From Pleistocene to Holocene: the prehistory of southwest Asia in evolutionary context

Abstract

In this paper I seek to show how cultural niche construction theory offers the potential to extend the human evolutionary story beyond the Pleistocene, through the Neolithic, towards the kind of very large-scale societies in which we live today. The study of the human past has been compartmentalised, each compartment using different analytical vocabularies, so that their accounts are written in mutually incompatible languages. In recent years social, cognitive and cultural evolutionary theories, building on a growing body of archaeological evidence, have made substantial sense of the social and cultural evolution of the genus Homo. However, specialists in this field of studies have found it difficult to extend their kind of analysis into the Holocene human world. Within southwest Asia the three or four millennia of the Neolithic period at the beginning of the Holocene represents a pivotal point, which saw the transformation of human society in the emergence of the first large-scale, permanent communities, the domestication of plants and animals, and the establishment of effective farming economies. Following the Neolithic, the pace of human social, economic and cultural evolution continued to increase. By 5000 years ago, in parts of southwest Asia and northeast Africa there were very large-scale urban societies, and the first large-scale states (kingdoms). An extension of cultural niche construction theory enables us to extend the evolutionary narrative of the Pleistocene into the Holocene, opening the way to developing a single, long-term, evolutionary account of human history.

Bringing Darwin into the social sciences and the humanities: cultural evolution and its philosophical implications

“…For instance, in his article ''From Pleistocene to Holocene: the prehistory of southwest Asia in evolutionary context'', archaeologist Trevor Watkins seeks to show how cultural niche construction theory offers the potential to extend the story of human evolution beyond the Pleistocene, through the Neolithic period towards the type of large-scale societies in which we live today. He thus shows the way to the development of a single, long-term, evolutionary account of human history (Watkins, 2017).…”

Introducing Göbekli Tepe to Psychology

“…Given such specialization, it is assumed they were not fully egalitarian, but somewhat socially stratified. The various groups surely traded, and what was traded was surely material, but likely also cultural (Watkins, 2010, 2017). Before the discovery of Göbekli Tepe modern archeology already recognized this era and general location as home to what has been variously called a transitional, complex, or some type of “broad spectrum” people known to be on the way toward true agriculture and sedentism.…”

“…Both Schmidt and Norenzayan assume the construction of Göbekli Tepe marks a revolutionary change in human psychology (see also Watkins, 2017), one that would have advanced these hunter-gatherers beyond some sort of shamanism and into an ideology of “supernatural watchers.” In turn, and as discussed previously, it seems likely that ideology was shared through storytelling and facilitated many other social changes. Indeed, Norenzayan's (2013; see also Norenzayan et al, 2016) influential “Big Gods” hypothesis of religion, cooperation, and conflict already makes explicit connections to the site, as eventually every account in the psychology of religion may be obligated to do.…”

“…Within cognitive archeology there is the notion that a pivotal moment in human history comes when we harness material culture to store and showcase our thoughts (e.g., Donald, 1991; Mithen, 2007; Renfrew & Scarre, 1998; Watkins, 2017), and as such writing becomes the ultimate juxtaposition of mind and artifact. Writing systems are tied to languages, but are preceded by symbolic systems known as proto-writing.…”

Open for Competition: Domesticates, Parasitic Domesticoids and the Agricultural Niche

“…Fuller and Lucas 2017;Scott 2017;Watkins 2017;Zeder 2016). Cultural niche construction implicates processes of change via feedback between culturally transmitted practices, long-term modifications to the environment (clearance, arable soils, etc.…”