Origins of Human Innovation and Creativity, Volume 16

Series Editor

Contributors

Chapter 1 Origins of Human Innovation and Creativity

1.1 The Problem of Stasis in Stone Tool Technology

1.2 The Evolutionary Ecology of Creativity

1.3 Emergent Patterns of Creativity and Innovation in Early Technologies

1.4 Concluding Remarks

Chapter 2 Creativity and Complex Society Before the Upper Palaeolithic Transition

2.1 A Definition

2.2 Modelling the Hominin Mind

2.3 The Number of Minds and the Evolution of Creativity

2.4 Social Brains and Active Personal Networks

2.5 Creativity, the Senses and Social Complexity

2.6 Conclusion

Chapter 3 North African Origins of Symbolically Mediated Behaviour and the Aterian

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Symbolism and Humans

3.3 North Africa During the MSA and the Aterian

3.4 A revised Chronology for the Aterian

3.5 Innovations in the Aterian

3.5 Environmental Context for Developments in the Aterian

3.6 Discussion

Chapter 4 Personal Ornaments and Symbolism Among the Neanderthals

Chapter 5 Invention, Reinvention and Innovation

Chapter 6 Emergent Patterns of Creativity and Innovation in Early Technologies

Chapter 7 The Evolutionary Ecology of Creativity

7.1 Modern Humans as a ‘Major Transition’ in Evolution

7.2 Pair-bonding and Courtship Displays

7.3 Foraging Strategy and Information-Sharing

7.4 The Emergence of Phenotypic Thought

7.5 The Archaeology of Alternative Reality

7.6 Conclusions

Chapter 8 Climate, Creativity and Competition

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Possible Causes and Scales of Change

8.3 Social Processes of Population Expansion and Contraction

8.4 Precision and Accuracy in Dating the Spread of Behavioural Novelty

8.5 Neanderthal Innovations

8.6 Neanderthals, Climatic Change and Innovation

8.7 Future Directions

Note

Index

Innovation and creativity are two of the key characteristics that distinguish cultural transmission from biological transmission. This book explores a number of questions concerning the nature and timing of the origins of human creativity. What were the driving factors in the development of new technologies? What caused the stasis in stone tool technological innovation in the Early Pleistocene? Were there specific regions and episodes of enhanced technological development, or did it occur at a steady pace where ancestral humans lived? The authors are archaeologists who address these questions, armed with data from ancient artefacts such as shell beads used as jewelry, primitive musical instruments, and sophisticated techniques required to fashion certain kinds of stone into tools.

Providing ‘state of art’ discussions that step back from the usual archaeological publications that focus mainly on individual site discoveries, this book presents the full picture on how and why creativity in Middle to Late Pleistocene archeology/anthropology evolved.

• Gives a full, original and multidisciplinary perspective on how and why creativity evolved in the Middle to Late Pleistocene
• Enhances our understanding of the big leaps forward in creativity at certain times
• Assesses the intellectual creativity of Homo erectus, H. neanderthalensis, and H. sapiens via their artefacts

quaternary scientists, palaeoanthropologists, archeologists