What Early Sapiens Cognition Can Teach Us: Untangling Cultural Influences on Human Cognition Across Time

• Main Author: Andrea Bender
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-01-01
• Series: Frontiers in Psychology
• Subjects: cognition; culture; evolution; early humans; chaîne opératoire; cross-cultural comparisons
• Online Access: https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00099/full

Evidence of cultural influences on cognition is accumulating, but untangling these cultural influences from one another or from non-cultural influences has remained a challenging task. As between-group differences are neither a sufficient nor a necessary indicator of cultural impact, cross-cultural comparisons in isolation are unable to furnish any cogent conclusions. This shortfall can be compensated by taking a diachronic perspective that focuses on the role of culture for the emergence and evolution of our cognitive abilities. Three strategies for reconstructing early human cognition are presented: the chaîne opératoire approach and its extension to brain-imaging studies, large-scale extrapolations, and phylogenetic comparative methods. While these strategies are reliant on our understanding of present-day cognition, they conversely also have the potential to advance this understanding in fundamental ways.