Life Hacks for Polymaths

Between the late 1980s and early 1990s, language evolution became the subject of focus in archeological circles. Among the most influential articles written on the matter is the article written by archeologists’ Iain Davidson and Pscyhologist William Noble’s entitled “The Archeology of Perception” published in 1989. Davidson and Noble’s paper is considered as the most influential paper during this time because of its explicit theoretical stance. However another interesting article on the matter which was has equally important implications for archeologist was written by anthropologist, Martin Byers who wrote “Symboling and the Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition” in 1989. While Byer’s thoughts maybe have importance in cognitive archeology, his article is somewhat difficult to understand and I will try my best to dissect what he is trying to say and will try to compare the ideas conveyed in the two articles. For Davidson and Noble, a symbol is a part of what we know now as … [Read more...]

In a nutshell the main thesis of the Piagetian perspective on Paleolithic evolution of cognition is that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. This simply means there is a parallelism between the development of a species’ thought processes and its evolution. Piaget himself called this idea as “a parallelism between the progress made in the logical rational organization of knowledge and the corresponding formative psychological processes.” Jean Piaget is a developmental psychologist who was known for his epistemological studies with children. He was greatly renowned as the pioneer of the “constructivist theory of knowing”. According to Piaget, intelligence develops in a series of progressive stages. One stage must be accomplished before the next can occur. He said that this phenomenon could be readily observed in the developmental stages that children go through. Applying the Piagetian perspective to the evolution of hominid’s by interpreting the archeological record in this … [Read more...]

In 1979, entirely independent of one another, three articles appeared that became very influential, and mark a kind of beginning point for contemporary evolutionary cognitive archaeology. Anthropologist Sue Taylor Parker and Neurobiologist Kathleen Gibson wrote “A developmental model for the evolution of language and intelligence in early Hominids.” Archeologist John A.J Gowlette wrote “Complexities of cultural evidence in the Lower and Middle Pleistocene” while Archeologist Thomas Wynn wrote “The intelligence of later Acheulean hominds” Again, let me emphasize that personally I do not take the position of any of the articles writer as I am more biased towards intelligent design. I am merely discussing the position of the different scholars in the field of cognitive archeology and how their thoughts have contributed to contemporary evolutionary cognitive archeology. Parker and Gibson advanced in their paper that stages of development of intelligence and language in our species … [Read more...]