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Artifacts and cognition: Evolution or cultural progress?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2003

Bruce Bridgeman
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 bruceb@cats.ucsc.edu http://zzyx.ucsc.edu/Psych/Faculty/bridgeman.html

Abstract

Lack of symmetry of stone tools does not require that hominids making asymmetric tools are incapable of doing better. By analogy, differences between stone tools of early humans and modern technology arose without genetic change. A conservative assumption is that symmetry of stone artifacts may have arisen simply because symmetrical tools work better when used for striking and chopping rather than scraping.

Type
Brief Report
Copyright
© 2002 Cambridge University Press

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