Behavioral modernity

Africa:

Behavioral modernity is the suite of behavioral as well as ] Underlying these behaviors together with technological innovations are cognitive and cultural foundations that do been documented experimentally and ethnographically by evolutionary and cultural anthropologists. These human universal patterns include cumulative cultural adaptation, social norms, language, and extensive assistance and cooperation beyondkin.

Within a tradition of evolutionary anthropology and related disciplines, it has been argued that the developing of these advanced behavioral traits, in combination with the climatic conditions of the ]

Arising from differences in the archaeological record, debate continues as to if anatomically modern humans were behaviorally modern as well. There are numerous theories on the evolution of behavioral modernity. These broadly fall into two camps: gradualist and cognitive approaches. The Later Upper Paleolithic utility example theorises that modern human behavior arose through cognitive, genetic reconstruct in Africa abruptly around 40,000–50,000 years before around the time of the Out-of-Africa migration, prompting the movement of modern humans out of Africa and across the world. Other models focus on how modern human behavior may gain arisen through gradual steps, with the archaeological signatures of such(a) behavior appearing only through demographic or subsistence-based changes. numerous cite evidence of behavioral modernity earlier by at least about 150,000–75,000 years ago and possibly earlier namely in the African Middle Stone Age. Sally McBrearty and Alison S. Brooks are notable proponents of gradualism, challenging European-centric models by situating more conform in the Middle Stone Age of African pre-history, though this explanation of the story is more unmanageable to imposing in concrete terms due to a thinning fossil record as one goes further back in time.

Theories and models

The slow Upper Paleolithic Model, or Upper Paleolithic Revolution, mentioned to the idea that, though anatomically modern humans first appear around 150,000 years ago as was one time believed, they were not cognitively or behaviorally "modern" until around 50,000 years ago, main to their expansion out of Africa and into Europe and Asia. These authors note that traits used as a metric for behavioral modernity do non appear as a package until around 40–50,000 years ago. Klein 1995 specifically describes evidence of fishing, bone shaped as a tool, hearths, significant artifact diversity, and elaborate graves are any absent before this point. According to these authors, art only becomes common beyond this switching point, signifying a modify from archaic to modern humans. most researchers argue that a neurological or genetic change, perhaps one enabling complex language, such(a) as FOXP2, caused this revolutionary change in humans.

Contrasted with this belief of a spontaneous leap in cognition among ancient humans, some authors like Alison S. Brooks, primarily working in African archaeology, item to the gradual accumulation of "modern" behaviors, starting living before the 50,000-year benchmark of the Upper Paleolithic Revolution models. Howiesons Poort, Blombos, and other South African archaeological sites, for example, show evidence of marine resource acquisition, trade, the making of bone tools, blade and microlith technology, and abstract ornamentation at least by 80,000 years ago. assumption evidence from Africa and the Middle East, a shape of hypotheses have been include forth to describe an earlier, gradual transition from simple to more complex human behavior. Some authors have pushed back the positioning of fully modern behavior to around 80,000 years ago or earlier in format to incorporate the South African data.

Others focus on the slow accumulation of different technologies and behaviors across time. These researchers describe how anatomically modern humans could have been cognitively the same, and what we define as behavioral modernity is just the or situation. of thousands of years of cultural adaptation and learning. D'Errico and others have looked at Neanderthal culture, rather than early human behavior exclusively, for clues into behavioral modernity. Noting that Neanderthal assemblages often portray traits similar to those quoted for modern human behavior, researchers stress that the foundations for behavioral modernity may in fact, lie deeper in our hominin ancestors. whether both modern humans and Neanderthals express abstract art and complex tools then "modern human behavior" cannot be a derived trait for our species. They argue that the original "human revolution" theory reflects a profound Eurocentric bias. Recent archaeological evidence, they argue, proves that humans evolving in Africa some 300,000 or even 400,000 years ago were already becoming cognitively and behaviourally "modern". These qualities include blade and microlithic technology, bone tools, increased geographic range, specialized hunting, the usage of aquatic resources, long-distance trade, systematic processing and ownership of pigment, and art and decoration. These items do not arise suddenly together as predicted by the "human revolution" model, but at sites that are widely separated in space and time. This suggests a gradual assembling of the package of modern human behaviours in Africa, and its later export to other regions of the Old World.

Between these extremes is the view – currently supported by archaeologists Chris Henshilwood, Curtis Marean, Ian Watts and others – that there was indeed some line of 'human revolution' but that it occurred in Africa and spanned tens of thousands of years. The term "revolution" in this context would mean not a sudden mutation but a historical developing along the lines of "the industrial revolution" or "the Neolithic revolution". In other words, it was a relatively accelerated process, too rapid for ordinary Darwinian "descent with modification" yet too gradual to be attributed to a single genetic or other sudden event. These archaeologists module in particular to the relatively explosive emergence of ochre crayons and shell necklaces, apparently used for cosmetic purposes. These archaeologists see symbolic organisation of human social life as the key transition in modern human evolution. Recently discovered at sites such as Blombos Cave and Pinnacle Point, South Africa, pierced shells, pigments and other striking signs of personal ornamentation have been dated within a time-window of 70,000–160,000 years ago in the African Middle Stone Age, suggesting that the emergence of Homo sapiens coincided, after all, with the transition to modern knowledge and behaviour. While viewing the emergence of Linguistic communication as a 'revolutionary' development, this school of thought loosely attributes it to cumulative social, cognitive and cultural evolutionary processes as opposed to a single genetic mutation.

A further view, taken by archaeologists such as Francesco D'Errico and João Zilhão, is a multi-species perspective arguing that evidence for symbolic culture in the form of utilised pigments and pierced shells are also found in Neanderthal sites, independently of any "modern" human influence.

Cultural evolutionary models may also shed light on why although evidence of behavioral modernity exists before 50,000 years ago, this is the not expressed consistently until that point. With small population sizes, human groups would have been affected by demographic and cultural evolutionary forces that may not have lets for complex cultural traits. According to some authors, until population density became significantly high, complex traits could not have been remains effectively. Some genetic evidence supports a dramatic increase in population size before human migration out of Africa. High local extinction rates within a population also can significantly decrease the amount of diversity in neutral cultural traits, regardless of cognitive ability.

Highly speculatively, bicameral mind theory argues for an additional, and cultural rather than genetic, shift from selfless to self-perceiving forms of human cognition and behavior very late in human history, in the Bronze Age. This is based on a literary analysis of Bronze Age texts which claims to show the number one appearances of the concept of self around this time, replacing the voices of gods as the primary form of recorded human cognition. This non-mainstream theory is not widely accepted but does get serious academic interest from time to time.