Why the Muddle in the Middle Matters: the Language of Comparative and Direct in Human Evolution

Abstract

The two fundamental approaches to studying human evolution are those of using data relating to the past itself (i.e., archaeology, palaeontology), and those of establishing comparative frameworks, usually based on the study of extant related species. Work with primates has been important in establishing comparisons of social structure, frameworks of subsistence, and base levels of intelligence, and has recently been used to generate ideas about the origins of language. This chapter examines how archaeology can be used to address critically the application of comparative ideas, especially those which are based on the concept of 'Machiavellian intelligence', linking group size and neocortex ratio. Archaeology is able to map out the communication of cultural information in a number of ways. Its direct evidence establishes that early Homo had far greater ranges than those of living apes. Technology used across these ranges had to pay for itself in energetic terms. It is argued that such factors may be as important as group size in accounting for evolutionary change.

Modelling the end of the Acheulean at global and continental levels suggests widespread persistence into the Middle Palaeolithic

“…Sanchez-Yustos et al, 2018]) been linked to an absence of these species. Moreover, Acheulean tools have been fundamental to debates on the 'muddle in the middle' (Isaac, 1972;Gowlett, 1997;Malinsky-Buller, 2016), and are unavoidably linked to our understanding of hominin cognition, sociality, language, anatomy, and behaviour during this period (e.g. Hopkinson, 2007;Stout, 2011;Uomini and Meyer, 2013;Gowlett, 2015;Key and Lycett, 2018;Wynn and Gowlett, 2018;Pappu and Akhilesh, 2019).…”

Introduction to special issue The Lower to Middle Paleolithic boundaries: Evolutionary threshold or continuum?

“…The organizers of and participants to this symposium and special issue are not the first to recognize the importance of cultural and biological developments during this period of time. In 1975, Glynn Isaac coined the term "Muddle in the Middle" to refer to the many behavioral and cultural developments between the Lower and Middle Paleolithic (Isaac, 1975), and this trope has been revived periodically in papers reviewing new data and new understandings of this intriguing interval (Gowlett, 2008;Malinsky-Buller, 2016). The landmark volume After the Australopithecines (Butzer and Isaac, 1975), as well as later conferences organized at the University of Haifa (Ronen, 1982;Ronen and Weinstein-Evron, 2000) assembled researchers from across the globe to look more deeply into environmental, biological, and cultural developments during the later Middle Pleistocene.…”