Chapter 2: What Were They Thinking?

Origins of Government, from the Paleolithic to Philadelphia

Page 53: Origins of the State of Nature: the Cognitive Revolution. Language, Narrative, and Culture.

Map of archaic human species in Africa and Eurasia, showing how they did not reach into the Arabian peninsula or the frozen North, or cross water to any islands. (With a wolf in the tundra saying “Winter is here.”)

SIS (narrating):  5,000 generations ago, Homo sapiens was only the newest of many human species, which had already been evolving and adapting to the various environments of Africa and Eurasia for a couple million years.

All were brighter than our ape cousins — using fire, making stone tools, etc. But they were all archaic humans.

None had the brainpower to invent or learn new skills, adapt to frozen tundra, or even cross water, it seems.

Any new adaptations had to wait for the slow accidents of random genetic evolution over many thousands of generations.

This new Homo sapiens had much the same anatomy as modern humans, but they didn’t yet have the modern human mind.

That was about to change.

SIS (narrating):  In the beginning was the word.

Sensation reaching eye.

SIS (narrating):  Archaic Homo sapiens didn’t have words. Heck, they didn’t even think conscious thoughts like you and I do. They mainly felt intuitive perceptions.

Sensation is interpreted across brain regions.

SIS (narrating):  Hardwired systems in the brain took in sensations, interpreted what they meant, and reacted accordingly.

Perception resulting in popping a strawberry in the mouth.

SIS (narrating):  They probably didn’t even have memories of the past, which we take for granted. Life was experienced in the now.

Mini-comic begins.

SIS (narrating):  But this new species had a few new genes, and new ways of expressing some of the standard-issue genes.

Just some happy little accidents of evolution.

One nifty novelty was the remarkable range of vocal sounds they could produce.

Children playing and making funny sounds.

SIS (narrating):  It’s easy to imaging children playing with these sounds.

VARIOUS CHILDREN:  Bzzrp! (Ha ha ha) Glatch! Fya-lino! Oke!

TREE KID:  …Oke?

Tree Kid places hands on tree.

TREE KID:  Oke  Oke  Oke  Oke  Oke

ANOTHER KID (Placing hand on the tree):  Oke?

REST OF THE KIDS (Pointing at the tree):  Oke!  Oke!  Oke!  Oke!  Oke!

That night, the children are asleep near the fire. Tree kid is visualizing the tree and whispers:

TREE KID:  Oke

All the children go wide-eyed, as they all envision the same tree.

SIS (narrating):  Words are magic.

(Section break)

SIS (narrating):  Instead of instinctive hoots and howls, with preset meanings and responses, this new species could create new vocalizations, could associate them with any perception, and so share that perception with every brain in earshot. For a social animal whose survival depended on working together, this modest mutation delivered a huge advantage.

People gathering fruit from a tree.

FRUIT FOLK 1:  Cooperation is so much easier, now that we’re all on the same page.

FRUIT FOLK 2:  What’s a page?

Stick figure with microphone, saying “Hello?”, with stack of amplifiers turning it into a screeching “OOOOOOOO” so loud the Earth itself has to cover its ears.

SIS (narrating):  They still couldn’t think like us, or even have a simple conversation — but these magic words started us on our way.

Any tweaks that aided social communication swept through the gene pool, all of them amplifying each other in a feedback loop of accelerated evolution.

Woman and man making tools with rocks.

SIS (narrating):  Wiring for syntax, for example, made it possible to combine (and understand) strings of words conveying much greater detail, nuance, and precision.

ROCK WOMAN:  No, not that rock. Hand me the darker, egg-shaped one.

…To your left…

…Your other left…

No…

SIS (narrating):  It follows that putting the right words in the right order meant a capacity for logical, sequential thought…

ROCK MAN:  Okay, but if you want a rock that won’t shatter the first time you use it, you’ll want this rock.

Couple pondering.

SIS (narrating):  …and that required a substantial working-memory “buffer” where words could last long enough to be assembled into sentences.

PONDERING GUY:  I need to pre-say sentences in my head, to make sure they’ll make sense to the others.

PONDERING GIRL:  Hold that thought…

Prehistoric youth holding an old-timey radio microphone, peering out like a sports announcer.

SIS (narrating):  And so a new brain process evolved, which could take in the unconscious perceptions and make sense of them — with words and syntax — so that we could share them and be understood.

It was a full-time narrator in our heads, giving a running commentary explaining our experiences with stories that seemed to make sense.

ANNOUNCER:  So it looks like what’s happening now is…

New brains.

SIS (narrating):  This mental spin doctor was to become the world’s first CONSCIOUS MIND

Not the simple consciousness of an animal brain that’s merely awake and aware…

…This was the new consciousness of a human mind that was actively thinking!

BRAIN HAVING AN EPIPHANY:  Holy shit!

Brain with an amplifier feedback knob.

SIS (narrating):  We’d gotten that far rapidly enough, but once the human brain started telling stories, our cognitive revolution kicked into overdrive!

BRAIN:  Now it goes to eleven!

Girl daydreaming while others look on.

SIS (narrating):  For example, by playing around with stories, we could think about what might happen.

In other words, we had imagination!

ONLOOKER 1:  Check out Karen— daydreaming again.

ONLOOKER 2:  Whoa… Testing options in a simulator in her head? With no risk of death or embarrassment if they wouldn’t work?

You bet I’m checking her out! She’s got genes with a future.

The fruit gatherers are back at the tree, but there’s no more fruit.

SIS (narrating):  And once we could imagine the future, what was to stop us from imagining the past?

By telling itself stories about its experiences, the brain invented another uniquely human ability — episodic memory!

FRUIT FOLK 1:  Hey, what happened to all the yellow fruit that grew here?

FRUIT FOLK 2:  Yellow? Are you crazy? They were red. I remember distinctly.

FRUIT FOLK 3:  Oh yeah, red. I remember now.

Aside box.

AUTHOR:  [Readers of the Crim Pro comic may recall (ha) that episodic memory is not a recording of what actualy happened. It’s a story our brains piece together from whatever information happens to be available, and seems to make sense.

Our brains rewrite and edit each story every time we recall the pieces it’s made from.

In other words, memory is not about what is accurate…

it’s about what feels true.]

Couple lounging on a riverbank.

SIS (narrating):  Okay, so… All these thoughts and memories and dreams and ideas and plans? We weren’t just telling these stories to ourselves.

The whole point of all this brainpower was social communication. And boy did we get good at it. With story and syntax and increasingly precise language, we were sharing our thoughts with each other.

MENTAL MAN:  Magic words are one thing, but sending out thoughts into other people’s minds?

MENTAL MAID:  That sounds like telepathy to me!

SIS (narrating):  Which is another way of saying cooperation may be our survival skill, but story is our SUPERPOWER!

Guys hunting a bear.

SIS (narrating):  With this new superpower of narrative, our newly-thinking species could act as one.

We could plan strategies together by sharing (and debating) everyone’s experiences and observations and ideas.

HUNTER 1:  Bob, you go behind those trees and distract the bear, then we’ll spear it from behind.

HUNTER 2:  That’s not exactly sporting, is it?

HUNTER 3:  Yeah, at least give Bob a chance of surviving!

Bear chasing the guys.

SIS (narrating):  With everyone knowing the plan, and knowing what everyone else was doing, we could cooperate like crazy. And as circumstances changed, we could alter our strategies on the fly.

HUNTER 1:  Okay, Plan “B” — Bob, you play dead, and spear it in the belly when it stops to investigate.

BOB:  No. Plan “B” is “Run faster than you guys.”

People mocking Neanderthals.

SIS (narrating):  Up until now, no human species could do more than ape what they saw others do. But our narrative mind could invent and teach and learn new technologies and skills.

MOCKER 1:  Those archaic guys have been making the exact same tools, the exact same way, for a hundred thousand years! …Longer!

MOCKER 2:  Ha! Monkey see, monkey do!

MOCKER 3:  Ugh, you guys are so species-ist.

Smoldering but enthusiastic guys crashed on the ground, one’s hair is on fire.

SIS (narrating):  Bonus: Learning by doing requires an opportunity, and can seem risky. But now we could rehearse skills and learn from our mistakes in the safe virtual reality of imagination.

[EDIT SUGGESTION: Change “an opportunity, and can seem risky” to “the opportunity to do it, and real-life mistakes have real-life consequences.”]

EXPERIMENTER:  Aha! I know what we did wrong. Next time, we need to…

Group listening to a storyteller on a grassy slope.

SIS (narrating):  As with apes and grooming, archaic humans likely could only bond one-on-one, and only one at a time. But with speech we could bond by sharing our thoughts with everyone in earshot.

GIRL IN AUDIENCE:  See? We share everything!

Cocktail party diagram.

SIS (narrating):  We share best with three other people at a time (more becomes an audience rather than a conversation). Each of you can tell three more, and so on, spreading socially useful gossip throughout the group in one evening.

And thus the cocktail party was invented!

CHATTING VOICES:  Hey, did you hear?

Do tell!

Gab  Hey!  Chat  Hey!  Dish  Chat  Share

SIS (narrating):  Gossip is important for cooperation. It’s how we know who’s trustworthy, who’ll work with whom, who cheats, etc.

Gossiping group

SIS (narrating):  Big brains are expensive, evolutionarily speaking, but ours just grew bigger and bigger — mostly so we could gossip about more and more people, and cooperate in larger and larger groups.

GOSSIP GIRL 1:  Check out the big brain on Brett!

GOSSIP GIRL 2:  Aw, he’s just keeping up with the Joneses.

GOSSIP GUY 1:  Keeping up on the Joneses, you mean!

GOSSIP GUY 2:  So Rolf only gave Evie a hug, but Evie didn’t want to make Sharon jealous, so Rolf went over and kissed Sharon in front of everybody, and Fred was like “You and Rolf? Seriously?” And Angie was all “Oh Fred! You’re into Sharon?” and she ran off crying! But the best bit was when Fred ran after her going “No that’s not what I meant” and Nick & Nicki got up in his face saying “If you make our little sister cry… when out of nowhere EVIE-

[EDIT SUGGESTION: Needs a closed quote after “sister cry…”]

Perplexed woman.

SIS (narrating):  As it’s just as important to know how much everyone else wants to cooperate with you, this storytelling mind started telling itself very self-conscious stories — of what others must think of you.

PERPLEXED WOMAN:  Is this the right thing to do?

No, I’d better not say that.

I keep having horrible thoughts! I must be a horrible person!

What will the neighbors think?

Jiminy crickets but it’s hard having a conscience!

The mental couple on the riverbank again.

SIS (narrating):  With brain bits structured to observe ourselves, to judge ourselves, in real time… suddenly, we were self-aware!

MENTAL MAN:  I’m aware of my own thoughts!

I’m… aware of myself being aware of being aware of myself!

MENTAL MAID:  Is that why you’re always talking about yourself?

Groups of emotional people.

SIS (narrating):  Along with conscious stuff like language and self-awareness and imagination, we also broadened the scope and depth of our unconscious social emotions — feelings (and ways to read others’ feelings) that kept us all in line without having to think about it.

GROUP A:  Yikes. That was a bit of a faux pas.

Ha!

So why are we laughing?

Oh man, I am so embarrassed.

GROUP B:  You did what? You realize how bad that was? I’m outraged!

We know. We’re ashamed.

But we’re sorry!

We feel so guilty!

How can we make it better?

GROUP C:  Oh honey, don’t cry!

There there, everything will be all right. You’ll see.

We’re here for you.

Now I’m sad for her.

GROUP D:  [Some anti-social emotions, too]

I wish I had all the guys fawning over me once in a while.

Aw, get over yourself.

GROUP E (mammoth hunters):  Great job everyone. We should all be proud of what we’ve accomplished.

We are!

It’s so satisfying when we all pitch in.

I tell ya, times like this, life feels good.

So that’s why you’re always grinning.

I thought it’s because he fell on his head that one time- ha!

Shut up, don’t ruin the moment.

GROUP F (solo):  I was loyal to you

But you betrayed me.

It hurts! It hurts!

I’m going to make you hurt.

[Perversely pro-social?]

SIS (narrating):  To understand all these new feelings, in all their shades and nuances, our mind of course created new narratives… like morality. Narratives which, in turn, helped us restrain our selfish urges and encourage cooperation — even self-sacrificing cooperation.

SIS:  Hold that thought…

SIS (narrating):  With all this intelligence and creativity and social narrative, we didn’t merely survive in climates and circumstances that would have killed archaic us — we thrived!

And thanks to narrative, what we created and learned during life wouldn’t die with us.

Instead of waiting ages for an accidentally successful gene to gradually spread itself among our descendants, successful narratives — memes — spread themselves throughout society immediately. And our children passed these memed skills and norms and ideas and symbols and behaviors on to their children…

Bonfire dance.

SIS (narrating):  And so we added CULTURE

to our growing list of superpowers.

DANCERS:  Life has meaning!

Music!

Beauty!

OLD AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Phoo on this modern dance. Give me the classics any day.

PARENT (to child):  It’s the story of when the moon fell in love!

SIS (narrating):  Thanks to our new-and-improved biology, we had become the first animal with an existence separate from biology.

Stick figures.

STICK FIGURES:  The only one, actually, so far as we can tell.

But if we’re wired to act this way, then isn’t our sense of transcending biology just an illusion? …another narrative?

If so, then do our lives really have meaning?

Great. Just great. Now you’ve gone an invented philosophy. Happy now?

Neanderthals reading the script.

SIS (narrating):  Again, all of this happened in the blink of an evolutionary eye. In perhaps as few as a thousand generations, we’d transformed — from one of the non-sapient archaic species without language or culture or creativity…

NEANDERTHAL 1:  “Ugh?”

You seriously want me to say ugh?

NEANDERTHAL 2:  Frikkin’ species-ist author.

NEANDERTHAL 3:  “Ooh, look at me. I have language. I’m so special!”

Montage of Mona Lisa, Pizza, Taj Mahal, symphony, calculus, smartphone showing a relatable webcomic, Voyager, F-22.

SIS (narrating):  …into our modern human species, with the same intensely social brain that came up with calculus and Christianity… that gave us poetry and pizza… that painted the Mona Lisa… that pilots fighter jets, builds cities, composes symphonies, discovers the laws of physics, sends robots beyond the solar system, transmits comics across the Internet…

A brain hardwired for society through story.

Stick figures.

STICK FIGURES:  So wait- are we still the same species as archaic Homo sapiens?

Homo sapiens? The “wise” man?

Don’t know about wise…

How about Homo narrans, the storyteller!

Proas in action.

SIS:  *ahem*

And with that brain…

We took over the world.

JOE:  Great, wonderful. Now we all know how we got to our state of nature.

Any chance of telling us how we got to 1787??

If you would like to learn more, here are just a few suggestions to get you started:

53. Language, Narrative, and Culture

Books:

Donald R. Wehrs, Suzanne Nalbantian, and Don M. Tucker, eds., Cultural Memory: From the Sciences to the Humanities, New York: Routledge, 2022.

Paul B. Armstrong, Stories and the Brain: The Neuroscience of Narrative, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020.

Matthew E. Brashears and Laura Aufderheide Brashears, “Compression Heuristics, Social Networks, and the Evolution of Human Intelligence,” in Michael S. Vitevitch, ed., Network Science in Cognitive Psychology, New York: Routledge, 2020.

Francesca Giardini and Rafael Wittek, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Gossip and Reputation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.

Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson, The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012.

 

Articles:

Andrew E. Budson, Kenneth A. Richman, and Elizabeth A. Kensinger, “Consciousness as a Memory System,” Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology, Vol. 35, No. 4 (December 2022): 263-297.

Vanessa A. D. Wilson, Klaus Zuberbühler, and Balthasar Bickel, “The Evolutionary Origins of Syntax: Event Cognition in Nonhuman Primates,” Science Advances, Vol. 8, No. 25 (June 2022): 1-12.

Armin W. Schulz and Sarah Robins, “Episodic Memory, Simulated Future Planning, and their Evolution,” Review of Philosophy and Psychology, Vol. 14 (2023): 811-832.

Simon E. Fisher, “Human Genetics: The Evolving Story of FOXP2,” Current Biology, Vol. 29 (January 2021): R65-R67.

Joseph Henrich and Michael Muthukrishna, “The Origins and Psychology of Human Cooperation,” Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 72 (2021): 207-240.

Francesco Ferretti and Ines Adornetti, “Persuasive Conversation as a New Form of Communication in Homo Sapiens,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Vol. 376 (2021): 1-9.

Paul J. Eslinger et al., “The Neuroscience of Social Feelings: Mechanisms of Adaptive Social Functioning,” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, Vol. 128 (September 2021): 592-620.

Katherine Nelson and Robyn Fivush, “The Development of Autobiographical Memory, Autobiographical Narratives, and Autobiographical Consciousness,” Psychological Reports, Vol. 123, No. 1 (January 2020): 71-96.

Dan P. McAdams, “‘First We Invented Stories, then They Changed Us’: The Evolution of Narrative Identity,” Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring 2019): 1-83.

Enrico Coen, “The Storytelling Arms Race: Origin of Human Intelligence and the Scientific Mind,” Heredity, Vol. 123 (2019): 67-78.

Feel free to offer more suggestions in the comments!