Kiss my Acheulian*

I've been taking a break from the lab and teaching this week in order to recuperate for the upcoming semester, hang with the kids, and catch up on some reading that I've been neglecting. The book I just finished was The Agile Gene by Matt Ridley (originally known as Nature via Nurture) on behavioral genetics and the 20th century scientific battle between biological and environmental determinists. While the book has several interesting examples of the interaction between genes and environment and how this has led to who we are today. One of the more interesting of these factoids came from Chapter 8 "The Conundrums of Culture" and why Acheulian handaxes don't change much for 1 million years in form

Ridley recounts a hypothesis put forth by Marek Kohn (1999) that these handaxes really weren't very useful at all but simply a way of males showing off to females and the goal was to create the perfect handaxe in order to acquire the best mate. In a sense, the mental template that arose for these objects was due to sexual selection and not for utilitarian purposes. While this conjures up intriguing images of multiple males of Homo erectus happily chipping away in an elaborate flint dance, it is probably unlikely.

One problem is southeast Asia, if this is symbolic of general behavior in a species why are none of these stone handaxes found with these specimens. One is probably being selected for is not the best handaxe but the male who is best able to bring home the bacon (quite literally) . He who is the best hunter will be chosen by the females. Another problem is that it suggests that males are the only ones making stone tools. If these tools were used to process meat, then it is likely that females were involved in the scraping, chopping, and schlepping. While the acquisition of meat probably fell to the males, the distribution and consumption of meat was a group activity.

While Ridley is probably right that the interaction of our genes with our environment influencing our behavior was selected for during the Pleistocene and in order to do this you sometimes need a reductionist methodology you have to be careful to not mistake the forest for the trees.

References

Kohn, M. (1999) As We Know It: Coming to Terms with the Evolved Mind. Granta. 336 p.

Ridley M (2004) The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture. Perennial. New York New York. 326 p.

*This title comes from the remix of an Emminen song titled"The Real Hominin" by Tony DiFiore, now it's a meme stuck in my head.