ABSTRACT
This chapter takes a gradualist approach to the evolution of the human mind and proposes three key stages in cognition over the last million years, associated with three prehistoric periods of behavior and their particular adaptive circumstances. By the late Acheulean, normativity is evident in hominin stone tool forms, a cognitive trait that may have been selected for to enhance cooperation in large groups. During the Middle Palaeolithic, planned use of the landscape as well as the feedback loops and increased hierarchical complexity of hominin stone tool production are indicative of recursive thinking. This trait was perhaps selected for in circumstances of competition between hominins, including between normative groups. Middle Palaeolithic hominins occasionally display the capacity for abstraction, but it is not until the late Palaeolithic that such behaviors become habitual. Climatic crises in eastern and southern Africa around 70,000 years ago may have precipitated selection for abstraction, in order that hominins could form tribal supergroups to facilitate access to remote resources, and so that they could produce multiple-state tools to increase hunting efficiency.
