Todd Reed wrote:
>> . What he understood and was exposed to was necessarily limited to 
>> his immediate surroundings. So, I would argue that while he was no 
>> less smart than modern man the structure of his thought and belief 
>> was far more localized.
>>
>
> I believe this thread is conflating 'smart' with the the underlying 
> equipment. Paleo man had the same underlying biological structure, the 
> mental infrastructure was inferior in terms of development and 
> complexity. The software of language, culture and technological 
> development.
>
> Language itself is born during the Paleolithic era, though writing not 
> until communities come about as a result of agriculture.
>
> However Paleo man had a superior engagement with his surroundings and 
> IMHO had a hugely more engaged relationship with the natural 
> environment around him/her. The 'smarts' this thread is talking about 
> were used to live and learn about the natural world as only basic 
> technologies existed...fire, basic woodcraft/stonecraft, leather 
> working perhaps. It's obvious I don't live in the paleolithic as my 
> software can't project very far into that kind of lifestyle.
>
> I would imagine Paleolithic man and woman had an immense store of 
> knowledge about the world around them and how to survive within it on 
> harsher terms than we have to cope with in the developed world at least.
>
> So, in terms of the smarts/software needed to live in the Paleo world, 
> we're dumb. Bring a Paleo adult forward in time to the present, and 
> they would lack the smarts/software to be successful.
>

+1. Thank you for that.

Software is a wonderful metaphor. In the world of electronics, so much 
of what we are capable of doing today is a result of the innovation of 
the microprocessor which allows the function of a system to be 
determined by programming rather than by the physical layout of the 
circuits. The evolution of the human mind bears a striking resemblance 
to this. We are far less constrained by our surroundings than other 
beings that we are aware of, because the evolution of linguistic 
"software" has enabled us to evolve faster than we could possibly evolve 
in "hardware."