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By using highly advanced brain imaging technology to observe modern humans crafting ancient tools, an Indiana University neuroarchaeologist has found evidence that human-like ways of thinking may have emerged as early as 1.8 million years ago.
The results, reported May 8 in the journal Nature Human Behavior, place the appearance of human-like cognition at the emergence of Homo erectus, an early apelike species of human first found in Africa whose evolution predates Neanderthals by nearly 600,000 years.
"This is a significant result because it's commonly thought our most modern forms of cognition only appeared very recently in terms of human evolutionary history," said Shelby S. Putt, a postdoctoral researcher with The Stone Age Institute at Indiana University, who is first author on the study. "But these results suggest the transition from apelike to humanlike ways of thinking and behaving arose surprisingly early."
The study's conclusions are based upon brain activity in modern individuals taught to create two types of ancient tools: simple Oldowan-era "flake tools" -- little more than broken rocks with a jagged edge -- and more complicated Acheulian-era hand axes, which resemble a large arrowhead. Both are formed by smashing rocks together using a process known as "flintknapping."
"'Humanlike' Ways of Thinking Evolved 1.8 Million Years Ago," but ape-like thinking remains.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @08:54AM (5 children)
How could this be even remotely possible when the earth is only 6000 years old, flat, and the center of the Universe, and craters on the moon are created by electricity, and when vaccines cause autism, Homeopathy is effective, jmorris is sane and khallow well informed, and Trump is making America Grate Again? Huh? Enough of these "clit-bait" articles!
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @10:11AM (4 children)
Simple: Obviously God has always existed, therefore he already existed 1.8 million years ago. So 1.8 million years ago, after being bored of being perfectly rational all the time, he thought about ways to make things a bit more interesting. Therefore he invented a complete new way of thinking, one riddled with fallacies, hidden assumptions, false believes, etc. After having played with that way of thinking in his mind for 1.794 million years, he finally decided it would be interesting to watch how beings would fare that only had this limited type of thinking available to them. That's when he created the world, with the humans as the experimental creatures for this way of thinking.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @12:05PM (2 children)
Which humour-impaired moderator moderated that as Flamebait?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @05:32PM (1 child)
It was not very funny.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @06:52PM
Not being funny is not flamebait.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @07:38PM
I was expecting you to mention this part of the story specifically.
"Tell me about the rabbits^W dinosaurs, George."
"That's just God testing your faith, Lenny."
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Thursday May 11 2017, @09:08AM
Somewhat related, recent findings suggest that a group of Homo naledi hid their deceased in a cave. I believe that they did this to prevent their dead from being eaten by scavengers. Although they appear not to be on our evolutionary branch, it looks to me like anthropomorphic behavior.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Thursday May 11 2017, @09:56AM (1 child)
"And pray there's intelligent life somewhere else up there, 'cause there's bugger all down here on Earth...". The Galaxy Song (Eric Idle), Monty Python rom "The Meaning of Life"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @10:47AM
"And pray there's intelligent life somewhere else up there, 'cause there's bugger all down here on Earth...". The Galaxy Song (Eric Idle), Monty Python rom "The Meaning of Life"
No link? You sir are a coward and a cad!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtdpuZxvk [youtube.com]
And by the way, we need your liver.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Dunbal on Thursday May 11 2017, @10:52AM
That's a long fucking wait for Netflix.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday May 11 2017, @01:21PM (2 children)
I'm not really that familiar with the methods of neuroarchaeology, but to a layman it seems like there's quite a few potential leaps of logic here. The main methodological argument from TFA:
The resulting brain scans revealed that visual attention and motor control were required to create the simpler Oldowan tools. A much larger portion of the brain was engaged in the creation of the more complex Acheulian tools, including regions of the brain associated with the integration of visual, auditory and sensorimotor information; the guidance of visual working memory; and higher-order action planning.
"The fact that these more advanced forms of cognition were required to create Acheulean hand axes -- but not simpler Oldowan tools -- means the date for this more humanlike type of cognition can be pushed back to at least 1.8 million years ago, the earliest these tools are found in the archaeological record," Putt said. "Strikingly, these parts of the brain are the same areas engaged in modern activities like playing the piano."
Here are just a few questions this raises to me:
(1) What evidence do we have that hominid brains must have solved this "problem" in the same way that modern human brains do? Sure, this is how modern human brain process the learning of these tasks, but why do primitive hominid brains need to process them the same way? For example, maybe this was a relatively simple task for a modern human to learn, but it required a lot more "effort" for a primitive hominid brain, perhaps over a longer time using more basic learning/processing mechanisms.
(2) How do we know that modern humans didn't use completely different techniques to learn here? TFA says half of the participants were given VERBAL instructions. Automatically, that seems to bias the cognitive processing in a very modern way, since I don't think anyone is assuming these creatures were talking to each other 1.8 million years ago. The other half observed videos and "figured it out" I guess, but still, the way a modern human might approach imitating and learning such a task may be very different.
(3) How do we know these "more advanced forms of cognition" are required? Neuroscience is still in its infancy in terms of really understanding the detailed integration of different parts of the brain for tasks, and neuroanatomy may be specific enough to say "this part of the brain often 'lights up' for tasks that integrate different types of information and visual memory" or whatever, but pretty much a lot of the brain "lights up" during a lot of tasks, and we don't know why. Could it not be that some of these "advanced" parts of the brain ALSO sometimes help to perform more "primitive" processing that's quite unlike "humanlike" ways of thinking, and that's what we're seeing here?
I'm not an expert on any of this, but I have read some of the scholarly literature on cognition at times. At first glance, it just seems there are some pretty broad assumptions being made here.
Also, while the study is paywalled, the abstract [nature.com] worries me. It concludes with this sentence: "Acheulian toolmaking, therefore, may have more evolutionary ties to playing Mozart than quoting Shakespeare." That's the connection with that "piano-playing" quip in TFA, and the search I did to find the study shows a few news outlets actually ran headlines saying there was a "musical connection" to this early toolmaking.
Sorry, but that's complete BS, and it's a red flag to me that a study author would even put such crap in their abstract. In the cognition studies I've read, abstracts will commonly make some broader claim for their research. (Everyone wants to make their research sound important.) But those that try to claim very broad connections ("early hominid toolmaking is like playing Mozart!") often seemed the least grounded in empirical evidence and more just speculation based on vague neural mapping and overly specific assumptions about locality of advanced brain functions. Sure, I could be overreacting, but that sort of nonsense does a disservice to rigorous science.
(Score: 1) by a-zA-Z0-9$_.+!*'(),- on Thursday May 11 2017, @02:41PM
+1 Insightful. Hells yeah.
https://newrepublic.com/article/114112/anonymouth-linguistic-tool-might-have-helped-jk-rowling
(Score: 2) by pnkwarhall on Thursday May 11 2017, @05:44PM
tldr: "What != How"
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:50PM
Uses 'humanlike' in both the title and the summary, but doesn't even bother describing/defining what it means. Reads like a mindless PR blurb.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by leftover on Thursday May 11 2017, @04:09PM (2 children)
Although it is clear what the ending phrase "but ape-like thinking remains"
was intended to convey, the roles of "ape-like" and "human-like" are reversed.
Over decades of both direct observation and reading recorded history, it has
become obvious to me that animal behavior is the source of any good in people.
What we do with "higher" capabilities is to develop delusions of grandeur, religions,
rent-seeking behaviors, and sociopathy in all its forms.
Just read the news.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12 2017, @03:39AM (1 child)
Perhaps you should spend a decade researching animal behavior before making that claim. Animals do kill and torturer each other 'for fun' and when a pride switches male owners the females kill their own offspring to make room for the new male offspring. Most humans handle divorce far more civil than that. Rape is the most common way of breeding.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12 2017, @10:02AM
The new male lion kills any still-nursing cubs in order to bring the females back into estrus.
The females don't interfere with what he's doing.
The much-larger male wouldn't tolerate that anyway.
There are several videos on YouTube that document this.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]