Major Transitions in Human Evolutionary History

* Article: Major Transitions in Human Evolutionary History. By Martin Stuart-Fox. World Futures, The Journal of New Paradigm Research Volume 79, 2023 - Issue 1, Pages 29-68

URL = https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02604027.2021.2018646

Abstract

"Eörs Szathmáry and John Maynard Smith famously argued that the evolution of life on earth has been marked by a series of transitions to greater complexity, the last being from primate to human societies.

I argue that this last transition, covering all of human evolutionary history, in turn comprises two phases:

• the first defined by increases in the capacity of the human brain/mind to structurally integrate causal inferences and selectively apply them to construct increasingly sophisticated sociocultural niches;

• the second defined by manipulation of the universal Darwinian mechanisms driving sociocultural evolution.

During the first phase, hominin cognitive structure passed through three key transitions to produce the brain/mind of archaic Homo sapiens.

The fourth transition, to fully modern Homo sapiens sapiens equipped with symbolic cognition and language, marks the fulcrum that leveraged the second phase in which changes in the scope and rate of niche construction were primarily driven by manipulation of sociocultural evolutionary mechanisms.

The fifth transition to sedentary living enabled new selection pressures to be exerted through the concentration and application of social power,

while the sixth transition multiplied the cognitive variation available to construct more elaborate sociocultural niches.

Finally I note that decreasing intervals between transitions creates a pattern of accelerating sociocultural change.'