ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2022
Archaeological evidence for thinking about possibilities in hominin evolution.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- Selective use of distant stone resources by the earliest Oldowan toolmakers.Science advances · 2025Article
- Can chimpanzees conceive of mutually exclusive future possibilities? A Comment on: 'Chimpanzees prepare for alternative possible outcomes' (2023), by EngelmannBiology letters · 2024Article
- How (and why) languages became more complex as we evolved more prosocial: the human self-domestication view.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Thinking about possibilities: mechanisms, ontogeny, functions and phylogeny.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The emergence of the ability to think about future possibilities must have played an influential role in human evolution, driving a range of foresightful behaviours, including preparation, communication and technological innovation. Here we review the archeological evidence for such behavioural indicators of foresight. We find the earliest signs of hominins retaining tools and transporting materials for repeated future use emerging from around 1.8 Ma. From about 0.5 Ma onwards, there are indications of technical and social changes reflecting advances in foresight. And in a third period, starting from around 140 000 years ago, hominins appear to have increasingly relied on material culture to shape the future and to exchange their ideas about possibilities. Visible signs of storytelling, even about entirely fictional scenarios, appear over the last 50 000 years. Although the current evidence suggests that there were distinct transitions in the evolution of our capacity to think about the future, we warn that issues of taphonomy and archaeological sampling are likely to skew our picture of human cognitive evolution. This article is part of the theme issue 'Thinking about possibilities: mechanisms, ontogeny, functions and phylogeny'.
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Registered trials
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