Archaeological evidence for thinking about possibilities in hominin evolution

Abstract

The emergence of the ability to think about future possibilities must have played an influential role in human evolution, driving a range of foresightful behaviours, including preparation, communication and technological innovation. Here we review the archeological evidence for such behavioural indicators of foresight. We find the earliest signs of hominins retaining tools and transporting materials for repeated future use emerging from around 1.8 Ma. From about 0.5 Ma onwards, there are indications of technical and social changes reflecting advances in foresight. And in a third period, starting from around 140 000 years ago, hominins appear to have increasingly relied on material culture to shape the future and to exchange their ideas about possibilities. Visible signs of storytelling, even about entirely fictional scenarios, appear over the last 50 000 years. Although the current evidence suggests that there were distinct transitions in the evolution of our capacity to think about the future, we warn that issues of taphonomy and archaeological sampling are likely to skew our picture of human cognitive evolution. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Thinking about possibilities: mechanisms, ontogeny, functions and phylogeny’.

The other side of false belief: Constructing the objectivity of reality

“…Archaeological evidence suggests that humans' hominin ancestors have been collaboratively hunting large animals since 400,000 to 2 million years ago (Langley & Suddendorf, 2022;Stiner et al, 2009;Whiten & Erdal, 2012).…”

“…Functionally, the capacity to discuss and reason about future possibilities was advantageous during human evolution for enabling partners to construct increasingly elaborate plans of joint action for interacting with the objective world (Langley & Suddendorf, 2022). Moreover, such discursive settings of reason-giving and justification may also have influenced the evolution of human thinking about what was objectively true in the past.…”

“…The uniquely human understanding that reality is objective is reliant on a suite of other uniquely human cognitive capacities, such as the abilities to establish joint attention and common ground with others, to communicate with others linguistically, to represent others' mental states recursively, to consider multiple possibilities for how scenarios may unfold, and to mentally time travel to imagined past and future scenarios (Grigoroglou & Ganea, 2022; Harris, 2022; Langley & Suddendorf, 2022; Mahr & Csibra, 2018; O'Madagain & Tomasello, 2021; Suddendorf, 2013; Suddendorf & Corballis, 2007; Tomasello, 2014). Perhaps one of the most profound insights of recent decades of evolutionary psychology is that many diverse features of uniquely human cognition, such as those mentioned above, probably share a common evolutionary and functional basis—as adaptations for social cooperation and mental coordination (Mahr & Csibra, 2018; Mercier & Sperber, 2017; Suddendorf, 2013; Tomasello, 2014).…”

Thinking about possibilities: mechanisms, ontogeny, functions and phylogeny

“…Whatever the underlying capacities of non-human animals, it is undeniable that at least some behavioural expressions of thinking about possibilities are confined to the human lineage. In this issue, Langley and Suddendorf [112] review archaeological evidence suggesting that human ancestors were long entertaining and preparing for more complex future possibilities than non-human primates. By around 1.8 Ma, for instance, Homo erectus individuals were manufacturing stone tools and transporting raw materials across vast distances [113,114], presumably because they recognized the possibility of using these tools and raw materials in the future.…”

“…On the whole, Langley & Suddendorf's [112] analysis makes clear that the ability to think about possibilities and act accordingly has undergone multiple critical transitions since the split of the human and chimpanzee lineages some 6 Ma. Ultimately, therefore, any striking conceptual disparities between modern humans and our closest extant primate relatives (i.e.…”