Stone tools and the evolution of human cognition /

Distant ancestors' use of stone tools has a long and varied evolutionary history. Because no direct fossil record of early human behavior exists, insight into the evolution of human cognition must be inferred from indirect interpretations based on archaeological finds. From a time before the fabrication of delicate bone instruments and the creation of stunning works of art in the closing millennia of the last Ice Age, the only available clues to early human cognition come from the understanding of changing lithic (stone) technologies. This work presents a detailed and scholarly discussion of lithic technologies, with specific reference to their utility as markers of human cognition. Chapter contributors consider numerous factors from various perspectives, including information gleaned from the archaeological record, observation of nonhuman primates, and experimental investigations. The authors also emphasize the many challenges researchers faced in standardizing investigations across a broad span of geologic time and a variety of ancestral species and advise caution in the interpretation of results. This volume requires an understanding of lithic technologies and/or cognitive science and will be of interest primarily to paleoanthropologists, archaeologists, and cognitive scientists. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. D. A. Brass independent scholar