The ripples of modernity: How we can extend paleoanthropology with the extended evolutionary synthesis

Abstract

Contemporary understandings of paleoanthropological data illustrate that the search for a line defining, or a specific point designating, “modern human” is problematic. Here we lend support to the argument for the need to look for patterns in the paleoanthropological record that indicate how multiple evolutionary processes intersected to form the human niche, a concept critical to assessing the development and processes involved in the emergence of a contemporary human phenotype. We suggest that incorporating key elements of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) into our endeavors offers a better and more integrative toolkit for modeling and assessing the evolution of the genus Homo. To illustrate our points, we highlight how aspects of the genetic exchanges, morphology, and material culture of the later Pleistocene complicate the concept of “modern” human behavior and suggest that multiple evolutionary patterns, processes, and pathways intersected to form the human niche.

Behavioural modernity, investigative disintegration & Rubicon expectation

“…Although this is not the only scenario available in today's approach to human cultural and cognitive evolution, 4 sociocultural and demographic based models (also aided by incorporation of elements of the Evolutionary Extended Synthesis, see Kissel & Fuentes, 2021) are redrawing the conceptual toolkit and investigation. Further, it is argued that such scenarios are more grounded in the available evidence compared to biologically based explanations, as they account for patterns in the record without resorting to events that are not yet empirically sustained (nor easily testable).…”

Evolving Belief, Evolving Minds: Evolutionary Insights Into the Development and Functioning of Human Society

“…Over the last two million years members of the genus Homo (humans) underwent significant changes via the emergence of a distinctively human niche. Relative to other hominins, Homo underwent specific morphological changes alongside significant behavioral, ecological and cognitive shifts as they forged and were shaped by this human niche (Fuentes, 2015 ; Marks, 2015 ; Antón and Kuzawa, 2017 ; Kissel and Fuentes, 2021 ). During this time core human patterns emerged including: hyper-cooperation and complex collaboration in social interactions and material technologies; substantially extended childhood development and complex caretaking behavior; intricate and diverse foraging and hunting patterns involving complex technologies, behavior and communication; novel and dynamic material and symbolic cultures eventually resulting in complex cognitive and material meaning-making processes; emergence of exchange networks and increasingly dynamic intergroup relations; and increasingly complex communication and information sharing, eventually resulting in language (Foley, 2016 ; Fuentes, 2017 , 2018 ; Galway-Witham et al, 2019 ) ( Figure 1 ).…”

“…Given the morphological and ecological diversity, and the multiple tool technologies and lifeways evident across this period it is clear that there were many successful ways to navigate the human niche and that they all were intricately connected to, and stemming from, an evolving cognitive capacity setting the stage for the contemporary human mind. Contemporary Homo sapiens are inheritors of a diversity of biological and cultural histories facilitated by the dynamics of the human niche (Kissel and Fuentes, 2021 ).…”

“…Current integrative approaches to human evolution emphasize mutual mutability between agents, bodies, collective action, social perceptions, and the roles of experiences, cultures and institutions in structuring human behavior (Fuentes, 2009 , 2017 ; Marks, 2012 ; Fry, 2013 ; Kim and Kissel, 2018 ; Seitz et al, 2018 ; Sykes, 2020 ; Kissel and Fuentes, 2021 ; e.g. DeSilva, 2021 ).…”

“…This ongoing dynamic, the feedback between neural and behavioral plasticity, laid the neurobiological, social, and ecological foundations in human populations for a particularly complex cognition, and for belief (Deacon, 1997 ; Fuentes, 2019 ; Tomasello, 2019 ; Corbey, 2020 ). The ratcheting up of social and ecological complexity, combined with increased interactions among populations of the genus Homo , particularly over the last 200,000 to 500,000 years, created opportunities for the connections and exchanges between groups and populations that enabled shared beliefs, and eventually belief systems, to emerge (Galway-Witham et al, 2019 ; Kissel and Fuentes, 2021 ). The last few hundred thousand years offer material evidence for an increase in, and eventual ubiquity of, meaning-making, art and symbol in human populations (Malafouris, 2013 ; Deacon, 2016 ; Roberts, 2016 ; Fuentes, 2017 ; Sykes, 2020 ).…”