A model of the transition to behavioural and cognitive modernity using reflexively autocatalytic networks

Abstract

This paper proposes a model of the cognitive mechanisms underlying the transition to behavioural and cognitive modernity in the Upper Palaeolithic using autocatalytic networks. These networks have been used to model life’s origins. More recently, they have been applied to the emergence of cognitive structure capable of undergoing cultural evolution. Mental representations of knowledge and experiences play the role of catalytic molecules, the interactions among them (e.g. the forging of new associations or affordances) play the role of reactions, and thought processes are modelled as chains of these interactions. We posit that one or more genetic mutations may have allowed thought to be spontaneously tailored to the situation by modulating the degree of (i) divergence (versus convergence), (ii) abstractness (versus concreteness), and (iii) context specificity. This culminated in persistent, unified autocatalytic semantic networks that bridged previously compartmentalized knowledge and experience. We explain the model using one of the oldest-known uncontested examples of figurative art: the carving of the Hohlenstein–Stadel Löwenmensch, or lion man. The approach keeps track of where in a cultural lineage each innovation appears, and models cumulative change step by step. It paves the way for a broad scientific framework for the origins of both biological and cultural evolutionary processes.