Exploring the Psychological Basis for Transitions in the Archaeological Record

TL;DR

This paper proposes a psychological framework for understanding two key cognitive transitions that underpin human cultural evolution, integrating interdisciplinary research and agent-based modeling to explain archaeological transitions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel, non-Darwinian Self-other Reorganization theory linking psychological processes to archaeological evidence of cultural change.

Findings

Identifies two fundamental cognitive transitions in human evolution.

Connects psychological traits like creativity to archaeological record.

Proposes a non-Darwinian model for cultural evolution.

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract here is the first paragraph: No other species remotely approaches the human capacity for the cultural evolution of novelty that is accumulative, adaptive, and open-ended (i.e., with no a priori limit on the size or scope of possibilities). By culture we mean extrasomatic adaptations--including behavior and technology--that are socially rather than sexually transmitted. This chapter synthesizes research from anthropology, psychology, archaeology, and agent-based modeling into a speculative yet coherent account of two fundamental cognitive transitions underlying human cultural evolution that is consistent with contemporary psychology. While the chapter overlaps with a more technical paper on this topic (Gabora & Smith 2018), it incorporates new research and elaborates a genetic component to our overall argument. The ideas in this chapter grew out of a non-Darwinian framework for cultural evolution, referred to as the Self-other Reorganization (SOR) theory of cultural evolution (Gabora, 2013, in press; Smith, 2013), which was inspired by research on the origin and earliest stage in the evolution of life (Cornish-Bowden & C\'ardenas 2017; Goldenfeld, Biancalani, & Jafarpour, 2017, Vetsigian, Woese, & Goldenfeld 2006; Woese, 2002). SOR bridges psychological research on fundamental aspects of our human nature such as creativity and our proclivity to reflect on ideas from different perspectives, with the literature on evolutionary approaches to cultural evolution that aspire to synthesize the behavioral sciences much as has been done for the biological scientists. The current chapter is complementary to this effort, but less abstract; it attempts to ground the theory of cultural evolution in terms of cognitive transitions as suggested by archaeological evidence.