Landscape of the Mind: Human Evolution and the Archaeology of Thought

389 Pages·2011·7.16 MB·English

by  John F. Hoffecker

JOHN F. HOFFECKER
TO THE MAN AND HIS WORK V. GORDON CHILDE (1892-1957)
Contents
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IX
Modernity and Infinity 1
2 Daydreams of the Lower Paleolithic 33
3 Modern Humans and the Super-Brain 73
4 The Upper Paleolithic as History 104
5 Mindscapes of the Postglacial Epoch 138
6 The Vision Animal 169
NOTES 179
BIBLIOGRAPHY 221
INDEX 245
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ALTHOUGH READERS NEED NOT concern themselves with the particulars,
death was very much on my mind as I wrote Landscape of the Mind. More to the
point, the bitter gulf that lies between the death of a person as a biological
organism and the potential immortality of his or her thoughts was on my mind. It
reflects a conviction that "the mind" is an entity that transcends both biological
space (that is, an individual brain) and biological time. Another conviction is that
we-I refer to not only archaeologists, but also students of other disciplines-have
been studying something important that remains only vaguely defined.
If the ultimate source of the mind is the individual brain-an unmistakable
product of evolutionary biology-something has emerged with the mind,
something that involves properties not found elsewhere in the biological realm.
Some refer to them as emergent properties and attribute them to the almost
unimaginable complexity of the system they represent. It is a system much
greater than the estimated 1 million billion synaptic connections in an individual
brain (itself described as the most complex object in the known universe). At
some point in human evolution, probably not very long ago, humans evolved the
capacity for transmitting thoughts from one brain to others by means of
externalized symbols. This created a "super-brain" within each social group and
probably marked the advent of both the mind and what many of niy colleagues
in archaeology refer to as modernity.

The characteristic of the mind most important to our lives is creativitythe
capacity for the seemingly limitless recombination of thoughts expressed as
words or artifacts into hierarchically organized structures with no prior
existence. The first bow and arrow is one example, and Catcher in the Rye is
another. The advent of creativity changed everything. It brought forth onto the
Earth something new, analogous to the origin of life itself. The creative mind has
been developing and accumulating these structures ever since. One of the
consequences is that most of us spend most of our time in a landscape shaped
largely by structures of the mind, not by the processes of geomorphology or
evolutionary biology.
Another conviction that readers will find expressed in this book is that
archaeology can contribute to an understanding of the mind, including its origin.
Although much of archaeological method may seem rather simple and
antiquated, the data of the archaeological record is largely a trail of fossil
thought. This is a consequence of the ability, very rare among living organisms
(the honeybee being an example), to project mental representations outside the
brain, which was something accomplished initially with the hands and later with
the vocal tract. A central theme of this book is that by reaching out to touch and
eventually alter their own thoughts, evolving humans made the mind.
As I wrote this book, I was acutely conscious of how the creativity of others-
many of then no longer living-had provided much of the structure of thought
contained here. The thoughts of V. Gordon Childe (1892-1957) about
archaeology and history are fundamental, as are the ideas of R. G. Collingwood
(1889-1943), who was an influence on Childe. Some major ideas that readers
will find in this book about the relationship between humans and their artifacts
were articulated by Andre Leroi-Gourhan (1911-1986) several decades ago,
although most English-speaking archaeologists are unaware of his contribution
in this realm. Noam Chomsky's ideas about language-especially those of the past
two decades-are an essential foundation. Much of what I have written about the
evolution and spread of modern humans is based on the work of Richard G.
Klein.
My parents, John Savin and Felicity Hoffecker, nurtured my interest in
archaeology and history from an early age. My father was especially interested
in Collingwood's work and often spoke about it, along with that of Benedetto
Croce (1856-1952), who was, in turn, an influence on Colling wood. Many of
the illustrations were done by Ian Torao Hoffecker. They are all part of this
book.
A number of people read and commented on specific chapters of the book, and
I am grateful for their time and thoughts. Colleagues and friends who read the
critically important (and heavily revised) first chapter include Jolanta M.
Grajski, Nancy R. Lyons, Marina Petrova, and Shelly Sommer. The first chapter
also reflects fruitful discussions with Bob Levin and Valerie E. Stone.
My colleagues in archaeology at the University of Colorado in Boulder
reviewed chapter 4 in the congenial setting of our monthly luncheon, and I
would like to thank Cathy Cameron, Art Joyce, Steve Lekson, Paola Villa, and
Richard Wilshusen for their thoughts and continents. Three anonymous
reviewers for Columbia University Press plowed through the complete draft, and
their comments and criticisms were very helpful.
I am especially grateful to the staff at Columbia University Press. Patrick
Fitzgerald, Publisher for the Life Sciences, embraced this project with
enthusiasm at the outset and remained an important source of guidance and
encouragement throughout the two and half years that I labored on the draft. The
entire manuscript was edited by Irene Pavitt. Editorial assistant Bridget
Flannery-McCoy and her predecessor, Marina Petrova, also were very helpful.
1
Modernity and Infinity
[T]he mind is in its own nature immortal.
RENE DESCARTES
TOWARD THE END OF HIS MEMOIR, Vladimir Nabokov expressed his
frustration at "having developed an infinity of sensation and thought within a
finite existence."1 It was a theme he had turned to in the last lines of Lolita: "I
am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic
sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may
share."'-- Nabokov died in 1977 and-like all other forms of organic life-
relinquished his conscious sensation of being. But many of his thoughts continue
to exist, as they do on this page, and in this way Nabokov transcended his finite
existence.
It is a power that almost all humans possess-to transcend their existence as
organic beings by communicating thoughts that will endure after they die. The
ideas of an individual may be communicated in writing or print or electronic
media and, before the invention of writing, by oral tradition. In this way, the
seemingly ephemeral thoughts that flow through the brain may endure for
centuries or more.
Nonverbal thoughts may be communicated through art and technology. The
aurochs mentioned by Nabokov refer to cave paintings of the Upper Paleolithic
that were created more than 30,000 years ago.3 The visual imaginings of the
individuals who crafted these paintings are as fresh today as the words written
by Nabokov several decades ago. The earliest known examples of thoughts
expressed in material form are the bifacial stone tools of the Lower Paleolithic,
some of which are 1.7 million years old.' Much of the archaeological record, like
the historical written record, is a record of thought.
External Thought
[Ojur world is the product of our thoughts.
JAMES DEETZ
The immortality of artifact and art is based on a unique human ability to express
complex thoughts outside the brain. Although language comes to mind first as
the means by which people articulate their ideas, humans externalize thoughts in
a wide variety of media. In addition to spoken and written language, these media
include music, painting, dance, gesture, architecture, sculpture, and others. One
of the most consequential forms of external thought is technology. The earliest
humans used and modified natural objects, as do some other animals. But during
the past million years, humans have externalized thoughts in the form of
technologies that have become increasingly complex and powerful with far-
reaching effects on themselves and their environment.
Other animals can communicate their emotional states and simple bits of
information, but only humans can project complex structures of thought, or
mental representations, outside the brain.' Like those of other animals, the human
brain receives what cognitive psychologists term natural representations. A
natural representation might be the perceived or remembered visual image of a
waterfall or the sound of the waterfall. Humans have not yet developed the
technology to externalize a natural representation, but they can create and project
artificial (or "semantic") representations, such as a painting or verbal description
of the perceived or remembered image of the waterfall.' From 1.7 million years
ago onward, the archaeological record is filled with artificial representations.
Humans have evolved two specialized organs that are used to communicate or
externalize mental representations: the hand and the vocal tract (figure 1.1). The
hand apparently evolved first as a means to project thoughts outside the brain,
underscoring the seminal role of bipedalism in human origins. Although the
primates have had a long history of manipulating objects with their forelimbs, it
was upright walking among the earliest humans that freed up the hands to