A Meme’s Eye View of Pleistocene Symbolic Behavior

Sometime in the not-too-distant evolutionary past, our species began to engage in novel cultural practices such as painting the body, making jewelry, and producing art, a syndrome of behaviors collectively referred to as “symbolic.” And while there’s near universal acceptance of the idea that the origins of symbolic behavior must tell us something crucial about the final stages of becoming “fully human,” there is much less agreement about its causes (or its effects, for that matter). A broad variety of theories have been and continue to be offered. However, rather than suggest that our problem is one of an embarrassment of riches in this area, the present article makes the case that a valuable culturally evolutionary perspective has been left by the wayside by mainstream theorists working on Pleistocene symbolic behavior. This is the perspective of memetics, or of a meme’s eye view. In making this case, I shall be guided by Dan Dennett’s most recent version of meme theory, which I take to be the best development of the theory to date. In particular, I focus on Dennett’s treatment of two key topics: namely, (1) digitization schemes, and (2) memes’ interests (as distinct from ours, memes’ bearers). After unpacking and evaluating Dennett’s thinking on these topics, I seek to apply the lessons learned to the Pleistocene symbolic record. Towards this end, I use three case studies as my point of entry: one relating to the African Middle Stone Age, and two relating to the European Upper Paleolithic. As I hope to show, taking a meme’s eye view in these cases recasts the evidence in new and interesting ways, while also suggesting some fruitful lines for future inquiry.