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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time to venture into the Vault for a classic episode

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Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This one originally aired

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Speaker 1: November two thousand eighteen. This was our interview with the

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Speaker 1: emery professor Dietrich Stout about stone age technology. Yeah, this one,

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Speaker 1: this one was a lot of fun. We actually had

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Speaker 1: an in the studio, so uh, no phone call, uh

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Speaker 1: static or anything going on with this one. Uh. He

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Speaker 1: was a tremendously interesting to chat with and he even

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Speaker 1: engage some discussion on two thousand and one a Space Odyssey,

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Speaker 1: which of course was the the Vault episode that we

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Speaker 1: aired before this one. Yeah, so we hope you enjoy

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Ra and I'm Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 1: In today we have for you an interview episode, an

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Speaker 1: episode where we sat down and talked to an expert

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Speaker 1: on paleolithic technology. And I'm really excited for you all

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Speaker 1: to hear this one because this conversation was a lot

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Speaker 1: of fun. A Stone Age technology is so much more

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Speaker 1: fascinating than you would think, yeah, because in looking at it,

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Speaker 1: we're looking really at the roots of a human invention

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Speaker 1: and innovation, Like where does the entire tree of human

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Speaker 1: technology spring from? Yeah, and how did ancient technology shape us?

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Speaker 1: So this is going to be a conversation with Dr

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Speaker 1: Dietrich Stout. Dietrich Stout is an Associate professor of anthropology

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Speaker 1: at Emory University, where his Paleolithic Technology Laboratory investigates the

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Speaker 1: role of technology and human evolution. Dr Stout is also

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Speaker 1: Associate director of Emory's cross Disciplinary Center for Mind, Brain

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Speaker 1: and Culture, which promotes diverse and integrative research into human

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Speaker 1: nature and experience. His research focus on Paleolithic stone toolmaking

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Speaker 1: and brain evolution, integrads field research at early Stone Age

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Speaker 1: archaeological sites in Ethiopia with laboratory and museum research including

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Speaker 1: artifact analysis and experimental replication, functional and structural neuroimaging, behavioral analysis,

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Speaker 1: and psychometric testing. Now, if you want to check out

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Speaker 1: those centers I mentioned, the Paleolithic Technology Laboratory, you can

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Speaker 1: find that at scholar blogs dot Emery dot e d

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Speaker 1: u slash Stout Lab, and then the Center for mind

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Speaker 1: braining culture. You can just go to c MBC dot

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Speaker 1: Emery dot E d U. Yeah, this is a super

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Speaker 1: fun interview. I should distress this was an in studio interview. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: one of a couple of interviews we recorded about a

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Speaker 1: month ago where we said, hey, let's let's reach out

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Speaker 1: to some local experts on some various topics. We don't

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Speaker 1: necessarily we enjoyed jumping on the phone with with folks,

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Speaker 1: but why not have some some local talent come into

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Speaker 1: the studio. And that's what we did here. It was

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Speaker 1: a lot of fun, uh, and I and you will

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Speaker 1: really enjoy it. So I'd say, without any further ado,

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Speaker 1: let's go straight to our conversation with Dietrich Stout. Hey, Dietrich,

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Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.

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Speaker 1: Can you start by telling our listeners a little bit

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Speaker 1: about who you are and what you do? Yeah. Well,

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Speaker 1: I'm an associate professor of anthropology at Emory University. I'm

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Speaker 1: also the associate director of the Center for Mind, Brain

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Speaker 1: and Culture at Emery as well, which is a center

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Speaker 1: that promotes interdisciplinary research on mind, brain and culture. And

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Speaker 1: those are basically my interests. I come at it from

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Speaker 1: the direction of archaeology and the hope that we can

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Speaker 1: learn something from the past about what made us the

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Speaker 1: way we are today. So how did you first get

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Speaker 1: interested in stone age technology? Well, um, it's not something

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Speaker 1: that you typically encounter in most high schools around the country. UH. So,

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Speaker 1: you know, when I went to UH to college, I

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Speaker 1: really had had no idea of the possibilities that were

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Speaker 1: there for anthropology, for the archaeology of human origins. I

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Speaker 1: did know that I was interested in the way the

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Speaker 1: human mind works, in the nature of human experience. UH.

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Speaker 1: And at the time, I thought that meant that I

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Speaker 1: wanted to be a philosopher. When I got to school,

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Speaker 1: I realized what I said before, that a lot of

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Speaker 1: the way we can understand how we are today and

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Speaker 1: the nature of human experiences to understand the evolutionary processes

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Speaker 1: that brought us to where we are. UH. And I

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Speaker 1: had a really great UH professor as a freshman and

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Speaker 1: a freshman seminar. He told me to take some archaeology classes.

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Speaker 1: I did, and I still I just remember one lecture

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Speaker 1: that my professor gave, and she was talking about these

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Speaker 1: ancient stone tools in a particular kind called the little

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Speaker 1: vow waw technique, um, And he was pointing out that

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Speaker 1: you could see every individual action and and blow against

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Speaker 1: the core that this person had done something like fifty

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Speaker 1: or a hundred thousand years ago, and you could reconstruct

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Speaker 1: what they were thinking, the plans they made, And that

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Speaker 1: just struck me as as an incredible window on the

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Speaker 1: past and how our minds became the way that they

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Speaker 1: are today. And that's what got me started on it.

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Speaker 1: And like seeing into a dead person's imagination. Yeah, to

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Speaker 1: be able to recapture that, I mean, And now I've

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Speaker 1: worked at sites there are half a million years old

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Speaker 1: where you can literally trace individual decision making processes. It's

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Speaker 1: it's it's pretty incredible. Actually held a core at one

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Speaker 1: of these sites. I was looking at it and I

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Speaker 1: was wondering why they didn't do something that that I

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Speaker 1: would have done with that core, that piece of rock,

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Speaker 1: and I twisted it around to look at where I

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Speaker 1: was thinking about, and I said that they actually had tried,

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Speaker 1: well I was thinking, but it didn't work. So both

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Speaker 1: of us made the same mistake, separated by half a

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Speaker 1: million years. That's almost a little spooky. Yeah. Um, So

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Speaker 1: obviously we know that the Stone Age means stone tools.

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Speaker 1: But what as an expert in the area, what does

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Speaker 1: the Stone Age mean to you? What do you think

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Speaker 1: about when when this age is conjured? Uh? Yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: I think really of the the time period uh for

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Speaker 1: which we have evidence of human behavior in the forms

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Speaker 1: of archaeology, but extending way back into the past, so

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Speaker 1: that we have information, but it's also an evolutionary time depth.

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Speaker 1: And we're talking millions of years, more than three million

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Speaker 1: years at this point of time. Uh. So that's what

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Speaker 1: gets me excited about the Stone Age. Uh And of

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Speaker 1: course you know, it's called the Stone Age for a reason.

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Speaker 1: Most of what we have are the best evidences of

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Speaker 1: stone tools for behavior. Um So that's what I've focused on.

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Speaker 1: And when you think about the very beginning of the Paleolithic,

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Speaker 1: obviously we're talking about hominid ancestors then, but not not

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Speaker 1: Homo sapiens, right, And so when those organisms were alive,

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Speaker 1: when when they were trying to survive and and stone

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Speaker 1: tools began to play a role in their lives, what

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Speaker 1: was that role? What was the earliest role you think

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Speaker 1: stone tools played in in these organisms survival? Yeah? Well,

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Speaker 1: I would say at the outset, there's a lot of

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Speaker 1: things we don't really know with any great certainty about

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Speaker 1: the earliest Paleolithic uh. I think that there is strong

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Speaker 1: evidence that some of the earlier tools were used for

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Speaker 1: for butchery of animals, because you can recover actual cut

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Speaker 1: marks on bones when somebody accidentally nicked the bone as

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Speaker 1: they were butchering an animal, and so that's a direct evidence.

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Speaker 1: Now what else they were used for is much harder

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Speaker 1: to say because the plant materials, all those things are gone,

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Speaker 1: so there's very limited evidence of that, and it's only

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Speaker 1: in the past couple of years that that has been

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Speaker 1: reported a much earlier site. We used to think the

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Speaker 1: earliest stone tools were two and a half million years

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Speaker 1: old that worked at some of those sites, but now

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Speaker 1: they go back to three point three million years and

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Speaker 1: we as yet have very little evidence of what they

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Speaker 1: might have done with those tools. Hopefully in the next

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Speaker 1: few years there will be the kinds of evidence that

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Speaker 1: I was talking about, but it's just not there yet,

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Speaker 1: so a lot of unknowns. If I had to say,

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Speaker 1: these things are cutting tools, and the most important thing

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Speaker 1: probably for early humans to be able to cut was

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Speaker 1: animal flesh to access that, but they could have used

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Speaker 1: them for a lot of other things, including making other tools. Uh.

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Speaker 1: One of the great things about having a cutting edge

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Speaker 1: is your ability to shape other tools. For instance, in

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Speaker 1: would if you have a knife in the form of

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Speaker 1: a stone flake, you can make a spear. You can

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Speaker 1: make a digging stick. Again, though the wood's not there anymore.

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Speaker 1: So if they did that, we have a hard time

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Speaker 1: knowing for sure. And when you mentioned those dates a

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Speaker 1: minute ago that's referring to, Uh, is that that modified

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Speaker 1: stone tools we're not talking about like found stone tools. No,

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Speaker 1: And in fact, it would be nearly impossible to identify

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Speaker 1: and differentiate a found stone tool from a rock at

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Speaker 1: this point. M. So that's why we know chimpanzees use

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Speaker 1: rocks as tools, and so it's you know, likely that

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Speaker 1: are very early ancestors did Um. But yeah, by by

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Speaker 1: three point three, we have evidence of them actually fracturing

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Speaker 1: rock on purpose in a controlled way to produce cutting edges.

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Speaker 1: And that's something that we can definitively separate from a

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Speaker 1: natural process, so we know it it occurred at that point. Um.

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Speaker 1: Currently if I'm wrong, but are there are there broad

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Speaker 1: stroke um classifications for the different levels of tool creation?

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Speaker 1: Like I want to say, it's something like nature fact, artifact, etcetera. Uh,

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Speaker 1: could you walk our listeners through that? Yeah? Well, um,

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Speaker 1: you know, of course you could have on modified rocks

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Speaker 1: used as tools, for instance, to crack open and nut

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Speaker 1: as Uh. Chimpanzees and some monkeys, macaque monkeys do that

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Speaker 1: as well. Um, that's a tool, you know, it's a

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Speaker 1: stone tool. Um. But what we see by three point

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Speaker 1: three million years is the actual modification of the rock

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Speaker 1: on purpose in order to make a different kind of tool. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And that's generally a process simply of fracturing the to

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Speaker 1: produce sharp shards or flakes of stone that then become knives. Um.

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Speaker 1: And so that's loosely called like mode one. Uh. The

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Speaker 1: most well known industry that does that is the old

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Speaker 1: One named after Old of I Gorge or Mary and

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Speaker 1: Louis Leaky worked. Uh. And that's a very simple form

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Speaker 1: of stone tool making. Uh. It does require quite a

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Speaker 1: bit of coordination. It's not easy to break rocks. Um.

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Speaker 1: They're hard. You have to hit them just right and

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Speaker 1: with a lot of force. Um. But it's pretty conceptually simple.

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Speaker 1: You're not gonna make flakes um. And then after that

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Speaker 1: you've got what variously is called like mode to or

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Speaker 1: loosely called Schulian after a site where it was first

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Speaker 1: described in Europe. Is the manufacture of these things that

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Speaker 1: archaeologists call hand axes. And that's where you're not just

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Speaker 1: shattering the rock into flakes, but you're actually shaping the

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Speaker 1: rock to make a tool. UM. The classic tool from

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Speaker 1: this sort of stage or time period is UH the

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Speaker 1: hand as, which would be a flat rock UM with

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Speaker 1: cutting edge most of the way around the perimeter and

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Speaker 1: a tip at one end can be good again we

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Speaker 1: think for a large animal butchery UH. And so that's

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Speaker 1: where you've moved in to actually having the intention, having

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Speaker 1: a goal in mind, and the techniques that you have.

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Speaker 1: The control over the stone that's required is more um UH.

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Speaker 1: Following that, you have what we call prepared core technologies

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Speaker 1: in which you shape the rock in a careful way

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Speaker 1: so that you can remove one final piece that's already

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Speaker 1: pre shaped the way you want it to be uh.

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Speaker 1: And then you can do that over and over again,

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Speaker 1: so it becomes a very efficient way of making tools.

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Speaker 1: And then there's all sorts of variations on that UM.

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Speaker 1: And that's the point in which we think there's a

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Speaker 1: big change that they start actually putting these things on sticks,

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Speaker 1: for instance hafting. Right, So you have composite tools, and

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Speaker 1: you have all sorts of other techniques and materials that

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Speaker 1: then enter the process and things become much more complex.

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Speaker 1: So you mentioned the hand as, I'm interested to know

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Speaker 1: a little bit more about that. I may be mistaken,

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Speaker 1: but there there have been identified, I think, different schools

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Speaker 1: of hand as construction. Is that right? Well, yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean there are different ways of making something that we

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Speaker 1: call a hand ax. Uh. Now, we also, I would

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Speaker 1: have be very careful about that. We should always remember

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Speaker 1: that when we call slanging a hand axt, that's a

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Speaker 1: name that we came up with to describe a bunch

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Speaker 1: of things that we think are all similar to each other.

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Speaker 1: That doesn't necessarily map onto what anybody was thinking in

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Speaker 1: the past, or whether they knew each other or or whatever.

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Speaker 1: So it's a tool, but we have to be careful

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Speaker 1: about it. You put a name on something, you think

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Speaker 1: you understand it. Uh. But yeah, So, as I mentioned,

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Speaker 1: the hand ax has a particular form, there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of different ways you could achieve that, and a lot

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Speaker 1: of different starting points. For instance, I might start with

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Speaker 1: just a big rock and then shape that rock into

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Speaker 1: a pointed, thin hand ax. Uh Or I could start

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Speaker 1: with an even larger rock and then I knock off

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Speaker 1: a giant flame a you know, more than more than

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Speaker 1: ten centimeters long, as generally they cut off, and that's

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Speaker 1: almost already what I need. You know, it's got a

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Speaker 1: big cutting edge all the way around the edge. And

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Speaker 1: then I shape that flight just a little bit right.

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Speaker 1: And that's a very different way of making a tool

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Speaker 1: that in the end probably as a similar function and

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Speaker 1: looks quite similar. And then there's all sorts of different

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Speaker 1: sub variants of ways of doing that. Uh So that's

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Speaker 1: what I think when you're talking about different schools, is

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Speaker 1: these different methods of making the hand access. Now there's

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Speaker 1: as a raging debate over what the variation actually means,

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Speaker 1: you know, they the sort of naive ascension early on

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Speaker 1: was every time you find a different way of doing something,

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Speaker 1: that's a different quote culture, even though we don't really

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Speaker 1: know what we mean by that term at that point.

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Speaker 1: Now now there's you know, people saying that all these

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Speaker 1: are just recurring rediscoveries of simple solutions to the same

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Speaker 1: kind of problems. They don't necessarily imply any sort of

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Speaker 1: cultural continuity or contact between people. There's even been suggestions

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Speaker 1: that there was some kind of large genetic opponent to

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Speaker 1: the way that people made these these hand axes. So

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Speaker 1: now it's up for debate. But the variation is what

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Speaker 1: we we study to try to understand what was going

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Speaker 1: on in the past. That's where we have a sort

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Speaker 1: of an insight into what was what was happening. Well,

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Speaker 1: I was definitely going to ask you the naive question

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Speaker 1: about whether that's a result of culture, but is there

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Speaker 1: So if we don't make that assumption that the different

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Speaker 1: forms or shapes or approaches to hand axes are necessarily

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Speaker 1: the result of cultural traditions or cultural contact, is there

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Speaker 1: anything that you think looking at tools like this Stone

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Speaker 1: age tools could possibly tell us about the culture of

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Speaker 1: the creatures that made them. Yeah, well, and so this

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Speaker 1: is where we have to get into the sort of

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Speaker 1: stuff that you can learn through experimental archaeology. Um, for instance,

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Speaker 1: how difficult is it to discover and use particular techniques?

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Speaker 1: You know, so you know, if there if there's two

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Speaker 1: people that do something the same way, if it's an

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Speaker 1: obvious answer, then the no reason to think they learned

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Speaker 1: it from each other. But if it's this really sort

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Speaker 1: of obscure and and and hard to learn technique that

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Speaker 1: they share, and then it's much more likely that they

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Speaker 1: learned it from each other. So I mean, so there's

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Speaker 1: this thing in in the issuely and uh sort of

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Speaker 1: a geographic patterning um to where you have far fewer

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Speaker 1: hand axes in East Asia than you do in Africa

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Speaker 1: and Western Asia and Europe. And also none of them

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Speaker 1: really to appear to be as refined as some of

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Speaker 1: the nicest examples from from further west. Um. And so

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Speaker 1: people have devided for a long time with this geographical

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Speaker 1: patterning means, and I tend to interpret it, you know,

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Speaker 1: is in terms of there are some techniques that are

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Speaker 1: pretty hard to discover on your own and some that

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Speaker 1: are easy, you know. And so you have a lot

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Speaker 1: of reinvention of sort of easy hand acts making here

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Speaker 1: there in the other place, you know. But these particular uh,

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Speaker 1: advanced techniques may only have been invited it once or

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Speaker 1: twice or a couple of times, and so their geographic

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Speaker 1: spread is more restricted. So that's sort of the way

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Speaker 1: that you make a relationship between understanding the way that

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Speaker 1: you actually make the tools and then how they might

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Speaker 1: spread through ancient populations. So you mentioned experimental archaeology. Um.

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Speaker 1: I know a lot of people probably when they think

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Speaker 1: about the data collection part of archaeology, they probably think

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Speaker 1: primarily about digging. Um. But but tell us a little

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Speaker 1: bit about what experimental archaeology means and what what what

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Speaker 1: kind of things that has helped us understand that we

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Speaker 1: couldn't understand just from looking at actual artifacts. Yeah. Well,

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Speaker 1: you know what you can understand from just looking at

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Speaker 1: the artifact is actually a bit limited. You know, these

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Speaker 1: things they don't they don't come out of the ground

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Speaker 1: with with labels on them. Uh uh. You know. I

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Speaker 1: I like to do this when I give a presentation

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Speaker 1: and to show a picture full of a table full

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Speaker 1: of a bunch of old one stone tools and say like, okay,

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Speaker 1: now what does this tell us? And in most people,

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Speaker 1: you know, you can't even tell all that there are

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Speaker 1: anything other than just rocks if you're not used to

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Speaker 1: looking at them. So what you have to do to

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Speaker 1: understand what these tools that we dig up can actually

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Speaker 1: tell us is uh, basically experimental archaeology. We use analogies,

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Speaker 1: We try to learn how to make them ourselves, and

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Speaker 1: then you can manipulate. Well, if I make it this way,

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Speaker 1: then it looks like that. If I make it this way,

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Speaker 1: it looks like that. If I use it this way,

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Speaker 1: this happens to it. Um. So then we make these analogies,

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Speaker 1: these sort of inferential arguments that processes we can observe

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Speaker 1: and manipulate experimentally now are the same ones that produce

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Speaker 1: the same effects in the past. Uh, I mean, if

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Speaker 1: you think about it, we do this you know any time,

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Speaker 1: even in more recent time periods. When you look at

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Speaker 1: an artifact, I mean, you're making an analogy with something

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Speaker 1: you're familiar with. Usually even it's just implicit, you know, obviously, um,

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Speaker 1: this is a sword, you know, seeing things like that

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Speaker 1: before and now you don't really know that you're right,

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Speaker 1: but it's similar enough to things with which you're familiar

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Speaker 1: that that that's you know, that's reasonable. When you dig

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Speaker 1: up something from two an a million years ago, you've

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Speaker 1: got nothing to go on, right, So we have to

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Speaker 1: actually do some of this work to establish robust or

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Speaker 1: strong analogies that we can use. Now you've mentioned your

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Speaker 1: own experiences creating stone tools. How long does it take

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Speaker 1: you to create a hand axe? Oh? Yeah, I mean

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Speaker 1: it takes me maybe half an hour. I'm a little

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Speaker 1: bit slow with that. Uh and uh, you know it

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Speaker 1: depending on how nice you want to make it. And

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Speaker 1: that's already assuming that I'm I'm sitting in my outdoor

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Speaker 1: lab with a pile of rocks right next to me,

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Speaker 1: and I just start making the thing. You know, if,

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Speaker 1: of course, in prehistory you would have had to go

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Speaker 1: get the rocks and all these other things take a

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Speaker 1: lot more time. But yeah, uh, something that's that's quite

347
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Speaker 1: good at it nine twelve to fifteen minutes, you can yea. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So you mentioned that we think a lot of these

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Speaker 1: early stone tools were used in butchering meat. Have you

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Speaker 1: ever had food prepared with stone tools you've made? Uh, well,

351
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Speaker 1: let's see myself. Uh yeah, only actually recently one of

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Speaker 1: my colleagues had a pig roast where we used some

353
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Speaker 1: of the stuff that I had made. Yeah, but back

354
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Speaker 1: in uh in in graduate school. And it's quite common

355
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Speaker 1: in these labs and places where people do this sort

356
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Speaker 1: of work to have the occasional animal roast where you uh,

357
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Speaker 1: and you you learn things like you know that obsidian

358
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Speaker 1: um is really sharp and great, but it also crumbles

359
00:19:24,960 --> 00:19:28,399
Speaker 1: and leaves little bits of like glassy kind of gridgy stuff. Yeah,

360
00:19:28,640 --> 00:19:32,719
Speaker 1: not so great. I like flint better. So do we

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Speaker 1: find uh, do we find little grains of obsidian and

362
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Speaker 1: ancient teeth? I'm not aware. Um, you know, there's always

363
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Speaker 1: I'm not well versed in later prehistory, and so it's

364
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Speaker 1: possibily there's something out there about that. I'm not aware

365
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Speaker 1: of them actually getting any dental wear from the stone tools.

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Speaker 1: Of course, you get very similar looking dental where when

367
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Speaker 1: you you eat like a tubersy dug out of sandy ground,

368
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Speaker 1: so you do get cut marks on teeth, which is

369
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Speaker 1: very interesting because a way commonly to eat things if

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Speaker 1: you don't use silverware or chop sticks or anything like that,

371
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Speaker 1: is you hold it up to your mouth, you clench

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Speaker 1: it in your teeth, and you cut away from from there,

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Speaker 1: so you're cutting right next to your mouth, and occasionally

374
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Speaker 1: they did hit their teeth um, and so you get

375
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Speaker 1: these little little cut marks on the front teeth and spatingly. Sorry, Yeah,

376
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Speaker 1: a lot of things gross, but one of the one

377
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Speaker 1: of the cool things. You can actually infer which hand

378
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Speaker 1: was used because there is a you know, a sort

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Speaker 1: of in ergonomics. You're slicing down and in one direction,

380
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Speaker 1: so you can tell, and so people use that to

381
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Speaker 1: identify early examples of predominantly right handed populations. So even

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Speaker 1: the gross stuff, there's always something you can you can

383
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Speaker 1: get out of it, you know. We encourage you to

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Speaker 1: mention all the gross stuff. We're not We don't shy

385
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Speaker 1: away from that here. So how is the study of

386
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Speaker 1: modern stone tool users such a such as a stone

387
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Speaker 1: tool users in New Guinea? How is this informed our

388
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Speaker 1: understanding of ancient stone tool use? Basically, the whole goal

389
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Speaker 1: of experimental archie apology is to generate analogies that we

390
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Speaker 1: can observe in the modern day UH to understand the past. UM.

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Speaker 1: One of the things we have to be careful about though,

392
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Speaker 1: is that when you design experiments and you control things,

393
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Speaker 1: you build in a lot of your own assumptions, even

394
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Speaker 1: if you're not aware of them, about how things are

395
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Speaker 1: done or why things are done and so forth. You're

396
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Speaker 1: also dealing with a very artificial environment in the lab

397
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Speaker 1: and without any social context or anything like that. UM.

398
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Speaker 1: So another source of analogy UM that you can use

399
00:21:28,359 --> 00:21:33,239
Speaker 1: to understand the past is UH ethnographic observation UM. And

400
00:21:33,240 --> 00:21:35,160
Speaker 1: by that I would tress it you you can include

401
00:21:35,200 --> 00:21:37,439
Speaker 1: also people for instance, in the United States that do

402
00:21:37,520 --> 00:21:39,919
Speaker 1: this as a hobby. There's a community, there's things we

403
00:21:39,920 --> 00:21:42,719
Speaker 1: can learn from them. I was lucky enough to uh

404
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Speaker 1: to visit some modern toolmakers in New Guinea that are

405
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Speaker 1: part of a different tradition uh back in I was there,

406
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Speaker 1: um and one of the things that that that just

407
00:21:53,760 --> 00:21:56,480
Speaker 1: broadens the number of different examples of ways to do

408
00:21:56,640 --> 00:22:00,480
Speaker 1: things UM that we can use to understand the past. UM.

409
00:22:00,520 --> 00:22:02,400
Speaker 1: And one of the one of the really cool things

410
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Speaker 1: about it was I was expecting this to be a

411
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Speaker 1: very uh you know, very foreign experience, experience to be

412
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Speaker 1: in the highlands of New Guinea, and but once we

413
00:22:09,800 --> 00:22:11,959
Speaker 1: got to the stone tools, they talked about a lot

414
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Speaker 1: of the same things that I, as an archaeologist was

415
00:22:14,080 --> 00:22:15,919
Speaker 1: already used, where they had names for the for the

416
00:22:15,960 --> 00:22:18,480
Speaker 1: same kinds of features of the stone tools and they

417
00:22:18,680 --> 00:22:20,800
Speaker 1: uh So there's a real common ground there because we

418
00:22:20,800 --> 00:22:23,600
Speaker 1: were all based on things that happened when you try

419
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Speaker 1: to break stone in a controlled way. And then that's

420
00:22:26,560 --> 00:22:28,920
Speaker 1: very validating for an archaeologist because it means we can

421
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Speaker 1: expect that even moving them to the total unknown of

422
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Speaker 1: the past, there's gonna be these constants that shaped human

423
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Speaker 1: behavior and if we can understand them today, it looks

424
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Speaker 1: like they affect different people from very different cultural backgrounds

425
00:22:40,080 --> 00:22:43,240
Speaker 1: in similar ways. And so so that's very validating. UM.

426
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Speaker 1: The other thing that was really exciting there is is

427
00:22:46,480 --> 00:22:49,640
Speaker 1: just how they incorporated stone tool making into their own

428
00:22:49,680 --> 00:22:53,720
Speaker 1: particular cultural and social contextu UM, which obviously, if you

429
00:22:53,760 --> 00:22:58,040
Speaker 1: study hobbyists in the industrialized West is one context. But

430
00:22:58,160 --> 00:23:02,119
Speaker 1: this was horticultural contact. And the way they had a

431
00:23:02,119 --> 00:23:04,679
Speaker 1: sort of a system of apprenticeship for learning this, and

432
00:23:04,720 --> 00:23:07,439
Speaker 1: the just the amount of time that it takes to

433
00:23:07,480 --> 00:23:09,919
Speaker 1: become an expert in the they had a particularly you know,

434
00:23:09,920 --> 00:23:13,480
Speaker 1: advanced kind of toolmaking UM. But the the this year

435
00:23:13,560 --> 00:23:17,200
Speaker 1: effort and the social values they attached to sticking with

436
00:23:17,280 --> 00:23:20,560
Speaker 1: it and practicing, the support they provided for learning that way,

437
00:23:20,600 --> 00:23:22,920
Speaker 1: I thought, I found that to be all very inspirational

438
00:23:23,240 --> 00:23:26,280
Speaker 1: UM for my own research. So in in in dealing

439
00:23:26,280 --> 00:23:29,960
Speaker 1: with the stone toolmakers in New Guinea, UM, and I'm

440
00:23:29,960 --> 00:23:31,960
Speaker 1: assuming there was a there was a language barrier, there

441
00:23:32,119 --> 00:23:34,600
Speaker 1: is a translator, Well what was how did did that

442
00:23:34,640 --> 00:23:37,760
Speaker 1: reveal anything or back up anything that you any pre

443
00:23:37,760 --> 00:23:41,720
Speaker 1: existing thoughts about the effects of tool use and toolmaking

444
00:23:41,840 --> 00:23:45,760
Speaker 1: on language and UH and then the origins of language. Yeah,

445
00:23:45,840 --> 00:23:49,600
Speaker 1: well I think it was. There's there's been an idea

446
00:23:49,720 --> 00:23:54,760
Speaker 1: for for some time, UM, which were increasingly are articulating that. Uh.

447
00:23:55,000 --> 00:23:56,480
Speaker 1: One of the things that may have led to the

448
00:23:56,520 --> 00:24:00,200
Speaker 1: evolution of language, in terms of an evolutionary press or

449
00:24:00,359 --> 00:24:02,640
Speaker 1: favoring language evolution, is is the need to be able

450
00:24:02,680 --> 00:24:05,960
Speaker 1: to teach each other, uh, and particularly the ability to

451
00:24:05,960 --> 00:24:08,080
Speaker 1: teach people that you're related to, because then you get

452
00:24:08,119 --> 00:24:11,080
Speaker 1: sort of the genetic benefit and all that kind of thing. Uh.

453
00:24:11,119 --> 00:24:15,639
Speaker 1: And in New Guinea it was really uh striking the

454
00:24:15,680 --> 00:24:19,840
Speaker 1: amount of social support, um in various ways that was

455
00:24:19,880 --> 00:24:23,679
Speaker 1: provided for people learning. UM. I found that very informative.

456
00:24:23,920 --> 00:24:27,920
Speaker 1: So of course language, you know, talking I have to

457
00:24:28,000 --> 00:24:30,600
Speaker 1: do this, don't do that, or we call this this,

458
00:24:30,720 --> 00:24:34,280
Speaker 1: you know, and and um also use of language to

459
00:24:34,280 --> 00:24:37,960
Speaker 1: tell stories, which establishes, you know, sort of these cultural norms.

460
00:24:37,960 --> 00:24:40,320
Speaker 1: They tell a story about someone who is a great

461
00:24:40,359 --> 00:24:43,399
Speaker 1: toolmaker because he spent all of his time practicing, and

462
00:24:43,440 --> 00:24:46,240
Speaker 1: he neglected his fields and didn't talk to his wife,

463
00:24:46,359 --> 00:24:48,160
Speaker 1: you know, and all that sort of stuff. UM. And

464
00:24:48,200 --> 00:24:50,639
Speaker 1: that the socializing that they do, they sit together and

465
00:24:50,680 --> 00:24:53,640
Speaker 1: it makes it fun. Um. All of these things are

466
00:24:53,640 --> 00:24:57,360
Speaker 1: really important to learning something that's very frustrating and difficult. Um,

467
00:24:57,720 --> 00:24:59,760
Speaker 1: you know, maybe you can think of analogies in your

468
00:24:59,760 --> 00:25:03,280
Speaker 1: own experience. Uh. And so that that was really really cool.

469
00:25:03,440 --> 00:25:06,600
Speaker 1: And then just the uh also all of the gesturing,

470
00:25:07,040 --> 00:25:10,400
Speaker 1: the pointing, and just the context of having particular places

471
00:25:10,400 --> 00:25:12,600
Speaker 1: where you do things. You know, this is where we

472
00:25:12,640 --> 00:25:15,200
Speaker 1: go to get the rocks, this is where we all

473
00:25:15,200 --> 00:25:17,760
Speaker 1: sit down and make tools together. There was a structure,

474
00:25:17,800 --> 00:25:19,920
Speaker 1: so there's so much about what they were doing socially

475
00:25:20,359 --> 00:25:24,600
Speaker 1: that resulted in the sustaining of this technology. And I thought,

476
00:25:25,000 --> 00:25:27,679
Speaker 1: you know, obviously you can't just project that into a

477
00:25:27,720 --> 00:25:30,560
Speaker 1: particular past context. But we need to expand our thinking

478
00:25:30,760 --> 00:25:32,920
Speaker 1: broadly to think about these other dimensions and may be

479
00:25:33,040 --> 00:25:36,520
Speaker 1: implied by some of the ancient stone tools that we find. Okay,

480
00:25:36,520 --> 00:25:38,199
Speaker 1: time to take a quick break, but we will be

481
00:25:38,320 --> 00:25:43,360
Speaker 1: right back with more of our conversation than Alright, we're back,

482
00:25:43,400 --> 00:25:46,639
Speaker 1: let's jump back in now. Obviously this is a different

483
00:25:46,680 --> 00:25:51,080
Speaker 1: question from how the crafting of stone tools might have

484
00:25:51,160 --> 00:25:54,440
Speaker 1: changed our neuro anatomy over time. But I wonder does

485
00:25:54,520 --> 00:25:57,520
Speaker 1: making stone tools just change the way you in your

486
00:25:57,600 --> 00:26:00,760
Speaker 1: life think about your relationship with the earth, Like do

487
00:26:00,800 --> 00:26:03,400
Speaker 1: you do you find yourself out walking and looking down

488
00:26:03,400 --> 00:26:05,280
Speaker 1: and saying, oh, there's a good one. No, that's not

489
00:26:05,320 --> 00:26:08,280
Speaker 1: a good one. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean now,

490
00:26:08,520 --> 00:26:10,320
Speaker 1: I mean, particularly if you've been doing a lot recently,

491
00:26:10,359 --> 00:26:12,639
Speaker 1: you can't see a rock without picturing it breaking, you know,

492
00:26:13,119 --> 00:26:15,679
Speaker 1: it's a uh And of course just doing being an

493
00:26:15,760 --> 00:26:19,920
Speaker 1: archaeologist does that too. Um. You know, I'm always looking

494
00:26:19,960 --> 00:26:22,680
Speaker 1: at little pebbles and my wife will catch me looking

495
00:26:22,680 --> 00:26:24,720
Speaker 1: at the landscaping, you know, and like that would be

496
00:26:24,760 --> 00:26:28,200
Speaker 1: a good hammerstone or something. Okay, you know, uh so

497
00:26:28,200 --> 00:26:31,760
Speaker 1: so yeah, it does influence. Uh some of the resources

498
00:26:31,760 --> 00:26:34,760
Speaker 1: that you're aware of that are really not particularly relevant

499
00:26:34,800 --> 00:26:37,480
Speaker 1: for most people in their daily lives, but we're once

500
00:26:37,840 --> 00:26:41,240
Speaker 1: incredibly central. Well, I think about ways that that that

501
00:26:41,320 --> 00:26:45,480
Speaker 1: type of thinking, um can take on more complex kind

502
00:26:45,480 --> 00:26:48,560
Speaker 1: of mental dimensions. Like I think about the way when

503
00:26:48,600 --> 00:26:51,760
Speaker 1: I go shopping. Uh, if I'm like picking out produced

504
00:26:51,800 --> 00:26:54,520
Speaker 1: to cook with, I can see like a good fresh

505
00:26:54,520 --> 00:26:57,560
Speaker 1: piece of produce and I attribute moral goodness to that,

506
00:26:58,040 --> 00:27:00,399
Speaker 1: and I see like a bad, rotten piece of produce

507
00:27:00,480 --> 00:27:03,199
Speaker 1: and I attribute moral badness to it. Do do you

508
00:27:03,280 --> 00:27:05,320
Speaker 1: do you ever feel inklings of that kind of thing?

509
00:27:05,400 --> 00:27:09,159
Speaker 1: With rocks. Oh well, there's a certainly I don't know

510
00:27:09,160 --> 00:27:14,080
Speaker 1: about the moral dimensions, so certainly, uh, real aesthetic to it.

511
00:27:14,240 --> 00:27:17,280
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I don't know if you're familiar

512
00:27:17,359 --> 00:27:19,840
Speaker 1: with with flint, but it's a beautiful rock and the uh,

513
00:27:20,359 --> 00:27:22,800
Speaker 1: the sound that it makes and the way that it

514
00:27:22,840 --> 00:27:25,800
Speaker 1: breaks when it when it does what you wanted to uh,

515
00:27:26,040 --> 00:27:29,560
Speaker 1: is just infinitely pleasing, you know. And I just got

516
00:27:29,640 --> 00:27:32,159
Speaker 1: some some really nice bassault as well, which is a

517
00:27:32,640 --> 00:27:35,119
Speaker 1: very different kind of of rock and has different but

518
00:27:35,240 --> 00:27:38,240
Speaker 1: also really just aesthetically pleasing and you get a real

519
00:27:38,280 --> 00:27:41,960
Speaker 1: pleasure out of out of working in Yeah. So you

520
00:27:41,960 --> 00:27:44,359
Speaker 1: said you can hear the difference between a good break

521
00:27:44,359 --> 00:27:47,760
Speaker 1: and a bad break. Yeah, yeah, this is a question.

522
00:27:47,800 --> 00:27:50,480
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's important, and I've talked to

523
00:27:50,480 --> 00:27:52,919
Speaker 1: people who are much more experienced stone toolmakers than I

524
00:27:52,960 --> 00:27:55,520
Speaker 1: am that that really emphasized that, you know, the sound

525
00:27:55,600 --> 00:27:58,760
Speaker 1: is important, and in fact, we're just in the process

526
00:27:58,800 --> 00:28:02,359
Speaker 1: of developing and online tests that people can take where

527
00:28:02,400 --> 00:28:05,600
Speaker 1: we play the sounds of a stone flake coming off

528
00:28:05,960 --> 00:28:08,240
Speaker 1: and you use a little slider to say how big

529
00:28:08,280 --> 00:28:11,240
Speaker 1: you think it was. Uh, So we're trying to see

530
00:28:11,240 --> 00:28:16,080
Speaker 1: how much information is actually present in those sounds. Uh,

531
00:28:16,240 --> 00:28:18,159
Speaker 1: I know, I know that when we're sitting around napping,

532
00:28:18,160 --> 00:28:20,720
Speaker 1: everybody's looking napping being a term we used to talk

533
00:28:20,720 --> 00:28:23,800
Speaker 1: about stone tool making, not to be confused with falling sleep,

534
00:28:23,840 --> 00:28:27,080
Speaker 1: but it's knocking the flakes, yeah, and napping. I don't

535
00:28:27,080 --> 00:28:28,520
Speaker 1: know if it's German or something. They don't even know

536
00:28:28,560 --> 00:28:31,879
Speaker 1: where it comes from, but yeah, knocking the flakes off. Anyway,

537
00:28:31,920 --> 00:28:35,240
Speaker 1: we're sitting around knocking the flakes off and uh, you know,

538
00:28:35,280 --> 00:28:37,720
Speaker 1: all staring down at what we're doing. And then somebody

539
00:28:38,040 --> 00:28:40,200
Speaker 1: will strike off a really nice large flake and it

540
00:28:40,200 --> 00:28:42,800
Speaker 1: makes this flat, popping sound and everybody just looks up

541
00:28:42,960 --> 00:28:47,200
Speaker 1: over it. Then all right, you know. Uh so anyway, long,

542
00:28:47,240 --> 00:28:51,280
Speaker 1: so the the we think the sound is is probably

543
00:28:51,320 --> 00:28:54,280
Speaker 1: really important, and we're trying to probe that it. It

544
00:28:54,360 --> 00:28:57,640
Speaker 1: keeps coming up also in some of the neuroimaging research

545
00:28:57,680 --> 00:29:00,520
Speaker 1: that we do, or we look at, uh, stone toolmaking,

546
00:29:00,520 --> 00:29:03,320
Speaker 1: and we get these activity in areas that are more

547
00:29:03,360 --> 00:29:06,520
Speaker 1: classically auditory and initially wasn't expecting to, but of course

548
00:29:06,520 --> 00:29:10,480
Speaker 1: it makes sense. That is interesting and the stuff about

549
00:29:10,480 --> 00:29:13,920
Speaker 1: the toolmaking process giving you all these sort of aesthetic

550
00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:16,000
Speaker 1: values when you look at rocks or when you hear

551
00:29:16,040 --> 00:29:19,880
Speaker 1: the sounds rocks make. Does that, um lead you to

552
00:29:20,080 --> 00:29:23,920
Speaker 1: draw any connections between the origins of tool crafting in

553
00:29:23,960 --> 00:29:29,120
Speaker 1: the origins of art um. Yeah, sure, you know, in

554
00:29:29,200 --> 00:29:33,440
Speaker 1: a informal sort of way. Um. And and and you

555
00:29:33,480 --> 00:29:37,000
Speaker 1: know people have have written about these ideas, and this

556
00:29:37,080 --> 00:29:40,320
Speaker 1: is another area sort of of contention, particularly with the

557
00:29:40,400 --> 00:29:45,080
Speaker 1: hand axes. Uh. They're beautiful, right, they did. They're very appealing. Um.

558
00:29:45,600 --> 00:29:48,320
Speaker 1: And there's some argument that in fact, they are much

559
00:29:48,400 --> 00:29:53,320
Speaker 1: too beautiful and appealing from no apparent functional benefit, that

560
00:29:53,520 --> 00:29:56,080
Speaker 1: this must be one of our earliest examples of you know,

561
00:29:56,160 --> 00:29:59,840
Speaker 1: aesthetic sense. Um. But as I mentioned that, it's awfully

562
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:06,040
Speaker 1: hard to demonstrate that in a really compelling way to skeptics. Uh. Um,

563
00:30:06,040 --> 00:30:07,800
Speaker 1: it's it's it is hard to say. You do get

564
00:30:07,840 --> 00:30:11,400
Speaker 1: these glimmerings of interesting things like, uh, you know, to

565
00:30:11,520 --> 00:30:14,360
Speaker 1: make a hand act and they'll be a fossil impression

566
00:30:14,360 --> 00:30:16,200
Speaker 1: of a shell that they leave right in the middle

567
00:30:16,240 --> 00:30:17,880
Speaker 1: of the center of one of the sides. You know,

568
00:30:17,960 --> 00:30:19,640
Speaker 1: it's sort of like they showed it off or was

569
00:30:19,680 --> 00:30:24,120
Speaker 1: that an accident? Yuh Um. It is hard to say, um,

570
00:30:24,320 --> 00:30:27,880
Speaker 1: But certainly from our perspective, the symmetry, and many of

571
00:30:27,880 --> 00:30:31,040
Speaker 1: the aspects of these tools are very aesthetically pleasing, so

572
00:30:31,520 --> 00:30:34,960
Speaker 1: we'd like to speculate that there's some relationship. There is

573
00:30:35,000 --> 00:30:38,080
Speaker 1: there any indication with any of the any particular hand

574
00:30:38,640 --> 00:30:42,600
Speaker 1: axes that are particularly beautiful to modern eye, that they

575
00:30:42,600 --> 00:30:47,240
Speaker 1: were in any way, uh, merely ritualistic, that they I mean,

576
00:30:47,360 --> 00:30:53,600
Speaker 1: they were not used. Yeah, so it's a it's a

577
00:30:53,640 --> 00:30:56,160
Speaker 1: bit hard because it's actually not always possible to show

578
00:30:56,200 --> 00:30:59,040
Speaker 1: that that many of the hand axes were used. You

579
00:30:59,040 --> 00:31:02,320
Speaker 1: need particular present vaction conditions and evidence to actually demonstrate

580
00:31:02,360 --> 00:31:05,000
Speaker 1: that something was used, so we rarely get that. On

581
00:31:05,040 --> 00:31:07,720
Speaker 1: the other hand, um, there are examples of things that

582
00:31:07,760 --> 00:31:10,600
Speaker 1: look like they couldn't have been used. Um, these are

583
00:31:10,720 --> 00:31:13,920
Speaker 1: very rare where there's be like this really giant hand

584
00:31:13,960 --> 00:31:16,320
Speaker 1: acts like the length of my forearm, you know, that

585
00:31:16,480 --> 00:31:20,440
Speaker 1: somebody made, and in our imagination, it's pretty hard to

586
00:31:20,480 --> 00:31:22,880
Speaker 1: come up with a functional reason to do that. So

587
00:31:22,960 --> 00:31:25,800
Speaker 1: it seems to have been somebody showing off or just

588
00:31:25,800 --> 00:31:28,080
Speaker 1: trying to produce a piece that is somehow appealing to

589
00:31:28,120 --> 00:31:32,080
Speaker 1: them or something like that. Yeah, it's it's it's elusive. Um,

590
00:31:32,080 --> 00:31:35,040
Speaker 1: there's these these glimmerings of it. So we've already mentioned

591
00:31:35,040 --> 00:31:40,080
Speaker 1: a little bit the possible relationships between tool use and

592
00:31:40,280 --> 00:31:44,720
Speaker 1: UM and the development of human neuro anatomy. Uh, could

593
00:31:44,720 --> 00:31:46,360
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit more about that, like what

594
00:31:46,600 --> 00:31:48,800
Speaker 1: some of the leads are and what is the evidence

595
00:31:49,520 --> 00:31:52,160
Speaker 1: directly for those connections. I know some of it has

596
00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:55,680
Speaker 1: to do with just like correlation of timelines, right right, Well,

597
00:31:55,680 --> 00:31:57,760
Speaker 1: I mean, so there's a basic awareness, so we've had

598
00:31:57,840 --> 00:32:01,120
Speaker 1: for for a long time that you know, there's a

599
00:32:01,240 --> 00:32:06,680
Speaker 1: broad general trend towards brain size increase over human evolution,

600
00:32:06,760 --> 00:32:09,680
Speaker 1: with many exceptions and side branches and so forth that

601
00:32:09,720 --> 00:32:13,080
Speaker 1: we're discovering now. Um, but yeah, I mean, our brains

602
00:32:13,080 --> 00:32:16,280
Speaker 1: are bigger than any of the brains were two millioners ago,

603
00:32:16,520 --> 00:32:19,720
Speaker 1: and there's a trend there. Also, you know, the tools

604
00:32:19,880 --> 00:32:22,800
Speaker 1: over time, with many exceptions and places where it didn't

605
00:32:22,800 --> 00:32:26,760
Speaker 1: happen and so forth, but the most u elaborate sophisticated

606
00:32:26,800 --> 00:32:29,800
Speaker 1: tools around hundred thousand years ago. We're much more complex

607
00:32:29,800 --> 00:32:32,280
Speaker 1: than the most elaborate sophisticated tools that were around two

608
00:32:32,280 --> 00:32:34,400
Speaker 1: million years ago. So there's a trend there. And there

609
00:32:34,480 --> 00:32:37,200
Speaker 1: there's two trends side by side, and you know, I

610
00:32:37,320 --> 00:32:41,080
Speaker 1: think maybe they're related to each other. Um. Now exactly

611
00:32:41,080 --> 00:32:43,920
Speaker 1: how they're related to each other is a more difficult question.

612
00:32:43,960 --> 00:32:46,640
Speaker 1: You know, did the brain get bigger and for other

613
00:32:46,720 --> 00:32:49,560
Speaker 1: reasons that then spill over into being able to make

614
00:32:49,600 --> 00:32:53,320
Speaker 1: tools or where the tools really important? So that like

615
00:32:53,480 --> 00:32:55,480
Speaker 1: if you could make a if you're a little bit

616
00:32:55,520 --> 00:32:58,480
Speaker 1: faster at making a tool, more reliable at making a tool,

617
00:32:58,600 --> 00:33:01,040
Speaker 1: you had a little bit of a reproductive advantage, then

618
00:33:01,080 --> 00:33:03,400
Speaker 1: you know, then then then maybe the tools drove it.

619
00:33:03,880 --> 00:33:08,160
Speaker 1: Um And those are hard to uh discern exactly. So

620
00:33:08,240 --> 00:33:10,760
Speaker 1: that's why we we try to do some of these

621
00:33:11,080 --> 00:33:15,040
Speaker 1: experiments where we relate the actual process of making tools.

622
00:33:15,080 --> 00:33:16,920
Speaker 1: We've tried to figure out, well, what does it demand

623
00:33:17,680 --> 00:33:21,560
Speaker 1: cognitively neurally if there were pressure on being able to

624
00:33:21,600 --> 00:33:23,800
Speaker 1: make these tools, these are the things then that would

625
00:33:23,840 --> 00:33:27,120
Speaker 1: respond to it. So that's we're just trying to sketch

626
00:33:27,160 --> 00:33:29,360
Speaker 1: out some of the basics still at this point, I

627
00:33:29,400 --> 00:33:31,760
Speaker 1: think to make that link and to do that, you've

628
00:33:31,760 --> 00:33:35,080
Speaker 1: done some research with the neuroimaging and and how that

629
00:33:35,120 --> 00:33:38,440
Speaker 1: relates to thinking about tools to making tools. Could you

630
00:33:38,520 --> 00:33:42,480
Speaker 1: tell us some more about that. Yeah, so, uh, we've

631
00:33:42,480 --> 00:33:45,800
Speaker 1: done a couple of different things. UM. One is what

632
00:33:45,880 --> 00:33:48,600
Speaker 1: most people are probably more familiar with, which is a

633
00:33:48,680 --> 00:33:54,040
Speaker 1: functional neuroimaging, which typically works somehow related to to blood

634
00:33:54,040 --> 00:33:57,040
Speaker 1: flow in the brain responses of neurons, so when they're

635
00:33:57,080 --> 00:34:00,160
Speaker 1: active UM. And so we can isolate those areas of

636
00:34:00,240 --> 00:34:02,760
Speaker 1: the brain UM that are more active when you make

637
00:34:02,760 --> 00:34:05,360
Speaker 1: a particular kind of tool, you know, for instance, the

638
00:34:05,400 --> 00:34:08,280
Speaker 1: hand actions that I was talking about versus the earlier, simpler,

639
00:34:08,320 --> 00:34:10,560
Speaker 1: old one style tools, and we can say, oh, well,

640
00:34:10,560 --> 00:34:13,160
Speaker 1: this is the neural system related to these forms of

641
00:34:13,200 --> 00:34:17,480
Speaker 1: cognition UM that is required to do that. So if

642
00:34:17,520 --> 00:34:19,640
Speaker 1: there was something that changed in the past associated with

643
00:34:19,640 --> 00:34:23,319
Speaker 1: this technology, is most likely to be those systems. Uh.

644
00:34:23,520 --> 00:34:26,920
Speaker 1: Then the other thing that we do is actually structural

645
00:34:27,000 --> 00:34:31,200
Speaker 1: stuff UM, and that comes in two flavors. Also, you can, uh,

646
00:34:31,280 --> 00:34:35,120
Speaker 1: you can look at plastic changes in the brain that

647
00:34:35,160 --> 00:34:38,960
Speaker 1: are caused by behavior. And this is something that in

648
00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:41,239
Speaker 1: the past, I guess about twenty years or so, people

649
00:34:41,360 --> 00:34:44,640
Speaker 1: really become aware that, even over short periods, doing things

650
00:34:44,640 --> 00:34:47,480
Speaker 1: like learning to juggle actually changes the physical structure of

651
00:34:47,480 --> 00:34:50,920
Speaker 1: your brain, especially things like white matter that sort of

652
00:34:51,000 --> 00:34:54,680
Speaker 1: the cables that connect things in your brain. UM. And

653
00:34:54,719 --> 00:34:57,920
Speaker 1: so we've applied that also to stone tool making UH

654
00:34:57,960 --> 00:35:01,600
Speaker 1: and seeing that training to cand access, for instance, will

655
00:35:01,640 --> 00:35:07,080
Speaker 1: increase certain white matter pathways in the brain. UH. Interestingly enough,

656
00:35:07,120 --> 00:35:09,600
Speaker 1: these are also white matter pathways that are larger and

657
00:35:09,719 --> 00:35:12,560
Speaker 1: modern humans versus chimpanzee. So we know that it's something

658
00:35:12,600 --> 00:35:15,760
Speaker 1: that has evolved in our history, and we can relate

659
00:35:15,800 --> 00:35:18,480
Speaker 1: it to a behavior that also is observable to have

660
00:35:18,600 --> 00:35:20,400
Speaker 1: come along at a certain time in our history. So

661
00:35:20,440 --> 00:35:23,280
Speaker 1: we started to strengthen this sorts of infrenial. Well, maybe

662
00:35:23,320 --> 00:35:26,840
Speaker 1: these things are related to the evolution of that pathway. UM.

663
00:35:26,920 --> 00:35:28,960
Speaker 1: The other thing that we can do that we're really

664
00:35:28,960 --> 00:35:32,440
Speaker 1: just starting to look at is uh individual differences in

665
00:35:32,640 --> 00:35:36,400
Speaker 1: structure and function of people. So if you get a

666
00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:39,440
Speaker 1: large enough sample, there are small differences, for instance, in

667
00:35:39,520 --> 00:35:42,960
Speaker 1: the rapidity with which people learn uh different kinds of

668
00:35:42,960 --> 00:35:45,759
Speaker 1: stone toolmaking, you know, and you can then correlate with

669
00:35:45,960 --> 00:35:48,320
Speaker 1: starting differences in their brain structure or the way that

670
00:35:48,360 --> 00:35:50,759
Speaker 1: their brain changes over time. And I think that's really

671
00:35:50,760 --> 00:35:53,359
Speaker 1: exciting because we can then also relate that to UH

672
00:35:53,400 --> 00:35:57,960
Speaker 1: cognitive tests. So, you know, some of the initial stuff

673
00:35:58,000 --> 00:36:00,000
Speaker 1: that we're getting is you know, so if you're pretty

674
00:36:00,040 --> 00:36:04,520
Speaker 1: really good at UH planning, for instance, there's a task

675
00:36:04,600 --> 00:36:06,480
Speaker 1: called the Tower of London, which you move sort of

676
00:36:06,560 --> 00:36:08,840
Speaker 1: rings around on three pegs, and you have to do

677
00:36:08,880 --> 00:36:11,879
Speaker 1: it in a particular order. Uh. If you're good at that,

678
00:36:11,960 --> 00:36:17,759
Speaker 1: you learn stone tool making faster slightly. Yeah. I think

679
00:36:17,800 --> 00:36:20,320
Speaker 1: that's really really fast because we're actually making these links

680
00:36:20,320 --> 00:36:25,399
Speaker 1: between particular cognitive operations and kind of types of stone

681
00:36:25,400 --> 00:36:27,879
Speaker 1: toolmaking that we can see in the archeological record. Now,

682
00:36:28,000 --> 00:36:30,399
Speaker 1: now that the test subjects who learned how to make

683
00:36:30,440 --> 00:36:33,839
Speaker 1: stone tools and then you saw the changes in the brain, Um,

684
00:36:34,560 --> 00:36:38,600
Speaker 1: were any of them engaged in any activity that was

685
00:36:38,840 --> 00:36:42,960
Speaker 1: comparable to stone tool use or construction, like carp injury

686
00:36:43,000 --> 00:36:47,759
Speaker 1: or anything prior? Uh yeah, Um, So we actually have

687
00:36:48,239 --> 00:36:52,040
Speaker 1: uh data on that that we haven't analyzed yet. We

688
00:36:52,040 --> 00:36:55,440
Speaker 1: have people right about their other hobbies and activities and

689
00:36:55,480 --> 00:36:57,080
Speaker 1: act We've got a big pile of stuff we've still

690
00:36:57,080 --> 00:36:59,480
Speaker 1: got to go through in that study. Um, but you know,

691
00:37:00,280 --> 00:37:03,240
Speaker 1: sort of anecdotally, I do know that there were people

692
00:37:03,440 --> 00:37:05,600
Speaker 1: from a bunch of different kinds of professions, Like we

693
00:37:05,640 --> 00:37:08,560
Speaker 1: had teachers, We did have one sculptor in the project,

694
00:37:08,600 --> 00:37:13,239
Speaker 1: and so there we don't yet have any hard conclusions

695
00:37:13,280 --> 00:37:15,360
Speaker 1: about that because we need to work with the data.

696
00:37:15,400 --> 00:37:18,040
Speaker 1: But one general impression I got there was a little

697
00:37:18,040 --> 00:37:22,160
Speaker 1: bit counterintuitive, is that if you have more experience with

698
00:37:22,200 --> 00:37:24,400
Speaker 1: some of these things that you might think of as

699
00:37:24,440 --> 00:37:27,480
Speaker 1: being you know, conducive to knowing how to make stone tools,

700
00:37:27,520 --> 00:37:29,880
Speaker 1: you can actually interfere if you're sort of setting your ways.

701
00:37:30,400 --> 00:37:33,400
Speaker 1: Um um so. But there's a lot more to be

702
00:37:33,440 --> 00:37:34,719
Speaker 1: done with that. And one of one of the things

703
00:37:34,800 --> 00:37:38,200
Speaker 1: that it bothers me is we always do these studies,

704
00:37:38,280 --> 00:37:43,400
Speaker 1: you know, with the the typical college undergraduates, and they're

705
00:37:43,440 --> 00:37:46,919
Speaker 1: not generally known for being particularly good with their hands.

706
00:37:47,320 --> 00:37:52,080
Speaker 1: Um so. Um. I would really like to expand into

707
00:37:52,600 --> 00:37:55,759
Speaker 1: different populations in different ages and um but you know,

708
00:37:56,160 --> 00:37:58,879
Speaker 1: we're just getting started, because that's where you would find

709
00:37:58,960 --> 00:38:03,120
Speaker 1: individuals who were skilled craftman uh craft people in other

710
00:38:03,160 --> 00:38:06,160
Speaker 1: school in other areas, right yeah, yeah, yeah, and just

711
00:38:06,760 --> 00:38:10,800
Speaker 1: just people that are more commonly doing work with their hands,

712
00:38:11,200 --> 00:38:14,719
Speaker 1: you know. Um. Now, I work with people out when

713
00:38:14,719 --> 00:38:18,480
Speaker 1: we go do excavations in Ethiopia and the far um

714
00:38:19,280 --> 00:38:22,080
Speaker 1: you know is there's their pastoral lists. They have herds

715
00:38:22,080 --> 00:38:24,680
Speaker 1: of animals, and they you know, they make little walls

716
00:38:24,680 --> 00:38:26,640
Speaker 1: out of stone all the time, and I mean they're

717
00:38:26,680 --> 00:38:29,080
Speaker 1: a lot more handy. They might pick it up a

718
00:38:29,080 --> 00:38:32,520
Speaker 1: lot faster. So obviously getting the population you want is

719
00:38:32,640 --> 00:38:35,680
Speaker 1: one experimental challenge. I would imagine another one if you're

720
00:38:35,760 --> 00:38:40,400
Speaker 1: if you're trying to do neuroimaging while people are engaging

721
00:38:40,440 --> 00:38:43,319
Speaker 1: in tool tool making. The I mean, don't you have

722
00:38:43,360 --> 00:38:46,480
Speaker 1: to hold still? So for fm R I, Yes, for

723
00:38:46,600 --> 00:38:49,279
Speaker 1: fm R I you do UM. So there is you know,

724
00:38:49,440 --> 00:38:52,440
Speaker 1: a couple kinds of workarounds. UH. One of them is

725
00:38:52,480 --> 00:38:55,680
Speaker 1: the the the the the earliest studies that we did,

726
00:38:55,800 --> 00:38:59,000
Speaker 1: you know, about eighteen years ago or more. Now, we

727
00:38:59,080 --> 00:39:03,400
Speaker 1: used a technique called f DG PET UM and positron

728
00:39:03,440 --> 00:39:07,080
Speaker 1: emission tomography UM is something they don't use a lot

729
00:39:07,120 --> 00:39:10,080
Speaker 1: for research anymore and brain activation. But one of the

730
00:39:10,080 --> 00:39:13,360
Speaker 1: things that lets you do is we injected a radiological

731
00:39:13,560 --> 00:39:17,280
Speaker 1: tracer UH into their bloodstream and this is a glucose

732
00:39:17,320 --> 00:39:21,000
Speaker 1: analog UH and so it's taken up by basically hungry

733
00:39:21,000 --> 00:39:24,120
Speaker 1: cells in the body like they think it's glucose, happens

734
00:39:24,160 --> 00:39:27,280
Speaker 1: in the brain and neurons UM and then it emits

735
00:39:27,360 --> 00:39:31,200
Speaker 1: radiation small amounts, but this can be this can be

736
00:39:31,239 --> 00:39:33,520
Speaker 1: detected by you know, a sensor array around the head.

737
00:39:33,560 --> 00:39:36,560
Speaker 1: So basically you can give somebody this injection. Have them

738
00:39:36,600 --> 00:39:39,000
Speaker 1: do anything you want, really like they could run around

739
00:39:39,000 --> 00:39:41,320
Speaker 1: the block and but we have them sitting in a

740
00:39:41,400 --> 00:39:43,759
Speaker 1: chair and make stone tools in an unconstrained way. Then

741
00:39:43,800 --> 00:39:45,719
Speaker 1: you walk them over to the scanner about half an

742
00:39:45,719 --> 00:39:48,080
Speaker 1: hour later if they've been doing this for half an hour, uh,

743
00:39:48,120 --> 00:39:52,319
Speaker 1: and you collect an image of where the glucose built up. Right. Um.

744
00:39:52,360 --> 00:39:55,400
Speaker 1: So this is great because you can do it um

745
00:39:55,480 --> 00:39:59,040
Speaker 1: and have them do real tasks outside the scanner. UM.

746
00:39:59,040 --> 00:40:02,680
Speaker 1: But it's limited because you know, you've got time averaged

747
00:40:02,719 --> 00:40:04,799
Speaker 1: over half an hour, and you can only do a

748
00:40:04,840 --> 00:40:07,800
Speaker 1: couple of different conditions because it does involve radiation exposure

749
00:40:07,800 --> 00:40:09,319
Speaker 1: and you don't want to give anybody too much and

750
00:40:09,800 --> 00:40:12,760
Speaker 1: so you know, um, the fm R I you mentioned,

751
00:40:12,760 --> 00:40:14,759
Speaker 1: you have to be still. But we can take advantage

752
00:40:14,760 --> 00:40:18,680
Speaker 1: of the fact that a little theoretical, but neuroscientists have

753
00:40:19,640 --> 00:40:21,600
Speaker 1: largely converged on the idea that one of the ways

754
00:40:21,600 --> 00:40:24,920
Speaker 1: we understand what we see other people do is to

755
00:40:25,480 --> 00:40:31,000
Speaker 1: internally simulated ourselves in fact using the same neural systems. Uh.

756
00:40:31,040 --> 00:40:33,040
Speaker 1: And this is probably an important way that we learned

757
00:40:33,120 --> 00:40:35,800
Speaker 1: from others as well, which is an important research question too.

758
00:40:36,239 --> 00:40:38,000
Speaker 1: But we can take advantage of that, and we show

759
00:40:38,000 --> 00:40:41,600
Speaker 1: people films of toolmaking in the scanner and so this

760
00:40:41,640 --> 00:40:45,600
Speaker 1: is most directly relevant to observational understanding and learning from

761
00:40:45,600 --> 00:40:49,480
Speaker 1: other individuals. UM. But it does pretty much use overlapping

762
00:40:49,520 --> 00:40:52,680
Speaker 1: systems with execution and we've shown that. Uh, So that's

763
00:40:52,680 --> 00:40:56,400
Speaker 1: another sort of workaround. And uh a colleague of mine,

764
00:40:56,600 --> 00:41:01,880
Speaker 1: Shelby Putt, is using something called functional near infrared spectrography

765
00:41:02,000 --> 00:41:06,480
Speaker 1: anyway f near as anyway is what I what I remember, UM,

766
00:41:06,560 --> 00:41:10,400
Speaker 1: and that actually uses near infra red visible light that

767
00:41:10,440 --> 00:41:13,360
Speaker 1: can penetrate the cranium and get some information on blood

768
00:41:13,360 --> 00:41:15,919
Speaker 1: flow from the superficial areas of the brain, and that

769
00:41:15,960 --> 00:41:18,480
Speaker 1: you can wear while you're doing something as well. So

770
00:41:18,560 --> 00:41:21,799
Speaker 1: there's some a few workarounds that you can do to

771
00:41:21,840 --> 00:41:27,200
Speaker 1: actually use neuroimaging techniques. And I wonder, UM, are there

772
00:41:27,800 --> 00:41:29,640
Speaker 1: I don't know if anybody's looked at this, but would

773
00:41:29,640 --> 00:41:33,600
Speaker 1: there be differences in the brain between UM, doing doing

774
00:41:33,640 --> 00:41:37,520
Speaker 1: a task and stone tool creation and simply imagining the task,

775
00:41:37,680 --> 00:41:39,839
Speaker 1: Because of all, you know, we've looked on the show

776
00:41:39,880 --> 00:41:43,640
Speaker 1: a bunch of times about simply imagining doing something is

777
00:41:43,760 --> 00:41:48,200
Speaker 1: very similar in the brain to actually doing it. Yeah. UM,

778
00:41:48,560 --> 00:41:53,440
Speaker 1: so it's similar in very interesting and important ways, but

779
00:41:53,520 --> 00:41:58,480
Speaker 1: also different in important ways, and particularly in the context

780
00:41:58,520 --> 00:42:01,040
Speaker 1: of stone toolmaking, where some of the things that we're

781
00:42:01,560 --> 00:42:06,080
Speaker 1: interested in are the actual skill to really deliver the

782
00:42:06,160 --> 00:42:09,680
Speaker 1: right amount of force to the right place. UM. We

783
00:42:09,719 --> 00:42:14,000
Speaker 1: want to actually tap into that somehow. UM. We did

784
00:42:14,040 --> 00:42:16,879
Speaker 1: do an experiment though, UM, in which we were more

785
00:42:17,040 --> 00:42:22,719
Speaker 1: interested in the uh, the kind of planning aspects and

786
00:42:22,800 --> 00:42:25,359
Speaker 1: the evaluation aspects, and we had just people looking at

787
00:42:25,360 --> 00:42:28,360
Speaker 1: stone tools and answering questions about what would be the

788
00:42:28,360 --> 00:42:30,560
Speaker 1: good thing to do next, which is basically asking them

789
00:42:30,600 --> 00:42:33,600
Speaker 1: to mentally imagine and simulate the actions. And you tap

790
00:42:33,640 --> 00:42:37,359
Speaker 1: into different aspects of the task demands there. So we

791
00:42:37,400 --> 00:42:40,160
Speaker 1: can use both. But but there are aspects of stone

792
00:42:40,200 --> 00:42:42,839
Speaker 1: tool making they're very reliant I think, on actually doing it.

793
00:42:43,440 --> 00:42:45,200
Speaker 1: All Right, we're gonna take a quick break, but we're

794
00:42:45,200 --> 00:42:51,520
Speaker 1: gonna jump right back in with our interview. Alright, we're back.

795
00:42:52,640 --> 00:42:54,759
Speaker 1: Just recently, I happened to be reading a couple of

796
00:42:54,800 --> 00:42:59,600
Speaker 1: papers in UM I think Frontiers in psychology. I believe

797
00:43:00,200 --> 00:43:05,040
Speaker 1: about the possible role of UM possible role of tool

798
00:43:05,200 --> 00:43:08,800
Speaker 1: use in the development of consciousness. UH. The the idea

799
00:43:09,080 --> 00:43:12,279
Speaker 1: under this new framework was that maybe consciousness has something

800
00:43:12,320 --> 00:43:15,840
Speaker 1: to do with creating states of objectivity in the mind

801
00:43:16,320 --> 00:43:19,560
Speaker 1: where you can sort of like imagine and correctly judge

802
00:43:19,600 --> 00:43:23,799
Speaker 1: the properties of an object that is not yourself. Um.

803
00:43:24,360 --> 00:43:27,839
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've read that, Marissano. No, this

804
00:43:28,000 --> 00:43:31,360
Speaker 1: was I'm sorry. I can't remember the guy's name, but

805
00:43:31,400 --> 00:43:33,359
Speaker 1: he's from Europe somewhere. I think he might have been

806
00:43:33,560 --> 00:43:36,879
Speaker 1: mas streaked. Okay, yeah, I don't I don't know that,

807
00:43:36,960 --> 00:43:42,040
Speaker 1: but um, yeah, I mean there are potential uh links

808
00:43:42,120 --> 00:43:44,960
Speaker 1: between consciouness. This is great for me. Actually, I told

809
00:43:45,000 --> 00:43:46,640
Speaker 1: you how I, you know, got into this. I thought

810
00:43:46,640 --> 00:43:49,200
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a philosopher and I'd love to

811
00:43:49,200 --> 00:43:51,319
Speaker 1: get around to consciousness. They say, you know, wait till

812
00:43:51,320 --> 00:43:53,360
Speaker 1: after you have tenure, maybe wait to get longer than that,

813
00:43:53,920 --> 00:43:58,000
Speaker 1: you know, tell your all the time. Um, but I

814
00:43:58,040 --> 00:44:00,440
Speaker 1: do think there is a potential that they're there might

815
00:44:00,440 --> 00:44:02,520
Speaker 1: be some way we could gain insight there. You know,

816
00:44:02,600 --> 00:44:04,480
Speaker 1: if you think about what are the things that actually

817
00:44:04,520 --> 00:44:09,520
Speaker 1: require consciousness, like what is consciousness actually good for? Um?

818
00:44:09,560 --> 00:44:13,120
Speaker 1: And you know some people have said basically nothing uh phenomenal,

819
00:44:13,360 --> 00:44:15,839
Speaker 1: you know, but but if there is something that it's

820
00:44:15,880 --> 00:44:19,000
Speaker 1: good for. It's for tasks that require attention. I mean,

821
00:44:19,000 --> 00:44:22,200
Speaker 1: that's what consciousness is. It's attending to things, uh, really

822
00:44:22,239 --> 00:44:24,719
Speaker 1: getting the whole brain on board, uh, you know, and

823
00:44:24,800 --> 00:44:28,120
Speaker 1: focusing on on this one thing. Um. And I think

824
00:44:28,200 --> 00:44:32,600
Speaker 1: that learning a skill like stone toolmaking is the kind

825
00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:36,879
Speaker 1: of thing that demands that concentrated attention. And if consciousness

826
00:44:36,920 --> 00:44:39,000
Speaker 1: is the way that you get that, if consciousness is

827
00:44:39,040 --> 00:44:42,080
Speaker 1: the feeling that you have when you fully attend to things,

828
00:44:42,840 --> 00:44:45,560
Speaker 1: then then then maybe there is a relationship there. I

829
00:44:45,600 --> 00:44:48,200
Speaker 1: mean some of the other things people you can as

830
00:44:48,239 --> 00:44:51,600
Speaker 1: you know, you can get into a car and uh

831
00:44:51,760 --> 00:44:54,680
Speaker 1: start thinking about something else and drive to work when

832
00:44:54,680 --> 00:44:56,360
Speaker 1: you meant to go to the store and so forth,

833
00:44:56,360 --> 00:44:58,120
Speaker 1: which is you know, this sort of zombie stuff is

834
00:44:58,160 --> 00:45:01,160
Speaker 1: pretty scary actually the things that you can you without

835
00:45:01,200 --> 00:45:03,680
Speaker 1: being aware of it. Um. But things people can't do

836
00:45:03,800 --> 00:45:07,640
Speaker 1: are sort of sustain hopefully conversations like what we're having here, uh,

837
00:45:07,640 --> 00:45:11,440
Speaker 1: you know, the stay focused, um, very skilled activities. I mean,

838
00:45:11,800 --> 00:45:14,840
Speaker 1: if you're like a race car driver, you wouldn't drift

839
00:45:14,920 --> 00:45:16,880
Speaker 1: away and think about something else that demands your attention,

840
00:45:16,920 --> 00:45:19,560
Speaker 1: demands consciousness. UM. So I think when we pick up

841
00:45:19,719 --> 00:45:23,520
Speaker 1: tasks in the past, UM that required people to really

842
00:45:23,560 --> 00:45:26,439
Speaker 1: focus and attend. Um, we might be picking up things

843
00:45:26,440 --> 00:45:29,759
Speaker 1: that are diagnostic of the need for conscious states. Of course,

844
00:45:29,800 --> 00:45:32,200
Speaker 1: one of the interesting things about tasks like that, like

845
00:45:32,480 --> 00:45:35,680
Speaker 1: work with your hands, is that it requires a lot

846
00:45:35,719 --> 00:45:38,240
Speaker 1: of consciousness when it's new to you, and over time

847
00:45:38,320 --> 00:45:41,840
Speaker 1: requires less and less exactly. And that's why you know,

848
00:45:42,000 --> 00:45:45,239
Speaker 1: unfortunately we we really have to focus on studying uh,

849
00:45:46,120 --> 00:45:49,080
Speaker 1: people who are learning, um, rather than you know, expert

850
00:45:49,120 --> 00:45:52,239
Speaker 1: performance is still interesting in many ways, UM, but if

851
00:45:52,280 --> 00:45:54,120
Speaker 1: you want to get at the real demands for something

852
00:45:54,160 --> 00:45:57,040
Speaker 1: like conscious attention, that's going to happen when you're figuring

853
00:45:57,080 --> 00:45:59,080
Speaker 1: it out later on. And I mentioned to some of

854
00:45:59,080 --> 00:46:00,839
Speaker 1: the people that can make a hand acts really well

855
00:46:00,840 --> 00:46:03,239
Speaker 1: and like, you know, twelve minutes, they don't have to

856
00:46:03,280 --> 00:46:06,000
Speaker 1: think about it at all. UM, Someone like me, I

857
00:46:06,040 --> 00:46:07,880
Speaker 1: have to attend to it so much that what always

858
00:46:07,920 --> 00:46:11,000
Speaker 1: happens is, I know, I give demonstrations of napping and

859
00:46:11,000 --> 00:46:13,839
Speaker 1: then I will always wind up cutting myself because trying

860
00:46:13,880 --> 00:46:15,560
Speaker 1: to talk about it and do us you know, and

861
00:46:15,800 --> 00:46:18,680
Speaker 1: you're not focusing on it. UM. So yeah, is the

862
00:46:18,719 --> 00:46:20,719
Speaker 1: more skills you get, the more you can ignore the

863
00:46:20,760 --> 00:46:23,080
Speaker 1: low level stuff and think about something else, you know,

864
00:46:23,280 --> 00:46:26,440
Speaker 1: like making it a really appealing hand ax versus just

865
00:46:26,480 --> 00:46:29,359
Speaker 1: trying to get something you can use. Do you happen

866
00:46:29,400 --> 00:46:32,200
Speaker 1: to find that the most beautiful hand axes are also

867
00:46:32,320 --> 00:46:35,919
Speaker 1: the best to like, the most functional, useful or those

868
00:46:35,960 --> 00:46:40,080
Speaker 1: things generally aligned or not aligned. You'd be surprised the

869
00:46:40,120 --> 00:46:43,440
Speaker 1: things that we don't know about stone tools because of

870
00:46:43,480 --> 00:46:45,880
Speaker 1: the amount of time that it takes to do proper

871
00:46:45,920 --> 00:46:49,439
Speaker 1: experimentation and actually test these sorts of things. So that's

872
00:46:49,480 --> 00:46:51,640
Speaker 1: something that people are interested in, but there's only been

873
00:46:51,640 --> 00:46:55,560
Speaker 1: a handful of experiments UM that actually looked at you know,

874
00:46:55,719 --> 00:46:57,920
Speaker 1: is the symmetry of the hand acts make it a

875
00:46:58,000 --> 00:47:01,360
Speaker 1: more or less effective butchery tool? Um? Does the straightness

876
00:47:01,400 --> 00:47:03,759
Speaker 1: of the edge matter? Um? Do any of the things

877
00:47:03,760 --> 00:47:07,360
Speaker 1: to the thinness of it matter? Uh? And to the

878
00:47:07,400 --> 00:47:09,600
Speaker 1: extent that has been shown, like the things like symmetry

879
00:47:09,600 --> 00:47:12,120
Speaker 1: don't seem to really matter very much for the function

880
00:47:12,480 --> 00:47:16,360
Speaker 1: uh the Uh the evenness of the edge does seem

881
00:47:16,400 --> 00:47:20,120
Speaker 1: to be important, and that might be aesthetic for some people. UM.

882
00:47:20,280 --> 00:47:23,000
Speaker 1: The sort of extreme thinning of the hand axes that

883
00:47:23,040 --> 00:47:26,120
Speaker 1: we find very appealing, I think because it's hard to

884
00:47:26,160 --> 00:47:30,080
Speaker 1: do is something that you know, maybe somewhat beneficial because

885
00:47:30,239 --> 00:47:33,160
Speaker 1: you have the tool you're carrying around is lighter. Um.

886
00:47:33,560 --> 00:47:36,040
Speaker 1: But thus far, there's not a lot of evidence that

887
00:47:36,120 --> 00:47:38,799
Speaker 1: things we think of is really aesthetically important about hand

888
00:47:38,840 --> 00:47:43,520
Speaker 1: axes are particularly functionally important. So there's another question we

889
00:47:43,560 --> 00:47:45,120
Speaker 1: may not know the answer to. But do you think

890
00:47:45,160 --> 00:47:48,880
Speaker 1: in general, is it more widely assumed that people in

891
00:47:49,000 --> 00:47:53,480
Speaker 1: the prehistoric times would make a hand ax and and

892
00:47:53,680 --> 00:47:56,000
Speaker 1: that would be their hand accidentally carried around with them,

893
00:47:56,080 --> 00:47:58,480
Speaker 1: or is it something that would be made on site

894
00:47:58,520 --> 00:48:02,560
Speaker 1: when it was needed. Yeah, I mean, I think it's

895
00:48:02,600 --> 00:48:06,160
Speaker 1: important to uh, for archaeologists and for everybody to to

896
00:48:06,239 --> 00:48:08,400
Speaker 1: remember when we think about the past that these is

897
00:48:08,400 --> 00:48:12,000
Speaker 1: a huge amount of time over a large area, UM,

898
00:48:12,040 --> 00:48:15,239
Speaker 1: and they probably did just about everything at one uh

899
00:48:15,520 --> 00:48:19,480
Speaker 1: time or another. Um. I it's some sites where you're

900
00:48:19,520 --> 00:48:23,000
Speaker 1: sitting close to raw materials, uh, you know, like there's

901
00:48:23,000 --> 00:48:25,920
Speaker 1: a site of box Grove, it's it's pretty close to

902
00:48:25,920 --> 00:48:28,919
Speaker 1: these chalk cliffs where the flint is coming right out.

903
00:48:29,800 --> 00:48:32,960
Speaker 1: They seem to have used them lightly and discarded them,

904
00:48:33,040 --> 00:48:35,560
Speaker 1: probably made them pretty close to the time that they

905
00:48:35,560 --> 00:48:38,480
Speaker 1: were going to use them, and that sort of thing. UM. Elsewhere.

906
00:48:38,560 --> 00:48:40,920
Speaker 1: They may have actually carried them around for when you

907
00:48:41,000 --> 00:48:43,080
Speaker 1: don't have as much rock, you know, and you're going

908
00:48:43,120 --> 00:48:44,960
Speaker 1: far from the source, you probably take the hand x

909
00:48:45,000 --> 00:48:46,880
Speaker 1: with you, and when it gets dull, you re sharpen

910
00:48:46,960 --> 00:48:49,320
Speaker 1: it and all these sorts of things. Maybe you keep

911
00:48:49,440 --> 00:48:51,360
Speaker 1: using it till you've whittled it down the way we

912
00:48:51,400 --> 00:48:54,000
Speaker 1: do a pencil nub, you know. Uh, so this is

913
00:48:54,040 --> 00:48:58,399
Speaker 1: an area people try to understand, um, basically the economics.

914
00:48:58,680 --> 00:49:01,080
Speaker 1: This is sort of an economic question. Uh, you know,

915
00:49:01,160 --> 00:49:03,520
Speaker 1: when does it make sense to just toss the hand

916
00:49:03,520 --> 00:49:06,640
Speaker 1: axe versus you know, carrying it with you and resharpening it.

917
00:49:06,680 --> 00:49:08,880
Speaker 1: And it seems to be driven by the things you

918
00:49:08,880 --> 00:49:11,279
Speaker 1: would expect it to be driven by, like distances from

919
00:49:11,360 --> 00:49:13,359
Speaker 1: raw materials and the kind of activities that you're doing.

920
00:49:13,800 --> 00:49:16,600
Speaker 1: So you probably get asked this question a lot, especially

921
00:49:16,880 --> 00:49:19,560
Speaker 1: this year since it's such a milestone year for the film.

922
00:49:19,640 --> 00:49:22,080
Speaker 1: But we recently talked about the about two thousand and

923
00:49:22,120 --> 00:49:24,960
Speaker 1: one of Space Odyssey on the show, Um, what are

924
00:49:25,000 --> 00:49:28,439
Speaker 1: your thoughts about two thousand one Space Audience? Specifically of course,

925
00:49:28,520 --> 00:49:34,279
Speaker 1: these scenes of these these ancient creatures engaging in tool

926
00:49:34,400 --> 00:49:37,879
Speaker 1: used for the first time. Yeah, well, I mean as

927
00:49:37,920 --> 00:49:39,920
Speaker 1: you may you may be aware of that two thousand

928
00:49:40,000 --> 00:49:45,880
Speaker 1: one was actually UH produced in consultation with archaeologists and

929
00:49:45,920 --> 00:49:51,080
Speaker 1: palaeo anthropologists, so it was informed by current UH speculations

930
00:49:51,160 --> 00:49:55,399
Speaker 1: hypotheses about the origins of technology at the time. UM

931
00:49:55,719 --> 00:50:00,319
Speaker 1: I think that we have a a different view and now,

932
00:50:00,680 --> 00:50:04,880
Speaker 1: UM I think if you would ask most most archaeologists

933
00:50:05,320 --> 00:50:08,000
Speaker 1: about the origins of tool use and technology, they get

934
00:50:08,080 --> 00:50:12,799
Speaker 1: very excited about things like cooperation and collaboration UH as

935
00:50:13,000 --> 00:50:15,759
Speaker 1: as being a real turning point for for humans, and

936
00:50:16,000 --> 00:50:18,640
Speaker 1: we are a very cooperative species and this makes a

937
00:50:18,719 --> 00:50:22,160
Speaker 1: lot of things possible, whereas that vision UM was much

938
00:50:22,200 --> 00:50:25,719
Speaker 1: more about the importance of killing each other UH and

939
00:50:25,840 --> 00:50:29,200
Speaker 1: the sort of you know, the the killer ape basically.

940
00:50:29,560 --> 00:50:31,680
Speaker 1: And if you want to take a step back from that,

941
00:50:31,680 --> 00:50:33,840
Speaker 1: there's a lot of my my other colleagues and in

942
00:50:33,880 --> 00:50:36,799
Speaker 1: anthropology and other disciplines who might point out that these

943
00:50:36,800 --> 00:50:39,960
Speaker 1: things are heavily influenced by our own social views at

944
00:50:40,000 --> 00:50:42,799
Speaker 1: the time about what's important, because some of it's is

945
00:50:43,000 --> 00:50:46,080
Speaker 1: you know, UH, myth making about human origins and what

946
00:50:46,120 --> 00:50:48,359
Speaker 1: we think human nature is. And after World War Two

947
00:50:48,360 --> 00:50:50,439
Speaker 1: it seemed pretty obvious we're all about killing each other

948
00:50:51,080 --> 00:50:53,640
Speaker 1: right now, we'd like to think it's about cooperation. Uh,

949
00:50:53,760 --> 00:50:55,319
Speaker 1: I don't want to go too heavy on that, because

950
00:50:55,320 --> 00:50:59,680
Speaker 1: there actually is uh empirical are there are empirical arguments

951
00:50:59,719 --> 00:51:02,680
Speaker 1: that they can be made about this, in particular looking

952
00:51:02,719 --> 00:51:06,719
Speaker 1: at comparisons across species and the importance of cooperation versus

953
00:51:06,760 --> 00:51:10,120
Speaker 1: competition in different contexts. So there is a framework for

954
00:51:10,120 --> 00:51:12,840
Speaker 1: for doing this. But it is interesting to think about

955
00:51:12,840 --> 00:51:16,200
Speaker 1: our biases. But are certainly two thousand one fantastic film.

956
00:51:16,239 --> 00:51:19,520
Speaker 1: I like I wish the introductory segment where a little

957
00:51:19,560 --> 00:51:21,680
Speaker 1: bit quicker because I like to use it in my classes.

958
00:51:21,680 --> 00:51:23,720
Speaker 1: But we had to sit there for like half a

959
00:51:24,480 --> 00:51:27,759
Speaker 1: students aren't up for it. Um. Yeah, so I think

960
00:51:27,760 --> 00:51:30,680
Speaker 1: it's uh. They did their best to work with the

961
00:51:30,680 --> 00:51:34,319
Speaker 1: current understanding at the time. It's a great movie. This

962
00:51:34,440 --> 00:51:36,719
Speaker 1: is another realm where we might ask you to speculate

963
00:51:36,840 --> 00:51:39,680
Speaker 1: if you're comfortable. But one of the things we talked

964
00:51:39,719 --> 00:51:42,440
Speaker 1: about with two thousand one was the idea that you know,

965
00:51:42,520 --> 00:51:46,560
Speaker 1: so when the the ape like creatures first encounter the

966
00:51:46,600 --> 00:51:49,759
Speaker 1: monolith in the in the Savannah, um, they they are

967
00:51:49,960 --> 00:51:53,200
Speaker 1: changed in some way. But it's often assumed that maybe

968
00:51:53,480 --> 00:51:56,200
Speaker 1: this is some alien technology that goes in and changes

969
00:51:56,280 --> 00:51:59,520
Speaker 1: something in their brain. But an interpretation we talked about

970
00:51:59,560 --> 00:52:01,480
Speaker 1: in the episod so it is one that that's actually

971
00:52:01,480 --> 00:52:04,640
Speaker 1: not what happens. That what happens is they see this

972
00:52:04,760 --> 00:52:07,560
Speaker 1: object in their environment that it's nothing like the rest

973
00:52:07,560 --> 00:52:11,160
Speaker 1: of their environment. It looks completely artificial, and it's simply

974
00:52:11,360 --> 00:52:15,359
Speaker 1: seeing that spurred something in their imagination that allowed them

975
00:52:15,400 --> 00:52:19,000
Speaker 1: to to take up the tools. Um. And that makes

976
00:52:19,000 --> 00:52:23,239
Speaker 1: me wonder about what what what would you imagine could

977
00:52:23,320 --> 00:52:26,799
Speaker 1: be the role of simply seeing things in the environment

978
00:52:27,280 --> 00:52:32,479
Speaker 1: to inspire the taking up and creation of tools. Yeah,

979
00:52:32,520 --> 00:52:37,279
Speaker 1: I mean it's probably, uh, probably very important. I think

980
00:52:37,320 --> 00:52:40,960
Speaker 1: this is the kind of thing that that archaeologists are

981
00:52:42,480 --> 00:52:46,239
Speaker 1: loath to actually talk about because you're talking about like, uh,

982
00:52:46,320 --> 00:52:49,799
Speaker 1: you know, individual acts of invention um that happened in

983
00:52:49,840 --> 00:52:52,640
Speaker 1: the past. Whereas the sort of the record that we

984
00:52:52,719 --> 00:52:57,080
Speaker 1: have is this really really high level, average sort of

985
00:52:57,200 --> 00:53:00,560
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Um. So it's hard for us. I mean, clearly,

986
00:53:01,120 --> 00:53:04,160
Speaker 1: you know, we shouldn't forget these things are inventions. They're

987
00:53:04,160 --> 00:53:08,160
Speaker 1: not like mutations or just inevitable things that happened like

988
00:53:08,320 --> 00:53:11,640
Speaker 1: somebody at some point had a new idea and did it,

989
00:53:11,719 --> 00:53:14,239
Speaker 1: and then whether they were inspired by particular things in

990
00:53:14,239 --> 00:53:17,120
Speaker 1: their environment. We like to think about, well, what kind

991
00:53:17,200 --> 00:53:19,600
Speaker 1: what were the kinds of things that they commonly encountered,

992
00:53:19,640 --> 00:53:21,919
Speaker 1: and we could have some leverage to talk about that.

993
00:53:22,000 --> 00:53:23,760
Speaker 1: You know, if they moved into a bit of a

994
00:53:23,800 --> 00:53:26,399
Speaker 1: of a foraging niche, then they may be around these

995
00:53:26,440 --> 00:53:30,560
Speaker 1: animal bones, you know, if there are stones available, Uh,

996
00:53:30,719 --> 00:53:34,520
Speaker 1: if they cracked nuts, um occasionally, as chimpanzees do, you're

997
00:53:34,520 --> 00:53:37,560
Speaker 1: going to accidentally fracture the rock and and you know,

998
00:53:37,680 --> 00:53:41,640
Speaker 1: you could imagine imagine an aha moment there, but those

999
00:53:41,640 --> 00:53:45,160
Speaker 1: are things that are very difficult to actually get to. Um.

1000
00:53:45,239 --> 00:53:47,680
Speaker 1: What I what I will say about the vision in

1001
00:53:48,000 --> 00:53:50,920
Speaker 1: in two thousand one is that it is an idea

1002
00:53:51,040 --> 00:53:54,400
Speaker 1: of a transformative moment um. And this is something that

1003
00:53:54,520 --> 00:53:57,280
Speaker 1: was also very current and maybe is to a certain extent,

1004
00:53:57,320 --> 00:54:00,560
Speaker 1: the idea that the invention of the earliest owned tools

1005
00:54:00,600 --> 00:54:03,799
Speaker 1: should be some kind of transformative, great leap forward that

1006
00:54:03,880 --> 00:54:06,640
Speaker 1: you know, that changed everything, and that doesn't seem to

1007
00:54:06,640 --> 00:54:08,959
Speaker 1: be the case actually. I mean, we now have one

1008
00:54:09,000 --> 00:54:12,360
Speaker 1: site at three point three million where they made stone tools.

1009
00:54:12,640 --> 00:54:16,640
Speaker 1: The next one is at two point six million, with

1010
00:54:16,800 --> 00:54:19,600
Speaker 1: nothing in between. Now we're going to find eventually something,

1011
00:54:19,719 --> 00:54:21,839
Speaker 1: but it's not a lot. It didn't like take off

1012
00:54:21,920 --> 00:54:23,719
Speaker 1: and go crazy. And and even at the two point

1013
00:54:23,800 --> 00:54:26,359
Speaker 1: six there's just a few and it's not around two

1014
00:54:26,400 --> 00:54:28,719
Speaker 1: million years ago that they start doing this regularly in

1015
00:54:28,760 --> 00:54:31,400
Speaker 1: a lot of places. So there's this huge long period

1016
00:54:31,400 --> 00:54:33,919
Speaker 1: of time where they're again stone tools. Maybe you could

1017
00:54:33,920 --> 00:54:36,799
Speaker 1: do it sometimes when it's worth it, I don't know.

1018
00:54:37,080 --> 00:54:39,640
Speaker 1: And so it wasn't like this sort of you know

1019
00:54:39,719 --> 00:54:42,360
Speaker 1: gun that went off and everything changed, which is a

1020
00:54:42,400 --> 00:54:44,759
Speaker 1: different perspective than what we used to have. Well it

1021
00:54:44,800 --> 00:54:47,400
Speaker 1: thinks it makes me think about even today and in

1022
00:54:47,520 --> 00:54:50,399
Speaker 1: modern society. You know, you have a new business as

1023
00:54:50,400 --> 00:54:52,759
Speaker 1: a new type of product, and it's always losing money

1024
00:54:52,840 --> 00:54:56,839
Speaker 1: at first, right. Uh, it makes me wonder if, yeah,

1025
00:54:57,480 --> 00:55:00,880
Speaker 1: were these things um more trouble than they were worth

1026
00:55:01,000 --> 00:55:03,520
Speaker 1: to begin with, and how if that's the case, how

1027
00:55:03,520 --> 00:55:05,560
Speaker 1: would you get through that? You know, how would you

1028
00:55:05,920 --> 00:55:09,200
Speaker 1: trust it to keep making them? Yeah, I mean it's

1029
00:55:09,239 --> 00:55:12,280
Speaker 1: hard to say. I think you know, my my favorite

1030
00:55:12,280 --> 00:55:15,160
Speaker 1: sort of hypothesis right now is that, yeah, it was

1031
00:55:15,239 --> 00:55:19,240
Speaker 1: just too too hard in particular the investment in learning

1032
00:55:19,239 --> 00:55:21,920
Speaker 1: how to do this. Uh, you know they did there

1033
00:55:22,520 --> 00:55:25,360
Speaker 1: were smaller brained individuals. They didn't have the same learning

1034
00:55:25,360 --> 00:55:27,959
Speaker 1: capacities that we have. And for whatever at the time,

1035
00:55:28,000 --> 00:55:30,600
Speaker 1: I think there was too steep a cost, and occasionally

1036
00:55:30,640 --> 00:55:33,279
Speaker 1: it seemed worth it, but only a few individuals would

1037
00:55:33,320 --> 00:55:35,319
Speaker 1: learn and and then they had to spend so much

1038
00:55:35,320 --> 00:55:37,399
Speaker 1: time figuring it out that you know, it was didn't

1039
00:55:37,400 --> 00:55:39,160
Speaker 1: really give them that much of an advantage, and then

1040
00:55:39,200 --> 00:55:41,200
Speaker 1: it was just lost in a small population. And no,

1041
00:55:41,280 --> 00:55:43,839
Speaker 1: we did it for however long you know, um, but

1042
00:55:44,480 --> 00:55:46,480
Speaker 1: you go on long enough, and there may have been

1043
00:55:46,640 --> 00:55:50,160
Speaker 1: some selection either on the toolmaking or on other things

1044
00:55:50,160 --> 00:55:52,759
Speaker 1: that they were doing that eventually lowered the costs for

1045
00:55:52,800 --> 00:55:55,040
Speaker 1: them a little bit. It wasn't quite such a stretch

1046
00:55:55,120 --> 00:55:56,840
Speaker 1: to be able to do this, and that's where I

1047
00:55:56,880 --> 00:55:59,719
Speaker 1: have the chance of it actually paying for itself, and

1048
00:55:59,719 --> 00:56:02,440
Speaker 1: then it would take off. So that's currently because when

1049
00:56:02,480 --> 00:56:04,279
Speaker 1: it does take off around two million years ago, it

1050
00:56:04,320 --> 00:56:06,680
Speaker 1: is very close in time to the appearance of Homo erectus,

1051
00:56:06,960 --> 00:56:10,600
Speaker 1: which has a larger brain and body, so you know, coincidence.

1052
00:56:10,960 --> 00:56:13,760
Speaker 1: But they messed around for a long time until something

1053
00:56:13,920 --> 00:56:17,799
Speaker 1: changed about the cost benefit equation. I think so many

1054
00:56:17,840 --> 00:56:23,240
Speaker 1: tantalizing mystery I'm just imagining these sort of many dark ages. Uh,

1055
00:56:23,560 --> 00:56:25,799
Speaker 1: and they're learning Huh. Yeah, I mean if you think

1056
00:56:25,840 --> 00:56:28,759
Speaker 1: of these small groups very isolated, you know, I mean,

1057
00:56:28,800 --> 00:56:30,680
Speaker 1: somebody could have a great idea and then you know,

1058
00:56:30,760 --> 00:56:33,640
Speaker 1: they have a bad year and everybody dies and nobody

1059
00:56:33,640 --> 00:56:37,960
Speaker 1: thinks of it again for five years. I'm sorry we

1060
00:56:38,080 --> 00:56:42,640
Speaker 1: keep asking you to speculate about stuff. Uh, these are

1061
00:56:42,640 --> 00:56:44,319
Speaker 1: the kind of questions we love to ask. But yeah,

1062
00:56:44,360 --> 00:56:47,520
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously people should understand that they're there are

1063
00:56:47,520 --> 00:56:51,040
Speaker 1: tons of limitations on what we can know empirically about

1064
00:56:51,080 --> 00:56:53,680
Speaker 1: things this far in the past. So besides what we've

1065
00:56:53,719 --> 00:56:55,880
Speaker 1: talked about so far, what else do you find most

1066
00:56:55,960 --> 00:57:00,319
Speaker 1: fascinating about studying stone age technology? Like? What what really

1067
00:57:00,360 --> 00:57:03,600
Speaker 1: gets your gears going about it? I mean, I I guess, uh,

1068
00:57:03,800 --> 00:57:06,680
Speaker 1: one thing, maybe it's a bit a bit technical. We

1069
00:57:06,800 --> 00:57:10,880
Speaker 1: we we started to talk about the relationship between stone

1070
00:57:10,920 --> 00:57:14,520
Speaker 1: toolmaking and language, and uh, one of the ideas that

1071
00:57:14,560 --> 00:57:18,400
Speaker 1: we discussed is that it created selective pressures of benefit

1072
00:57:18,560 --> 00:57:22,080
Speaker 1: for being able to communicate better, which eventually led to language.

1073
00:57:22,080 --> 00:57:26,480
Speaker 1: But there's another idea that, uh, that there's a more

1074
00:57:26,520 --> 00:57:30,040
Speaker 1: direct connection between toolmaking language because they might depend upon

1075
00:57:30,280 --> 00:57:34,000
Speaker 1: some of the same cognitive and neural systems, right. Uh

1076
00:57:34,240 --> 00:57:36,600
Speaker 1: So this is an old idea, you know, relating to

1077
00:57:36,640 --> 00:57:38,840
Speaker 1: the idea that there's kind of a syntax of action,

1078
00:57:39,200 --> 00:57:43,040
Speaker 1: that the way we structure uh, sequential actions is similar

1079
00:57:43,240 --> 00:57:46,280
Speaker 1: to the way we structure words and a sentence. In fact,

1080
00:57:46,360 --> 00:57:50,640
Speaker 1: words and a sentence are sequential actions. Uh. So there's

1081
00:57:50,680 --> 00:57:54,160
Speaker 1: clearly some really important differences. Um. But there's also the

1082
00:57:54,160 --> 00:57:56,920
Speaker 1: possibility that some of the systems that we use just

1083
00:57:57,000 --> 00:58:00,680
Speaker 1: to put together complex sequences of actions and toolmaking are

1084
00:58:00,840 --> 00:58:03,439
Speaker 1: also important to language evolution, so that if you had

1085
00:58:03,800 --> 00:58:07,280
Speaker 1: selection acting on toolmaking, it would provide a foundation from

1086
00:58:07,320 --> 00:58:10,160
Speaker 1: which then you could get language evolution. And you know,

1087
00:58:10,520 --> 00:58:13,720
Speaker 1: some of the work that we've done generally supports that

1088
00:58:13,880 --> 00:58:17,439
Speaker 1: idea that there is overlap, particularly in what people call

1089
00:58:17,800 --> 00:58:22,360
Speaker 1: Broca's area of the inferior frontal gyrus, which is related

1090
00:58:22,400 --> 00:58:26,480
Speaker 1: to language processing but also uh to putting together complex

1091
00:58:26,480 --> 00:58:29,959
Speaker 1: actions of other kinds. Uh. And so currently what we're

1092
00:58:30,000 --> 00:58:33,160
Speaker 1: working on is actually putting people in the scanner or

1093
00:58:33,200 --> 00:58:37,200
Speaker 1: showing them videos of toolmaking, have them listen to language. UH.

1094
00:58:37,440 --> 00:58:40,920
Speaker 1: We use computational methods to to parse the structure of

1095
00:58:40,920 --> 00:58:43,840
Speaker 1: the language and the structure of the toolmaking, and we

1096
00:58:43,920 --> 00:58:46,760
Speaker 1: see if the kind of the syntactic structure that we

1097
00:58:46,800 --> 00:58:49,120
Speaker 1: see in the toolmaking and in the language produces the

1098
00:58:49,160 --> 00:58:52,440
Speaker 1: same responses in the brain. And uh, that's not done yet,

1099
00:58:52,520 --> 00:58:55,280
Speaker 1: but so far we have some encouraging results along those lines.

1100
00:58:55,600 --> 00:59:00,840
Speaker 1: So this, this idea that uh, basic action sequencing and

1101
00:59:00,880 --> 00:59:03,760
Speaker 1: statistical learning that you would have for putting together complex

1102
00:59:03,760 --> 00:59:06,680
Speaker 1: actions provided the foundation for language evolution is something that

1103
00:59:06,680 --> 00:59:09,920
Speaker 1: I would like to continue pursuing. That's fascinating. I mean,

1104
00:59:10,480 --> 00:59:12,680
Speaker 1: if you even if you just think about your experience

1105
00:59:13,040 --> 00:59:17,080
Speaker 1: in there, there are ways that putting together a sentence

1106
00:59:17,320 --> 00:59:21,240
Speaker 1: can sometimes feel somewhat analogous to step by step activities

1107
00:59:21,240 --> 00:59:23,600
Speaker 1: with the hands, like the way that uh, you know,

1108
00:59:23,640 --> 00:59:25,640
Speaker 1: if you're used to speaking or if you're used to

1109
00:59:25,680 --> 00:59:27,880
Speaker 1: doing an activity, it can happen like we were talking about,

1110
00:59:27,920 --> 00:59:30,440
Speaker 1: mostly unconsciously. But then there are those moments where you

1111
00:59:30,480 --> 00:59:33,720
Speaker 1: feel you're maybe ready to break the sentence or something,

1112
00:59:33,760 --> 00:59:36,720
Speaker 1: and you slow down and it becomes more conscious. Um

1113
00:59:37,120 --> 00:59:39,840
Speaker 1: in anyway, that's just what made that made me think

1114
00:59:39,840 --> 00:59:43,440
Speaker 1: of very much. So, uh, you know that Morton Christiansen

1115
00:59:43,560 --> 00:59:45,680
Speaker 1: is another colleague of mine that's written a bit about

1116
00:59:45,720 --> 00:59:48,720
Speaker 1: the concept of language as a skill, and you think

1117
00:59:48,760 --> 00:59:50,959
Speaker 1: about it, uh, try not to think about it while

1118
00:59:51,000 --> 00:59:53,840
Speaker 1: I'm speaking. And that that's the point, because if you're

1119
00:59:53,880 --> 00:59:57,080
Speaker 1: attending to exactly how you're enunciating the words and so forth,

1120
00:59:57,120 --> 00:59:58,960
Speaker 1: you lose the threat of what you're trying to say.

1121
00:59:59,080 --> 01:00:01,480
Speaker 1: So you need to be able to very rapidly translate

1122
01:00:01,520 --> 01:00:04,520
Speaker 1: sort of a high level and tension into very particular

1123
01:00:04,600 --> 01:00:07,520
Speaker 1: motor actions. And then when you talk to me, I

1124
01:00:07,560 --> 01:00:10,280
Speaker 1: have to very rapidly translate what you're saying into a

1125
01:00:10,360 --> 01:00:12,640
Speaker 1: sort of a loose summary. I mean, I can't remember

1126
01:00:12,680 --> 01:00:14,680
Speaker 1: exactly what you said five minutes ago, but hopefully I

1127
01:00:14,720 --> 01:00:18,479
Speaker 1: have a general idea of what we've been talking about. Uh.

1128
01:00:18,520 --> 01:00:20,680
Speaker 1: And so this is skill. It's it's just like when

1129
01:00:20,720 --> 01:00:23,120
Speaker 1: you uh A famous example a is you know, skiing

1130
01:00:23,200 --> 01:00:25,919
Speaker 1: down a mountain slope. I mean, initially, if you don't

1131
01:00:25,920 --> 01:00:28,360
Speaker 1: know what you're doing, you're focused on how you're positioning

1132
01:00:28,360 --> 01:00:31,320
Speaker 1: your feet and so forth. Later on you can ignore

1133
01:00:31,360 --> 01:00:34,400
Speaker 1: that and focus on, you know, skiing the slope, and

1134
01:00:34,400 --> 01:00:36,760
Speaker 1: and so your focus of attention moves um in this

1135
01:00:36,880 --> 01:00:38,760
Speaker 1: the same in language and toolmaking, and I think the

1136
01:00:38,800 --> 01:00:41,560
Speaker 1: neural systems are related to each other. Yeah, it's kind

1137
01:00:41,600 --> 01:00:43,600
Speaker 1: of like how if you I think they're actually even

1138
01:00:44,240 --> 01:00:46,760
Speaker 1: studies of this that if you focus too consciously on,

1139
01:00:46,840 --> 01:00:50,600
Speaker 1: say like shooting a basketball, you get worse at it. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

1140
01:00:50,680 --> 01:00:53,360
Speaker 1: Experience the flow, you know, you have to, you have to,

1141
01:00:54,000 --> 01:00:56,640
Speaker 1: you have to automate a lot of it. Well, Detrich,

1142
01:00:56,720 --> 01:00:58,480
Speaker 1: this has been so great. Thank you so much for

1143
01:00:58,560 --> 01:01:05,920
Speaker 1: joining us today. Thank you, thank you. I really enjoyed it. Alright,

1144
01:01:05,960 --> 01:01:08,680
Speaker 1: So we hope you enjoyed our conversation with Dietrich Stout.

1145
01:01:08,680 --> 01:01:11,120
Speaker 1: I know Robert and I did. Um So if you

1146
01:01:11,160 --> 01:01:13,280
Speaker 1: want to follow up and check out any of the

1147
01:01:13,760 --> 01:01:16,080
Speaker 1: centers we mentioned, like the Center for Mind Braining Culture

1148
01:01:16,160 --> 01:01:18,880
Speaker 1: that's c MBC, dot Emory, dot E d U, but

1149
01:01:18,960 --> 01:01:21,080
Speaker 1: you can also we'll put a link to that on

1150
01:01:21,120 --> 01:01:23,720
Speaker 1: the landing page for this podcast. You can also check

1151
01:01:23,760 --> 01:01:27,680
Speaker 1: out the Paleolithic Technology Laboratory site at scholar Blogs, dot Emory,

1152
01:01:27,760 --> 01:01:30,160
Speaker 1: dot E d U, slash Stout Lab. And then there

1153
01:01:30,240 --> 01:01:33,760
Speaker 1: was one more thing that Dietrich emailed me about. So

1154
01:01:33,960 --> 01:01:36,920
Speaker 1: he talked in the interview about the role of sound

1155
01:01:37,560 --> 01:01:41,160
Speaker 1: in toolmaking, and so he sent me actually a link

1156
01:01:41,240 --> 01:01:43,960
Speaker 1: to a study where you can be a participant in

1157
01:01:44,160 --> 01:01:46,560
Speaker 1: trying to It's a study where they ask you about

1158
01:01:46,600 --> 01:01:49,040
Speaker 1: your experience with certain types of you know, like playing

1159
01:01:49,040 --> 01:01:52,240
Speaker 1: a musical instrument or something like that, and then you

1160
01:01:52,280 --> 01:01:56,120
Speaker 1: get to listen to different stone napping sounds and estimate

1161
01:01:56,240 --> 01:01:58,760
Speaker 1: the size of the chip that was produced by the

1162
01:01:58,800 --> 01:02:01,400
Speaker 1: sound you're listening to. Oh nice, I guess not produced

1163
01:02:01,400 --> 01:02:04,120
Speaker 1: by the sound, but that the sound was correlated with

1164
01:02:04,400 --> 01:02:06,720
Speaker 1: And we'll make sure the link for that is on

1165
01:02:06,760 --> 01:02:09,200
Speaker 1: the landing page as well. In the landing page for

1166
01:02:09,280 --> 01:02:11,920
Speaker 1: this episode, you will find it. It's stuff to Blow

1167
01:02:11,960 --> 01:02:15,000
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. That's our mothership. That's where we

1168
01:02:15,040 --> 01:02:17,560
Speaker 1: have all the episodes. That's where we have links out

1169
01:02:17,560 --> 01:02:19,360
Speaker 1: to our various social media accounts. That's where we have

1170
01:02:19,400 --> 01:02:22,720
Speaker 1: our tab for our store where you can purchase some

1171
01:02:22,800 --> 01:02:26,600
Speaker 1: merchandise with our logo or something related to particular episode.

1172
01:02:26,840 --> 01:02:29,120
Speaker 1: It's a great way to support our show. But if

1173
01:02:29,120 --> 01:02:30,480
Speaker 1: you want to support our show in a way that

1174
01:02:30,520 --> 01:02:33,440
Speaker 1: doesn't cost you a single time, just rate and review

1175
01:02:33,560 --> 01:02:35,400
Speaker 1: us wherever you have the power to do so. We're

1176
01:02:35,440 --> 01:02:39,240
Speaker 1: talking Apple podcasts or even our Facebook page. You can

1177
01:02:39,360 --> 01:02:41,680
Speaker 1: rate us there. People have been giving us some nice

1178
01:02:41,800 --> 01:02:44,600
Speaker 1: ratings there, and and you know all of it helps

1179
01:02:44,680 --> 01:02:48,920
Speaker 1: the all powerful algorithm that rules our lives. Big thanks

1180
01:02:49,000 --> 01:02:52,040
Speaker 1: as always to our wonderful audio producers Alex Williams and

1181
01:02:52,160 --> 01:02:54,360
Speaker 1: Terry Harrison. If you would like to get in touch

1182
01:02:54,400 --> 01:02:56,720
Speaker 1: with us with feedback about this episode or any other

1183
01:02:57,160 --> 01:02:59,560
Speaker 1: uh to suggest a topic for the future, just to

1184
01:02:59,560 --> 01:03:01,520
Speaker 1: say hi, I let us know where you listen from,

1185
01:03:01,520 --> 01:03:03,400
Speaker 1: how you found out about the show. Stuff like that.

1186
01:03:03,640 --> 01:03:06,160
Speaker 1: You can email us at blow the Mind at how

1187
01:03:06,240 --> 01:03:18,320
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands

1188
01:03:18,360 --> 01:03:43,520
Speaker 1: of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com