RT Article
T1 A Cathedral with Disconnected Chapels? Reassessing the Cognitive Capacities of Neanderthals in Light of Recent Archaeological Discoveries
JF Journal of cognition and culture
VO 21
IS 3/4
SP 243
OP 260
A1 Liu, Cheng
LA English
PB Brill
YR 2021
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1774654156
AB Abstract The reconstruction of hominins’ cognitive evolution has always been a crucial but challenging task. Researchers from various disciplines have tried to approach this issue, among which British archaeologist Steven Mithen’s cathedral model is regarded as one of the earliest and most creative attempts. In this model, he proposed that the Neanderthal’s mind is like a cathedral with disconnected chapels. Specifically, Neanderthals possessed advanced social, natural history, technical, and even linguistic intelligence modules, but the first three modules are isolated from each other, meaning they cannot effectively use the knowledge from one domain to address the issue of another domain. This article challenges his reconstruction of Neanderthals’ cognitive capacities by presenting multiple forms of archaeological evidence bearing on various kinds of cross-domain thinking that has arisen over the past two decades.
K1 Archaeological Evidence
K1 Neanderthal
K1 cognitive capacity
K1 cathedral model
DO 10.1163/15685373-12340107