ABSTRACT
Symbolic reasoning ability led to the acquisition of language within the context of a hominid social world. This must have influenced both the way language was used and its relationship to other aspects of a complex emerging mental life. In addition to the focus on language and tool-making, there is perhaps one other important component in the genesis of modern human cognition. Robin Dunbar has argued that early human social life provided the circumstances for changes in patterns of interaction around grooming and other key aspects of early hominid social life that led, interactively, to improved cognitive abilities and the emergence of language. A more common way of describing the multi-dimensionality of human cognition is by way of modular theories of the mind. If human symbolic reasoning evolved in a particular set of circumstances to solve particular types of problem then, from an adaptationist perspective, these founding conditions should be located in the way modern humans think.
