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

by Steven Mithen

Book Overview

Here is an exhilarating intellectual performance, in the tradition of Roger Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind and Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct. On the way to showing how the world of our... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0500050813
• Release Date: November 1996
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.3" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

Interesting Speculation

At first blush, the idea of creating an archeology of the human mind seems improbable, but Mithen actually makes compelling reading. Mithen isolates specific mental skills that most probably were used by our ancestors and traces there modifications and eventual integration to form the modern human brain.The reader does not have to buy into the specific developmental theory of the book in order to be challenged and amazed by the insights. Mithen is clearly not in possession of the final answer to questions about our intellectual heritage, but he clearly shows that it is fruitful to consider questions of the etiology of religon, art and science from an archaeological perspective. Mithen shows that there is much more that can be learned from the study of the development of human culture. Moreover, the book is well illustrated and written in a manner that opens up these concepts to the lay reader. Thought provoking and rewarding, this book makes the long history of mankind and our ancestors seem tangible. Highly recommended!

Clearly constructed and supported arguments.

I loved reading this book. Mithen's arguments are clearly constructed and well supported. Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, Mithen does an excellent job describing the process of evolution with respect to human cognition. I think this makes it a particularly good introductory book. I also enjoyed its discussion of the architecture of the mind. Mithen describes competing and complementary theories from disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, neurology, primatology, biological anthropology, social anthropology, and computer science. In the process, he begins to synthesize his own theory, which he then supports with archeological evidence.I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the evolution of mind. It's a good introduction for those just learning about the topic, as was the case for myself when I first read this book. I also think it could provide rich food for thought for the more learned cognitive scientists.

physical remains that illuminate the evolution of the mind

Mithen does what you always want as a reader. He gives you the evidence he has used to reach his conclusions (including a wonderfully extensive set of footnotes). You may disagree or find his descriptive framework too generic as others have noted. But he has clearly described and marshalled as evidence for his arguments the physical remains of human evolution and culture from 4 million years ago to 40,000 years ago. This is a particularly fascinating period in the evolution of the mind since it starts without anything like human awareness and consciousness and ends up with the modern human mind. A lot of great books have been written about the last 50,000 years (i love Jared Diamond's books - particularly "The Third Chimpanzee"), but this was the first book that i found that did a nice job of laying the foundation from the archeological record on how the human mind reached this current state.Mithen in his subtitle offers to explain the origins of art, religion, and science. His model here is weak, as it does not provide the rigor to explain the development of religion or science, but i think he actually does do a nice job with how art may have evolved with the growing connection between previously separate areas of brain function.The book does have its faults. He uses two metaphors to organize his thinking: the various stages in the evolution of a cathederal and the progress through a play. His reliance on these metaphors becomes a little tedious, and his writing is sometimes repetitive.That said, this is a book that does a great job in filing in a fascinating period in "human" history: from 4 million years ago to 50,000 years ago. And, even if you disagree, Mithen provides enough evidence and documentation for the reader to enter into a dialogue.

The archaeology book of the 1990s

I read The Prehistory of the Mind when it first came out, and my copy has now been read several times. As a prehistoric archaeologist, I have found this the most exciting and richly stimulating book on archaeology that I have read during the 1990s. Steve Mithen brings together new ideas from evolutionary and developmental psychology, and produces a (controversial) theory of the evolution of the human mind. The great value of his book is that Mithen sets a theoretical sequence generalised from the work of the evolutionary psychologists into the context of the archaeological evidence, from the earliest hominids through to the emergence of our own species, Homo sapiens sapiens. He seeks to relate the mental capabilities of our hominid ancestors to the ways in which they made and used stone tools. His unfolding of the evolved abilities of the modern human mind against the archaeology, art, ritual human burials etc of the European upper palaeolithic period of 40,000 to 30,000 years ago provides a convincing and at last scientific theory to underpin the idea of the 'upper palaeolithic revolution' that a number of archaeologists and anthropologists have been talking about for some years. I think that this book will prove to have a decisive influence on the development of archaeological theory, and that it will inspire archaeologists to do a lot of thinking in quite new directions, seeking to derive much more information about the mental, psychological, cultural and social behaviour of prehistoric peoples from traditional archaeological data.

Illuminating theory of the evolution of human intelligence

This is a wonderful book. It starts with the question of whether we are fundamentally different from chimpanzies in the way our mind works. Taking the perspective of an archaeologist, and blending that with the views of evolutionary biology and of human developmental psychology and cognitive science, Mithen spins an extroadinary tale. The earliest and most primative primates probably had most of their cognitive world "hard-wired." They had all the specific knowledge they needed for survival. Primates really took off from the rest of the mammals when we developed "general intelligence," which could learn from trial and error, and which could make generalizations based on experience. However, this general intelligence was slow in acquiring new knowledge. To accomplish that, specialized intelligences, or programs, needed to evolve. The first of these was social intelligence, which was the specialized ability to read and understand social heirarchies. Early empathy and the ability to infer from your own experience what other members of your species were thinking and feeling was the greatest power this new intelligence conferred, and became the origin of consciousness. The second specialized intelligence was that of natural biology. This was very helpful in expanding our observations of the world, and increased the food sources which were available to primitive ancestors of homo sapiens. The third specialized intelligence was technical intelligence. This enabled early man to fashion tools and to use them in ever more complex ways. To these three intelligences -- psychology, biology, and physics, so to speak -- was added linguistic intelligence. This gave the conscious mind a voice. It also enhanced the other three intelligences, especially social intelligence. Prior to the evolution of linguistic intelligence, peer communication was mostly visual and tactile. Speech was much more efficient than grooming in building and maintaining social bonds. It was also linguistic intelligence that made possible the next great leap to meta-intelligence. Linking the four specialized intelligences, there evolved during the period leading up to 40,000 years ago, a supraordinate intelligence which permitted what we might now call multitasking, or integration among the other specialized intelligences. We see the first evidence of this in the bursting forth of art and religion at that time. None of these appear to have been present prior to that time. Much like a simple computer, the earliest primates had a set of basic information. Then came a generalized processor. To this were added specialized programs for psychology, biology, physics, and language. Finally, true homo sapiens developed a metaprogram linking the others and permitting genuine creativity to take off. Unlike most popular books on science for the educated layperson, Mithen does not go in for much chit chat. This is a pet peave of mine in other books, such as "Sex on the Br