative cultural adaptation, social norms, language, and extensive help and cooperation beyond close kin.

It has been argued [by whom?] that the development of these modern behavioral traits, in combination with the climatic conditions of the Last Glacial Period and Last Glacial Maximum causing population bottlenecks, contributed to the evolutionary success of Homo sapiens worldwide relative to Neanderthals, Denisovans, and other archaic humans.

My solution:

Underlying these behaviors and technological innovations are cognitive and cultural foundations that have been documented experimentally and ethnographically by evolutionary and cultural anthropologists.

These human universal patterns include cumulative cultural adaptation, social norms, language, and extensive help and cooperation beyond close kin.

Within the tradition of evolutionary anthropology and related disciplines, it has been argued that the development of these modern behavioral traits, in combination with the climatic conditions of the Last Glacial Period and Last Glacial Maximum causing population bottlenecks, contributed to the evolutionary success of Homo sapiens worldwide relative to Neanderthals, Denisovans, and other archaic humans.

A solution, if not an improvement (though the two links I've added as a byproduct belonged in the first place). If not this, does anyone have a better proposal, or were the flaggings "by whom" fatuous in the first place? -- 23:00, 1 May 2020 MaxEnt

Gradualism
Gradualism was mentioned in the lead as one of two main camps, and yet the word "gradualism" never again recurred, so I added one sentence to bestow upon gradualism at least a cellphone number, if not a fixed address.

Sally McBrearty and Alison S. Brooks are notable proponents of gradualism, challenging European-centric models by situating more change in the Middle Stone Age of African pre-history, though this version of the story is more difficult to develop in concrete terms due to a thinning fossil record as one goes further back in time.

You can all probably tell that while I don't have one hour of formal training in anthropology, I can at least Frankenstitch a barely passable sentence together from the bric-à-brac of nearby articles.

Note also that the famous paper associated with these two researchers is already in our citation list. &mdash; MaxEnt 23:36, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Conflicting Timelines
The article in section 2.2 Alternative Models states:

Recent archaeological evidence, they argue, proves that humans evolving in Africa some 300,000 or even 400,000 years ago were already becoming cognitively and behaviourally "modern".

Immediately thereafter section 3.1 Africa states:

Recent research indicates that Homo sapiens originated in Africa between around 350,000 and 260,000 years ago.[29][30][31][32] There is some evidence for the beginning of modern behavior among early African H. sapiens around that period.[33][34][35][36]

These numbers read as though human behavioral modernity could predate the origin of the species Homo Sapien. - 47.233.32.236 (talk) 18:48, 31 July 2020 (UTC)


 * 'Tis possible.


 * Note, also, in archaeology/paleoanthropology and related fields, conflicting timelines are extremely common. This is because the record is piecemeal: a collection of artifacts here, some collections of fossils there, etc. But, there are examples of art and musical instruments from Neanderthal-inhabited Europe prior to the arrival of anatomically modern humans, so it the information about Africa is not too far out from the realm of possibility. Firejuggler86 (talk) 05:59, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Great Leap Forward (evolution)
Great Leap Forward (evolution) redirects here, but the article doesn't explain what Great Leap Forward means.

Fringe theories tag: Inclusion of a reference written by Nicholas Wade
As with Talk:Recent human evolution, as per the section of Nicholas Wade's biography article that summarizes his book A Troublesome Inheritance (2014) as well as the Wikipedia article about the book itself. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 23:10, 18 March 2022 (UTC)


 * I would also argue that the article also needs greater clarification about what is meant by "abstract thinking", "abstract thought", "abstract ornamentation", and "abstract imagery" in the article as per Evolution of human intelligence and the Wason selection task articles. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 23:19, 18 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Additionally, references written by Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd as per the article on group selection, which is not the mainstream view within evolutionary theory as per the article. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 00:09, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I removed the tag. Regarding your first comment, the source was one of many for one sentence, so I simply removed it. For your second, it's not clear to me what that has to do with fringe viewpoints. For your third, I see no mention of group selection in this article, nor reason to think that Richerson and Boyd are fringe figures - the opposite is the case as far as I know. Cultural evolution, in groups or otherwise, is not the same thing as group selection. Group selection has to do with genetic evolution, but culture evolves differently than genes do. Crossroads -talk- 05:55, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for following up on my placement of the tag and for removing the Wade content. However, I think I would disagree about the latter two points. I'm not arguing that Richerson and Boyd are fringe figures any more than other group selectionists are fringe figures whose work is otherwise consistent with the empirical mainstream of the evolutionary sciences. In point of fact, Steven Pinker cites Richerson and Boyd, along with E. O. Wilson, David Sloan Wilson, Jonathan Haidt, Joseph Henrich, Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, Martin Nowak, and Arne Traulsen favorably in his famous essay critiquing group selection. Group selection is and has been the heterodox viewpoint within the evolutionary sciences since at least the 1960s and (as far as I can tell) for perfectly defensible reasons, and as such, there needs to be greater clarification when group selectionists are cited in Wikipedia articles to ensure that the articles are not unduly biased towards group selectionist viewpoints in opposition to the mainstream individual selectionist viewpoint.

Cultural evolution, in groups or otherwise, is not the same thing as group selection. Group selection has to do with genetic evolution, but culture evolves differently than genes do. Unless you are referring to some version of cultural evolution that I am not familiar with, I do not think these statements are correct, but feel free to explain why I am wrong (since I am not a psychologist, anthropologist, or biologist). While cultural evolution and group selection may not be the same exact concept, to say that cultures evolve differently than biological organisms do, and that group selection has to do with genetic evolution and that cultural evolution does not, leaves aside the fact that the more common understandings of cultural evolution and group selection actually overlap and argue that culture does act as a selective force in human biological evolution (e.g. Skinnerian behaviorism, dual inheritance theory, multilevel selection, cultural group selection), and that the versions of cultural evolution that do not imply genetic evolution (e.g. memetics, multilineal evolution, neoevolutionism) are not widely accepted because evolution is not an appropriate analogy for cultural change and does not enhance understanding of culture any more than a conventional understanding of human history does.

Contrary to how he is often portrayed, B. F. Skinner was not opposed to evolutionary theory and saw his own work as an extension of it (as Paul Bloom has noted). In Beyond Freedom and Dignity and "Selection by Consequences", Skinner argues that the evolution of cultures is analogous to the evolution of species by natural selection, that the two kinds of evolution are interwoven, and that culture determines the transmission of biological characteristics. While Skinner acknowledges that cultural evolution is Lamarckian, Skinner argues that competition with other cultures does play a role in biological and cultural evolution (if only a minor one). Cultures evolve when new practices are adopted that advance the survival of the members of the culture (which depends on genetic susceptibility to reinforcement within a given environment), and practices promoting behavior furthering the survival of other members of the culture furthers the survival of the culture. The survival of a culture is the standard of success as a culture rather than the survival of cultures at the end of a descendent chain. (Skinner 1971 pp. 129-136; Skinner 1981 & 1984)

Despite agreeing with Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett about group selection, Steven Pinker is not sympathetic to the arguments Dawkins and Dennett put forward about cultural evolution and memetics in The Selfish Gene, Consciousness Explained, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, and From Bacteria to Bach and Back. In How the Mind Works, Pinker critiques memetics as proposed by Dawkins, arguing that complex memes do not arise from the retention of random copying errors because the mutations in memetic evolution are directed and the acquired characteristics of memes are inherited. Pinker notes that this effectively makes cultural evolution Lamarckian, and thus not a viable explanation for complex design and not really evolutionary, noting "To say that cultural evolution is Lamarckian is to confess that one has no idea of how it works"). Instead, models of transmission in cultural change about the popularity of memes is more analogous to contagious disease in epidemiology rather than to the selection of advantageous genes in evolution (as the models explain how memes become popular rather than their origins). Pinker argues that cultural evolution (i.e. that culture follows its own version of natural selection) is unnecessary for grounding culture in evolutionary theory, arguing instead "…nothing in culture makes sense except in the light of psychology. Evolution created psychology, and that is how it explains culture." (Pinker 1997 pp. 158-159; 206–210)

Similarly, Pinker states in "The False Allure of Group Selection" that in every version of group selection that he had ever reviewed, three fundamental components present in natural selection were absent: (1) the success of replicators is defined by the number of copies in a finite population (rather than success being defined by some analogue to replication); (2) mutations are random rather than directed; and (3) success applies to entities at the end of a chain of descendants rather than to entities themselves. (Pinker 2016 p. 870) These issues are more or less the same issues he raised with cultural evolution in How the Mind Works. Pinker concludes the 2016 version of the essay (published in the second edition of The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology edited by David Buss), "If [group selection] is meant to explain the cultural traits of successful groups, it adds nothing to conventional history and makes no precise use of the actual mechanism of natural selection." (Pinker 2016 p. 878) As for multilineal evolution and neoevolutionism, Earl B. Hunt concluded in Human Intelligence that while Jared Diamond's argument in Guns, Germs, and Steel about group differences in IQ is more persuasive than genetic explanations, it is also a just-so story because the present-day distribution of cognitive skills across human populations would require analysis of data about the cognitive behavior of populations that have long been extinct. (Hunt 2011 pp. 444-445)

As for the point about abstraction, in Human Universals, Donald E. Brown noted that abstraction in speech and thought (i.e. that language enables human beings to speak and think about things or processes that are not physically present) is a cultural universal, and that the usage of metaphor in language is also a cultural universal (which Pinker cites in The Language Instinct and The Blank Slate). (Brown pp. 131-132; Pinker 1994 pp. 429-430; Pinker 2002 pp. 455-457) In Words and Rules and The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker suggests that human intelligence is the product of metaphor (which stems from the ability to create arbitrary morphemes) and combinatorial grammar (which allows nesting of verb phrases in syntax), that these properties of language are what enables the infinite composition of sentences, and that this provides an explanation for the evolution of human intelligence. (Pinker 1999; Pinker 2007 pp. 241-245, 435-439)

However, in How the Mind Works (pp. 333-342), Pinker also notes the research by John Tooby and Leda Cosmides about the Wason selection task and cheater-detection in social exchange from The Adapted Mind, and by David C. Geary in Children's Mathematical Development (1994) about the failures of constructivism in mathematics education that demonstrates that some forms of abstract reasoning (i.e. propositional calculus and mathematics) are not cultural universals, not easily learned, and are more likely the by-products of other aspects of human cognition. Additionally, economist Thomas Sowell has noted that numerous studies finding disparities between the mean test scores of ethnic groups on IQ tests have found that ethnic groups with lower mean test scores have tended to perform worst on non-verbal, non-informational, or abstract reasoning test items (as the evolution of human intelligence article notes). This is why I would reiterate that the article needs to more clearly explain what is meant by abstract thinking.

Apologies for the lengthy and belated response. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 23:17, 26 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Unless you [Crossroads] are referring to some version of cultural evolution that I am not familiar with – it sounds like it. Modern cultural evolution theory (tracing back to Boyd, Richerson, and Cavalli-Sforza) has nothing to do with group selection and says that culture is a Darwinian evolutionary process, not just that it's analogous to one. It's not the dominant approach in any field, yes, but it is accepted and has been found useful in some (including, relevant for this article, anthropology and archaeology), and certainly isn't marginal to the point that we'd exclude it from articles. Especially not if you're suggesting the likes of Dawkins and Pinker are reliable sources on human evolution. The two references to Boyd & Richerson in this article seem completely appropriate to me. –&#8239;Joe (talk) 08:51, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

world history
who was the first to discover human skeleton? 41.57.95.126 (talk) 12:15, 27 February 2023 (UTC)


 * @41.57.95.126
 * Donald Johansson 41.57.95.126 (talk) 12:16, 27 February 2023 (UTC)