Origins of human cognitive development go back a lot longer than was once thought. Our first bipedal ancestors who came down from the trees more than 5 million years ago, had already some concept of “more” and “less” and perhaps even of rudimentary numbers upto 3 (as rhesus monkeys have today). Genetic analysis of ancient bones is showing that the origin and development of modern humans needs to be taking the Neanderthals and the Denisovans into account and perhaps has to go back at least to the time of a common ancestor from over 1 million years ago. Just considering the last 200,000 years is no longer enough.
I have no doubt that the mastery of fire, the eating of cooked meat, the growth of the brain and, above all, the increased need for cooperation were interconnected and drove human cognitive development. Whether developments happened in one place and spread or happened at many places, perhaps at many times, will always be a matter of speculation. But it is not so difficult to come up with a not implausible time-line of the key developments which gave us first counting and then tallying and arithmetic and geometry and now complex number theory. The oldest evidence we have of counting are tally-sticks from over 50,000 years ago. But counting surely started long before that.
Related:
What led humans to counting and when?
Tags: origin of counting
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