Big brains, small worlds; material culture and the evolution of the mind

Fiona Coward and Clive Gamble

(2008)

Fiona Coward and Clive Gamble (2008) Big brains, small worlds; material culture and the evolution of the mind. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society B , 363 ( 1499). pp. 1969-1980. ISSN 1471-2970

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Abstract

New developments in neuroimaging have demonstrated that the basic capacities underpinning human social skills are shared by our closest extant primate relatives. The challenge for archaeologists is to explain how complex human societies evolved from this shared pattern of face-to-face social interaction. We argue that a key process was the gradual incorporation of material culture into social networks over the course of hominin evolution. Here we use three long-term processes in hominin evolution - encephalisation, the global human diaspora and sedentism/agriculture - to illustrate how the cultural transmission of material culture allowed the ‘scaling up’ of face-to-face social interactions to the global societies known today. We conclude that future research by neuroimagers and archaeologists will need to investigate the cognitive mechanisms behind human engagement with material culture as well as with other persons.

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This is a Published version
This version's date is: 21/02/2008
This item is peer reviewed

Link to this Version

https://repository.royalholloway.ac.uk/items/7b21f820-8351-1cbd-95e5-2fe92933b64b/1/

Item TypeJournal Article
TitleBig brains, small worlds; material culture and the evolution of the mind
AuthorsCoward, Fiona
Gamble, Clive
DepartmentsFaculty of Science\Geography

Identifiers

doi10.1098/rstb.2008.0004

Deposited by Al Dean (ZSRA118) on 08-Mar-2010 in Royal Holloway Research Online.Last modified on 07-Jan-2011

Notes

(C) 2008 Royal Society, whose permission to mount this version for private study and research is acknowledged. The repository version is the author's final draft.

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