The target article rightly questions whether the archaeological record is useful for identifying sea changes in hominin cognitive abilities. This commentary suggests an alternative approach of synthesizing findings from primatology, evolutionary developmental biology, and paleoanthropology to formulate hypotheses about cognitive evolution in hominins that lived during the three million years that preceded the record of material culture (the Botanic Age).
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Our species' behavioral and cognitive evolution constitute a key research topic across many scientific disciplines. Based on ethnographic hunter-gatherer data, Stibbard-Hawkes challenges the common link made between past material culture and cognitive capacities. Despite this adequate criticism, archaeology must retain a central role for studying these issues due to its unique access to relevant empirical evidence in deep time.
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Stibbard-Hawkes' taphonomic findings are valuable, and his call for caution warranted, but the hazards he raises are being mitigated by a multi-pronged approach; current research on behavioural/cognitive modernity is not based solely on material chronology. Theories synthesize data from archaeology, anthropology, psychology, neuroscience, and genetics, and predictions arising from these theories are tested with mathematical and agent-based models.
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The target article rightly questions whether the archaeological record is useful for identifying sea changes in hominin cognitive abilities. This commentary suggests an alternative approach of synthesizing findings from primatology, evolutionary developmental biology, and paleoanthropology to formulate hypotheses about cognitive evolution in hominins that lived during the three million years that preceded the record of material culture (the Botanic Age).
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