The Dual Role of Culture for Reconstructing Early Sapiens Cognition

Questions on early sapiens cognition, the cognitive abilities of our ancestors, are intriguing but notoriously hard to tackle. Leaving no hard traces in the archeological record, these abilities need to be inferred from indirect evidence, informed by our understanding of present-day cognition. Most of such attempts acknowledge the role that culture, as a faculty, has played for human evolution, but they underrate or even disregard the role of distinct cultural traditions and the ensuing diversity, both in present-day humans and as a dimension of past cognition. We argue that culture has exerted a profound impact on human cognition from the start in a dual manner: It scaffolds cognition through both development and evolution, and it thereby continually diversifies the form and content of human thinking. To unveil early sapiens cognition and retrace its evolutionary trajectories, this cognitive diversity must be considered. We present two strategies to achieve this: large-scale extrapolation and phylogenetic comparison. The former aims at filtering out diversity to determine what is basic and universal versus culturally shaped (illustrated for theory of mind abilities). The latter capitalizes on the diversity to reconstruct evolutionary trajectories (illustrated for religious beliefs). The two methods, in combination, advance our understanding of the cognitive abilities of our early sapiens ancestors and of how these abilities emerged and evolved. To conclude, we discuss the implications of this approach for our insights into early cognition itself and its scientific investigation.

Automated summary

Questions on early sapiens cognition are difficult to tackle, but can be inferred from indirect evidence and our understanding of present-day cognition. Culture has played a profound role in human cognition from the beginning, scaffolding cognition through development and evolution, and continually diversifying human thinking. By considering cognitive diversity, we can unveil early sapiens cognition and retrace its evolutionary trajectories using large-scale extrapolation and phylogenetic comparison.