Episode Details

Signs of symbolism, abstract thinking, compassion, and even a religious streak becoming visible in hominids hundreds of thousands of years ago.

We talked to Dr. Marc Kissel (PhD, Anthropology) about his work looking at the evolution of higher cognitive functions in ancient hominids — our ancestors  — hundreds of thousands of years ago. They were a lot smarter than many modern people give them credit for:

• they were skilled at turning flint rocks into arrowheads
• the controlled use of fire … have you ever tried to start a fire without modern tools (matches; paper; fuel; knives; axes)?
• they made “superglue” to attach their arrowheads to wooden shafts, through a carefully controlled combustion of birch bark.

Envisioning the transformation of a rock into an arrowhead … a pile of logs into a fire … birch bark into glue … requires forethought, planning, abstract thinking, and intelligence. And they passed on the details of their technology to their descendants … and to surrounding tribes. This not only takes intelligence and memory, but probably also some kind of language.

And then there are other signs of advanced cognitive thinking that could be the earliest seeds of something even more surprising, and quite controversial:

• Scratch marks and engravings on rocks, snail shells, or ostrich egg shells: were these also some kind of primitive language? Symbols?
• Paintings of hands on cave walls: was this their way of saying “Grog was here”?
• Statues and figurines of little beings … idols?
• Ritualized burials, complete with jewelry … an early belief in the afterlife?
• Evidence that flowers were left around the buried body … was this for the benefit of the dead relative moving into the afterlife … or a primitive form of the living relatives grieving their loss?
• flutes made from bird bones … music? Music has always been deeply spiritual for modern humans.

Language, abstract thinking, symbolism, a belief in the afterlife, and music are all key ingredients in all major religions around the world today. Could these ancient hominids have been forming a religious str