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Here is an exhilarating intellectual performance,
in the tradition of Roger Penrose's The Emperor's New
Mind and Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct.
On the way to showing how the world of our ancient ancestors
shaped our modern modular mind, Steven Mithen shares one
provocative insight after another as he answers a series
of fascinating questions:
- Were our brains hard-wired in the Pleistocene
era by the needs of hunter-gatherers?
- When did religious beliefs first emerge?
- Why were the first paintings made by
humankind so technically accomplished and expressive?
- What can the sexual habits of chimpanzees
tell us about the prehistory of the modern mind?
This is the first archaeological account
to support the new modular concept of the mind. The concept,
promulgated by cognitive and evolutionary psychologists,
views the mind as a collection of specialized intelligences
or "cognitive domains," somewhat like a Swiss
army knife with its specialized blades and tools. Arguing
that only archaeology can answer many of the key questions
raised by this new concept, Steven Mithen delineates a three-phase
sequence for mind's evolution over six million years --
from early Homo in Africa to the ice-age Neanderthals
to our modern modular minds.
Here is an intriguing and challenging explanation
of what it means to be human, a bold new theory about the
origins and nature of the mind.
Steven Mithen has taught at Cambridge
University and is currently Lecturer in Archaeology at the
University of Reading. 'An active field archaeologist, he
is at present directing excavations of early prehistoric
settlements on the Hebridean Islands of western Scotland.
His previous book, Thoughtful Foragers: A Study of Prehistoric
Decision Making, achieved widespread critical acclaim.
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