The Rise of Modern Behavior

This article was published on May 18, 2024.

The Rise of Modern Behavior – A Copernican Revolution in Understanding Human Evolution

Abstract

This article proposes a paradigm shift in our understanding of the cognitive revolution, highlighting that the emergence of modern language around 75,000 years ago in South Africa was a pivotal event that fundamentally transformed human mental operations and social interactions. Initially, language functioned primarily to replicate existing survival strategies through tool use, bridging the gap between the human body and the environment and promoting conformity within groups. However, this research contends that around 75,000 years ago, language experienced a radical transformation, changing rapidly into a complex symbolic communication system.

By examining the interplay between tool use, vocalization, and social structure evolution, the paper illustrates that early Homo sapiens utilized singing and rhythmic movements—akin to tools—to reinforce social bonds and ensure cultural continuity. This practice, deeply embedded in our neurological framework through mechanisms like mirror neurons, underscores the foundational role of rhythmic and melodic elements in early Homo sapiens.

The shift in language function is corroborated by archaeological evidence, including intricate toolmaking and symbolic artifacts like shell beads, signalling bursts of creativity. Contrary to traditional views that posit a linear increase in intelligence, this paper argues that human evolution was characterized by increasing behavioral conformity, alongside a latent growth in creative potential—they were two sides of the same coin.

This new framework challenges established narratives of human evolution, aligning with various mythologies that suggest an ancient, harmonious relationship with nature was disrupted by the cognitive revolution. Thus, early cave paintings might be viewed as poignant expressions of help, signalling a deep sense of loss and a call for reconnection with nature. This perspective sheds new light on the cognitive and social transformations that have shaped the development of Homo sapiens, revealing how these changes continue to alienate us from our evolutionary origins and influence who we are today.

Rethinking Human Evolution: From Darwin to Modern Discoveries

With the advent of evolutionary theory, humanity also fell under the domain of scientific inquiry. Previously, natural laws, matter, and the solar system had been formulated in scientific terms, and now it was humanity’s turn. From this point onward, it was scientists who would explain the origins of human spiritual qualities, not theologians. The search for humanity’s past would no longer be found in religious scriptures, but in fossils.

At the inception of paleoanthropology, the paradigm of human evolution began to crystallize. In his 1872 book ‘On the Descent of Man,’ Charles Darwin posited that what distinguished humans was our intelligence, and by using our intelligence, we were able to master any environment, despite our physical characteristics being inferior to our brains (Darwin, 1872). Thus, human intelligence was a trait similar to the lion’s strength or the cheetah’s speed. While animals became faster, more agile, or stronger, humans became smarter (Darwin, 1872). He also concluded that there was only a degree of difference between humans and other animals. He depicted a scenario in which the human brain began to evolve millions of years ago and gradually became larger and more intelligent— and the differences between British Victorians and the ‘uncivilized’ people Darwin encountered on his trip to South America on the HMS Beagle were a result of natural selection (Darwin, 1872). However, after this assumption was made and when fossil hunters started to link for the “missing link” in Asia, Europe, and Africa, no fossil evidence of human ancestors confirmed this idea. The only fossil that corresponded with this original brain-tool timeline was the Piltdown fossil (found in England, of course), where a large ancient brain was linked with tools—but it was later exposed as a hoax (Spencer, 1990).

As a matter of fact, what the fossil record has taught us is that large brains evolved relatively late in history, starting with Homo erectus approximately 2 million years ago (Leakey, 1973). However, the development of large brains was not immediately accompanied by modern behavior. In fact, the first unequivocal signs of modern behavior date back only to about 74,000 years ago, as evidenced by findings in South Africa (Marean, 2010). On the contrary, the tools from the Middle Stone Age (MSA) associated with early Homo sapiens appear to have been stable over time, though they were locally adapted to different niches. For example, in the Levant around 80,000 to 100,000 years ago, Homo sapiens and Neanderthals alternately inhabited the same caves over thousands of years, employing the same stone knapping technique, known as the Levallois technique, before Homo sapiens finally disappeared from the area (Shea, 2003).

Recent findings have also challenged our previous view regarding the age of Homo sapiens. Previously believed to be around 200,000 years old, in 2017, two groundbreaking discoveries pushed back the timeline for the earliest Homo sapiens. First, fossils found at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco have been dated to approximately 315,000 years ago, significantly older than earlier thought (Callaway 2017). Secondly, complete DNA sequencing of a 2,000-year-old skeleton in South Africa, known as the Ballito boy, revealed the genetic diversity of the Kung San people prior to the arrival of Bantu-speaking populations, indicating that Homo sapiens is likely to be between 260,000 and 350,000 years old (Schlebusch et al. 2017).

And it doesn’t stop there. The older so-called archaic Homo sapiens had, on average, larger brains than we have today, as exemplified by fossils like Florisbad (a 259,000-year-old fossil from South Africa) and Herto (a 160,000-year-old fossil from Ethiopia) (Grine 2007; White et al. 2003). We have also learned that the genetic differences between people are extremely low, and that two mountain gorillas in Rwanda can have greater genetic differences than any two humans on the planet (Scally et al. 2012).

As we have seen, the earliest signs of modern behaviour emerged within our own species, Homo sapiens, rather than among our predecessors. Moreover, archaeological findings indicate that for most of our species’ existence—over three-quarters of its history—these modern behaviours were not evident. Darwin and the early paleoanthropologists were wrong – the rise of modern behaviour was to be found in our own species.

Was There a Cognitive Revolution?

What then is modern behavior? Modern human behavior is characterized by a complex interplay of cognitive, social, and technological advancements. It includes the use of symbolic communication, such as language and art, which allows for the expression of abstract ideas and the transmission of culture across generations (Conard 2011). Modern behavior also involves sophisticated tool use and technological innovation, seen in the creation of intricate tools (Ambrose 2001). It is also characterized by ritualistic practices and the burial of the dead, indicating a sense of awareness and significance placed on life and death, spirituality, and an emerging consciousness of self and community (Pettitt 2010; Dunbar 2016).

The discrepancy between human brain development and modern behavior, which completely contradicts the idea put forward by Darwin, has led the scientific community to believe that there was a great leap in Homo sapiens that resulted in our modern behavior. Initially, the cognitive revolution was thought to have taken place in Europe around 40,000 years ago based on cave paintings, jewellery, and tools that have been discovered in France, Spain, and Germany (Stringer & Mellars, 1989). Later on, the location of the revolution was thought to be Western Asia since new discoveries in that area predated those in Europe (Bar-Yosef, 2002).

New discoveries of tools and decoration in South Africa have changed this view once again. Important examples are 71,000 years old microlithic tools and a 74,000 years old necklace made by deliberately perforated shell beads, both from Blombos Cave (Henshilwood et al., 2002) in South Africa. Remains of advanced technology have also been found in Eastern Africa, as for example in Mumba Cave where a transition from Middle Stone Age to Later Stone Age tools can be seen, and today it’s believed that the cognitive revolution took place first in South Africa and later in Eastern Africa prior to the large migration out of Africa starting approximately 60,000 years ago (McBrearty and Brooks, 2000). The earliest fully modern cave paintings are now thought to have been created in the Indonesian island of Sulawesi approximately 44,000 years ago (Aubert et al., 2018).

However, there are also early signs of modern behavior such as the use of red ochre that goes back to 285,000 years ago in the Kapthurin (Tryon & McBrearty, 2002) and at 270,000 years at Twin Rivers in Zambia (Barham, 2002). Early use of shell beads that goes back to approximately 142,000 years old shell beads in Bizmoune Cave in Morocco (Bouzouggar et al., 2007), and the Skhul Cave in Israel yielded marine shell beads dating from around 100,000 to 135,000 years ago (Vanhaeren et al., 2006).

Whereas it is easy to find practical reasons for the use of red ochre, for example in gluing parts together (Wadley, 2001), it is more difficult to find practical reasons for the shell beads, even though they may have been used in fishing or as tools. This has led other researchers, such as the paleoanthropologist Sally McBrearty and Alison Brooks, to believe that there was a gradual development of Homo sapiens thinking (McBrearty & Brooks, 2000). However, these early signs of modern behavior are linked both to Homo sapiens and Neanderthals (as for example 115,000-year-old shell beads from the Cave of Los Aviones in Spain, that were likely used by Neanderthals) (Zilhão et al., 2010), suggesting that this type of behavior does not reflect fully modern behavior.

We also see that most discoveries of early signs of modernity have been made in the outskirts of the ancient human range where the climate was more unstable (Ambrose, 1998). The finding of, for example, a necklace in South Africa doesn’t mean that all humans at that time wore personal ornaments. The same goes for early signs of shell beads that were found at the northernmost boundaries of Homo sapiens expansion at the time (Powell, Shennan, & Thomas, 2009). In other areas of Africa, such as in western Africa, less advanced tools were prevalent much longer than in other areas. A recent finding from Western Africa also showed that very old MSA tools, thought to have ceased to exist, were still used 15,000 years ago (Scerri et al., 2021), and this tool kit had important similarities with the tool kits used by Neanderthals.

Around 40,000 years ago, there was an explosion in cultural expressions and new technologies, such as microlithic tools used to create hooks and sewing needles, which also correlated with rapid migrations to new habitats (Conard, 2003). This period also witnessed the emergence of sophisticated art forms, such as cave paintings in Europe (White, 2003) and decorated artifacts found across various sites (d’Errico et al., 2003), which demonstrate an advanced capacity for symbolic thought and expression. Additionally, the presence of ritual burials (Pettitt, 2002) and the construction of ritual sites (Lewis-Williams, 2002) indicate a new level of societal complexity and spiritual or religious awareness. These advancements, coupled with the extinction of Neanderthals and Denisovans, as well as a wide range of animal species in all areas humans settled, collectively suggest that a profound cognitive revolution occurred. The convergence of technological innovation, artistic expression, and complex social rituals during this time provides compelling evidence that early humans underwent a significant cognitive transformation.

It has been suggested that genetic changes were the driving force behind the cognitive revolution. However, it is unlikely that small genetic changes can have re-organized the brain since mental abilities are controlled by many different parts of our brain. A few critical genes have nevertheless been detected, as for example FOXP2, the so-called “language gene”, and it has been suggested that a mutation of FOXP2 gave us the ability to speak like we do today. But the exact same sequence of FOXP2 has also been found in Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA suggesting that the mutation must have taken place more than 700,000 years ago (Krause et al., 2007).

Up until today, no specific genetic changes have been identified. Instead, discussions focus more on a reorganization of the brain or several small accumulated changes. For example, researchers have identified a domed cranial skull as a characteristic of modern humans, possibly marking the dawn of modern behavior. In the archaeological record, it appears that a standardization process of the cranial vault took place in Africa, which was completed approximately 130,000 years ago, when most cranial vaults had the same domed shape and a smaller face (unlike, for example, the fossils in Jebel Irhoud and Herto) (Rightmire, 2009; White et al., 2003). However, no speciation process occurred during this period, and the oldest, undoubtedly anatomically modern Homo sapiens is Omo I from Ethiopia, estimated to be 195,000 years old (McDougall et al., 2005). It is thought that the roundness of the head brought about changes in the brain that made us more creative. Subsequently, cultural thinking may have accumulated over time, eventually leading to our modern behavior. However, the discovery of the Iwo Eleru skull in Nigeria, which is only about 13,000 years old, contradicts this view. This skull has remarkable archaic features, such as large brow ridges, eye orbits that do not resemble those of modern Homo sapiens, and a straight, not domed, cranial vault (Harvati et al., 2011). Nevertheless, the skull had been buried, hence, resembling modern behavior, and it was found along with Late Stone Age tools. Archaic forms of Homo sapiens apparently also survived for a longer period of time in Red Deer Cave in China, and there are also examples of archaic findings in Australia, such as the Kow Swamp Skulls, which are remarkably recent (Curnoe et al., 2012). New genetic studies have also shown that the human population in Red Deer Cave was modern Homo sapiens and that they have left a significant genetic footprint among the indigenous peoples of America (Meyer et al., 2012). In other words, it seems that archaic skull features survived many years after the cognitive revolution took place – and there is nothing stating that they were not modern.

Recent research into human brain evolution has revealed that cranial shape does not necessarily reflect brain structure. Researchers analyzing ancient child skulls found that these remain consistent with those of modern children, suggesting stability in cranial features over time. However, skulls from older individuals within the same population display more archaic traits. This observation has led researchers to propose that changes in skull morphology are influenced by lifestyle factors rather than changes in brain structure, with chewing habits playing a significant role (Lieberman et al., 2004; Neubauer et al., 2010). Importantly, a study published in Science Advances reinforces the view that modern human brain shape evolution is complex and influenced by multiple factors, not merely genetic or straightforward evolutionary trends (Neubauer, Gunz, & Hublin, 2018).

In summary, current knowledge suggests that the emergence of modern behavior likely occurred in South Africa approximately 100,000 – 75,000 years ago, possibly triggered by climate change. Later, the same changes occurred in Eastern Africa and rapidly expanded into Western Asia and Europe a few thousand years later. However, in other regions, other Homo sapiens continued to live in a highly traditional manner using original tool making techniques.

A Paradox

We are facing a paradox. Everything suggests that thinking has an evolutionary past, yet humans have not always been modern. It seems there was a significant leap, but there are no biological changes to account for this.

How should this be understood? Have scientists missed something crucial in their research on humans? What fundamentally unites scientists, and what has characterized the intellectual history of the West throughout the years? The answer to this question is the belief in human intelligence. What unites scientists is the conviction that humans should be thinking beings; they believe that the essence of being human is to be thinking and creative. In other words: they draw a parallel between biology and behavior. They believe that a specific biological structure should automatically result in corresponding behavior—and that modern humans reflect our evolutionary past.

But what if this is incorrect? What if humans are not supposed to think and act as they do today? What if evolution has promoted things other than intellectual capability? Why not accept the paradox’s two components? Why not assume that humans really have undergone a gradual evolutionary process (as Darwin suggested) and that there indeed was a rapid development leap (as archaeological findings indicate)? Why not consider that there was a significant leap, but without any change in the brain?

The next step must be to assume that human mental properties have been dormant/latent. Perhaps the potential for modern thinking has existed for around 300,000 years, but it only came to expression 70,000 years ago, and seriously about 40,000 years ago. The potential has existed, but not the need. Thus, it was a dormant potential that came to life, not a completely new species that was born.

This viewpoint could explain the perplexity of scientists. Human intelligence has simply been latent; it has been dormant. From this standpoint, we do not need to resort to any biological change to describe the great leap. In this way, it is also possible to explain the similar outburst of creativity that we have seen among both Homo sapiens and Neanderthals more than 100,000 years ago, and it can also explain the persistence of more traditional ways of life in pockets of more isolated areas.

If the brain has not developed to increase consciousness and language ability, why did it arise? This requires a Copernican revolution in the view of humans.

Language and Modern Behavior

What characterizes modern behavior is the ability to use symbols and our language. It is language that distinguishes us from apes. We have a neo-cortex just like apes, but what sets us apart in practice is our use of symbols. Our brains have looked the same throughout the years, with their neo-cortex, so the difference must be something else. What really separates us from animals is not the anatomy of our brains, but our language. With language, we can control our mental processes and how the brain works. Language is our world, as Ludwig Wittgenstein put it in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Wittgenstein, 1922). The limits of our language are the limits of our world. Language not only governs our thinking, it also affects our consciousness, our experience of the world. According to Deacon (1997) and Pinker (2000), this unique capability for symbolic thought and language is what truly differentiates Homo sapiens from other species, underpinning the development of our complex societies.

What does it say that the language we use today reflects how it was intended to be used?

Many researchers agree that articulate language is crucial to our modern behavior, organizing and thinking. Language enables us to name things, to think about the future, to raise existential questions, to establish extended trade networks, and so on. In other words, it is reasonable to assume that when people started to transport cultural artifacts over large areas and wear personal ornaments, this is an indication of the use of language as we know it today (Deacon, 1997; Tomasello, 2008). Such capabilities reflect not only complex cognitive processing but also the establishment of social networks that facilitate far-reaching interactions and the dissemination of cultural knowledge (Dunbar, 2004).

It seems that language use was the cause of the cognitive revolution, but it also seems that the necessary foundations for language use existed in humans long before we started to use language as we know it today. This raises the question: what was the original use of language?

Tools and Language

Besides language, tools have been crucial in explaining what differentiates us from animals, and our bipedalism has been seen as a critical turning point in our evolution since it freed our hands to manipulate the surrounding world. Throughout history, tools have made it possible to extract resources that were previously difficult to obtain. From this perspective, tools can be seen as exosomatic organs, extensions of the human body, and technology can be viewed as a membrane that we use to interact with reality and extract energy from it, as proposed by the French philosopher Leroi-Gourhan (Leroi-Gourhan, 1993). The early use of tools even before the emergence of Homo sapiens, as evidenced at sites like Dikika in Ethiopia, underscores their fundamental role in our evolutionary history (McPherron et al., 2010). Furthermore, as Stiegler articulates, these tools are not merely aids but integral components of our biological and cultural evolution, shaping our memory and interactions with the world (Stiegler, 1998).

The first tools made by humans, including Oldowan tools by Homo habilis and Acheulean tools by Homo erectus, were incredibly uniform over extended periods of time. These tools were made in a standardized way, indicating that they became virtual extensions of the human body and suggesting that the lifestyles and behaviors of these people did not change significantly over time. The persistence of Oldowan tools, as discussed by Semaw (2000), and the widespread use of Acheulean hand-axes, as described by Lepre et al. (2011), reflect a remarkable consistency in tool-making techniques that underscores a stable adaptation strategy (Toth and Schick, 2009). This consistency further indicates that the behavioral patterns of these early humans remained remarkably static, reinforcing their successful adaptation to their environments.

Can tools help us understand the evolutionary roots of language? In fact, there is a strong correlation between language and tool use, with overlapping brain systems for both activities, such as Broca’s area, which is activated during both speech and tool use. For example, there is a significant correlation between repetitive hand movements in the process of tool creation and tool use – the same parts of the brain are being used (Stout & Chaminade, 2009).

A researcher who has shown great interest in the origins of language is the neuroscientist Michael Arbib, who has proposed that human language did not originate from primate calls, but developed through mirror neurons in a separate part of the brain used for imitation. He has suggested that these mirror neurons, which are activated both when an individual observes and performs a certain action, could have played a crucial role in the development of language (Arbib, 2005).

According to Michael A. Arbib, the evolution of human language can be understood through a series of developmental stages. He begins with the fundamental human ability to grasp objects, which is essential for interacting with the environment and led to the formation of new neurological pathways. This grasping ability evolved into the capability for imitation, facilitated by mirror neurons that activate when an individual both observes and performs an action. This imitation is vital for social learning and the transmission of culture (Arbib, 2012).

Arbib proposes that language developed from brain areas initially used for manipulating objects, rather than from the vocal communications used by primates like chimpanzees. Over time, hand gestures, according to Arbib, evolved to become more symbolic and detached from their original practical purposes. These gestures began to convey complex messages more arbitrarily, setting the foundation for a basic form of language. Ultimately, Arbib suggests that this evolution of gestures paved the way for the advent of spoken language through the utilization of vocal mechanisms (Arbib, 2013).

In Co-Evolution of Human Consciousness and Language, Arbib writes: ‘Our novel tenet is that the parity requirement for language in humans—what counts for the speaker must count for the hearer—is met because of the mirror-system hypothesis, namely that “Language evolved from a basic mechanism not originally related to communication: the mirror system for grasping with its capacity to generate and recognize a set of actions’ (Arbib, 2001, p 212).

Further, he suggests, ‘Biological evolution may not so much have yielded a human brain “equipped with” language so much as a human brain “ready for” language. The corollary to this is that even though an early Homo sapiens infant raised (after some miracle of time travel or cloning) in a human home in today’s world would be completely human, an adult Homo sapiens of 200,000 years ago would have a consciousness in many ways limited with respect to a modern human’ (Arbib, 2001, p210).

Arbib’s ideas are quite intriguing. He suggests that language originated separately from the parts of the brain associated with primate calls in chimpanzees, instead arising from areas initially involved in manipulating physical objects. This manipulation and the transmission of these hand movements from one generation to another were facilitated by mirror neurons (imitation). But why should we conclude that this eventually developed into a symbolic language? Once humans became language-ready, which we can assume they were at least 300,000 years ago, shouldn’t this have resulted in the use of language from that day forward? Isn’t it more plausible that “language,” up until the cognitive revolution, served functions other than the symbolic communication we associate with it today?

Since tool use predates language as we know it today, and since the same parts of the brain are necessary for both language production and acquisition, as well as tool use, we can assume that our mental abilities—such as the ability to envision a tool from a larger stone block and to repeat complex hand movements—did not necessarily primarily facilitate creativity and language, but rather the ability to extract a series of mental images of the physical surroundings and to repeat advanced hand movements necessary for tool production, and to pass this knowledge on to others. In other words, the initial use of the “language” package was not to communicate using symbols but to simply copy the skills that their ancestors had already acquired. In other words, we need to pause halfway through Arbib’s language development scheme.

Even the first composite tools, which were made by both Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens, were remarkably stable over time. This leads to the conclusion that more advanced mental abilities, such as planning and working memory, are closely linked to tool use (Stout & Chaminade, 2009). The construction of composite tools requires the gathering and possession of different materials that are likely to be collected from various places. For example, the flint used by early Homo sapiens at Jebel Irhoud was collected from at least 15 kilometers away (Richter et al., 2017). However, this behavior was most likely part of the inherited survival strategies passed down from generation to generation and did not include language as we know it today.

Archaeological findings indicate that the stone tools were extremely traditional. Of course, they also made tools out of wood, and these were probably stable as well. And not just the tools – the movement patterns of the people themselves were also extremely stable.

Another example is the Acheulean hand axe used by Homo erectus, which was remarkably stable over 1.5 million years (Lycett & Gowlett, 2008). This suggests that behavior was also stable at this time. Tools can be seen as a kind of physical manifestation of people’s inner worlds that have lived on in the form of stone tools. These reflect life as a whole which, by all accounts, followed well-tested and familiar survival strategies (Shea, 2006).

The Singing Primate

We have seen that tool use and language are fundamentally intertwined—beginning with the simple grasping of physical objects and progressing through imitation, which then evolved into increasingly advanced and refined actions. However, a question arises: how were these complex behaviors and hand movements passed on from person to person, generation to generation? Moreover, why have we developed organs specifically adapted for vocalization? This requires a further new approach to language.

The biologist Mario Vaneechoutte (and others) has suggested that our forefathers were singing primates, and he has presented a number of arguments for this hypothesis. For example, humans have the capacity to acquire and produce more than 700 different distinct phonemes, but in most languages only between 15-25 different phonemes are being used. In other words, human children have an incredible ability to differentiate between and learn how to produce different sounds but end up using only a fraction of these for speech. In singing, on the other hand, far more phonemes are being used. (Vaneechoutte et al. 2011)

Additionally, the method by which infants learn language aligns more closely with learning to sing than with learning to speak. Human infants learn grammar through intonation and pitch in combination with facial expression and gesture. And these prosodic clues are exaggerated in infant-directed speech (so called motherese). Hence, infants don’t acquire language by understanding the lexical meaning of a word, but rather by grasping the melody of the language. As a matter of fact, human infants acquire language in rather the same way as songbirds learn songs. Hence, we are learning a melody, a rhythm, rather than words during the initial process of language acquisition. (Vaneechoutte et al. 2011)

According to Mario Vaneechoutte, the fundamental relation between language and body movements is most apparent in singing and dancing. When we hear a rhythm, we are likely to move according to it. Humans are also experts is mimicking which is crucial for learning how to sing. We have mirror neurons that make us incredibly aware of the movements and behavior of others. (Vaneechoutte et al. 2011)

Vaneechoutte suggests that singing emerged as a means to strengthen social bonds and facilitate pair bonding among early humans. The use of rhythm and melody in singing likely played a crucial role in aligning emotions and actions, thereby enhancing group unity and cooperative behavior. He also suggests that prior to the advent of structured, symbolic language, early humans might have employed singing and musical sounds as a primary mode of communication. From this musical foundation, language may have subsequently evolved through a process of memetic development. (Vaneechoutte et al. 2011) However, this raises a question similar to one posed by Arbib: If the primary purpose of singing was communication, why didn’t language develop immediately once humans were capable of it?

If, on the other hand, we link singing with tool use and conclude that the two facilitated imitation across generations, then the pieces fall into place. As a matter of fact, researchers have been puzzled about why Homo erectus’ tool use remained so stable over a long period. The commonly accepted view in the scientific community has been that tool use was reproduced through cultural transmission from one generation to the next (Stout & Chaminade, 2009), but some researchers have pointed out that cultural transmission could not be so exact, so conservative, which has led them to propose the possibility of a genetic component (Corbey et al., 2016). However, explaining the exact replication of tool production from one generation to the next is very difficult since the production of the tools, or the actual movement patterns, are not encoded in the genes. The notion that the brain—with language/song as an agent—has evolved specifically to cement these behaviors, and that singing not only created a flow, even a musical rhythm, in the tool-making itself and in everyday life but also facilitated the transfer of specific movement patterns to younger generations, makes the pieces fall into place

Also from a neuroscientific perspective, there is no contradiction in claiming that singing came before speaking. The exact same brain functions that we use when we acquire and produce language are used when we learn rhythms and to sing (Patel, 2008). There is not only overlapping brain use for tool use and speaking, but also for singing and speaking (Zatorre, Belin, & Penhune, 2002). Spoken language seems increasingly superfluous in the equation.

It has also been suggested that breath hold diving played a crucial role in developing our ability to produce sounds: a lowered larynx made it possible to control our breathing and to produce sounds more effectively (Vaneechoutte et al. 2011). In addition, Mario Vaneechoutte hypothesizes that the aquatic environment was also crucial for our ability to mimick and to interpret the movements of others. In water – a 3D environment – our skill to mimick drastically increased, and as singing relies on mimicking, our ability to differentiate between sounds also increased by living in proximity of water.

As a matter of fact, only species who can move freely in three dimensions – either in air or in water – do actually sing. Song birds, bats and cetaceans have developed a great ability to mimick – and hence also singing skills. (Vaneechoutte, 2014)

So when the people of Jebel Irhoud and other early Homo sapiens were collecting materials and creating tools by projecting their mental images onto the physical world, they were not talking but singing. It was two sides of the same coin. It was two sides of the same coin. Movement patterns and song were fundamentally the same thing. Language was a mediator between the inner mental world and the outer, physical one. It bridged the gap between the inner and the outer, body and soul, and this was facilitated by mirror neurons, rhythm, and song.

Language and the Cognitive Revolution

Obviously, it’s plausible to assume that the most important trigger of the cognitive revolution was the emergence of modern language. What actually happened 75 000 years ago in South Africa, but later in other places, was that the human mental abilities, that previously had been occupied by reproducing already existing living strategies and navigating complex landscapes, turned into the development of language as we know it today which reorganized the human mind as well as the human interrelations. But this was probably not the first time, also the emergence of the Acheulean and the Mousterian tool complexes were initiated by such a burst of undisciplined creativity, before it again turned into repetition and rhythm. The plausible underlying cause was climatic change, that made it no longer possible to hold on to the old lifestyle.

Climate changes created a cognitive dissonance, an unbridled language, and a creativity that enabled humans to adapt. Evolution later facilitated the replication of behaviors that had adapted to the new environment, the new habitat, along with accompanying bodily adaptations. The brain and body parts evolved through selective adaptation to the new living environment. The brain grew and became more advanced in imitating behavior, but at the same time, creativity flourished beneath the surface.

What happened during the cognitive revolution was that language was diverted from its previous tasks of cementing behavior, systematically transferring knowledge from one generation to another, uniting brains with one another, and creating a collective consciousness. Now, language became unbridled, undifferentiated, but in a short time, it crystallized into the language we know today, as a system of symbols, and with a fully developed grammar as Noam Chomsky has postulated (Chomsky, 1965). On a philosophical level, language had previously helped to bridge the gap between the mental and biological, or between tools and body, it was about integrating the tools into the bodily apparatus, so that thinking and the body became one. The brain was the servant of the body, not the other way around. The great leap granted the brain a special status over the body, which was further diminished during the Neolithic revolution and even more so during the ongoing AI revolution.

Earlier in Homo sapiens history there was no language as we know it today. Throughout history we were singing/tool-making shoreline apes – and we learned by mimicking our forefathers. These brain functions made us perfectly good in acquiring the behavior that our predecessors had already invented, even though this kind of behavior was not written in our DNA. Hence, singing made us not only repeat the lifestyle of our forefathers, it also made us reinvent the world day after day. Singing and dancing also tuned people to each other and put us on the same track: it united the minds of people. At this time, there was also no discrepancy between mind and body—because it is language that makes us reflect and raise existential questions, language that creates the illusion of a dualism between body and mind.

This understanding is also reflected in our mythological world. In nearly all religions and mythologies, there is an idea of an ancient natural state in which humans and animals were indistinguishable, and everything had an undifferentiated form—often referred to as the perennial philosophy. The most well-known example is the Old Testament (Alter, 2004), while another is the Aboriginal Dreamtime (Isaacs, 1980). According to these mythologies, something then occurred that drastically altered human lives and led to alienation from the winds and the animals, marking the onset of the cognitive revolution.

In Aboriginal mythology—one of the oldest continuous human mythological traditions—there is a belief in worldly creators who sang the world into existence. Central to this belief is the concept of ‘songlines,’ which are songs that, when sung, enable individuals to navigate the landscape (Chatwin, 1987). Yet, their primary purpose extends beyond mere navigation; these songs serve to unify minds. Through singing, individuals could forge connections with the minds of others across generations, effectively navigating not just a physical landscape, but a mental one as well.

I am tempted to believe that the mental world we possess today is much poorer than it originally was. Our brains were structured differently in our early days, and we had a purer and more direct experience of the world, which reminds me of Gotama’s philosophy. And when modern language entered the stage, it did not refine our mental abilities, it simply hijacked them.

This sheds new light on the old signs of modern behavior. The cave paintings for example, might fundamentally have been a call for help.

Literature

Ambrose, S. H. (1998). Late Pleistocene human population bottlenecks, volcanic winter, and differentiation of modern humans. Journal of Human Evolution, 34(6), 623-651. https://doi.org/10.1006/jhev.1998.0219

Ambrose, S. H. (2001). Paleolithic technology and human evolution. Science, 291(5509), 1748-1753. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1059487

Arbib, M. A. (2001). Co-evolution of human consciousness and language. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 929, 195-220.

Arbib, M. A. (2005). From monkey-like action recognition to human language: An evolutionary framework for neurolinguistics. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28(2), 105-124. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X05000038

Arbib, M. A. (2012). How the Brain Got Language: The Mirror System Hypothesis. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Arbib, M. A. (2013). Language, Music, and the Brain: A Mysterious Relationship. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Aubert, M., Brumm, A., Ramli, M., Sutikna, T., Saptomo, E. W., Hakim, B., Morwood, M. J., van den Bergh, G. D., Kinsley, L., & Dosseto, A. (2018). Palaeolithic cave art in Borneo. Nature, 564, 254-257. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0679-9

Bar-Yosef, O. (2002). The Upper Paleolithic revolution. Annual Review of Anthropology, 31, 363-393. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.31.040402.085416

Bouzouggar, A., Barton, N., Vanhaeren, M., d’Errico, F., Collcutt, S., Higham, T., Hodge, E., Parfitt, S., Rhodes, E., Schwenninger, J.-L., Stringer, C., Turner, E., Ward, S., Moutmir, A., & Stambouli, A. (2007). 82,000-year-old shell beads from North Africa and implications for the origins of modern human behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(24), 9964-9969. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0703877104

Chatwin, B. (1987). The Songlines. New York, NY: Viking Penguin.

Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Conard, N. J. (2003). Palaeolithic ivory sculptures from southwestern Germany and the origins of figurative art. Nature, 426, 830-832. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature02186

Conard, N. J. (2011). The demise of the Neanderthal cultural niche and the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic in southwestern Germany. Quaternary International, 231(1-2), 119-122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2010.07.001

Curnoe, D., Ji, X., Taçon, P. S. C., & Yaozheng, G. (2012). Possible Homo sapiens in China at 100,000 years ago. Nature, 484, 201-204. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10968

d’Errico, F., Henshilwood, C., Lawson, G., Vanhaeren, M., Tillier, A.-M., Soressi, M., Bresson, F., Maureille, B., Nowell, A., Lakarra, J., Backwell, L., & Julien, M. (2003). Archaeological evidence for the emergence of language, symbolism, and music—An alternative multidisciplinary perspective. Journal of World Prehistory, 17(1), 1-70. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023980201043

Darwin, C. (1872). The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. London, UK: John Murray.

Deacon, T. W. (1997). The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.

Dunbar, R. I. M. (2004). Gossip in evolutionary perspective. Review of General Psychology, 8(2), 100-110. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.8.2.100

Dunbar, R. I. M. (2016). Human Evolution. Pelican Books.

Grine, F. E., Fleagle, J. G., & Leakey, R. E. (2007). The first humans – Origin and early evolution of the genus Homo: Contributions from the Third Stony Brook Human Evolution Symposium and Workshop October 3 – October 7, 2006. Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology. Springer.

Harvati, K., Röding, C., Bosman, A. M., Karakostis, F. A., Grün, R., Stringer, C., Karkanas, P., Thompson, N. C., Koutoulidis, V., Moulopoulos, L. A., Gorgoulis, V. G., & Kouloukoussa, M. (2011). Apidima Cave fossils provide earliest evidence of Homo sapiens in Eurasia. Nature, 571(7766), 500-504. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1376-z

Henshilwood, C. S., d’Errico, F., Marean, C. W., Milo, R. G., & Yates, R. (2002). Emerging complexity in early lithic industries: The Still Bay points of Blombos Cave (South Africa). Journal of Archaeological Science, 29(9), 891-905. https://doi.org/10.1006/jasc.2001.0774

Isaacs, J. (1980). Australian Dreaming: 40,000 Years of Aboriginal History. Sydney, Australia: Lansdowne Press.

Krause, J., Lalueza-Fox, C., Orlando, L., Enard, W., Green, R. E., Burbano, H. A., Hublin, J.-J., Hänni, C., Fortea, J., de la Rasilla, M., Bertranpetit, J., Rosas, A., & Pääbo, S. (2007). The derived FOXP2 variant of modern humans was shared with Neandertals. Current Biology, 17(21), 1908-1912. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2007.10.008

Laland, K. N., Odling-Smee, J., & Myles, S. (2010). How culture shaped the human genome: Bringing genetics and the human sciences together. Nature Reviews Genetics, 11(2), 137-148. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg2734

Leakey, R. E. (1973). Origins. New York, NY: Dutton.

Lepre, C. J., Roche, H., Kent, D. V., Harmand, S., Quinn, R. L., Brugal, J.-P., Texier, P.-J., Lenoble, A., & Feibel, C. S. (2011). An earlier origin for the Acheulean. Nature, 477, 82-85. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10372

Lewis-Williams, D. (2002). The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art. Thames & Hudson.

Lycett, S. J., & Gowlett, J. A. J. (2008). On questions surrounding the Acheulean ‘tradition’. World Archaeology, 40(3), 295-315. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438240802261267

Marean, C. W. (2010). Pinnacle Point Cave 13B (Western Cape Province, South Africa) in context: The Cape Floral kingdom, shellfish, and modern human origins. Journal of Human Evolution, 59(3-4), 425-443. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2010.07.011

McDougall, I., Brown, F. H., & Fleagle, J. G. (2005). Stratigraphic placement and age of modern humans from Kibish, Ethiopia. Nature, 433(7027), 733-736. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03258

McPherron, S. P., Alemseged, Z., Marean, C. W., Wynn, J. G., Reed, D., Geraads, D., Bobe, R., & Béarat, H. A. (2010). Evidence for stone-tool-assisted consumption of animal tissues before 3.39 million years ago at Dikika, Ethiopia. Nature, 466, 857-860. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09248

McBrearty, S., & Brooks, A. S. (2000). The revolution that wasn’t: A new interpretation of the origin of modern human behavior. Journal of Human Evolution, 39(5), 453-563. https://doi.org/10.1006/jhev.2000.0435

Meyer, M., Kircher, M., Gansauge, M.-T., Li, H., Racimo, F., Mallick, S., Schraiber, J. G., Jay, F., Prüfer, K., de Filippo, C., Sudmant, P. H., Alkan, C., Fu, Q., Do, R., Rohland, N., Tandon, A., Siebauer, M., Green, R. E., Bryc, K., Briggs, A. W., Stenzel, U., Dabney, J., Shendure, J., Kitzman, J., Hammer, M. F., Shunkov, M. V., Derevianko, A. P., Patterson, N., Andrés, A. M., Eichler, E. E., Slatkin, M., Reich, D., Kelso, J., & Pääbo, S. (2012). A high-coverage genome sequence from an archaic Denisovan individual. Science, 338(6104), 222-226. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1224344

Neubauer, S., Gunz, P., & Hublin, J.-J. (2018). The evolution of modern human brain shape. Science Advances, 4(1), eaao5961. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aao5961

Patel, A. D. (2008). Music, Language, and the Brain. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Pettitt, P. (2002). The Neanderthal dead: Exploring mortuary variability in Middle Paleolithic Eurasia. Before Farming, 1(4), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.3828/bfarm.2002.1.4

Pettitt, P. (2010). The Palaeolithic Origins of Human Burial. Routledge.

Pinker, S. (2000). The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. New York, NY: Harper Perennial Modern Classics.

Powell, A., Shennan, S., & Thomas, M. G. (2009). Late Pleistocene demography and the appearance of modern human behavior. Science, 324(5932), 1298-1301. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1170165

Richter, D., Grün, R., Joannes-Boyau, R., Steele, T. E., Amani, F., Rué, M., Fernandes, P., Raynal, J.-P., Geraads, D., Ben-Ncer, A., Hublin, J.-J., & McPherron, S. P. (2017). The age of the hominin fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and the origins of the Middle Stone Age. Nature, 546, 293-296. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature22335

Rightmire, G. P. (2009). Middle Pleistocene Homo: The African record. Journal of Anthropological Sciences, 87, 67-76.

Scally, A., Durbin, R. (2012). Revising the human mutation rate: Implications for understanding human evolution. Nature Reviews Genetics, 13(10), 745-753. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg3295

Scerri, E. M. L., Thomas, M. G., Manica, A., Gunz, P., Stock, J. T., Stringer, C., Grove, M., Groucutt, H. S., Timmermann, A., Rightmire, G. P., d’Errico, F., Tryon, C. A., Drake, N. A., Brooks, A. S., Dennell, R. W., Durbin, R., Henn, B. M., Lee-Thorp, J., deMenocal, P., Petraglia, M. D., Thompson, J. C., Scally, A., & Chikhi, L. (2021). Beyond multiregional and simple out-of-Africa models of human evolution. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 5(10), 1370-1382. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01539-4

Schlebusch, C. M., Skoglund, P., Sjödin, P., Gattepaille, L. M., Hernandez, D., Jay, F., Li, S., De Jongh, M., Singleton, A., Blum, M. G. B., Soodyall, H., & Jakobsson, M. (2017). Southern African ancient genomes estimate modern human divergence to 350,000 to 260,000 years ago. Science, 358(6363), 652-655. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aao6266

Semaw, S. (2000). The world’s oldest stone artefacts from Gona, Ethiopia: Their implications for understanding stone technology and patterns of human evolution between 2.6-1.5 million years ago. Journal of Archaeological Science, 27(12), 1197-1214. https://doi.org/10.1006/jasc.1999.0592

Shea, J. J. (2003). Neandertals, competition, and the origin of modern human behavior in the Levant. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 12(4), 173-187. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.10106

Shea, J. J. (2006). The origins of lithic projectile point technology: Evidence from Africa, the Levant, and Europe. Journal of Archaeological Science, 33(6), 823-846. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2005.10.015

Stiegler, B. (1998). Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Stout, D., & Chaminade, T. (2009). The cognitive neuroscience of prehistoric stone tool-making. Neuropsychologia, 47(5), 1251-1261. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.01.009

Stringer, C., & Mellars, P. (1989). The human revolution: Behavioural and biological perspectives on the origins of modern humans. Edinburgh University Press.

Tomasello, M. (2008). Origins of Human Communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Toth, N., & Schick, K. (2009). The Oldowan: The tool making of early hominins and implications for understanding the adaptation of human ancestors. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 19(1), 85-97. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774309000055

Tryon, C. A., & McBrearty, S. (2002). Tephrostratigraphy and the Acheulian to Middle Stone Age transition in the Kapthurin Formation, Kenya. Journal of Human Evolution, 42(1-2), 211-235. https://doi.org/10.1006/jhev.2001.0513

Vaneechoutte, M., Kuliukas, A., & Verhaegen, M. (2011). Was man more aquatic in the past? Fifty years after Alister Hardy – Waterside hypotheses of human evolution. Bentham Science Publishers.

Vaneechoutte, M. (2014). The origin of articulate language revisited: The potential of a semi-aquatic past of human ancestors to explain the origin of human musicality and articulate language. Human Evolution, 29(1-3), 1-34.

Vanhaeren, M., d’Errico, F., Stringer, C., James, S. L., Todd, J. A., & Mienis, H. K. (2006). Middle Paleolithic shell beads in Israel and Algeria. Science, 312(5781), 1785-1788. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1128139

Wadley, L. (2001). What is cultural modernity? A general view and a South African perspective from Rose Cottage Cave. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 11(2), 201-221. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774301000090

White, T. D., Asfaw, B., DeGusta, D., Gilbert, H., Richards, G. D., Suwa, G., & Howell, F. C. (2003). Pleistocene Homo sapiens from Middle Awash, Ethiopia. Nature, 423, 742-747. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature01669

White, T. (2003). Early hominids—Diversity or distortion? Science, 299(5615), 1994-1997. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1080851

Wittgenstein, L. (1922). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. London, UK: Kegan Paul.

Zatorre, R. J., Belin, P., & Penhune, V. B. (2002). Structure and function of auditory cortex: Music and speech. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6(1), 37-46. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(00)01816-7

Zilhão, J., d’Errico, F., Bordes, J.-G., Lenoble, A., Texier, J.-P., & Rigaud, J.-P. (2010). Analysis of Aurignacian interstratification at the Chatelperronian-type site and implications for the behavioral modernity of Neandertals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(37), 1023-1028. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1411529111