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Behavioral modernity

Behavioral modernity refers to the suite of advanced cognitive, technological, and cultural traits that characterize anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens), including symbolic behavior, innovative tool-making, complex social structures, and reliable intergenerational transmission of knowledge, which developed gradually in Africa during the Middle Stone Age starting around 320,000 years ago. This transition marks a shift from earlier hominin behaviors to those enabling greater ecological flexibility, planning depth, and cultural accumulation, distinguishing H. sapiens from contemporaries like Neanderthals.^[1] Unlike the traditional "Upper Paleolithic Revolution" model, which posits a rapid emergence of these traits around 50,000 years ago in Europe, archaeological evidence supports an incremental African origin emerging alongside anatomical modernity.^[2] Key characteristics of behavioral modernity encompass symbolic expressions such as engraved ochre, shell beads, and abstract art; advanced technologies including blade production, hafted composite tools, and bone implements; and social practices like long-distance raw material exchange, specialized hunting strategies, and ritualistic burials with grave goods.^[3] These traits first appear sporadically as early as approximately 320,000 years ago, including pigment processing and long-distance trade at Olorgesailie in Kenya, followed by shell beads and engraved artifacts at Blombos Cave in South Africa dating to approximately 75,000 years ago, indicating early symbolic communication and personal adornment.^[2] By 70,000–60,000 years ago, sites like Howiesons Poort show evidence of geometric microliths and heat-treated tools, reflecting planning and innovation.^[3] The gradual accumulation of these behaviors is attributed to factors such as population dynamics, environmental pressures, and enhanced social learning mechanisms that allowed for high-fidelity cultural transmission across generations.^[1] This process facilitated H. sapiens' expansion out of Africa around 60,000–70,000 years ago, contributing to the global dispersal and replacement of other hominin groups.^[3] Debates persist regarding the exact cognitive prerequisites and whether Neanderthals independently achieved partial modernity, but African Middle Stone Age evidence underscores behavioral modernity as a mosaic of developments rather than a singular event.

Conceptual Foundations

Definition and Characteristics

Behavioral modernity refers to the emergence of a suite of cognitive, social, technological, and symbolic behaviors in Homo sapiens that enabled advanced symbolic thinking, abstract planning, innovation, and efficient cultural transmission, distinguishing it from the more utilitarian behaviors of earlier hominins. This concept encompasses the capacity for creative culture, including complex problem-solving, language-like communication, and adaptive social structures, marking a profound shift in human adaptability and ecological success.^[4]^[5] Key characteristics of behavioral modernity include symbolic artifacts such as the use of ochre for pigmentation and engraving, shell beads for personal adornment, and engraved objects indicating abstract representation. Technological innovations feature blade tools for efficient cutting, bone implements for specialized tasks, and composite tools with hafting for enhanced functionality. Social organization is evidenced by practices like long-distance trade networks for resource exchange and ritual burials suggesting communal mourning or spiritual beliefs. Artistic expressions manifest in abstract engravings on ochre and ostrich eggshells, and body ornamentation like shell beads reflecting identity and status. These traits collectively demonstrate increased behavioral flexibility and cultural complexity.^[4] Behavioral modernity represents a distinct layer of evolution beyond anatomical modernity—the physical traits defining Homo sapiens, such as a high forehead and rounded skull, which appeared around 300,000 years ago—focusing instead on cognitive and cultural advancements that were not inherently tied to skeletal changes. These behavioral traits provided adaptive advantages, such as improved group cooperation through symbolic communication and trade, which facilitated resource sharing and conflict resolution, thereby enhancing survival in diverse environments. Traditionally, behavioral modernity has been anchored to the Upper Paleolithic Revolution around 50,000 years ago in Eurasia, though evidence now points to earlier African origins spanning 300,000 to 50,000 years ago.^[3]^[4]

Historical Development of the Concept

The concept of behavioral modernity emerged in the context of 19th-century archaeological frameworks that viewed human development as a linear progression through stages of technological and cultural advancement, exemplified by Christian Jørgen Thomsen's three-age system (Stone, Bronze, Iron Ages) introduced in 1836, which categorized prehistoric societies based on tool materials and implied increasing behavioral sophistication. This unilinear evolutionary perspective, further elaborated in John Lubbock's Prehistoric Times (1865), positioned European Upper Paleolithic cultures as the pinnacle of modern human achievement, associating them with the onset of symbolic and innovative behaviors around 40,000 years ago. Early 20th-century excavations reinforced this Eurocentric model, but findings from Africa began to challenge it; L.S.B. Leakey's discoveries at Olduvai Gorge in the 1950s and 1960s, including early stone tools and hominin fossils dated to over 1.8 million years ago, highlighted Africa's role in human origins and suggested deeper roots for complex behaviors, influencing subsequent debates on when and where modernity arose. In the 1960s, French archaeologist François Bordes advanced the discussion through his typology of Middle Paleolithic tools, proposing ethnic or cultural variability in Mousterian industries that implied greater behavioral flexibility among archaic humans than previously thought, laying groundwork for distinguishing anatomical from behavioral modernity. The 1970s and 1980s saw the crystallization of the "human revolution" hypothesis in South African archaeology, with Richard Klein arguing based on sites like Klasies River and Border Cave that a abrupt cognitive shift around 40,000–50,000 years ago enabled modern behaviors such as systematic hunting and symbolic expression, potentially triggered by genetic changes. This idea gained prominence in the 1989 edited volume The Human Revolution: Behavioural and Biological Perspectives on the Origins of Modern Humans by Paul Mellars and Christopher Stringer, which framed the transition as a global event tied to the spread of anatomically modern humans. By the 1990s, multiregional models challenged this abrupt, Africa-centric view, incorporating evidence from Eurasia and Asia to propose that behavioral innovations developed regionally without a single revolutionary point, influenced by ongoing gene flow among hominin populations. In the post-2000 era, cognitive archaeology refined the concept, with Sally McBrearty and Alison Brooks' 2000 critique demonstrating through African Middle Stone Age evidence (e.g., from >100,000 years ago) that modern behaviors accumulated gradually rather than suddenly, rejecting the "creative explosion" narrative. Subsequent integrations emphasized mosaic evolution, where traits like symbolism and technological innovation appeared variably across regions and time periods, as seen in 2010s syntheses linking behavioral variability to environmental and social pressures. By the 2020s, this perspective dominates, with studies underscoring non-linear, regionally diverse pathways to full behavioral modernity, informed by genetic and isotopic data that highlight adaptive flexibility in early Homo sapiens.

Theoretical Models

Upper Paleolithic Revolution Model

The Upper Paleolithic Revolution model describes a sudden and transformative shift in human behavioral patterns around 50,000 to 40,000 years ago, particularly in Europe, associated with the migration of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) out of Africa. This period marks the onset of the Upper Paleolithic, characterized by a dramatic increase in technological complexity, such as the production of fine blades, bone tools, and composite implements, alongside the emergence of symbolic expressions like cave art, portable figurines, and body adornments. Proponents argue that these innovations reflect a qualitative leap in cognitive and social capabilities, distinguishing modern human behavior from earlier archaic forms and enabling the replacement of Neanderthals across Eurasia. Richard Klein has been a prominent advocate of this model, hypothesizing in his 2009 analysis that the revolution stemmed from a key genetic mutation in African populations approximately 50,000 years ago, which enhanced neural structures supporting language acquisition and symbolic reasoning. This mutation, Klein posits, provided a selective advantage that propelled the rapid dispersal of modern humans, triggering the cultural explosion observed in the archaeological record. Complementing this, Paul Mellars has focused on the technological dimensions, particularly the Aurignacian techno-complex (circa 43,000–35,000 years ago), which he views as evidence of innovative adaptations including specialized hunting gear and long-distance raw material exchange, representing a fundamental break from Middle Paleolithic traditions.^[6]^[6]^[7] Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain this abrupt transition. Environmental pressures during the early stages of the Last Glacial period, including colder climates and fluctuating resources in Europe, likely drove adaptations in subsistence strategies and mobility, fostering technological ingenuity among incoming populations. Cognitive mutations, such as potential changes in genes like FOXP2—known for its role in speech and motor control—have been speculated to underpin enhanced communicative abilities, though direct evidence remains elusive. Additionally, population bottlenecks during the out-of-Africa migration may have intensified social learning and cultural transmission in small groups, amplifying the spread of novel behaviors. This punctuated model stands in contrast to gradualist perspectives, which envision a more continuous development of modern traits over longer timescales.^[7]^[8]^[8]

Gradualist and Multiregional Models

The gradualist perspective posits that the suite of behaviors associated with behavioral modernity accumulated incrementally over a period spanning approximately 300,000 to 50,000 years ago, primarily in Africa during the Middle Stone Age, rather than emerging abruptly as a singular event.^[9] This model, advanced by McBrearty and Brooks, emphasizes a stepwise development of technological innovations such as blade production and bone tools, alongside symbolic practices including the processing of ochre for pigment and the creation of perforated shell beads, which indicate early cognitive and aesthetic capacities predating similar European evidence by tens of thousands of years.^[9] These behaviors are seen as evolving through cumulative cultural and adaptive processes, challenging the notion of a discrete "revolution" and highlighting the depth of the African archaeological record.^[9] Alternative perspectives, such as those emphasizing mosaic evolution, propose that behavioral modernity arose through parallel developments and cumulative changes across multiple regions and hominin populations in the Old World, facilitated by gene flow and cultural exchanges, including some advanced traits in Neanderthals.^[10] This view frames behavioral traits like advanced tool use and symbolic expression as evolving in a distributed, reticulate pattern across lineages, integrating regional adaptations without requiring a single point of origin for modern behaviors.^[10]^[10] Supporting these alternative frameworks is a critique of Eurocentrism inherent in earlier models that privileged the Upper Paleolithic in Europe—now widely regarded as an outdated endpoint—as the benchmark for modernity, overlooking earlier African innovations.^[9] Additionally, gradualist and mosaic interpretations align with paleoclimatic data indicating steady environmental fluctuations rather than sharp punctuated shifts, allowing for prolonged periods of behavioral experimentation and adaptation across hominin groups.^[11]

Archaeological Evidence

Evidence from Africa

Archaeological evidence for behavioral modernity in Africa dates back to at least 300,000 years ago, with the discovery of Homo sapiens fossils and associated Middle Stone Age (MSA) tools at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco. These findings include Levallois flakes and points indicative of sophisticated stone tool production, suggesting advanced planning and technological innovation among early modern humans. The site's thermoluminescence dating places the artifacts in a context that challenges models positing a later emergence of modern behaviors, highlighting Africa's role as the cradle for the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens.^[12]^[13] At Pinnacle Point Cave 13B in South Africa, dated to approximately 164,000 years ago, shellfish middens provide the earliest evidence of systematic marine resource exploitation, reflecting planned foraging strategies during periods of climatic stress. This adaptation allowed early humans to mitigate terrestrial resource scarcity by harvesting nutrient-rich shellfish, demonstrating cognitive flexibility and environmental adaptation. Additionally, silcrete tools from the same layers show signs of heat treatment, a pyrotechnological innovation that improved flaking properties and tool quality, marking one of the earliest instances of such engineering in human evolution.^[14] Blombos Cave in South Africa yields compelling evidence of symbolic behavior from layers dated between 100,000 and 70,000 years ago. Engraved ochre pieces featuring abstract geometric patterns, such as crosshatches, indicate intentional abstract representation and possibly aesthetic or communicative functions. Perforated Nassarius kraussianus shell beads, artificially colored with ochre, further attest to personal ornamentation and social signaling, with wear patterns suggesting prolonged use as jewelry. These artifacts underscore the development of symbolic thought and cultural complexity in the MSA.^[15]^[16] Human remains from Klasies River Mouth in South Africa, dating to around 120,000–60,000 years ago, include fragmentary crania, mandibles, and postcrania associated with MSA tools, shell middens, and pigment use. While not formal burials, the context of these anatomically modern human fossils, including evidence of ochre processing, has been interpreted by some researchers as suggestive of ritual or symbolic practices, such as intentional body disposal or defleshing. This site reinforces the African primacy of behavioral traits like resource intensification and potential mortuary behaviors, contributing to the out-of-Africa dispersal of modern humans. Further evidence comes from Bargny in Senegal, dated to around 150,000 years ago, showing MSA tool use and coastal adaptation in West Africa.^[17]

Evidence from Eurasia

Archaeological evidence from Eurasia demonstrates the spread and regional expressions of behavioral modernity following the dispersal of anatomically modern humans from Africa, with key sites revealing advanced symbolic, technological, and social practices. In Europe, the Chauvet Cave in southern France provides some of the earliest and most sophisticated examples of parietal art, featuring over 400 animal depictions rendered with remarkable anatomical accuracy and dynamic compositions, dated to approximately 36,000–30,000 years ago during the Aurignacian period.^[18] This artwork, including engravings and paintings of lions, rhinos, and mammoths, indicates complex cognitive abilities such as abstract representation and possibly narrative intent, marking a significant proliferation of symbolic behavior in western Eurasia.^[19] Further evidence of social complexity emerges from the Dolní Věstonice site in the Czech Republic, a Gravettian settlement dated to around 29,000–25,000 years ago, where multiple hearths arranged in structured patterns suggest organized communal activities and seasonal gatherings of groups exceeding 100 individuals.^[20] The site yielded ceramic figurines, including the iconic Venus of Dolní Věstonice—a fired clay statuette of a female form—and other anthropomorphic and zoomorphic objects, representing the earliest known use of pyrotechnology for artistic purposes and hinting at ritual or symbolic functions within social networks.^[21] These artifacts, combined with evidence of specialized tool production and burial practices, underscore adaptations to the periglacial environments of central Europe during the Upper Paleolithic.^[22] In Asia, the Denisova Cave in southern Siberia yields ornaments such as bone pendants and needles dated to 49,000–43,000 years ago, reflecting personal adornment and sewing technologies that imply social signaling and clothing production suited to cold climates. Similarly, Niah Cave in Borneo, Malaysia, contains evidence of deliberate human burials around 40,000 years ago, including the "Deep Skull" and associated grave goods like shell tools and red ochre, indicating ritualistic treatment of the dead and symbolic use of pigments in a tropical island context.^[23] Recent discoveries in the 2020s from Sulawesi, Indonesia, include cave art panels depicting therianthropic figures hunting pigs, dated to approximately 51,200 years ago via uranium-series dating of overlying calcite, providing the oldest known narrative scenes and evidence of mythological storytelling in island Southeast Asia.^[24] Across Eurasia, these sites illustrate technological shifts, such as the Gravettian industry's refined backed blades and burins, which facilitated diverse hunting strategies and resource processing from around 33,000–21,000 years ago, enabling human expansion into varied landscapes from tundra to rainforests.^[25] Symbolic proliferation intensified during the Last Glacial Maximum (approximately 26,000–19,000 years ago), with increased production of portable art, ornaments, and structured living spaces reflecting cognitive flexibility and cultural adaptations to environmental stressors like aridity and cold snaps.^[26] This pattern aligns with the broader timeline of the Upper Paleolithic Revolution, highlighting regional innovations in behavioral modernity without a singular origin point.

Biological and Genetic Insights

Anatomical vs. Behavioral Modernity

Anatomical modernity in Homo sapiens refers to the emergence of physical traits that align with the skeletal morphology of contemporary humans, including a high, rounded forehead, a globular braincase, reduced brow ridges, and a more gracile postcranial skeleton compared to archaic hominins.^[27]^[28] These features mark a departure from earlier hominins, with the earliest evidence appearing in African fossils such as those from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, dated to approximately 315,000 years ago, which exhibit modern facial structure alongside some archaic cranial elements.^[13] Subsequent key specimens include the Omo Kibish remains from Ethiopia, representing anatomically modern Homo sapiens and dated to approximately 233,000 years ago (233 ± 22,000 years ago),^[29] and the Herto skulls from Ethiopia, approximately 160,000 years old, which show intermediate morphology leading toward fully modern forms.^[30] In contrast to this anatomical timeline, behavioral modernity—characterized by complex symbolic practices, advanced tool technologies, and ecological adaptability—emerged significantly later, creating a mosaic pattern where early anatomically modern humans often displayed archaic or rudimentary behaviors.^[1] For instance, populations from 200,000 to 100,000 years ago, despite possessing modern skeletal anatomy, produced relatively simple stone tools and showed limited evidence of symbolic expression, resembling the behavioral repertoire of earlier hominins rather than later Homo sapiens innovations like widespread art or long-distance trade.^[1] This lag, spanning at least 100,000 years, highlights that anatomical changes preceded full behavioral complexity by a substantial margin.^[1] The evolutionary implications of this disconnect suggest that behavioral modernity represents a cultural threshold rather than a strictly genetic one, as brain size in early Homo sapiens stabilized within the modern range by around 300,000 years ago without further significant increases tied to behavioral shifts.^[31]^[1] Instead, the development of advanced behaviors likely arose from enhanced social learning, cultural transmission, and environmental niche construction among populations already anatomically modern, allowing for gradual cognitive and cultural evolution independent of major anatomical alterations.^[1] This perspective underscores behavioral modernity as an emergent property of human societies rather than a direct outcome of physical evolution.

Genetic Correlates and Population Studies

Genetic studies have identified specific genes associated with traits potentially linked to behavioral modernity, such as language and environmental adaptation. The FOXP2 gene, crucial for speech and language development, underwent two amino acid substitutions shared with Neanderthals in the human lineage before their divergence (>400,000 years ago). There is no evidence of recent positive selection in modern humans, though mutations in FOXP2 are known to cause speech deficits, suggesting its role in the cognitive foundations of complex language, a hallmark of behavioral modernity.^[32]^[33] Similarly, the MC1R gene, involved in skin pigmentation, shows signatures of selection in Eurasian populations for lighter skin variants, which enhanced vitamin D synthesis in low-UV northern latitudes, facilitating human expansion and associated behavioral innovations around 40,000 to 50,000 years ago.^[34] Population genetics reveals patterns of admixture and diversity that align with the timeline of behavioral modernity. Ancient DNA from the ~45,000-year-old Ust'-Ishim individual in Siberia indicates early modern human dispersal into Eurasia with Neanderthal admixture occurring 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, providing genetic evidence for the out-of-Africa migration that paralleled the spread of advanced behaviors.^[35] In Africa, the cradle of modern humans, 2020s genomic studies highlight unparalleled diversity, with ancient lineages dating back over 300,000 years, underscoring deep roots for the cognitive and cultural capacities defining behavioral modernity. More recent 2024–2025 studies continue to emphasize this high African genetic diversity, far exceeding that in non-African populations, supporting the emergence of modern behaviors within diverse African groups long before global dispersals.^[36]^[37] Key studies explore how population events may have influenced genetic selection for traits tied to behavioral modernity. Neanderthal introgression into modern human genomes, comprising 1-4% of non-African ancestry, has contributed alleles affecting brain development and cognitive functions, including those linked to behavioral phenotypes such as sociality and potentially symbolic processing.^[38] These introgressed sequences, identified through ancient DNA analysis, suggest that archaic gene flow enriched modern human genetic variation in ways that may have supported the neural underpinnings of advanced cognition.^[39]

Debates and Implications

Major Critiques

One major critique of behavioral modernity theories centers on their Eurocentric bias, which overemphasizes the European Upper Paleolithic as the origin of modern behaviors while downplaying earlier African evidence of complex cognition and symbolism. This perspective, articulated in d'Errico et al. (2003), argues that trait lists used to define modernity—such as art and ornaments—derive from European assemblages and fail to account for comparable African Middle Stone Age innovations, leading to an artificial delay in recognizing sapiens' capabilities outside Europe.^[40] Another significant challenge involves definitional vagueness in identifying behavioral modernity, particularly the difficulty in distinguishing symbolic intent from utilitarian functions in archaeological artifacts.^[41] Henshilwood and Marean (2003) highlight how subjective interpretations of symbolism can vary, complicating objective assessments of cognitive thresholds.^[41] Compounding this is preservation bias, or taphonomic effects, which favor the survival of durable items like stone tools and cave art while perishable evidence of behaviors—such as wooden structures or body modifications—disappears, skewing the record toward visible "modern" traits.^[5] d'Errico et al. (2003) note that such biases may create illusory "revolutions" in the archaeological timeline by underrepresenting earlier or non-European expressions of complexity.^[5] Critiques also extend to the assumption of behavioral modernity's exclusivity to Homo sapiens, challenged by evidence of advanced capabilities in other hominins like Neanderthals. For instance, uranium-thorium dating of cave markings in Spain's La Pasiega, dated to over 64,000 years ago—predating sapiens' arrival in Europe—attributes abstract engravings to Neanderthals, suggesting symbolic behavior was not unique to our species. In the 2020s, reevaluations have further questioned sapiens' distinctiveness, with studies showing Neanderthals organized living spaces in structured ways akin to early modern humans, indicating comparable cognitive and social sophistication. These findings imply that behavioral modernity may represent shared hominin traits rather than a sapiens-specific breakthrough, prompting gradualist models as partial responses to such overlaps.^[42]

Contemporary Consensus and Future Directions

As of 2025, the contemporary consensus on behavioral modernity portrays it as a mosaic and gradual process originating in Africa during the Middle Stone Age around 300,000 years ago, characterized by asynchronous and regionally variable innovations in technology, symbolism, and social organization rather than a singular "revolutionary" event.^[5]^[43] Recent scholarship, however, has called for reconceptualization of the term to include evidence from extinct hominins like Neanderthals and to theoretically separate biological (anatomical) from behavioral aspects, challenging traditional views of exclusivity to Homo sapiens while affirming the African roots of key developments in our lineage.^[44]^[45] This view rejects earlier notions of a discrete "modernity package" tied to abrupt genetic or cognitive shifts, emphasizing instead a polycentric development with evidence of complex behaviors appearing sporadically across African sites from the earliest Homo sapiens.^[46] Full expression of these behaviors became widespread globally by approximately 50,000 years ago, coinciding with the dispersal of anatomically modern humans out of Africa and the onset of the Upper Paleolithic in Eurasia.^[5] This consensus arises from an integrative approach combining archaeological records of material culture with genetic analyses of ancient DNA and cognitive models of innovation and transmission, revealing that behavioral complexity evolved through cumulative cultural processes rather than isolated biological triggers. For instance, genetic studies highlight population dynamics and admixture events that supported the spread of adaptive traits, while cognitive frameworks explain how enhanced executive functions enabled the planning and abstraction evident in early art and tools.^[31] Such interdisciplinary synthesis has refined understandings of how environmental pressures and social learning interacted to foster modernity, moving beyond anatomy-focused definitions.^[42] Despite this agreement, unresolved issues persist regarding the relative influence of climatic fluctuations—such as glacial-interglacial cycles that altered resource availability—versus endogenous factors like neural reorganization or population density in propelling behavioral innovations.^[3] Scholars debate whether external environmental instability primarily drove adaptive responses or if internal cognitive capacities, potentially linked to genetic mutations, were the dominant catalysts.^[5] Another key uncertainty involves the contributions of non-Homo sapiens hominins, including Denisovans and Neanderthals, whose genetic legacies in modern populations may have introduced behavioral or physiological advantages, though the archaeological record shows they independently developed some complex traits without direct sapiens influence.^[43] Looking to the 2020s and 2030s, future research directions emphasize paleoproteomics to analyze proteins in ancient bones and artifacts, potentially revealing molecular signatures of cognitive processes like symbolic thinking preserved in Middle Stone Age remains.^[47] Advances in AI-powered agent-based modeling will simulate cultural transmission dynamics, testing how social networks and innovation biases shaped the mosaic emergence of behaviors across prehistoric populations.^[48] Additionally, interdisciplinary neuroarchaeology initiatives aim to link neural mechanisms—such as embodied cognition—with artifactual evidence, using neuroimaging analogs to infer the mental states behind early sapiens actions, while ongoing debates address whether the concept of behavioral modernity requires further refinement or replacement.^[49]^[45]

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Apr 27, 2010 · Rather than being monocentric and exclusively African, the origins of modern behavior would be polycentric and mosaic in nature (16). Fig. 1.Missing: contemporary | Show results with:contemporary
[42]
Molecular archaeology of human cognitive traits - ScienceDirect.com
Aug 30, 2022 · The brains and minds of our human ancestors remain inaccessible for experimental exploration. Therefore, we reconstructed human cognitive ...<|control11|><|separator|>
[43]
Behavioral Modernity and the Cultural Transmission of Structured ...
Apr 23, 2014 · Abstract:Cultural transmission models are coming to the fore in explaining increases in the Paleolithic toolkit richness and diversity.
[44]
Neuroarchaeology, Embodiment, and " Modern Human Behavior "
Apr 9, 2016 · In this article, it will be demonstrated how neuro-cognition can be assimilated with population dynamics and the transmission of information ...<|control11|><|separator|>