Learner-driven innovation in the stone tool technology of early Homo sapiens.

Jayne Wilkins

doi:10.1017/ehs.2020.40

Abstract

Current perspectives of stone tool technology tend to emphasize homogeneity in tool forms and core reduction strategies across time and space. This homogeneity is understood to represent shared cultural traditions that are passed down through the generations. This represents a top-down perspective on how and why stone tools are manufactured that largely restricts technological agency to experts, adults and teachers. However, just as bottom-up processes driven by children and youth influence technological innovation today, they are likely to have played a role in the past. This paper considers evidence from the archaeological record of early Homo sapiens' lithic technology in Africa that may attest to our long history of bottom-up social learning processes and learner-driven innovation. This evidence includes the role of emulative social learning in generating assemblages with diverse reduction strategies, a high degree of technological fragmentation across southern Africa during some time periods, and technological convergence through the Pleistocene. Counter to some perspectives on the uniqueness of our species, our ability to learn independently, to 'break the rules' and to play, as opposed to conforming to top-down influences, may also account for our technological success.

Highlights

Humans are unusual among extant primates for our heavy reliance on social learning (Tomasello et al, 1993)
Stone tool production creates a large amount of durable debris, and this debris is often the only surviving record of past human behaviours, stone tool technology is the main avenue available to archaeologists for empirically investigating the evolution of human social learning (Stout & Hecht, 2017; Stout, 2018; Shea, 2006; Ranhorn et al, 2020)
Some of the earliest stone tools hint that our capacities for social learning via imitation have deep roots in the Plio-Pleistocene (Stout et al, 2019), with more enhanced capacities evidenced in the complex technologies associated with the emergence of our species, Homo sapiens (Wadley, 2010; Brown et al, 2009, 2012; Mourre et al, 2010; Wilkins et al, 2012)

Summary

Introduction

Humans are unusual among extant primates for our heavy reliance on social learning (Tomasello et al, 1993). Some of the earliest stone tools hint that our capacities for social learning via imitation have deep roots in the Plio-Pleistocene (Stout et al, 2019), with more enhanced capacities evidenced in the complex technologies associated with the emergence of our species, Homo sapiens (Wadley, 2010; Brown et al, 2009, 2012; Mourre et al, 2010; Wilkins et al, 2012). One advantage of social learning is that it facilitates cumulative culture change (i.e. the ‘rachet effect’), which is the human capacity to build on the cultural behaviours of others, allowing increases in complexity and/or efficiency over time (Tomasello, 2016; Tennie et al, 2009, 2016; Boyd & Richerson, 2005; Richerson & Boyd, 2005).

Objectives

Conclusion