Hidden Depths - The ancestry of our most human emotions
Project Justification and Description
Figure 1: Illustration of the relationship between five key social emotions and Palaeolithic evidence
Why is this project important?
For almost all of human existence complex narratives have inspired us with what it means to be human, helping us to negotiate the complex tensions our emotional minds place on us in discovering our systems of values and morality, be this through myths and stories which explain creation or explicit religious texts. However the scientific study of human origins over the last century has left most of us with little to inspire us, instead giving us the impression of a past dominated by selfish individualistic competition. There is little within this narrative to appeal to those groups which most wish and need to explore what it means to them to be human. This project redresses this through carrying out new research into the evolution of our distinctively human social emotions, as seen through archaeological evidence for the development of courage, kindness, tolerance, self-control and gratitude in our distant ancestors, and disseminating this research both to the wider public and academically.
The narrative that we create of our existence is important. We know that the prehistoric explanations of how we came to be have a profound effect on who we think we are, and how we behave. All too often these narratives have affected us in a negative way. At an extreme example the comments of two respected German academics that ’There was a time, now considered barbaric, in which eliminating those who were born unfit for life, or who later became so, was taken for granted’ (Binding and Hoche 1920) became part of the justification of the elimination of individuals with disabilities which was the first part of the atrocities of the Holocaust. We know now this interpretation is far from the truth, and indeed that care for those with illness or injury has been part of human evolutionary history since ‘humans’ first evolved (Hublin 2009; Spikins, Rutherford, and Needham 2010; Spikins 2015a; Spikins, in press). However an assumption that there was no room for moral or altruistic motivations in our distant past often prevails. Even though there is much within the archaeological evidence of the distant past to inspire alternative narratives to that of selfish competition, violence and cruelty in the past is still dominant in the media. Even in an academic environment evidence for active care of the vulnerable is consistently ignored or underplayed (Tilley 2015a). It would be naive to suggest that early human societies were social utopias, however alternative narratives which consider the role of pro-social and altruistic motivations are much needed. As societies we lack an accessible understanding of alternative evidence for human societies, which gives us the opportunity to develop alternative narratives within which pro-social motivations, such as courage, kindness, self-control, tolerance and gratitude are explored. Such evidence is also profoundly moving, and attracts media and public attention when it is made available.
Understanding the evolutionary context of why we react in the way that we do also contributes to our key social challenges today. For example we now recognise that part of human adaptation may have involved a capacity for multiple developmental pathways, governing not only physical growth but cognition, each adaptive in different contexts (Narvaez et al. 2013). By understanding why we respond and develop differently in different contexts we can better cope with the present world and understand how to design our futures. Furthermore there are other potential benefits to understanding our evolved emotional minds. Many apparent ‘disorders’ are best understood as a mismatch between adaptations which were once useful and modern contexts in which they create new challenges (Nunn, Wallace, and Beall 2015). Moreover an understanding of the social context of past care and of commitments and the evolutionary importance of trust allows us to appreciate why declining levels of trust in authorities and within communities is so significant an issue in modern societies (see most famously for example Putnam 2001). Research into the evolution of moral emotions to date has however progressed outside of the chronological control and material evidence which the archaeological record can provide. Biological models of the evolution of altruism have become highly sophisticated, yet operate outside of the material record for behaviours.
Key Aim:
The project has an ambitious aim - to provide material evidence to an emerging new narrative to human origins which highlights the role of pro-social altruistic motivationsin human evolutionary success.
What activities do you propose to carry out?
Overview:
This project addresses the need for both a public and an academic understanding of the material evidence for human emotional strengths in the distant past though the following key outputs:
●A print on demand open-access accessible volume
●Two open access academic papers
●A web site with an online animation and resources aimed at adolescents and young people (ages 11-15).
By making evidence available at several different levels (academic, informed public, young people) the aim is to contribute to understanding and sense of respect for the motivations for behaviours in the distant past, and allow people to develop their own narratives of their distant origins.
Activities to achieve these outputs (two phases):
Phase One:
Research and interpretation of evidence and academic publication (12 months)
The funds requested would allow the research and interpretation of evidence for Palaeolithic behaviour from both primary sources and secondary sources, such as unpublished excavation material, material published in reports and minor journals as well higher impact academic sources which informs our understanding of the evolution of the five key human emotional strengths.
Detailed research (described more fully in the following pages) will be carried out at two levels of analysis for each social emotion –
●An overview of evidence throughout the Palaeolithic, drawn from academic sources, put within the context of recent research in cognition and the evolution of social emotions
●A series of case studies of key sites which provide greater detail, drawing on detailed material from academic publications, reports and papers in minor journals and unpublished material drawn from site visits and interviews with key academics involved in fieldwork or research.
The key regions to be visited are the Paris Basin, France (Musée de l’Homme, Musée de St GermainenLaye, sites of Pincevent and Les Etoiles), the Dordogne, France (Musée de Prehistoire, Les Ezyies de Tayac) and Santander, northern Spain (Museo de Altamira and Museo de Atapuerca). In each of these locations detailed data will be collected by the PI and RA on specific sites as well as discussions with prominent academics. Focused interviews will also be carried out via Skype with key figures (listed in the following pages) involved in the excavation and research of key sites. For each individual there will be three staged interviews. The first will explain the scope of questions and the aims of the project, the second will be a main information collection interview to find out detailed information as well as to better understand the ideas and perspectives of the key researcher, and the last will overview how material will be represented (this last could also be carried out via email).
Leading to the creation of:
●the material and draft sections for the accessible volume ‘Hidden Depths’ as well as the material for the online resources for young people created in Part Two.
●academic publications which would cover each of the key emotions, drawing on the evidence collected to argue for the mechanisms and pattern of development through time. These will include two papers with the provisional titles of ‘Adding a chronological dimension to the evolution of social emotions’ (intended for Biological Theory) and ‘Tolerance and human evolutionary success’ (intended for PLOS One).
Five key human emotional strengths - details on research and activities:
Courage
Evidence for courage and it’s role social relationships in our distant past comes from evidence for hunting techniques which require courage, and from evidence for the maintenance of peace through counter-dominance tactics and from the control of disputes through ritualised conflict.
Hunting:
Meat eating is an important part of human evolution, allowing brain size expansion and increasing cognitive sophistication. However the emotional context of collaborative hunting has yet to be explored. Here I will bring together evidence for hunting practices, from earliest evidence of potential hunting, to collaborative hunting in Neanderthals to that in modern humans, evaluating the extent to which courage, capacity to put oneself in danger or take risks on behalf of others, was increasingly an essential part of such practices, and using examples from specific sites to illustrate how capacities for courage changed through time.
Maintenance of Peace
Past hunter-gatherers appear to have maintained long periods of peace (Kelly 2000). The project will consider the role that courage had in that process through counter-dominance tactics and ritualised conflict resolution drawing on archaeological evidence. Following pioneering work by Boehm the role of counter-dominance tactics in past, and how far back these can be extended into prehistory will be considered. The role of ritualised conflict (seen in anthropological accounts) in preventing the escalation of violence but demanding much courage will also be explored.
Site examples:
Lomekwi 3 - 3.3 million year- Earliest humans - old butchery wear on stone tools, questions of hunting and scavenging, analogies with chimpanzee hunting (Harmand et al. 2015)
Olduvai at 1.8 million years ago and firmer evidence for collaborative hunting
Olduvai BK4b - reliance on hunting, changes in site construction (Domínguez-Rodrigo et al. 2014)
La Cotte de Ste Brelade (courtesy of Matthew Pope) - collaborative hunting in Neanderthals, associated with evidence for extensive trauma.
Molodova I, level 4 - the significance of mammoths in potential aggregation (Demay, Péan, and Patou-Mathis 2012)
Verberie - collaborative hunting of reindeer and evidence for sharing of food within the whole group (Zubrow, Audouze, and Enloe 2010)
Shanidar - Neanderthal with projectile point injury (Erik Trinkaus 2014)
San Teodoro Cave, Italy - interpersonal violence and complexity of causes (ie causes can be counter-dominance related as well as uncontrolled violence) (Bachechi, P-F. Fabbri, and Mallegni 1997)
TybrindVig B - (individual with multiple healed frontal head wounds) and question of ritualised conflict (Andersen 1985) see also (Thorpe 2003) for further examples.
Suggested personal interviews: Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo (Department of Prehistory, Complutense University, Madrid, Spain), LaëtitiaDemay (Muséum National d’HistoireNaturelle, Paris, France) Christopher Boehm (University of Southern California), Mirjana Roksandic (University of Winnipeg)
Self-control
In order to behave in the interests of others we have to have the self-control to resist the temptation of following purely our own interests - sharing food rather than eating it immediately when we are hungry for example. Self-control/patience is one of the key emotional strengths that allows human social collaboration to emerge, and we see signs of this very early in the archaeological record, becoming highly developed at a later date. Here three examples, relating to specific archaeological sites, are discussed - the production of handaxes and other artefact forms from 1.8 million years onwards (involving self-control in imposing pre-conceived form on a difficult raw material, and capabilities to procure raw material for future use) food sharing (including between different households) and shared mortuary ritual (involving capacities contain and share grief).
Site examples:
Kilombe, Kenya - manufacture and use of finely made handaxes, following a mental template, and illustrating concern with aesthetics and reputation for patience (J. A. J. Gowlett 1978; Crompton and Gowlett 1993; J. A. J. Gowlett 2011; Spikins 2012; J. Gowlett et al. 2014)
GrottadeiGiganti, Italy - long distance raw material transport by Neanderthals to a region with very poor local raw materials, and relationship with self-control, forethought and behaviour on behalf of the group (Spinapolice 2012)
Olduvai BK4b, Kenya - sharing of large game animals, provisioning of offspring and the vulnerable (Domínguez-Rodrigo et al. 2014)
Pincevent level 14-20 and Verberie, Paris Basin - complex food sharing practices in ice age europe(Enloe 2003; Zubrow, Audouze, and Enloe 2010)
Atapuerca, northern Spain - shared mortuary deposition and the origins of shared mortuary practice (Pettitt 2013; Arsuaga et al. 1997)
Suggested interviews: John Gowlett (Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, Liverpool, UK), EnzaSpinapolice (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany), Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo (Department of Prehistory, Complutense University, Madrid, Spain), Mark White (Department of Archaeology, Durham, UK), Paul Pettitt (University of Durham, UK), Juan Luis Arsuaga (Universidad Complutense, Madrid)
Kindness/Compassion
Kindness and compassion has a long evolutionary history and is perhaps best illustrated through a willingness to support and care for ill, injured or vulnerable individuals (regardless of whether they will survive). Compassion involves not just empathy, but a motivation to help others. A reputation as someone willing to help vulnerable group members is likely to have been important in selective success and in forging relationships based on trust in the human evolutionary past. A willingness to care for the vulnerable dates back to at least 1.6 million years ago, and is widespread in archaic species such as Neanderthals (Spikins, Rutherford, and Needham 2010; Tilley 2015a; Spikins 2015a; Spikins in press).
Site examples:
Koobi Fora, Kenya - c 1.6 million years ago.Hypervitaminosis A in female KNMER 1808 at 1.5-1.7 million, will have caused severe pain and loss of consciousness and she must have been looked after for several weeks (A. Walker, Zimmerman, and Leakey 1982; Alan Walker and Shipman 1997; Doolan 2011)
Dmanisi, Georgia - c 1.8 million years ago.Dmanisi crania 3444/3900 lost all but one of the teeth before death, speculation that others were providing food (Lordkipanidze et al. 2005; Lordkipanidze et al. 2006)
Atapuerca, northern Spain - c 450,000 years ago. Support and care for a child with craniosyntosis(Gracia et al. 2009) and an elderly man with a damaged hip (Bonmatí et al. 2011) as well as an individual with ear hyperostosis that probably caused deafness (Pérez et al. 1997) and a severe dental abscess another (Pérez et al. 1997).
Salé, Morocco - c400,000 years ago. A Middle Palaeolithic woman who suffered from debilitating cranial distortion and muscular trauma related to a pre-birth physical deformity (congenital torticollis) and reached adulthood despite disability (Hublin 1985; Hublin 2009; Bower 1994).
Shanidar Cave, Iraq - c60-45,000years ago - one male with multiple pathologies including damage to left eye and probable blindness (also left cerebral cortex damage), right arm paralysis probably from childhood, fractures of right humerus and amputation at the elbow; osteomyelitis of the right clavicle, fracture to the right foot, and degenerative joint disease of the right knee and ankle ((Tilley 2015a, 16). (Erik Trinkaus 1978; Erik Trinkaus 2014; Solecki 1971; E. Trinkaus and Zimmerman 1982). A second make with severe osteoarthritis of the right foot (possibly from trauma), and serious lung damage with survival for several weeks at least whilst immobilised (Tilley 2015a, 16)
Suggested Interviews: Lorna Tilley (Research School of Humanities and the Arts, Australia National University, Australia), Erik Trinkaus (University of Pennsylvania), Jean-Jacques Hublin (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig), Juan Luis Arsuaga (Universidad Complutense, Madrid)
Tolerance
Tolerance of people who are different, or of strangers, allows a new type of human collaboration - that across diverse minds, bodies and experiences and across different groups. Such collaboration provides resilience within groups, as diverse strategies to cope with changes are enabled, and resilience on a large scale to environmental risks and resource shortages as collaborations between groups buffer shortfalls. Archaeological examples provide a material record of tolerance for those who are different, those who are distant and for children who think differently (in careful teaching).
Site examples:
Qesem Cave, Israel, 300,000bp andPincevent, Paris Basin 12,000bp- evidence of apprentice flint knapping (Grimm 2000; Stapert 2007; Assaf, Barkai, and Gopher 2016)
Rouffignac Cave, France - 30,000bp- evidence of children being helped to trace lines on cave walls (Van Gelder and Sharpe 2009)
Blombos Cave, South Africa - 70-60,000bp, Howieson’sPoort and Stillbayindusties, early evidence of raw material transport across territories and inter-group alliances (Henshilwood and Dubreuil 2011)
Bad Dürremberg, Germany - c 7,000bp ‘shaman’s grave’ of a woman with probable epilepsy (Porr and Alt 2006)
Romito, Italy - 18-13,000bp support and integration of an adult with dwarfism (Frayer et al. 1987; Craig et al. 2010; Tilley 2015b)
Chauvet Cave, France - c 30,000bp speculated integration of different minds in Upper Palaeolithic art (Kellman 1998; Humphrey 1998; Spikins 2009)
Suggested interviews: Marian Vanhaeren (CNRS, Bordeaux, France), Christopher Henshilwood (University of Bergen), Clive Gamble (University of Southampton, UK), Lorna Tilley (Research School of Humanities and the Arts, Australia National University, Australia, Leslie Van Gelder (Walden Univeristy)
Gratitude
Gratitude is a highly complex emotion, and perhaps the most difficult to identify in the material record. To feel gratitude we need to understand other’s motivations (ie have a developed social mind) and be aware that their intentions towards us are altruistic. We cannot feel gratitude because we want to, or think we should, but only in contexts of genuine trust. Gratitude however provides the basis for generalised reciprocity (to give to others without expecting a particular return (Nowak and Roch 2007)) and for long term, large scale collaboration. Here we consider archaeological evidence for the types of complex social minds which could infer complex motivations and nuanced emotions in others, and the capacity for individuals to be supported by large scale alliance networks.
Site examples:
Las Covallanos Cave, northern Spain - cave art illustrating complex and nuanced understanding of the emotions and reactions of the visitor (Bahn and Vertut 1988; Bahn 2012)