The document discusses how early hominins like Homo erectus became human by controlling fire and developing language. It explores how using fire for cooking allowed for increased brain size and how maintaining fires required cognitive abilities like planning and cooperation. Early sites show evidence of fire use dating back 1.5 million years. The development of language around 150,000-200,000 years ago allowed for sharing knowledge culturally rather than just genetically. This helped drive further technological and cultural evolution in humans.

1. Session 19: Episode 5(4)
—
Apes become human with fire and
language
William P. Hall
President
Kororoit Institute Proponents and Supporters
Assoc., Inc. - http://kororoit.org
william-hall@bigpond.com
http://www.orgs-evolution-knowledge.net
Access my research papers from
Google Citations

2. Tonight
 The last session explored the circumstances that set our hominin
ancestors on a very different path from that followed by our
anthropoid cousins. The other apes remained in the primeval
forests of “Eden”, while our progenitors were expelled and had
to become smart carnivores to survive
 This sets the stage for tonight’s session
– Here I explore the circumstances, selective processes and
technological innovations that made these carnivorous apes
recognizably human and set them on a still accelerating path of
technological and cultural evolution.
– In this process culture begins to replace genetics as the major
mechanism for transmitting adaptive knowledge
Becoming human
Using, keeping & making fire
Language revolution and the emergence of “archaic” humans
Language and the emergence of groups as higher order autopoietic systems
Homo sapiens’ dispersal out of Africa
Considering the pace of technological change

3. Taking fruit from the tree of knowledge and the
expulsion from Eden (Sistine Chapel)
3
The Bible and Leonardo got it wrong – actually, it
was the other way around

4. The carnivorous savanna
ape becomes the top
predator

5. Aggressive scavenging becomes active predation
5
Hominins using haak en steek branches as tools (Guthrie 2007): a. for driving big cats away from their prey. b. The
simple conversion of a thorn branch into a "megathorn" lance for active hunting.
 Predator kills represent a potentially significant resource for
scavenging apes
– All savanna predators avoid running into thorn trees and bushes
because of the risk to their eyes
– Most will back off if a thorn branch is waved in their faces
– It is a small step from using available thorn branches in defense to
actively use them to drive predators away from their kills
– It is another small step to hunt & kill prey themselves

6.  Oldowan tools made & used
from 2.6 to 1.7 mya (left)
– Hominin teeth can’t tear skin
and flesh of large prey
– Anvils & hammer stones used to
access marrow from scavenged
carcasses
– Kanzi the bonobo learned to
break stones & use sharp flakes as cutting tools
– Early hominin culture assimilated knowledge that broken hammer
stones can be used to cut skin & ligaments for butchering large prey
before lost to competing carnivores and scavengers
 More sophisticated Acheulean hand choppers & other tools
(right) made & used from 1.7 mya to 0.1 mya facilitated
butchering but required greater knowledge & dexterity to make
 Note exceedingly slow rate of technological change
– Suggests neural/social/linguistic capacity to accumulate knowledge
of complex technologies was stringently limited for most of
hominin history6
With thorn branches, spears and stone butchering tools,
hominins became top carnivores on the savanna

7. Cognitive improvements for the cultural accumulation
of knowledge begins to dominate adaptive evolution
 Acheulean tool-kit gives early Homo the fangs and claws it
needed to become top carnivore on the savanna
– Limited changes in the erectus toolkit over one million years
– Suggests cognitive limitations to easily refine & modify tool use
– Also, without effective means to preserve & transmit knowledge
culturally ,technological innovations may be lost & reinvented several
times & may take hundreds of thousands of years to be consolidated
 Carnivorous hominins expand to Dmanisi in Georgia and spread
through Eurasia as H. erectus (and other species?)
 Selection for cognitive improvements
– Social capacity to work cooperatively & share proceeds & knowledge
– Foresight for planning
– Capabilities for memory, learning and teaching
– Neuromuscular coordination for tool-making
 As cognitive capacity improves via genetic selection, the capacity
for the cultural storage and sharing on knowledge also grows7

8. What comprises cognitive capacity?
8
Twomey 2011

9. Early human groups pioneered a particular socio-
cognitive niche based on 5 principal capacities
 Socio-cognitive niche: cooperation, egalitarianism, mind-reading
(theory of mind), language, cultural accumulation
 Principal classes of social cognition in hunter–gatherer bands and
inferred reinforcing relationships between them
9
Whiten & Erdal 2011

10. Larger brains require
better diets to support
their evolution
—
Proto humans learn to control fire
and cook their food

11. Aiello & Wheeler 1995
Selective tradeoffs involving diet & cognition
11
Melin et al. 2014
 Environmental deterioration forced
early hominins to work harder to find
and extract hidden/imbedded foods.
 Larger brains are energetically costly
- Selective feedback on tradeoffs
between cognitive capacity and
masticatory/digestive capabilities
- Work smarter to find better quality
foods releases energy to becoming
smarter yet

12. Hominins become top savanna carnivores
12
5 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0
 Speciation & increasing brain size over time associated with pulses of
climatic variability (Shultz et al. 2012; Shultz & Maslin 2013)
 Original large carnivore guild
– lions, leopards, three sabertooth cats, large
bear, bear-sized wolverine, several large
hyenids, wild dogs, etc.
 3 mya aggressive scavanging
 2 mya active hunting with spears & cutters
 By 1.8 mya Olduvai hunters were top carnivores
taking prime bovid prey (Bunn & Gurtov 2013)
and most large carnivores were essentially extinct
Werdelin & Lewis 2013

13. Another set of tradeoffs
13 Isler & van Schaik 2014

14. Diet and cognitive capacity
14
Positive feedback loop
Babbitt et al. 2011

15. Ecology of the human use of fire
15
Twomey 2011

16. Cognitive demands associated with maintaining fires
Fire Related Behaviors Possible Problems Cognitive demands
Access to Fire from Others
- force or stealth
- free access
- exchange
- Risk of injury and death
- Open to free-riding
- Lack of Intragroup cooperation
- Agreeing on suitable barter items
- Intergroup level collaboration
- Monitoring information about free-riders
- Understanding and communicating intentions
Maintaining Fire
Gathering fuel
- group gathering
- proximate or remote
Individual Gathering
- stockpiling
- Group coordination
- Divided labor
- Adopting complimentary roles
- Reciprocity
- Acting remotely from each other
- Group level cooperation
- Deciding who does what
- Monitoring reciprocal exchanges
- Knowing what remote others were doing
- Group contingency planning
Transporting Fire
- burning logs
- fire carriers
- Fire Must be kept oxygenated
- Must decide who carries the fire
- Needs to be fed and attended to
- Attention to the task
- Being ready in advance
- Division of labour
Protecting Fire
- cave use
- finding new shelters
- shelter construction
- Increased travel costs
- Group level cooperation
- Novel problem solving situations
- Stockpiling
- Division of labour required
- Novel action planning
Using Fire
- Cooking
- Warmth
- Light
- Protection
- Food stealing
- Need a large fire to be effective.
- Monitoring and dealing with free riders
- Social coordination required to bring in fuel
16
Twomey 2011

17. 17
Early fire users & makers
 Wonderwerk Cave ~1.5 mya?, 1.0 mya certain (fire keepers? – Berna et al. 2012)
– South Africa
– Acheulian tool kit (H. erectus?)
 Gesher Benot Ya‫י‬aqov – 780 kya sporadic for 100 kya span (fire makers? – Goren-Inbar 2011)
– Jordan River, Israel, boggy lake margin
– Acheulian tool kit (H. erectus, ergaster, early sapiens all possible)
– Processed elephant, rhino, bovids, gazelles, fish, crustacea, seeds, nuts, leafy vegetables & made stone
tools around “virtual” hearths
 Schöningen ~ 400 - 380 kya – an autumn hunting camp (Thieme 2005)
– Saxony, eastern Germany, peaty lake margin (extraordinary preservation)
– First compound wooden tool (worked branch grooved to hold cutting flakes)
– Acheulian stone tools, 8 sophisticated wooden throwing javelins, 4 outdoor hearths,
– Fossil evidence for the slaughtering, spit roasting and possible smoking of an entire herd of horses at
these hearths (20 complete skulls from all ages)
– Intact spears and javelin may represent ritual offering
 Bilzingsleben 370 kya (single occupation period for an open-air hunting camp – Mania & Mania
2005)
– Thuringia, eastern Germany, karstic lake margin (extraordinary preservation)
– Acheulian tool kit (skull fragments suggest late H. erectus, late heidelbergensis, pre Neanderthal, early
sapiens)
– Three “settlement structures” (huts) with internal hearths, four separate “activity areas” identified by
different tool kits & other artefacts (tool making, stone paved area for spit roasting, skin and bone
processing area, paved area with a single hearth & suggestion of ritual alter)
– Fossil remains of elephants, rhinoceros, horses, bison, red deer, fallow deer, roe deer, pigs, cave lions,
cave bears, grey wolves, spotted hyenas, red foxes, badgers, and martens

18. Homo heidelbergensis campsites in Germany
18
Schöningen II L1 ~ 400 - 380 kya:
flint artifacts, 4 worked fir branches
with slots for flint blades,
1000+ bones of 10 mammal species.
II L4 ~ 100-200 kya later: 9 fire
hardened wood javelins, 2 pointed
throwing stick, 4 hearths(?), flint tools,
bones from 20 + horses, etc.
Thieme et al. 2005;
Stahlschmidt et al. 2015
Schoch, et al. 2015
The Bilzingsleben Site, ~370 kya. Key: 1. Limits of excavated area; 2. Geological
fault lines; 3. Shore line; 4. Sandy travertine sediment; 5. Alluvial fan; 6. Activity
area at the lake shore; 7. Outlines of living structures; 8. Workshop areas;
9. Special workshop area with traces of fire use; 10. Circular paved area;
11. Charcoal; 12. Bone anvils; 13. Stone with traces of heat; 14. Bones with
intentional markings; 15. Linear arrangement of stones; 16. Elephant tusk. 17. Human
skull fragments; 18. Human tooth. (Mania & Mania 2005: p. 101)

19. Cognitive capacity is
little help without
knowledge
—
Adaptations for accumulating
cultural knowledge

20. 20
Cognitive skills needed to accumulate knowledge for niche expansion
(Vaesen 2012; Sterelny 2013, 2014)
 Hand-eye coordination - fine motor control needs more neurons
 Causal reasoning - time-binding; understand goals, actions, and
consequences
 Function representation - associate particular tools with
particular jobs
 Natural history intelligence - conscious attention to
understanding the behaviors of predators, prey, fire, other
changing aspects of environment
 Executive control – anticipating, deciding & planning; not just
reacting
 Social intelligence - extended childhood, social learning
(imitation not emulation), understanding of intentions of others
(mirror neurons?), focused teaching & learning, apprenticeship
 Intragroup coordination
 Intergroup collaboration
 Language

21. Transferring knowledge from a practitioner to a
learner ‘tacitly’ without speech
 Understand the end purpose/goal of performing the technology
– It helps if the practitioner can communicate key ides using gestures and pantomime
 Observe the practitioner carry out a component task within the technology.
– try to remember the practitioner’s actions
– try understand end result and purpose (e.g., to prepare something for the next task)
– focus attention on steps that appear to be related to the end purpose
– try to understand how and why the observed step(s) contribute to the end purpose
 Try to imitate what the practitioner did
– for each step, did your action produce the same result the practitioner achieved?
– if not, try to understand why not? (watch the practitioner perform the same steps
again, and again, and again…)
– try again, and again, and again… until you get the correct result
– how do the steps go together to complete the task
 Put the steps together
– have you achieved the end purpose/goal?
– If not, try to understand why not?
– etc.
If you had seen a fire, needed one, and found a pile of wood, but you had
never seen anyone start a fire and had no writing or pictures showing you
how, how would you do it?21

22. What is language?
 Pre-literate language is not what we speak today
– Speech vanishes in the instant it is articulated (Walter Ong 1982)
 Before writing, language was not symbolic as we would understand it today
 Words as discrete objects of thought did not exist before writing
 Language communicated states of mind
– Without writing, language only has meaning in the social context (self-speech?)
 Tylén et al. 2010 defining “language”
– extends the ‘interaction space’ in space and time
– tool for aligning attention to share experience (to structure, guide and constrain joint
attention and perspective-taking in an already existing, shared meaning space)
– enables collaborative development & sharing of higher-order situation models and action
plans (management of complementary & contingent)
– attunes people to aspects of visual, auditory and spatial perception at a cultural level
 Words as proxies for objects and actions
 Language is a complex adaptive system (Beckner et al. 2009)
– Consists of multiple agents interacting with one another
– Adaptive - speakers’ behavior is based on their past interactions, and current and past
interactions together feed forward into future behavior
– Speaker’s behavior consequence of competing factors ranging from perceptual
constraints to social motivations
– speakers’ behavior is based on their past interactions, and current and past interactions
together feed forward into future behavior
– The structures of language emerge from interrelated patterns of experience, social
interaction, and cognitive mechanisms
22

23.  Triadic niche construction: neural/cognitive/ecological (Iriki & Taoka
2012)
 Brocas’ Area
– Expanded area of brain involved in both speech
and fine motor control
– Identifiable in hominin endocasts – H. habilis
like modern humans compared to apes
– Mirror System Hypothesis (MSH) proposes
primitive action-matching system evolved
to support imitation, pantomime, manual
‘protosign’ and ultimately vocal language
 FOXP2 and other speech related genetic
changes affected Broca’s area in our common
ancestors with Neanderthals and Denisovans
 Food processing technologies make food more
digestible enabling natural selection to divert metabolic resources from
the digestive system to development of larger brains
 Larger brains support increased cognitive capacity: memory, mental
maps, greater social complexity, better neuromuscular coordination
Red oval = Broca’s Area
Stout & Chaminade 2012; see also
Stout & Chaminade 2007
Genetic & physiological enhancements facilitating the emergence
of language
23

24. 24
When did hominins learn to speak?
(e.g., d’Errico et al. 2009)
 Language doesn’t fossilize until it is written
 Emergence of dateable genetic & fossilizable morphological/neurological
prerequisites
– FOXP2 etc (common to H. sapiens & neanderthalensis)
– Larynx & hyoid bone (ditto)
– Neuromuscular control of breathing (lack in ergaster & erectus)
– Broca’s & Wernicke’s areas of the cerebral cortex
 Last 150,000 - 200,000 years
– Social coordination of cooperative hunthing
– Last common ancestor H. neanderthalensis & sapiens was on the way (H.
heidelbergensis)
– Co-evolved with the development of complex technologies & social systems
– Only fully developed with the emergence of domestication
 Paleoarcheological proxies for symbolic behavior
– “masterpieces” (specially worked complex tools)
– body and artifact painting (ochres & other pigments)
– shell beads jewelry
– ritual burials and “grave goods”
– representational painting
– musical instruments (i.e., bone flutes)

25. after Krubitzer & Stolzenberg (2014)
Background for the emergence of
language in Homo
25

26. 26
How much knowledge does it take to make & use tools?
Killing prey with stone-tipped spears
 Understanding cognitive demands of technologies
 Thinking a stone-tipped spear
– sequence of steps to make a spear used to bring down prey
(chains of operation/cognigram)
– making a bow and arrow set is at least 3x more difficult
– each arrow indicates ordered application of specific knowledge
(Lombard 2012; Lombard & Haidle 2012)

27. 27
Paleoarcheological evidence for symbolic thinking
 The oldest securely dated, purposely made engravings (two ochre slabs
engraved with geometric patterns) come from Blombos Cave ~75 kya.
Both are variants of the same pattern suggesting they are not
accidental
 The use of ochre becomes widespread in Europe after 36 ka during the
Aurignacian, widely accepted as representing the first H. sapiens in
Europe
A. B. C.
Symbolic artifacts? A. Different pigments & ochred artifacts from various times and locations.
B. Engraved ochre slab, C. shell beads, both from Still Bay layers of Blombos Cave, S.A. ~75 kya
(d’Errico et al. 2009)

28. 28
Neanderthals also had well-developed symbolic
culture ~ 48-40 kya
Grotte du Renne (France), Chatelperronian symbolic artifacts. Personal ornaments made of perforated and
grooved teeth (1–6, 11), bones (7–8, 10) and a fossil (9); red (12–14) and black (15–16) colorants bearing facets
produced by grinding; bone awls (17–23). [Caron et al. 2011]

29. 29
Walter Ong and the subjective nature of pre-
literate speech in group cognition
 Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word.
Routledge, London (1982)
– download book free
 Before technologies for counting and writing, human
knowledge existed only in living memory and could only
be shared via speech and imitation
– speech is ephemeral, instantly disappearing as it is uttered
– speech’s only effect on the world is the altered mental states
of those hearing it
– coordinates immediate social responses in living societies
– transfers knowledge independently of time and place
 process knowledge
 situational knowledge
 cultural norms

30. Language and the emergence of hominin groups as
higher order autopoietic systems
 Language - phenomenon of groups not individuals (one hand clapping = nonsense)
 Drivers for the evolution of a faculty of language
– Coordinates individuals’ involvement in group activities and society
– Transmits essential cultural knowledge (heritage)
 Common language, cultural norms & xenophobia determine group boundaries
 Cultural knowledge propagated among individuals between generations by language
determines group success on the adaptive landscape
 An entity is autopoietic if it exhibits all the criteria (Varela et al. 1974)
– Bounded (groups separated socially by cultural differences and breeding systems)
– Complex (groups formed by multiple individuals playing different roles in group)
– Mechanistic (interactions of group individuals determine group functions & activities)
– Self-referential (group identity determined by culturally transmitted knowledge)
– Self-producing (group retains its continuity beyond the lifetimes of single individuals
through individual reproduction and recruitment combined with indoctrination in and
transmission of accumulated cultural knowledge from one generation to the next)
– Autonomous (group manages its own survival and continuity through knowledge-based
interactions of its individual members)
 Autopoietic entities represent units of selection
 Pre-linguistic groups probably qualified as autopoietic – but group identity and
adaptive variation greatly strengthened by language-assisted cultural
accumulation30

31. 31
Coevolutionary cycles for niche construction: tools,
language & culture
 Pleistocene coevolutionary cycle
– Increasingly complex technologies for hunting & gathering
require better cognition, culture & language skills to support
technologies
– Domestication of dogs & other animals
 Grade shift: agriculture
– Permanent habitations
– Complex tools and industries
– Food storage
– Long range / centralized planning & control
– Technologies for counting, recording, writing and teaching
– Hierarchical social organization and differentiation: kings,
priests, clerks, soldiers/police, artisans, peons/slaves
– Increasing linguistic complexity: abstraction, time & space,
quantitative, sophistication re actors and actions, shading of
qualities and qualifications

32. The Middle Stone Age (Africa) / Middle Paleolithic (Europe) was
a post Acheulian technological plateau (~ 300 → ~ 50 kya)
 Primary references: Current Anthropology, Vol. 54, No. S8, Wenner-
Gren Symposium: Alternative Pathways to Complexity: Evolutionary
Trajectories in the Middle Paleolithic and Middle Stone Age
(December 2013: Introduction, Table of Contents)
 Acheulian tools continued to be used by other hominins (e.g., H. erectus)
 Technology variable through MSA / MP but no clear temporal trends
– Sporadic development and loss of complex technologies
– Operational chains of limited length
 Despite major ecological shifts between glacial and inter-glacial there is
no evidence for permanent settlements or cultural shifts from nomadic
hunting and gathering.
– Little technological difference between Neanderthal/Denisovan/archaic H.
sapiens in Europe, anatomically modern sapiens in South Africa, and AM
sapiens in the Levant (eastern Med.) early colonization ~ 100 kya, and
permanent colonization and spread to Eurasia ~ 70 kya
– Populations limited in size to small bands, with evidence that Neanderthals &
Denisovans passed through more severe genetic bottlenecks than sapiens
 Even with language, the capacity for cultural memory was limited32

33. Next session explores cognitive revolution that
enabled the Agricultural Revolution
33
 In this session I considered the evolutionary circumstances that
enabled our hunting and gathering ancestors to become
recognizably human in their control of fire and the use of
symbolic language
– However, for something like 250,000 years our ancestors and
cousins seemed to be limited in the complexity of the technology
they could use
– Suggests some capacity limit had been reached in the amount of
knowledge that could be accumulated and transmitted.
 Something happened around 50,000 years ago that breached the
limitations, and allowed the development much more
sophisticated hunting technologies and then completely new
technologies underlying the Agricultural Revolution
– Lynne Kelly’s insights explain how this was achieved without writing
When human organizations began to dominate the world
• Mnemonics started modern humans on the road to planetary dominance
• Becoming settled – surmounting the knowledge limitations of migratory life
• Agricultural Revolution - humans control animal and plant metabolism