The Human Evolutionary Transition: From Animal Intelligence to Culture

Magnus Enquist; Stefano Ghirlanda; Johan Lind

Book

The Human Evolutionary Transition

From Animal Intelligence to Culture

Magnus Enquist , Stefano Ghirlanda and Johan Lind

Language: English

Published/Copyright: 2023

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About this book

A major new theory of why human intelligence has not evolved in other species

The Human Evolutionary Transition offers a unified view of the evolution of intelligence, presenting a bold and provocative new account of how animals and humans have followed two powerful yet very different evolutionary paths to intelligence. This incisive book shows how animals rely on robust associative mechanisms that are guided by genetic information, which enable animals to sidestep complex problems in learning and decision making but ultimately limit what they can learn. Humans embody an evolutionary transition to a different kind of intelligence, one that relies on behavioral and mental flexibility. The book argues that flexibility is useless to most animals because they lack sufficient opportunities to learn new behavioral and mental skills. Humans find these opportunities in lengthy childhoods and through culture.

Blending the latest findings in fields ranging from psychology to evolutionary anthropology, The Human Evolutionary Transition draws on computational analyses of the problems organisms face, extensive overviews of empirical data on animal and human learning, and mathematical modeling and computer simulations of hypotheses about intelligence. This compelling book demonstrates that animal and human intelligence evolved from similar selection pressures while identifying bottlenecks in evolution that may explain why human-like intelligence is so rare.

Author / Editor information

Magnus Enquist is professor of ethology and director of the Centre for Cultural Evolution at Stockholm University. Stefano Ghirlanda is professor of psychology at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Johan Lind is associate professor of ethology and deputy director of the Centre for Cultural Evolution at Stockholm University.

Reviews

"The Human Evolutionary Transition is a highly valuable contribution to the field that will reward careful study."---Ronald J. Planer, The British Society for the Philosophy of Science --- "A new and compelling evolutionary stance on comparative cognition."

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Frontmatter
i

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CONTENTS
v

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
vii

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1 Challenges to the Evolution of Intelligence
1

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2 Seven Hypotheses
12

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3 Learning Behavioral Sequences
26

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4 Genetic Guidance of Learning
51

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5 Sources of Information
60

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6 Social Learning
73

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7 Can Animals Think?
86

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8 The Nature of Animal Intelligence
113

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9 Uniquely Human
124

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10 The Transition
141

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11 How and Why Does Thinking Work?
149

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12 Acquisition and Transmission of Sequential Information
167

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13 Social Transmission of Mental Skills
177

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14 Cooperation
191

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15 The Power of Cultural Evolution
198

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16 Why Only Humans?
209

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REFERENCES
227

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INDEX
275

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A NOTE ON THE TYPE
281

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Publishing information

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

eBook published on:

November 10, 2022

eBook ISBN:

9780691240763

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691240763

eBook ISBN: 9780691240763

Keywords for this book

Behavior; Learning; Cultural evolution; Sociocultural evolution; Thought; Human evolution; Evolutionary dynamics; Decision-making; Human evolution (origins of society and culture); The Major Transitions in Evolution; Evolution of human intelligence; Modern Studies; Evolutionary psychology; Evolution; Language acquisition; Evolutionary biology; Cognitive architecture; Cultural history; Activation; Skill; Organism; Cost-effectiveness analysis; Life; Adaptation; Probability; Result; Developmental psychology; Animal cognition; Cellular differentiation; Cognitive revolution; Approach Behavior; Reinforcement; Behavioral modernity; Explanatory power; Ecological niche; Perception; Comparative psychology; Biology; Outsourcing; Social environment; Zone of proximal development; Stimulus (physiology); Ethology; Inference; Trait theory; Combinatorial explosion; Scientific notation; Tool Use Behavior; Governance; Energy consumption; Anatomically modern human; Population genetics; Dynamical system; Genetic divergence; Implementation; Social intelligence; Sensory processing; Obstacle; Mating; Socialism; Order of acquisition; Invention; Human behavior; Symbolic language (engineering); Emergence; Social learning theory; Backtracking; Dimension; Early childhood; Information processing

Audience(s) for this book

For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research

The Human Evolutionary Transition

Overview

About this book

Author / Editor information

Reviews

Topics

Table of contents

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

1 Challenges to the Evolution of Intelligence

2 Seven Hypotheses

3 Learning Behavioral Sequences

4 Genetic Guidance of Learning

5 Sources of Information

6 Social Learning

7 Can Animals Think?

8 The Nature of Animal Intelligence

9 Uniquely Human

10 The Transition

11 How and Why Does Thinking Work?

12 Acquisition and Transmission of Sequential Information

13 Social Transmission of Mental Skills

14 Cooperation

15 The Power of Cultural Evolution

16 Why Only Humans?

REFERENCES

INDEX

A NOTE ON THE TYPE

Bibliographic data