Most archaeologists now agree that the species, Homo sapiens sapiens, emerged some 200 000 years ago from earlier hominid ancestors, almost certainly in Africa. The date of the out-of-Africa dispersal of the species is set around 60 000 years ago. These dates establish an inevitable division in the field of cognitive archaeology. After the dispersal phase, about 60 000 years ago, we speak about a human animal very much like ourselves. The genetic differences are quite small, so that a baby born then would be very like a baby born today. We talk about very comparable innate abilities and capacities. But before this time we consider the very emergence of humankind as a species, from the earlier apes. It is clear that there must have been very significant cognitive developments over the preceding millions of years following the appearance in Africa of the more remote ancestor Australopithecus.
There are many intriguing questions in the cognitive archaeology of the speciation phase, that is to say of the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic, associated with Neanderthal humans, with Homo erectus and with their predecessors. One of the most interesting and most hotly debated is the question of the emergence of language. When did complex language, implying the ability to distinguish between past, present, and future, with reasonably sophisticated syntax, in fact emerge? Some earlier scholars sought to associate this with tool use, and emphasized the elegant symmetry in some of the flint implements termed ‘hand-axes’. It was suggested that the use of language would be helpful in the transmission of the relevant skills between generations. But others, such as Merlin Donald, stressed the importance in these earlier homi-nids of mimesis, of skilled imitation, which would not necessarily be dependent upon linguistic capacity.
Some archaeologists have sought to associate the emergence of new tool kits at the outset of the Upper Palaeolithic of Western Europe with the appearance there of Homo sapiens. Bone as well as stone tools are widely found from this time, and human burial, rarely seen earlier, is more common. Some scientists have spoken of a ‘creative explosion’ at this time, seeking to equate the new behaviors with the emergence of complex language, of self-consciousness, and indeed with the appearance of ‘cave art’. New research into the later Stone Age of Africa, at sites such as the Blombos Cave, has however shown that new behaviors, such as the production of beads and adornments and the incision of pattern upon lumps or red ochre, were developing there as early as 70 000 years ago.
Context is clearly crucial for the cognitive archaeology of the speciation phase of human development. So the detailed study of living floors has been productive in the beginning of the study of social life, often around the hearth. The sequence in the production, the chaine operatoire, of stone tools has also been profitably studied. So we too have questions of procurement: the distance over which humans were willing and able to travel to collect the necessary raw materials. Some of these, such as obsidian or shell, were carried over considerable distances. Gradually such questions as these are being subjected to much more systematic study, and the cognitive archaeology of the palaeolithic period is now being constructed upon sound foundations.
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