Tracking Science: The Origin of Scientific Thinking in Our Paleolithic Ancestors
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By Louis Liebenberg

Skeptic Magazine, Volume 18, Number 3, 2013

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There is a paradox in human evolution: It was once assumed not only that rational science originated with the ancient Greek philosophic schools, but that the belief systems of prehistoric hunter-gatherers were dominated by superstitions and irrational beliefs. If this was the case, then how did the human mind evolve the ability to do scientific reasoning if scientific reasoning was not required for hunter-gather subsistence?

A similar (albeit broader) paradox led the 19th century naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace to conclude that the human brain could not be the product of undirected evolution because “Natural selection could only have endowed savage man with a brain a few degrees superior to that of an ape, whereas he actually possesses one very little inferior to that of a philosopher” (1). The 20th century anthropologist Sherwood Washburn reframed the paradox when he pointed out that the same brain that has been adapted for the needs of hunter-gatherer subsistence today deals with the subtleties of modern mathematics and physics (2). More recently, the psychologist Steven Pinker has noted that Wallace’s paradox of the apparent evolutionary uselessness of human intelligence is a central problem of psychology, biology, and the scientific worldview (3), while the biologist Edward O. Wilson regards it as “the great mystery of human evolution: how to account for calculus and Mozart” (4).

This apparent paradox may be resolved if it is assumed that at least some of the first anatomically modern hunter-gatherers were capable of scientific reasoning, and that the intellectual requirements of modern science were, at least among the most intelligent members of hunter-gatherer bands, a necessity for the survival of hunter-gatherer societies. The first creative science, practiced by possibly some of the earliest members of Homo sapiens who had modern brains and intellects, may have been the tracking of game animals. Tracking is a science that fundamentally requires the same intellectual abilities as a modern science like physics (5). (With “modern hunter-gatherers” and “modern intellects,” the term “modern” is used in the archaeological sense of the word, as when archaeologists and anthropologists refer to “anatomically modern humans” to mean our species. With “modern science” and “modern physics” the term “modern” refers to science and physics practiced during and since the 20th century.)