In Landscape of the Mind, John F. Hoffecker explores the origin and growth of the human mind, drawing on archaeology, history, and the fossil record. He suggests that, as an indirect result of bipedal locomotion, early humans developed a feedback relationship among their hands, brains, and tools that evolved into the capacity to externalize thoughts in the form of shaped stone objects. When anatomically modern humans evolved a parallel capacity to externalize thoughts as symbolic language, individual brains within social groups became integrated into a "neocortical Internet," or super-brain, giving birth to the mind. Noting that archaeological traces of symbolism coincide with evidence of the ability to generate novel technology, Hoffecker contends that human creativity, as well as higher order consciousness, is a product of the superbrain. He equates the subsequent growth of the mind with human history, which began in Africa more than 50,000 years ago. As anatomically modern humans spread across the globe, adapting to a variety of climates and habitats, they redesigned themselves technologically and created alternative realities through tools, language, and art. Hoffecker connects the rise of civilization to a hierarchical reorganization of the super-brain, triggered by explosive population growth. Subsequent human history reflects to varying degrees the suppression of the mind's creative powers by the rigid hierarchies of nationstates and empires, constraining the further accumulation of knowledge. The modern world emerged after 1200 from the fragments of the Roman Empire, whose collapse had eliminated a central authority that could thwart innovation. Hoffecker concludes with speculation about the possibility of artificial intelligence and the consequences of a mind liberated from its organic antecedents to exist in an independent, nonbiological form.

In this book, John F. Hoffecker employs his unique knowledge to address a central goal in paleoanthropology--tracking the evolution of the human mind. Others have attempted similar syntheses, but if you can read only one book, this is the one to choose for its remarkable integration of diverse archaeological observations and unusual clarity and especially for the narrative's close approximation to what actually happened in prehistory. -- Richard G. Klein, Bass Professor in Humanities and Sciences, Stanford University, and author of The Human Career: Human Biological and Cultural Origins

About the Author
John F. Hoffecker is a fellow of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is the author of A Prehistory of the North: Human Settlement of the Higher Latitudes and coauthor of Human Ecology of Beringia, which was named a Choice outstanding academic title.

Reviews
Overall, this is a much needed addition to the area of cognitive thought, an area of research that will become increasingly important within archaeology and paleoanthropology over the coming decades. -- Samuel P. Griffiths PaleoAnthropology Landscape of the Mind provides an innovative view on the feedback between the biological and social in human evolution. -- Matthew L. Sisk Journal of Anthropological Research The volume would be a very good read for nonspecialists interested in cognitive evolution in general and human evolution in particular. -- Thomas Wynn Quarterly Review of Biology



Book Information
ISBN 9780231147040
Author John Hoffecker
Format Hardback
Page Count 288
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press