The Cultural Transition of the Middle--论文代写范文精选

利基写道:与之前的时代相比,创新是文化的本质。这称为旧石器时代晚期革命,这种集体考古信号明显证明存在于人类大脑。他称这一时期为人类文化的大爆炸。下面的report代写范文进行讲述。

Abstract
Many elements of culture made their first appearance in the Upper Paleolithic. Previous hypotheses put forth to explain this unprecedented burst of creativity are found wanting. Examination of the psychological basis of creativity leads to the suggestion that it resulted from the onset of contextual focus: the capacity to focus or defocus attention in response to the situation, thereby shifting between analytic and associative modes of thought. New ideas germinate in a defocused state in which one is receptive to the possible relevance of many dimensions of a situation. They are refined in a focused state, conducive to filtering out irrelevant dimensions and condensing relevant ones.

Introduction
Human culture is widely believed to have begun between 2 and 1.5 mya, at which time a rapid increase in brain size coincides with onset of the use of fire and sophisticated stone tools. The archaeological record suggests that a perhaps even more profound cultural transition occurred between 60,000 and 30,000 ka during the Middle / Upper Paleolithic (Bar-Yosef, 1994; Klein, 1989; Mellars, 1973, 1989a, b; Mithen, 1996, 1998; Soffer, 1994; Stringer & Gamble, 1993; White, 1993). Leakey (1984) writes:Unlike previous eras, when stasis dominated, innovation is now the essence of culture, with change being measured in millennia rather than hundreds of millennia. Known as the Upper Paleolithic Revolution, this collective archaeological signal is unmistakable evidence of the modern human mind at work (p. 93-94).
 
Mithen (1996) refers to this period as the 'big bang' of human culture, claiming that it shows more innovation than the previous six million years of human evolution. It marks the beginning of a more strategic style of hunting involving specific animals at specific sites. We also see the colonization of Australia, the replacement of Levallois tool technology by blade cores in the Near East, and the first appearance of many forms of art in Europe, including naturalistic cave paintings of animals, bone and antler tools with engraved designs, ivory statues of animals and sea shells, personal decoration such as beads, pendants, and perforated animal teeth, and elaborate burial sites. 

Some of these items are associated with social change and the beginnings of ritualized religion; White (1982) writes of a total restructuring of social relations(p. 176). Moreover, we see the kind of cumulative change that Tomasello (1999) refers to as a Ratchet Effect.What could have caused this unprecedented explosion of creativity? Some have noted that it would make things easier if this second cultural transition also coincided with an increase in brain size (Mithen, 1998; Richerson & Boyd, 2000). And in fact, human brain enlargement does seem to have occurred in two spurts. However, the second takes place between 500,000 and 200,000 (Aiello, 1996) or 600,000 and 150,000 ka (Ruff, Trinkaus, & Holliday, 1997); at any rate, well before the Upper Paleolithic. Thus the cultural transition cannot be directly attributed to a change in the size or shape of the cranium. Leakey (1984) writes of anatomically modern human populations in the Middle East with little in the way of culture, and concludes The link between anatomy and behavior therefore seems to break (p. 95).

Advent of Syntactic Language
It has been argued that while a primitive form of language, or proto-language may have existed earlier, the symbolic and syntactic aspects emerged at this time (Aiello & Dunbar, 1993; Bickerton, 1990, 1996; Dunbar, 1993, 1996). Another argument put forth is that prior to the Upper Paleolithic, language was used merely in social situations, and thereafter it became general-purpose, put to use in all kinds of situations (Aiello & Dunbar, 1993; Dunbar, 1993, 1996).

These arguments lead to the suggestion that the Upper Paleolithic Revolution was due to onset of more complex language. As noted by Tomasello (1999), language has a transformative effect on cognition. However, to posit that the cultural revolution is due to the attainment of sophisticated language begs the question: what cognitive change made possible the kind of thought that sophisticated language requires? And unless there was a underlying cognitive change involved, why did the cultural situation change so rapidly? Thus the riddle of the Upper Paleolithic is not resolved through the attainment of complex language.

Donalds (1991, 2001) explanation is that material culture began to function as an externalized symbol storage. Certainly artifacts serve the purpose of anchoring knowledge or desirable states of mind so that they can be referred back to later. One sees a depiction of bison on a cave, and there is a re-living of the experience of watching a stampede of bison. One looks at notches in a log and knows how many days have gone by. The result is not so different from retrieving knowledge from memory, though the source of the knowledge is external rather than internal.

However, the external world functioned as a form of memory long before there were symbolic artifacts. A look of disapproval on a mother's face could remind a child not to eat a poisonous mushroom as readily as retrieval of a memory of doing this and getting sick. The look on the mother's face is not a material artifact, yet it functions for the child as an external memory source, in much the same way as a bison painting or notches in a log. Moreover, since material objects are manifestations of ideas, which begin in minds, it seems reasonable that we look to the mind, not the outside world, for the root cause of the cultural revolution.

Exploration of Conceptual Spaces
Another possibility is that it reflected an enhanced ability to blend concepts (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002) or to map, explore, and transform conceptual spaces (Mithen, 1998). Mithen refers to Bodens (1990) definition of a conceptual space as a style of thinking in music, sculpture, choreography, chemistry, etc. As for why hominids suddenly became good at exploring and transforming conceptual spaces, he is somewhat vague:There is unlikely to be one single change in the human mind that enabled conceptual spaces to become explored and transformed. Although creative thinking seems to appear suddenly in human evolution, its cognitive basis had a long evolutionary history during which the three foundations evolved on largely an independent basis.
 
Mithen may be on to something with the notion that the cultural revolution is related to the capacity to explore and transform conceptual spaces. However, although the capacity for a theory of mind, language, and complex artifacts may have, in their most primitive forms, arisen at different times, it is hard to imagine how they could have evolved independent of one another. Furthermore, if there is anything that science has established in the last decade or two it is that a single, small change in initial conditions can have enormous consequences (e.g. Bak, Tang, & Weisenfeld, 1988; Kauffman, 1993). Thus the possibility that the Upper Paleolithic revolution can be explained by a single change in cognitive functioning is not only the simplest explanation, it is also consistent with the sudden transition in the archeological record, and with our understanding of phase transitions across the scientific disciplines.

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