Article ID: CBB001022767

Cave Men: Stone Tools, Victorian Science, and the “Primitive Mind” of Deep Time (2011)

unapi

Pettitt, Paul B. (Author)
White, Mark J. (Author)


Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science
Volume: 65
Pages: 25--42


Publication Date: 2011
Edition Details: Part of a special issue, “Prehistoric Minds: Human Origins as a Cultural Artefact, 1780--2010”
Language: English

Palaeoanthropology, the study of the evolution of humanity, arose in the nineteenth century. Excavations in Europe uncovered a series of archaeological sediments which provided proof that the antiquity of human life on Earth was far longer than the biblical six thousand years, and by the 1880s authors had constructed a basic paradigm of what `primitive' human life was like. Here we examine the development of Victorian palaeoanthropology for what it reveals of the development of notions of cognitive evolution. It seems that Victorian specialists rarely addressed cognitive evolution explicitly, although several assumptions were generally made that arose from preconceptions derived from contemporary `primitive' peoples. We identify three main phases of development of notions of the primitive mind in the period.

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Article Eddy, Matthew D. (2011) The Prehistoric Mind as a Historical Artefact. Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science (p. 1). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001022767/

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Authors & Contributors
Sommer, Marianne
Smith, Tanya M.
Smith, Subrena E.
Madison, Paige
Schmalzer, Sigrid
Richard, Nathalie
Concepts
Human evolution
Paleoanthropology
Physical anthropology
Prehistory and primitive societies
Archaeology
Fossils
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
20th century
Stone age
20th century, late
18th century
Places
Great Britain
England
East Asia
Scandinavia; Nordic countries
Germany
France
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