Abstract
The competence of humans to create and apply constructs of reality far exceeds that of any other animal species. Their ability to consciously manipulate such models seems unique, but it remains unknown how these abilities were initially acquired and then developed. Most individuals hold strong, culturally-anchored beliefs that their particular reality is true, a viewpoint challenged by the observation that all such constructs are different. They reflect not reality, but each individual’s life experiences. Collectively they facilitated the development of hominins to unprecedented cultural and cognitive complexity. However, it remains entirely unknown how the human brain manages to create a model of the external world from the signals provided by sensory equipment and proprioceptors. This paper examines the roles of exograms in this development, as they are considered to be the only tangible connection between the brain, the faculties of sentience and the external world. Competency in exogram use became a crucial natural selection factor for humans and even overcame the human brain atrophy of the final Pleistocene and the Holocene. Under favourable conditions, some forms of exograms are capable of surviving from the deep time of human evolution. The paper follows their trail back in time to gain some insights into the developments that gave rise to human awareness, self-consciousness and Theory of Mind as we understand them. Specific archaeological finds and notions about sentient capabilities of hominins are presented in a search for exogram use in the course of human evolution. It results in a model that explains with clarity not only the course of the human journey but also the underlying reasons for the human condition as such: why we are the way we are.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adams F, Aizawa K (2001) The bounds of cognition. Philos Psychol 14:43–64
Arensburg B, Tillier A-M, Vandermeersch B, Duday H, Schepartz LA, Rak Y (1989) A Middle Palaeolithic human hyoid bone. Nature 338:758–760
Arensburg B, Schepartz LA, Tillier A-M, Vandermeersch B, Rak Y (1990) A reappraisal of the anatomical basis for speech in the Middle Pleistocene hominids. Am J Phys Anthropol 83:137–146
Bader ON (1978) Sungir’: verkhnepaleoliticheskaya stoyanka. Izdatel’stvo ‘Nauka’, Moscow.
Barham LS (2002) Systematic pigment use in the Middle Pleistocene of south-central Africa. Curr Anthropol 43:181–190
Barinaga M (1992) ‘African Eve’ backers beat a retreat. Science 255:686–687
Barrett JC (2013) The archaeology of mind: it’s not what you think. Cambridge Archaeol J 23(1):1–17
Beals KL, Smith CL, Dodd SM (1984) Brain size, cranial morphology, climate and time machines. Curr Anthropol 25:301–330
Beaumont PB (1990) Wonderwerk Cave. In: Beaumont P, Morris D (eds) Guide to archaeological sites in the Northern Cape. McGregor Museum, Kimberley, pp 101–134
Beaumont PB (1990) Kathu Pan. In: Beaumont P, Morris D (eds) Guide to archaeological sites in the Northern Cape. McGregor Museum, Kimberley, pp 75–100
Beaumont P (1999) Wonderwerk Cave. INQUA XV International Conference Field Guide: Northern Cape, pp. 27–31.
Beaumont P (2004) Kathu Pan and Kathu Townlands/Uitkoms. In: Morris D, Beaumont P (eds) Archaeology in the Northern Cape: some key sites. McGregor Museum, Kimberley, pp 50–53
Beaumont PB (2011) The edge: more on fire-making by about 1.7 million years ago at Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa. Curr Anthropol 52:585–595
Beaumont PB, Bednarik RG (2015) Concerning a cupule sequence on the edge of the Kalahari Desert in South Africa. Rock Art Res 32(2):163–177
Bednarik RG (1984) On the nature of psychograms. Artefact 8:27–33
Bednarik RG (1987) Engramme und Phosphene. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 112(2):223–235
Bednarik RG (1990) On the cognitive development of hominids. Man Environ 15(2):1–7
Bednarik RG (1992) Palaeoart and archaeological myths. Cambridge Archaeol J 2(1):27–43
Bednarik RG (1993) Palaeolithic art in India. Man Environ 18(2):33–40
Bednarik RG (1994) A taphonomy of palaeoart. Antiquity 68(258):68–74
Bednarik RG (1995) Concept-mediated marking in the Lower Palaeolithic. Curr Anthropol 36(4):605–634
Bednarik RG (1998) The ‘austrolopithecine’ cobble from Makapansgat, South Africa. South African Archaeol Bull 53:4–8
Bednarik RG (2002) An Acheulian palaeoart manuport from Morocco. Rock Art Res 19:137–139
Bednarik RG (2003) A figurine from the African Acheulian. Curr Anthropol 44(3):405–413
Bednarik RG (2005) Middle Pleistocene beads and symbolism. Anthropos 100:537–552
Bednarik RG (2006) The Middle Palaeolithic engravings from Oldisleben, Germany. Anthropologie 44:113–121
Bednarik RG (2008) Beads and cognitive evolution. Time Mind J Archaeol Consciousness Culture 1(3):285–318
Bednarik RG (2008) The domestication of humans. Anthropologie 46(1):1–17
Bednarik RG (2011) The human condition. Springer, New York
Bednarik RG (2012a) The origins of human modernity. Humanities 1(1):1–53; http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/1/1/1/.
Bednarik RG (2012b) An aetiology of hominin behaviour. Homo J Comparative Human Biol 63:319–335.
Bednarik RG (2013) The origins of modern human behaviour. In: Bednarik RG (ed) The psychology of human behaviour. Nova Press, New York, NY, pp 1–58
Bednarik RG (2013a) African Eve: hoax or hypothesis? Adv Anthropol 3(4):216–228; http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=39900#.U5JvUnYUqqY
Bednarik RG (2014) Exograms. Rock Art Res 31(1):47–62
Bednarik RG (2014b) Doing with less: hominin brain atrophy. Homo J Comparative Human Biol 65:433–449.
Bednarik RG (2015) An etiology of theory of Mind in deep time. In: Sherwood E (ed) Theory of Mind: development in children, brain mechanisms and social implications. Nova Science Publishers Inc, New York, pp 115–144
Bednarik RG (2017) Palaeoart of the Ice Age. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne
Bednarik RG (2020) The domestication of humans. Routledge, London & New York.
Bednarik RG, Beaumont P (2012) Pleistocene engravings from Wonderwerk Cave, South Africa. In Clottes P (ed) L’art pléistocène dans de monde, Actes du Congrès IFRAO, Tarascon-sur-Ariège, septembre 2010, Special issue, Préhistoire, Art et Sociétés, Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Ariège-Pyrénées 65–66: 96–97.
Benítez-Burraco A, Theofanopoulou C, Boeckx C (2016) Globularization and domestication. Topoi. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-016-9399-7
Berlant T, Wynn T (2018) First sculpture: handaxe to figure stone. Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX
Bickerton D (1990) Language and species. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Bostrom N (2003) Are we living in a computer simulation? Philos Quart 53(211):243–255
Brace CL (1993) ‘Popscience’ versus understanding the emergence of the modern mind. Behav Brain Sci 16(4):750–751
Brace CL, Rosenberg KR, Hunt KD (1987) Gradual change in human tooth size in the Late Pleistocene and post-Pleistocene. Evolution 41(4):705–720
Bråten S (2004) Hominin infant decentration hypothesis: mirror neurons system adapted to subserve mother-centered participation. Behav Brain Sci 27(4):508–509
Bråten S (ed) (2007) On being moved—from mirror neurons to empathy: advances in consciousness research. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Philadephia
Brookfield JFY (1997) Importance of ancestral DNA ages. Nature 388:134
Carruthers M (1990) The book of memory. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Carruthers M (1998) The craft of thought. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Castellano S, Parra G, Sánchez-Quinto FA, Racimo F, Kuhlwilm M, Kircher M et al (2014) Patterns of coding variation in the complete exomes of three Neandertals. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 111(18):6666–6671.
Christos G (2003) Memory and dreams: the creative human mind. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey, London
Churchland PS (1986) Neurophilosophy: toward a unified science of the mind-brain. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Clark A, Chalmers D (1998) The extended mind. Analysis 58:7–19
Clark JD, Oakley KP, Wells LH, McClelland JAC (1947) New studies on Rhodesian Man. J Roy Anthropol Institute 77:4–33
Cynx J, Clark SJ (1993) Ethological foxes and cognitive hedgehogs. Behav Brain Sci 16:756–757
d’Errico F, Gaillard C, Misra VN (1989) Collection of non-utilitarian objects by Homo erectus in India. In: Hominidae. Proceedings of the 2nd International Congress of Human Paleontology, pp. 237–239. Editoriale Jaca Book, Milan.
Di Pellegrino G, Fadiga L, Fogassi L, Gallese V, Rizzolatti G (1992) Understanding motor events: a neurophysiological study. Exp Brain Res 91:176–180
Donald M (1991) Origins of the modern mind: three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
Donald M (2001) A mind so rare: the evolution of human consciousness. W. W, Norton, New York
Dubois E (1894) Pithecanthropus erectus, eine menschenähnliche Übergangsform aus Java. Landersdrucherei, Batavia
Eitzman WI (1958) Reminiscences of Makapansgat Limeworks and its bone-breccial layers. South Afr J Sci 54:177–182
Falk D (1975) Comparative anatomy of the larynx in man and chimpanzee: implications for language in Neanderthal. Am J Phys Anthropol 43:123–132
Garrigan D, Mobasher Z, Severson T, Wilder JA, Hammer MF (2005) Evidence for archaic Asian ancestry on the human X chromosome. Molecular Biol Evolut 22:189–192
Gibbon RJ, Granger DE, Kuman K, Partridge TC (2009) Early Acheulean technology in the Rietputs Formation, South Africa, dated with cosmogenic nuclides. J Human Evolut 56:152–160
Gibbons A (2010) Close encounters of the prehistoric kind. Science 328:680–684
Goody J (1977) The domestication of the savage mind. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Goren-Inbar N (1986) A figurine from the Acheulian site of Berekhat Ram. Mi’Tekufat Ha’Even 19:7–12
Goren-Inbar N, Lewy Z, Kislev ME (1991) The taphonomy of a bead-like fossil from the Acheulian of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Israel. Rock Art Res 8:83–87
Green RE, Krause J, Ptak SE, Briggs AW, Ronan MT, Simons JF, Du L, Egholm M, Rothberg JM, Paunovic M, Pääbo S (2006) Analysis of one million base pairs of Neanderthal DNA. Nature 444:330–336
Green RE, Krause J, Briggs AW, Maricic T, Stenzel U, Kircher M et al (2010) A draft sequence of the Neandertal genome. Science 328:710–722
Gregory RL (1970) The intelligent eye. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London
Günther H (1994) Paläolithische Funde aus dem mittleren Unstruttal bei Oldisleben. Archäologie in Deutschland 1994(1):4
Gutierrez G, Sanchez D, Marin A (2002) A reanalysis of the ancient mitochondrial DNA sequences recovered from Neandertal bones. Mol Biol Evolut 19:1359–1366
Hardy J, Pittman A, Myers A, Gwinn-Hardy K, Fung HC, de Silva R, Hutton M, Duckworth J (2005) Evidence suggesting that Homo neanderthalensis contributed the H2 MAPT haplotype to Homo sapiens. Biocheml Soc Trans 33:582–585
Hedges SB, Kumar S, Tamura K, Stoneking M (1992) Human origins and analysis of mitochondrial DNA sequences. Science 255:737–739
Helgren DM (1978) Acheulian settlement along the lower Vaal River, South Africa. J Archaeol Sci 5:39–60
Helvenston PA (2013) Differences between oral and literate cultures: what we can know about Upper Paleolithic minds. In: Bednarik RG (ed) The psychology of human behaviour. Nova Press, New York, pp 59–110
Henneberg M (1988) Decrease of human skull size in the Holocene. Human Biol 60:395–405
Henneberg M (1990) Brain size/body weight variability in Homo sapiens: consequences for interpreting hominid evolution. Homo J Comparative Human Biol 39(3–4):121–130.
Hofstadter D (2007) I am a strange loop. Basic Books, New York
Hooper J, Teresi D (1992) The determinism problem. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Joffe TH (1997) Social pressures have selected for an extended juvenile period in primates. J Human Evolut 32:593–605
Joordens JCA, d’Errico F, Wesselingh FP, Munro S, de Vos J, Wallinga J et al (2014) Homo erectus at Trinil in Java used shells for tool production and engraving. Nature 518:228–231
Kandel ER, Pittenger C (1999) The past, the future and the biology of memory storage. Philos Trans Roy Soc B Biol Sci 354(1392):2027–2052
Klyosov AA, Rozhanskii IL (2012a) Re-examining the out of Africa theory and the origin of Europeoids (Caucasoids) in light of DNA genealogy. Adv Anthropol 2:80–86
Klyosov AAIL, Rozhanskii IL (2012b) Haplogroup R1a as the proto indo-Europeans and the legendary Aryans as witnessed by the DNA of their current descendants. Adv Anthropol 2:1–13
Klyosov AA, Tomezzoli GT (2013) DNA genealogy and linguistics, Ancient Europe. Adv Anthropol 3:101–111
Klyosov AA, Rozhanskii IL, Ryanbchenko LE (2012) Re-examining the Out-of-Africa theory and the origin of Europeoids (Caucasoids). Part 2. SNPs, haplogroups and haplotypes in the Y-chromosome of chimpanzee and humans. Adv Anthropol 2:198–213
Krings M, Stone A, Schmitz RW, Krainitzki H, Stoneking M, Pääbo S (1997) Neandertal DNA sequences and the origin of modern humans. Cell 90:19–30
Kuhlwilm M, Gronau I, Hubisz MJ, De Filippo C, Prado-Martinez J, Kircher M et al (2016) Ancient gene flow from early modern humans into eastern Neanderthals. Nature 530(7591):429–433
Kumar G (1996) Daraki-Chattan: a Palaeolithic cupule site in India. Rock Art Res 13(1):38–46
Laidler PW (1933) Dating evidence concerning the Middle Stone Ages and a Capsio-Wilton culture, in the south-east Cape. South Afr J Sci 30:530–542
Lashley KS (1923) Temporal variation in the function of the gyrus precentralis in primates. Am J Physiol 65:585–602
Lashley KS (1923a) The behavioristic interpretation of consciousness. Psychol Rev 30, Part I: 237–272; Part II: 329–353.
Lashley KS (1924) The theory that synaptic resistance is reduced by the passage of the nerve impulse. Psychol Rev 31:369–375
Lashley KS (1930) Brain mechanisms and intelligence. Psychol Rev 37:1–24
Lashley KS (1932) Studies in the dynamics of behavior. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Lashley KS (1935) The mechanism of vision, Part 12: Nervous structures concerned in the acquisition and retention of habits based on reactions to light. Comparative Psychol Monogr 11:43–79
Lashley KS (1943) Studies of cerebral function in learning: loss of the maze habit after occipital lesions in blind rats. J Comparative Neurol 79(3):431–462
Lashley KS (1950) In search of the engram. Soc Exp Biol Symp 4:454–482
Latour B (1993) We have never been modern. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
Maddison DR (1991) African origin of human MtDNA re-examined. Syst Zool 40:355
Maguire EA, Gadian DG, Johnsrude IS, Good CD, Ashburner J, Frackowiak RSJ, Frith CD (2000) Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 97(8): 4398–4403. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.070039597.
Makino T, Rubin CJ, Carneiro M, Axelsson E, Andersson L, Webster MT (2018) Elevated proportions of deleterious genetic variation in domestic animals and plants. Genome Biol Evolut 10(1):276–290
Mania D, Mania U (1988) Deliberate engravings on bone artefacts of Homo erectus. Rock Art Res 5(2):91–107
Marshack A (1996) A Middle Palaeolithic symbolic composition from the Golan Heights: the earliest known depictive image. Curr Anthropol 37:357–365
Maturana H, Varela F (1980) Autopoiesis and cognition: the realisation of the living. In: Cohen RS, Wartofsky MW (eds) Boston studies in the philosophy of science, vol 42. Kluwer, Dordrecht.
McBrearty S, Brooks AS (2000) The revolution that wasn’t: a new interpretation of the origin of modern human behaviour. J Human Evolut 39:453–563
McGann J (1991) The textual condition. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ
Moog F (1939) Paläolithische Freilandstation im Älteren Löß von Wyhlen (Amt Lörrach). Badische Fundberichte 15:36–52
Mottl M (1951) Die Repolust-Höhle bei Peggau (Steiermark) und ihre eiszeitlichen Bewohner. Archaeologica Austriaca 8:1–78
O’Connell JF, Hawkes K, Jones NGB (1999) Grandmothering and the evolution of Homo erectus. J Human Evolut 36:461–485
Pei WC (1931) Notice of the discovery of quartz and other stone artifacts in the Lower Pleistocene hominid-bearing sediments of the Choukoutien Cave deposits. Bull Geolog Soc China 11(2):109–146
Penfield W (1958) The excitable cortex in conscious man. Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, The Sherrington Lectures V
Peyrégne S, Boyle MJ, Dannemann M, Prüfer K (2017) Detecting ancient positive selection in humans using extended lineage sorting. Genome Res 27(9):1563–1572
Plotkin H (2002) The imagined world made real: towards a natural science of culture. Penguin Books, London
Prüfer K, Racimo F, Patterson N, Jay F, Sankararaman S et al (2014) The complete genome sequence of a Neanderthal from the Altai Mountains. Nature 505(7481):43–49
Racimo F (2016) Testing for ancient selection using cross-population allele frequency differentiation. Genetics 202(2):733–750
Ramachandran VS (2009) Mirror neurons and imitation learning as the driving force behind ‘the great leap forward’ in human evolution. Edge. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran/ramachandran_index.html. Retrieved 20-3-2019.
Raynal J-P, Séguy R (1986) Os incisé acheuléen de Sainte-Anne 1 (Polignac, Haute-Loire). Revue archéologique du Centre de la France 25:79–80
Rizzolatti G, Fadiga L, Gallese V, Fogassi L (1996) Premotor cortex and the recognition of motor actions. Cogn Br Res 3:131–141
Rowlands M (1999) The body in mind: understanding cognitive processes. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Russell B (1912) The problems of philosophy. H. Holt and Company, New York
Sankararaman S, Patterson N, Li H, Pääbo S, Reich D (2012) The date of interbreeding between Neandertals and modern humans. PloS Genetics 8(10):e1002947
Sankararaman S, Mallick S, Dannemann M, Prüfer K, Kelso J, Pääbo S, Patterson N, Reich D (2014) The genomic landscape of Neanderthal ancestry in present-day humans. Nature 507:354–357
Semenov SA (1964) Prehistoric technology. An experimental study of the oldest tools and artefacts from traces of manufacture and wear (transl. by M. W. Thompson). Cory, Adams and Mackay, London.
Semon R (1904) Die Mneme. W. Engelmann, Leipzig
Semon R (1921) The mneme. George Allen & Unwin, London
Squire LR, Kandel E (1999) Memory: from mind to molecules. Scientific American Library, New York
Squire LR, Zola-Morgan S (1991) The medial temporal lobe memory system. Science 253(5026):1380–1386
Steguweit L (1999) Intentionelle Schnittmarken auf Tierknochen von Bilzingsleben — Neue lasermikroskopische Untersuchungen. Praehistoria Thuringica 3:64–79
Stern DN (1985) The interpersonal world of the infant. Basic Books, New York
Sutton J (2008) Material agency, skills, and history: distributed cognition and the archaeology of memory. In: Malafouris L, Knappett C (eds) Material agency: towards a non-anthropocentric approach. Springer, Berlin, pp 37–55
Sutton J (2009) Remembering. In: Robbins P, Aydede M (eds) The Cambridge handbook of situated cognition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 217–235
Templeton AR (1992) Human origins and analysis of mitochondrial DNA sequences. Science 255:737
Templeton AR (1993) The ‘Eve’ hypothesis: a genetic critique and re-analysis. Am Anthropol 95:51–72
Templeton AR (1996) Gene lineages and human evolution. Science 272:1363
Templeton A (2002) Out of Africa again and again. Nature 416:45–51
Templeton AR (2005) Haplotype trees and modern human origins. Yearbook Phys Anthropol 48:33–59
Theofanopoulou C, Gastaldon S, O’Rourke T, Samuels BD, Messner A, Martins PT et al (2017) Self-domestication in Homo sapiens: insights from comparative genomics. PLoS ONE 12(10):e0185306
Valoch K (1987) The early Palaeolithic site Stránská skála I near Brno (Czechoslovakia). Anthropologie 25:125–142
Van Peer P, Fullager R, Stokes S, Bailey RM, Moeyersons J, Steenhoudt F, Geerts A, Vanderbeken T, De Dapper N, Geus F (2003) The Early to Middle Stone Age transition and the emergence of modern behaviour at site 8-B-11, Sai Island, Sudan. J Human Evolut 45(2):187–193
Vernot B, Akey J (2014) Resurrecting surviving Neandertal lineages from modern human genomes. Science 343(6174):1017–1021
Vernot B, Tucci S, Kelso J, Schraiber JG, Wolf AB, Gittelman RM et al (2016) Excavating Neandertal and Denisovan DNA from the genomes of Melanesian individuals. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aad9416
Viegas J (2015) Ancient human with 10% Neandertal genes found. http://news.discovery.com/human/genetics/ancient-human-human-with-10-percent-neanderthal-genes-found-150622.htm.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bednarik, R.G. About the Origins of the Human Ability to Create Constructs of Reality. Axiomathes 32, 1505–1524 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-021-09537-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-021-09537-8