The Prehistory of the Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion and Science (Paperback)

As with most cognitive studies, Mithen's book summarizes what is known of the similarity of chimpanzee [our nearest relative] intellect and abilities in contrast with our own. As do many of his colleagues, he finds our primate cousins lacking in all but minimal skills. With the chimpanzees thus disposed of, he moves to examine the hominid record. This is the great strength of this work. Instead of the usual tactic of portraying what is known of today's human intellect and projecting backward, Mithen starts at the beginnings of human evolution to carry his argument forward. Along the way he utilizes anthropology, morphological studies, even climate and geography. He uses evidence well, assuming little and carefully building the model. Key points in the narrative are two periods of hominid brain enlargement, which he uses to enhance his model of special "intelligences."

With the earliest hominids having only a Swiss Army knife array of mental tools, each segment of intelligence had to develop independent of the others. According to Mithen, this situation led to each "tool" building a separate "chapel" in the mind. Based on a central "nave" of "general" intelligence - keeping the body going, food gathering, sex - new intelligences would arise around it. These new intelligences are technical, natural, social and linguistic. Each operated independently of the others, so that tool-making enhanced "technical" intelligence, while learning about bird migration or fruiting seasons developed "natural" intelligence. The Swiss Army knife structure prevented these intelligences from interacting until the emergence of Homo sapiens. Then, according to Mithen, a "cognitive fluidity" tore through the walls of the "intelligence chapels" to acquire the broad range of abilities the mind exhibits today. While direct evidence of all this activity is, necessarily missing, the forceful presentation and elegant logic make it all a captivating read.

It's easy to critique Mithen's thesis. All you need is a competitive model of cognition. However, that would be unfair to what he has achieved, a carefully synthesized model of how human intelligence developed. Even without bringing in a competitive thesis, Mithen falls down in two important areas. After lengthy discussion of tool-making enhancing "technical" intelligence and its role in developing hunter-gatherer societies, he blithely omits any input from the "gathering" half of those communities. While rarely mentioning that tool-makers/hunters are almost exclusively male, even among chimpanzees, he restricts mention of female roles to the need to give birth to small-headed babies. He also depicts the changing of "social" intelligence associated with grooming in early hominids to the development of speech later. He ignores the possibility that speech is just as likely to have arisen within the community of females, who had greater reason to utilize it.

The second major flaw is his conclusion on how modern minds evolved from earlier ones. He argues that the "social" intelligence became the tool that opened the walls of his "intelligence chapels" of the cathedral. Since there is no reason to believe that intelligence should be so pigeon-holed as Mithen makes it, "social intelligence" as an integrating force is vague at best. Although comparison with a competitive thesis may be unfair, it's difficult not to refer the reader to Daniel C. Dennett's Multiple Drafts model of consciousness. If Mithen had consulted Dennett's Consciousness Explained, instead of blithely dismissing it, he would have discovered that his cathedral and chapels would have been built up over time instead of needing serious renovation at the end. Mithen would have been able to use the same evidence, indeed, the same metaphors, but with progressive construction instead of building then repairing. Knocking down mental walls is not a satisfactory technique to build intellect. Instead, Mithen should have kept the theatre metaphor, which he restricts to history, and built up his drama from a soliloquy to a full cast epic. That would have allowed him to enlarge mental capacities through new players, scenery changes, improved interaction among the cast, perhaps with himself taking the final bow. Given the work he's obviously put into this and the wealth of evidence he's considered and offered us, a smattering of applause [after a careful reading of the libretto] is not out of order.