We suggest a seven-grade model for the evolution of causal cognition as a framework that can be used to gauge variation in the complexity of causal reasoning from the panin-hominin split until the appearance of cognitively modern hunter-gatherer communities. The intention is to put forward a cohesive model for the evolution of causal cognition in humans, which can be assessed against increasingly fine-grained empirical data from the palaeoanthropological and archaeological records. We propose that the tracking behaviour (i.e., the ability to interpret and follow external, inanimate, visual clues of hominins) provides a rich case study for tracing the evolution of causal cognition in our lineage. The grades of causal cognition are tentatively linked to aspects of the Stone Age/Palaeolithic archaeological record. Our model can also be applied to current work in evolutionary psychology and research on causal cognition, so that an inter-disciplinary understanding and correlation of processes becomes increasingly possible.

中文翻译：

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追踪人类因果认知的演变。

我们建议因果认知演化的七级模型作为一个框架，该框架可用于衡量因人参-人参分裂而导致的现代猎人-采掘者社区之间因果推理复杂性的变化。目的是为人类因果认知的发展提出一个内聚模型，该模型可以根据古人类学和考古学记录中越来越细粒度的经验数据进行评估。我们认为，追踪行为（即解释和遵循人类素的外部，无生命的视觉线索的能力）可提供丰富的案例研究，以追踪我们世系中因果认知的演变。因果认知的等级暂时与石器时代/旧石器时代的考古记录有关。