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Prehistory of the Mind

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I read The Prehistory of the Mind when it first came out, and my copy has now been read several times. As a prehistoric archaeologist, I have found this the most exciting and richly stimulating book on archaeology that I have read during the 1990s. Steve Mithen brings together new ideas from evolutionary and developmental psychology, and produces a (controversial) theory of the evolution of the human mind. The great value of his book is that Mithen sets a theoretical sequence generalised from the work of the evolutionary psychologists into the context of the archaeological evidence, from the earliest hominids through to the emergence of our own species, Homo sapiens sapiens. He seeks to relate the mental capabilities of our hominid ancestors to the ways in which they made and used stone tools. His unfolding of the evolved abilities of the modern human mind against the archaeology, art, ritual human burials etc of the European upper palaeolithic period of 40,000 to 30,000 years ago provides a convincing and at last scientific theory to underpin the idea of the 'upper palaeolithic revolution' that a number of archaeologists and anthropologists have been talking about for some years. I think that this book will prove to have a decisive influence on the development of archaeological theory, and that it will inspire archaeologists to do a lot of thinking in quite new directions, seeking to derive much more information about the mental, psychological, cultural and social behaviour of prehistoric peoples from traditional archaeological data.

Mithen makes a valiant effort to establish the evolutionary roots of human intelligence. It's a complicated task, with so little physical evidence to support his endeavour. Still, he uses what there is with commendable ability. In presenting the development of intelligence, he falls back on three metaphorical images - the Swiss Army Knife, cathedral architecture and a dramatic play. The Swiss Army knife is a collection of specialized tools, each applied without relation to the others. You don't decork a wine bottle while trimming your fingernails. The cathedral is comprised of a central nave with connecting chapels. The chapels only connect to each other as intelligence develops. The drama is the history of hominid evolution, vague and obscure in the beginning, growing more discernible with more fossil evidence.

As with most cognitive studies, Mithen's book summarizes what is known of the similarity of chimpanzee [our nearest relative] intellect and abilities in contrast with our own. As do many of his colleagues, he finds our primate cousins lacking in all but minimal skills. With the chimpanzees thus disposed of, he moves to examine the hominid record. This is the great strength of this work. Instead of the usual tactic of portraying what is known of today's human intellect and projecting backward, Mithen starts at the beginnings of human evolution to carry his argument forward. Along the way he utilizes anthropology, morphological studies, even climate and geography. He uses evidence well, assuming little and carefully building the model. Key points in the narrative are two periods of hominid brain enlargement, which he uses to enhance his model of special "intelligences."

With the earliest hominids having only a Swiss Army knife array of mental tools, each segment of intelligence had to develop independent of the others. According to Mithen, this situation led to each "tool" building a separate "chapel" in the mind. Based on a central "nave" of "general" intelligence - keeping the body going, food gathering, sex - new intelligences would arise around it. These new intelligences are technical, natural, social and linguistic. Each operated independently of the others, so that tool-making enhanced "technical" intelligence, while learning about bird migration or fruiting seasons developed "natural" intelligence. The Swiss Army knife aspect prevented these intelligences from interacting until the emergence of Homo sapiens. Then, according to Mithen, a "cognitive fluidity" tore through the walls of the "intelligence chapels" to acquire the broad range of abilities the mind exhibits today. While direct evidence of all this activity is, necessarily missing, the forceful presentation and elegant logic make it all a captivating read.

It's easy to critique Mithen's thesis. All you need is a competitive model of cognition. However, that would be unfair to what he has achieved, a carefully synthesized model of how human intelligence developed. Even without bringing in a competitive thesis, Mithen falls down in two important areas. After lengthy discussion of tool-making enhancing "technical" intelligence and its role in developing hunter-gatherer societies, he blithely omits any input from the "gathering" half of those communities. While rarely mentioning that tool-makers/hunters are almost exclusively male, even among chimpanzees, he restricts mention of female roles to the need to give birth to small-headed babies. He also depicts the changing of "social" intelligence associated with grooming in early hominids to the development of speech later. He ignores the possibility that speech is just as likely to have arisen within the community of females, who had greater reason to utilize it.

The second major flaw is his conclusion on how modern minds evolved from earlier ones. He argues that the "social" intelligence became the tool that opened the walls of his "intelligence chapels" of the cathedral. Since there is no reason to believe that intelligence should be so pigeon-holed as Mithen makes it, "social intelligence" as an integrating force is vague at best. Although i promised not to employ a competitive thesis, it's difficult not to refer the reader to Daniel C. Dennett's Multiple Drafts model of consciousness. If Mithen had consulted Dennett's Consciousness Explained, instead of blithely dismissing it, he would have discovered that his cathedral and chapels would have been built up over time instead of needing serious renovation at the end. Mithen would have been able to use the same evidence, indeed, the same metaphors, but with progressive construction instead of building then redecorating. Knocking down mental walls is not a satisfactory technique to build intellect. Instead, Mithen should have kept the theatre metaphor, which he restricts to history, and built up his drama from a soliloquy to a full cast epic. That would have allowed him to enlarge mental capacities through new players, scenery changes, improved interaction among the cast, perhaps with himself taking the final bow. Given the work he's obviously put into this and the wealth of evidence he's considered and offered us, a smattering of applause [after a careful reading of the libretto] is not out of order.

This is a book about the evolution of intelligence. It raises an interesting question right away: Why, after humans suddenly sprouted big brains about 2 million years ago, did they do nothing in particular WITH these wonderfully big new brains until just 100,000 years ago? And then suddenly at some moment, 100,000 years ago, yesterday morning in effect, exploded into action. In other words there was vast lag between the appearance of a mature brain anatomy and any sort of vigorous, laudable mental activity. The observation makes it necessary for science to account for 1.9 million years of mental leisure, of cavemen and women just hanging out. It also calls into question the easy and commonplace assumption that we evolved a big brain in response to some extraordinary evolutionary challenge - a challenge that required us to think faster and more clearly than our near cousins, the chimps.

Books about brains are a genre, and they are as formulaic as detective novels. They always begin by setting up, in the sense of setting up bowling pins, the currently fashionable system of ideas about how the brain might work. Then comes the bowling ball - the blockbuster idea that is supposed to knock aside and supplant all of these fashionable but sadly flawed ideas. The opening critique of the fashionable ideas is usually the best chapter of a brain book, the sweet spot, perhaps because it is the most intellectually honest (ideas about the workings of the brain never add up to much) and because the hostile critique, just by the way, brings you up to date on what people have been thinking on this subject lately.

This is well written and intelligent book. There is too much coy academic nudging and winking and nodding, but when you get past it, it tells its story well. The writing is especially clear and compelling on the subject of mental development in children.

For a very different point of view read The Monkey Puzzle (Gribbin), which suggested that the big brain evolved long, long ago, probably long before we were primates - and secretly rode the genome down through the eons until it was simply re-expressed in humans, as a full blown brain, for whatever accidental biochemical reason, 2 million years ago. Per this line of reasoning Chimps have the same blueprint for a big brain written into their DNA. They just don't express it. In other words the code for a big brain does not print out as an anatomical structure in chimps, but it is in their genes. As are other ancient but silent structures, like gills and flippers.

If there is anything to this idea, then the brain has had a pre-pre-history, during which it evolved as a thinking machine, possibly underwater. And the hunter-gatherer human phase of its evolution is a trivial overlay, a scrim on the surface of this much longer evolutionary period, lost in the remote past. Texts on neurophysiology often include a famous and (once you have seen them, indelible) pair of photos of excised human and dolphin brains side by side. The structures are essentially identical. The dolphin brain is supposed to have emerged 22 million years ago, our very near replica of it, 20 million years later. This is not to say we are descended of a dolphin. Maybe we are both descended of who knows whom. Some v. sharp witted reptile.

There is a rival brain book in the current season called "How the Mind Works." The Prehistory of the Mind covers the same ground and does a better job of it. It is nice to see it out in paperback

This is a great book, and along with M. Donald's Origins of the Modern Mind, the most comprehensive and plausible theories of the evolution of the mind. I leave out of this comment evolutionary psychologists, like Pinker or Tooby and Cosmides, because they focus on the results of evolution, not the process itself.

Mithen's point is that to fully understand the modern mind and its origins, psychology, cognitive science, philosophy and neuroscience are not enough (these are the classical fields, theres of course sociology, AI, etc...) but that archeology has something to add as well. In fact, as he shows, it is a fundamentlal piece of the puzzle to understand the archeological history of primates in order to see what that has to say about the changes the mind went through across evolution. When others might have focused on language, and its origins, Mithen focuses on the actual evidence: bone remains, ancient tools, etc.

Mithen thus divides the evolution of man and his mind in stages, four of them, starting with the common ancestor of man and ape, about 6 million years ago, then with H. Habilis, then H. Erectus and the Nearthentals and finally with, well, us, or Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Mithen basically argues that the mind and its evolution can be understood on the context of the modularity-workspace models of the mind, and that changes in the mind across evolution are simply changes in the interactions (and appearence, existence, use or disuse) of these mental modules and the workspace (which he calls general intelligence). The modules are natural history intelligence, technical intelligence, Social intelligence and language.

This approach works well, and for example, shows that the difference between say, an ape (the model for our common ancestor) and a Nearthental, mindwise, is just that while the ape has general intelligence, well developed social intelligence (apes live in groups and interact a lot), their technical and natural intelligences are rather poor (they struggle to build tools, to say the least). Language is, although this point is controversial, absent. The nearthantal, with his natural and technical intelligence almost as developed as his social intelligence (they migrated, had hunting strategies, knew to forage well, built "complex" tools) and language, would have a much more complex or closer to modern mind. This example is an oversimplification of course, but examplifies Mithens strategy adequately. In similar fashion, Mithen describes the differences and reasons for these differences, in the minds of primates, hominids, and finally man, as well as the gradual change from ape-mind to human-mind.

Things in the book, and theoretically, get interesting when H. Sapiens arrives. The difference is not only on how developed the modules or the workspace is, but how these interact. So, the modern mind is what it is because natural science intelligence say, can interact with language and with social and technical intelligence as well. Thus men might want to depict animals (natural) on walls by drawing them (technical) for social purposes. Thus the origins of art. In a similar way, religion appeared. The appearance of pathways across modules and general intelligence, building a meta-workspace, argues Mithen, is the cause of the cultural explotion, of the modern mind. This is again oversimplified, but Mithen does a good job of arguing for why and how this came about.

As an interesting note, Mithen talks of consicousness's possible role as an integrator of distributed information in the modules. Consciousness is to Mithen present on the modules by themselves, and thus argues H. Habilis was in that sense consicous, but sees reflexive consciousness as taking its modern form by the addition of connections between modules, the creation of a meta-workspace. This is in close and curious agreement with Baars theory of consicousness, or with neurocognitive workspace models of consciousness (Dehaene's The Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness).

In closing, this book does much in adding to our understanding of the evolution of the mind, and thus should be read by anyone interested in this most precious aspect of hman life.

This is a wonderful book. It starts with the question of whether we are fundamentally different from chimpanzies in the way our mind works. Taking the perspective of an archaeologist, and blending that with the views of evolutionary biology and of human developmental psychology and cognitive science, Mithen spins an extroadinary tale. The earliest and most primative primates probably had most of their cognitive world "hard-wired." They had all the specific knowledge they needed for survival. Primates really took off from the rest of the mammals when we developed "general intelligence," which could learn from trial and error, and which could make generalizations based on experience. However, this general intelligence was slow in acquiring new knowledge. To accomplish that, specialized intelligences, or programs, needed to evolve. The first of these was social intelligence, which was the specialized ability to read and understand social heirarchies. Early empathy and the ability to infer from your own experience what other members of your species were thinking and feeling was the greatest power this new intelligence conferred, and became the origin of consciousness. The second specialized intelligence was that of natural biology. This was very helpful in expanding our observations of the world, and increased the food sources which were available to primitive ancestors of homo sapiens. The third specialized intelligence was technical intelligence. This enabled early man to fashion tools and to use them in ever more complex ways. To these three intelligences -- psychology, biology, and physics, so to speak -- was added linguistic intelligence. This gave the conscious mind a voice. It also enhanced the other three intelligences, especially social intelligence. Prior to the evolution of linguistic intelligence, peer communication was mostly visual and tactile. Speech was much more efficient than grooming in building and maintaining social bonds. It was also linguistic intelligence that made possible the next great leap to meta-intelligence. Linking the four specialized intelligences, there evolved during the period leading up to 40,000 years ago, a supraordinate intelligence which permitted what we might now call multitasking, or integration among the other specialized intelligences. We see the first evidence of this in the bursting forth of art and religion at that time. None of these appear to have been present prior to that time. Much like a simple computer, the earliest primates had a set of basic information. Then came a generalized processor. To this were added specialized programs for psychology, biology, physics, and language. Finally, true homo sapiens developed a metaprogram linking the others and permitting genuine creativity to take off. Unlike most popular books on science for the educated layperson, Mithen does not go in for much chit chat. This is a pet peave of mine in other books, such as "Sex on the Brain," or "Why We Age." Too much irrelevant material on the appearance and personal quirks of the scientists and not enough of the science. Not so here. The writing is only a tiny bit repetitious, and is generally excellent. A few other brief notes. Mithen explains some of the subtler aspects of upright posture, such as taking less direct sun, which permits foraging in the middle of the day. He addresses the role of a meat diet compared to a vegetarian one. He also demonstrates conclusively that while chimps and other primates have certain things in common with us, human intelligence is truly a unique phenomenon.

Mithen does what you always want as a reader. He gives you the evidence he has used to reach his conclusions (including a wonderfully extensive set of footnotes). You may disagree or find his descriptive framework too generic as others have noted. But he has clearly described and marshalled as evidence for his arguments the physical remains of human evolution and culture from 4 million years ago to 40,000 years ago.

This is a particularly fascinating period in the evolution of the mind since it starts without anything like human awareness and consciousness and ends up with the modern human mind. A lot of great books have been written about the last 50,000 years (i love Jared Diamond's books - particularly "The Third Chimpanzee"), but this was the first book that i found that did a nice job of laying the foundation from the archeological record on how the human mind reached this current state.

Mithen in his subtitle offers to explain the origins of art, religion, and science. His model here is weak, as it does not provide the rigor to explain the development of religion or science, but i think he actually does do a nice job with how art may have evolved with the growing connection between previously separate areas of brain function.

The book does have its faults. He uses two metaphors to organize his thinking: the various stages in the evolution of a cathederal and the progress through a play. His reliance on these metaphors becomes a little tedious, and his writing is sometimes repetitive.

That said, this is a book that does a great job in filing in a fascinating period in "human" history: from 4 million years ago to 50,000 years ago. And, even if you disagree, Mithen provides enough evidence and documentation for the reader to enter into a dialogue.

At first blush, the idea of creating an archeology of the human mind seems improbable, but Mithen actually makes compelling reading. Mithen isolates specific mental skills that most probably were used by our ancestors and traces there modifications and eventual integration to form the modern human brain.

The reader does not have to buy into the specific developmental theory of the book in order to be challenged and amazed by the insights. Mithen is clearly not in possession of the final answer to questions about our intellectual heritage, but he clearly shows that it is fruitful to consider questions of the etiology of religon, art and science from an archaeological perspective.

Mithen shows that there is much more that can be learned from the study of the development of human culture. Moreover, the book is well illustrated and written in a manner that opens up these concepts to the lay reader.

Thought provoking and rewarding, this book makes the long history of mankind and our ancestors seem tangible. Highly recommended!

I loved reading this book. Mithen's arguments are clearly constructed and well supported. Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, Mithen does an excellent job describing the process of evolution with respect to human cognition. I think this makes it a particularly good introductory book. I also enjoyed its discussion of the architecture of the mind. Mithen describes competing and complementary theories from disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, neurology, primatology, biological anthropology, social anthropology, and computer science. In the process, he begins to synthesize his own theory, which he then supports with archeological evidence.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the evolution of mind. It's a good introduction for those just learning about the topic, as was the case for myself when I first read this book. I also think it could provide rich food for thought for the more learned cognitive scientists.

While the questions Mithen raises are among the most fascinating around, his approach leaves much to be desired. It is intriguing indeed to view cognitive issues from a variety of viewpoints. In fact, Cognitive Science itself is an amalgam of a great many fields. In some sense, the "new" cognitive science is a reformation of the old "psychology", a general purpose, and intentionally overarching field.

Mithen, an archeologist by trade, makes compelling arguments for his inclusion in the discussion of the evolution of human consciousness and cognitive abilities such as complex tool making and language.

However, as his argument continues, his theory fills out more and more, his metaphors for the modularity of mind - compared to the many rooms in a medieval cathedral - and his over-reliance on a vague concept of "general learning" begin to wear on the seeker of understanding. Where in all this, are the hints of scientific evidence? What supports his assertions regarding modularity in the first place? And just what is this amorphous beast: "general intelligence"?

Without anything to back up those fundamentals in his argument, the whole edifice of his cathedral is nothing more than the ruins of some building long decayed. Can the stones uncovered by such excavation truly assert themselves into the magnificence they may have once engendered, or must we piece them together according to our own preconceptions of what the structure must have been?

One leaves the book with a strong feeling that archeologists are well among those who should take part in the search for understanding our cognitive origins, and the path on which we currently tread; but also with just as much conviction that alone they are lost.

While Mithen intimates that his book is in some sense an archeologist's answer to the wonderful book by Merlin Donald "Origins of the Modern Mind", there is little similarity in the approaches or scope of these two works. In large part, it is the strength of support for ideas and arguments (as well as the humility to acknowledge the areas where such is lacking) that distinguishes Donald from his would be interlocutor Mithen.

In this book, Mithen takes on the formidable task of describing how the mind of modern humans emerged from the minds of earlier hominids. The scarcity of hard evidence from prehistoric times, particularly about physical changes in the brain, makes this difficult to do. Mithen adopts the concept that there are different kinds of intelligence such as general, social, and technical. In his view, human ancestors evolved from having only general intelligence to supplementing that with other, specialized intelligences that enabled tool-making and language. The explosion in cultural creativity between 60,000 and 30,000 years ago occurred when these various intelligences were integrated, making possible art, religion, and science. Consciousness adopted the role of an integrating mechanism for knowledge that had been trapped in separate specialized intelligences.

Mithen writes that the use of metaphor and analogy is the most significant feature of the human mind. He has to rely on metaphor and analogy to convey some of the ideas in this book. While his speculations are generally persuasive, they often rest on a frustratingly vague substrate. Mithen's epilogue on the origin of agriculture, being better founded on evidence, is more specific. The book is illustrated with numerous diagrams, some of them too schematic to be scientifically useful.