2018 - 2019 / Tercera edición

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Browsing 2018 - 2019 / Tercera edición by Subject "Ciencias de la Tierra y Planetarias"

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    Human Cognitive Abilities in the Lower Palaeolithic, the Role of Material Culture in Human Evolution
    (2019) Byrne, Beatriz
    "Abstract Developments in Experimental and Cognitive Archaeology in the last two decades, together with those of Comparative Psychology and Cognitive Psychology, have allowed us to determine and understand in more detail how the mind of hominids worked from the beginning of human evolution. Experimental and Cognitive Archaeology have made it possible to know in detail the manufacturing processes of stone tools, the only type of material capable of surviving the passing of time, as well as the cognitive abilities necessary for their manufacture, knowledge of generalities and technological sequences or chaînes opératoires. Wider and deeper research into the behaviour of great primates both in the wild and in captivity have allowed a better and more detailed understanding of their cognitive abilities. While all approaches recognize the existence of qualitative or quantitative limits in the cognitive abilities of great apes with respect to humans there is a lack of agreement about which of those abilities make us really human and when they appear. This is partly due to lack of understanding about the nature of cognition. The present study applies the findings of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, interpreted by Leonardo Polo, on human and animal cognition both to last findings in primate cognition and to the manufacturing and use of Palaeolithic stone tools, including the oldest ones from the Lower Palaeolithic, in order to determine the type of cognitive abilities required for their manufacture. Special attention is given to the oldest stone tools dating from 3.3 to 2.34 million years ago. It specifically focuses on the necessary use of abstract thinking, as well as on practical reason or the faculty of means and not only the use of the collatio sensibilis or sensitive comparison of Thomas Aquinas and sensitive knowledge of great apes to their rudimentary use and making of tools".