Cognitive Evolution in Early Hominins
Friday August 31, 2:30-5:30
1117 Cathedral of Learning

What can we know about the brains and cognition of the earliest hominin ancestors? This workshop will discuss the results of a multiyear project based at the Stone Age Institute (Bloomington, Indiana) and the Indiana University Cognitive Science Program, with international partners and archaeological sites in Tanzania, the Republic of Georgia, and China. With funding from the John Templeton Foundation, this project has focused especially on the period between roughly 2.5 million years and 1.5 million years ago. The workshop features presentations by the project’s five principal investigators -- archaeologists Nicholas Toth (IU) and Kathy Schick (IU), psychologist Peter Todd (IU), anthropologist Tom Schoenemann (IU), and philosopher Colin Allen (Pitt) -- and other project members will be present to discuss their contributions. Topics to be covered include the analysis of the lower Paleolithic toolkit, with particular focus on the evidence from the partner sites, behavioral and neuroimaging studies of stone tool manufacture, analyses of cranial expansion and morphological change, as well as theoretical discussion of cognitive adaptations for tool making, search, problem solving, recognition of expertise, and the possible emergence of precursors to language.

Schedule

2:30 Introduction to the workshop by Colin Allen

2:40 Kathy Schick and Nick Toth on research at the project’s affiliated archaeological sites, the manufacture of Oldowan and Acheulean stone tools, and their behavioral and neuroimaging studies of tool manufacture modern apes and humans

3:15 Tom Schoenmann on the fossil evidence concerning hominin brain evolution, and neuroimaging studies investigating possible links between tool making and language

3:40 Coffee break

3:50 Bob Port on implications of the project for understanding the evolution of language

4:15 Peter Todd on the evolution of cognitive search strategies in the human lineage

4:40 Colin Allen on the range of evidence for the emergence of recognizable expertise in cognitively demanding tasks in early hominins

5:00 General Q&A

For More Information:
Colin Allen, U. Pittsburgh (Dept. of HPS), colin.allen@pitt.edu
Joyce McDonald, U. Pittsburgh Ctr. for Philosophy of Science, pittcntr@pitt.edu

Sponsors:
Center for Philosophy of Science
The Stone Age Institute