ArticleEvolutionary anthropology2018
The role of play objects and object play in human cognitive evolution and innovation.
Article in Evolutionary anthropology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 124 citations in OpenAlex.
- Becoming human in the age of AI: cognitive co-evolutionary processes.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Object play in Tsimane children: implications for sex-specific division of labour.Evolutionary human sciences · 2025Article
- Neural plasticity in early potters: Shape analysis and TMS-EEG co-registration trace the rise of a new motor skill.PloS one · 2025Article
- Use it or lose it: A model-based assessment of the hypothesis that European Neanderthals relied on wildfires to create their campfires.Open research Europe · 2025Article
- A global cross-cultural analysis of string figures reveals evidence of deep transmission and innovation.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Article
- Article
- Children at play: The role of novices in the production of Europe's earliest Upper Paleolithic ceramics.PloS one · 2024Article
- The two-faced process of learning and the importance of Janus-faced solutions.NPJ science of learning · 2023Article
- Atlatl use equalizes female and male projectile weapon velocity.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Children's Evolved Learning Abilities and Their Implications for Education.Educational psychology review · 2022Article
- Hunter-Gatherer Children's Object Play and Tool Use: An Ethnohistorical Analysis.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Experimental investigation of orangutans' lithic percussive and sharp stone tool behaviours.PloS one · 2022Article
- Theoretical plurality, the extended evolutionary synthesis, and archaeology.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Materiality, Agency and Evolution of Lithic Technology: an Integrated Perspective for Palaeolithic Archaeology.Journal of archaeological method and theory · 2021Article
- A cross-cultural investigation of young children's spontaneous invention of tool use behaviours.Royal Society open science · 2020Article
- Learner-driven innovation in the stone tool technology of earlyEvolutionary human sciences · 2020Article
- Corpse-directed play parenting by a sterile adult female chimpanzee.Primates; journal of primatology · 2020Article
- Space to play: identifying children's sites in the Pleistocene archaeological record.Evolutionary human sciences · 2020Article
- Adolescence and innovation in the European Upper Palaeolithic.Evolutionary human sciences · 2020Article
- Where innovations flourish: an ethnographic and archaeological overview of hunter-gatherer learning contexts.Evolutionary human sciences · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 4 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In this contribution, we address a major puzzle in the evolution of human material culture: If maturing individuals just learn their parental generation's material culture, then what is the origin of key innovations as documented in the archeological record? We approach this question by coupling a life-history model of the costs and benefits of experimentation with a niche-construction perspective. Niche-construction theory suggests that the behavior of organisms and their modification of the world around them have important evolutionary ramifications by altering developmental settings and selection pressures. Part of Homo sapiens' niche is the active provisioning of children with play objects - sometimes functional miniatures of adult tools - and the encouragement of object play, such as playful knapping with stones. Our model suggests that salient material culture innovation may occur or be primed in a late childhood or adolescence sweet spot when cognitive and physical abilities are sufficiently mature but before the full onset of the concerns and costs associated with reproduction. We evaluate the model against a series of archeological cases and make suggestions for future research.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.