Our modern culture and technology are based on thousands of years of cultural knowledge that is constantly accumulated and reinterpreted. Each of us is the culmination of thousands of generations that have preceded us in an uninterrupted lineage. Similarly, our current culture and technology have developed from thousands of years of accumulated and reinterpreted cultural knowledge.
So what made us different from other primates when our early ancestors began making connections and drawing on the knowledge of others? Cumulative culture, the accumulation of technological changes and developments over generations, has allowed humans to adapt to a variety of environments and challenges. However, it is unclear when during hominin evolution cumulative culture first developed.
A recently published study Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Research by Arizona State University researcher Charles Perrault and postdoctoral researcher Jonathan Page concludes that humans began rapidly accumulating technological knowledge through social learning about 600,000 years ago.
“Our kind, homo sapiensPerrault said it “successfully adapted to environmental conditions that required solutions to a variety of challenges, from tropical forests to arctic tundra.” Cumulative culture is very important because it allows humanity to create and recombine solutions from previous generations and develop new complex solutions to problems very quickly. As a result, our cultures, from technological problems and solutions to the way we organize our institutions, are too complex for humans to invent on their own.” Perrault is a research assistant at the Institute of Human Origins and an associate professor at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change.
Complexity of stone tools and cumulative culture
To investigate when this technological transformation may have begun, Page and Perrault analyzed changes in the complexity of stone tool-making techniques at archaeological sites over the last 3.3 million years to investigate the origins of the Cumulative Culture.
To establish a baseline for the complexity of stone tool technology that could be achieved without a cumulative culture, the researchers analyzed technologies used by nonhuman primates such as chimpanzees and inexperienced human stone tool-making experiments involving flint and random flaking.
Researchers divided the complexity of stone tool technologies by the number of stages (PUs, or procedural units) involved in each toolmaking sequence. The results suggest that australopiths and the earliest species existed between about 3.3 and 1.8 million years ago. Homo — the production order of stone tools remained in the basic range (from 1 to 6 PU). From about 1.8 million to 600,000 years ago, production sequences began to overlap and slightly exceed the basic complexity (4 to 7 PU). However, after about 600,000 years ago, the complexity of production sequences increased rapidly (from 5 PU to 18 PU).
“About 600,000 years ago, hominin populations began to rely on highly complex technologies, and we have only seen complexity increase rapidly since then. Both of these findings are consistent with what we would expect to see among hominids based on a cumulative culture, said Page, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Missouri and a doctoral student at ASU.
Foraging with tools may have been the driving force for the early beginnings of the evolution of cumulative culture. Between 3.4 and 2 million years ago, early hominins likely relied on foraging strategies that required tools such as access to meat, bone marrow, and organs, leading to changes in brain size, lifespan, and the biology that underpinned cumulative culture. Although other forms of social learning may have influenced toolmaking, evidence for rapid increases in technological complexity and the development of other new types of technology is available only in the Middle Pleistocene.
The Middle Pleistocene also shows consistent evidence for the controlled use of fire, hearths, and domestic spaces, which were probably important components of the development of a cumulative culture. Other types of complex technology were also developed in the Middle Pleistocene, including wooden structures constructed from logs carved with shafted tools, which were stone blades attached to wooden or bone handles.
All this suggests that a cumulative culture emerged near the beginning of the Middle Pleistocene, probably before the divergence of Neanderthals and modern humans.
Source: Port Altele
