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V. Life's Corporeal Evolution Develops, Encodes and Organizes Itself: An EarthWinian Genesis Synthesis

7. Multiple Ancestries of Homo Sapiens

Hoffecker, John. The Information Animal and the Super-Brain. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. 20/1, 2013. The University of Colorado arctic anthropologist follows up his 2011 book Landscape of the Mind: Human Evolution and the Archaeology of Thought which proposed that evolving species are most involved with sharing knowledge so as to promote cognitive group cohesion. This recurrent propensity and nested emergence is then set within the major evolutionary transition scale. It is next alluded that by way of language a human “super-brain” seems in process. See also his The Evolutionary Ecology of Creativity in Origins of Human Innovation and Creativity edited by Scott Elias (Elsevier, 2012).

Analogous to a super-organism, a super-brain is defined as a group of interacting brains that collectively exhibit at least some of the characteristics of an individual brain. Among eusocial animals, a super-brain evolved in the context of the super-organism (i.e., product of kin selection), but humans apparently evolved a means of brain integration through reciprocity, permitting formation of co-operative networks among non-relatives. It is suggested here that reciprocal alliances emerged primarily as a consequence of an “information-center” foraging strategy among early humans, analogous to that of the honeybee colony. Later increases in human brain size probably reflect significant expansion of gathered and stored information. With syntactic language, modern humans developed a more fully integrated super-brain that mirrors the flow of information within an individual brain and exhibits the property of generativity. (Abstract)

Hofman, Michel and Dean Falk, eds. Evolution of the Primate Brain: From Neuron to Behavior. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 2012. Volume 195 in the Progress in Brain Research series. A major international update with six sections: Introduction, Genes and Development, Comparative Neuroanatomy, Human Brain Evolution, Theories of Neural Organization, and Cognition: From Neuron to Behavior. Senior researchers offer chapters such as The Evolution of Neocortex in Primates by Jon Kaas, Embracing Covariation in Brain Evolution by Christine Charvet and Barbara Finley, The Missing Link: Evolution of the Primate Cerebellum, Carol MacLeod and Self-Organization and Interareal Networks in the Primate Cortex by Henry Kennedy and Colette Dehay.

This volume of Progress in Brain Research provides a synthetic source of information about state-of-the-art research that has important implications for the evolution of the brain and cognition in primates, including humans. This topic requires input from a variety of fields that are developing at an unprecedented pace: genetics, developmental neurobiology, comparative and functional neuroanatomy (at gross and microanatomical levels), quantitative neurobiology related to scaling factors that constrain brain organization and evolution, primate palaeontology (including paleoneurology), paleo-anthropology, comparative psychology, and behavioural evolutionary biology. (Publisher)

Holloway, Ralph, et al. Endocast Morphology of Homo naledi from the Dinaledi Chamber, South Africa. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Online May 14, 2018. A premier team of anthropologists from the USA (Columbia, Indiana, Des Moines University) and the RSA (University of Witwatersrand) report that even this small skull from an early, isolated hominin has a structural similarity to our present human cranium. This late Anthropo retrospect reveals a generic cerebral form, through which our personal and collective acumen has arisen to these abilities.

Hominin cranial remains from the Dinaledi Chamber, South Africa, represent multiple individuals of the species Homo naledi. This species exhibits a small endocranial volume comparable to Australopithecus, combined with several aspects of external cranial anatomy similar to larger-brained species of Homo such as Homo habilis and Homo erectus. Here, we describe the endocast anatomy of this recently discovered species. Despite the small size of the H. naledi endocasts, they share several aspects of structure in common with other species of Homo, not found in other hominins or great apes, notably in the organization of the inferior frontal and lateral orbital gyri. The presence of such structural innovations in a small-brained hominin may have relevance to behavioral evolution within the genus Homo. (Abstract)

Iliopoulos, Antonis and Duilio Garofoli. The Material Dimensions of Cognition Reexamining the Nature and Emergence of the Human Mind. Quaternary International. 405/A, 2016. An introduction to a special issue with this title concerned with a reciprocal interplay between cerebral complexity, semiotic language, record keeping, social beliefs and mores, resident niches and artifacts which graces and fosters our nascent civilizations. Some papers are Cognitive Archaeology without Behavioral Modernity, Extending Material Cognition to Primate Tool Use, The Role of Materiality in Numerical Cognition, and Scaling Up: Material Culture as Scaffold for the Social Brain.

Ingold, Tim. The Evolution of Society. Adrian Fabian, ed. Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. As an alternative to “contradictory” Darwinian descent with modification, a British anthropologist argues that evolution should be seen more in terms of developmental biology in order to rejoin phylogeny and ontogeny. Evolution and history can be merged by inclusion of the processes of dynamic self-organization which are manifest in the relational sociality of hunter-gatherers. This scenario is set in contrast to the discrete individuality championed by Western civilization.

Janson, Charles and Eric Smith. The Evolution of Culture: New Perspectives and Evidence. Evolutionary Anthropology. 12/2, 2003. An introduction to this issue and the next whose articles explore the realization that cultural dynamics similar to and continuous with the human domain pervade animal social behavior. Moreover this activity is becoming seen as its defining evolutionary characteristic.

Jeffares, Ben. Back to Australopithecus: Utilizing New Theories of Cognition to Understand the Pliocene Hominins. Biological Theory. Online December, 2013. A Victoria University of Wellington philosopher offers a novel model of evolutionary societies whence early clans and troops are immersed in a cerebral, sensory milieu. An “embodied cognition” could then be attributed to a communal grouping as a “socially extended mind.” In regard, could the million year ascent of homo sapiens sapiens be seen from our global retrospect as a consummate learning and educative experience?

The evolution of cognition literature is dominated by views that presume the evolution of underlying neural structures. However, recent models of cognition reemphasize the role of physiological structures, development, and external resources as important components of cognition. This article argues that these alternative models of cognition challenge our understanding of human cognitive evolution. As a case study, it focuses on rehabilitating bipedalism as a crucial moment in human evolution. The australopithecines are often seen as “merely” bipedal chimpanzees, with a similar suite of behaviors. But an embodied, developmental approach to understanding australopithecine cognitive abilities shows that the transition between australopithecines and the emergence of the Homo genus is less of a break than is often thought. Bipedalism on this view is not just a physiological and behavioral breakthrough: it represents a major cognitive leap as well. (Abstract)

Jones, Dan. Going Global. New Scientist. October 27, 2007. An illustrated update of the advent of modern humans in Africa, which is now seen to occur 160-200K years ago, earlier than previously thought. A relatively abrupt migration to other continents commenced some 50K years ago because genetic mutations facilitated larger brains, language and tool use.

Kappeler, Peter and Joan Silk, eds. Mind the Gap: Tracing the Origins of Human Universals. Berlin: Springer, 2010. A significant volume by an international cadre of scholars across primate, hominid, and anthropological phases assays how we people are at once similar yet dramatically different from our simian forebears. Prime sections are Family & Social Organization, Politics & Power, Intergroup Relations, Foundations of Cooperation, Language, Thought and Communication, and Innovation and Culture. Richard McElreath’s chapter is cited in A Cultural Linguistic Code, other notables could be “The Deep Structure of Human Society” by Bernard Chapais (search), “Human Power and Prestige systems” Aimee Plourde, “Primate Communication and Human Language by Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth, and Robin Dunbar’s “Brain and Behavior in Primate Evolution.”

King, Barbara. The Dynamic Dance. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004. A new understanding of nonvocal communication in African great apes by way of dynamical systems theory. Rather than study separate individuals and disembodied messages, it is the fluid interaction in between which most characterizes or choreographs social discourse.

Klein, Richard. Darwin and the Recent African Origin of Modern Humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 106/16007, 2009. An introduction to a special feature Out of Africa: Human Origins where papers such as a lead piece with this title by Ian Tattersall confirm that the broad family Homininae, with a newly added Ardipithecus predating Australopithecus, with due respect for Neanderthal cavepeople, evolved and migrated from fertile savannahs to the Levantine corridor, and for some millennia to cover the globe. And just now as if a single cognitive species we are altogether able to wonder in retrospect. While Homo Sapiens Sapiens is said to be distinguished by symbolic, language-based, culture, ignorant tribes and armies return to and still clash in this desert Babylonian cradle. As tribal fingers now reach for nuclear buttons, we seem not one wit wiser after all the centuries of carnage.

Nonetheless, whatever the details of the evidently complex acquisition of symbolic cognition in our species might have been, it seems clear that Africa provided the stage on which this radically new mode of processing information initially evolved. (Tattersall, 16020)

Kohler, Timothy and George Gumerman, eds. Dynamics in Human and Primate Societies. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. The nonlinear sciences are initiating a significant reevaluation of simian groups and prehistoric settlements which can now be modeled as agent-based, cooperative, complex adaptive systems.

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