Did farming arise from a misapplication of social intelligence?

Full Abstract

The origins of farming is the defining event of human history--the one turning point that has resulted in modern humans having a quite different type of lifestyle and cognition to all other animals and past types of humans. With the economic basis provided by farming, human individuals and societies have developed types of material culture that greatly augment powers of memory and computation, extending the human mental capacity far beyond that which the brain alone can provide. Archaeologists have long debated and discussed why people began living in settled communities and became dependent on cultivated plants and animals, which soon evolved into domesticated forms. One of the most intriguing explanations was proposed more than 20 years ago not by an archaeologist but by a psychologist:
Nicholas Humphrey suggested that farming arose from the 'misapplication of social intelligence'. I explore this idea in relation to recent discoveries and archaeological interpretations in the Near East, arguing that social intelligence has indeed played a key role in the origin of farming and hence the emergence of the modern world.

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Author information

Author/s: Mithen, Steven (S);

Affiliation: School of Human & Environmental Sciences, University of Reading, Whiteknights, PO Box 227, Reading RG6 6AB, UK. s.j.mithen(-atsign-)reading.ac.uk

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Historical Article; Journal Article; Review

Journal: Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences (Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2007-Apr; vol 362 (issue 1480) : pp 705-18

Dates: Created 2007/03/16; Completed 2007/09/26; Revised 2008/11/20;

PMID: 17261508, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Agriculture - history; methods
Cultural Evolution
History, Ancient
Humans

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