Liane Gabora and Scott Barry Kaufman · a priori limit to how a creative idea might unfold over time. A cartoon character may inspire the name and logo for a hockey team (the Mighty

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CHAPTER 15

Evolutionary Approaches to Creativity

Liane Gabora and Scott Barry Kaufman

1. Introduction

Many species engage in acts that could becalled creative (J.C. Kaufman & A.B. Kauf-man, 2004). However, human creativity isunique in that it has completely transformedthe planet we live on. We build skyscrap-ers, play breathtaking cello sonatas, sendourselves into space, and even decode ourown DNA. Given that the anatomy of thehuman brain is not so different from thatof the great apes, what enables us to be socreative? Recent collaborations at the fron-tier of anthropology, archaeology, psychol-ogy, and cognitive science are culminatingin speculative but increasingly sophisticatedefforts to piece together an answer to thisquestion. Examining the skeletons of ourancestors gives cues as to the anatomicalconstraints that hindered or enabled vari-ous kinds of creative expression. Relics ofthe past have much to tell us about thethoughts, beliefs, and creative abilities ofthe people who invented and used them.How the spectacular creativity of humanscame about is the first topic addressed in thischapter.

Studies at the intersection of creativityand evolution are not limited to investi-gations into the biological evolution of ahighly creative species. Creative ideas them-selves might be said to evolve through cul-ture. Human creativity is distinctive becauseof the adaptive and open-ended manner inwhich change accumulates. Inventions buildon previous ones in ways that enhance theirutility or aesthetic appeal, or make themapplicable in different situations. There is noa priori limit to how a creative idea mightunfold over time. A cartoon character mayinspire the name and logo for a hockey team(the Mighty Ducks), which might in turninspire toys, cereal shapes, cigarette lighterdesigns, or for that matter work its way intoan academic book chapter. It is this procliv-ity to take an idea and make it our own, or“put our own spin on it,” that makes creativeideas appear to evolve. The next section ofthis chapter investigates in what sense cre-ative ideas evolve through culture.

Finally, we address the question of whycreativity evolved. What forces supportedthe evolution of creativity? Does being cre-ative help us live longer, or attract mates?

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280 LIANE GABORA AND SCOTT BARRY KAUFMAN

Do creative projects sometimes interferewith survival and reproductive fitness; arethere nonbiological factors that compel usto create? This is a third topic addressed inthis chapter.

2. The Birth of Human Creativity

Looking at an artifact that was fashionedthousands or millions of years ago is an awe-inspiring experience because it gives us aglimpse into the lives and worldviews of ourearliest ancestors. To be sure, creative worksdisintegrate. The farther back in time welook for signs of creativity, the fewer creativeworks of that time remain with us today.But by corroborating theory and data fromdifferent fields, we are on our way towardputting together a coherent picture of howand when the creative abilities of humansarose.

We begin this section by examining thearchaeological evidence for the earliest indi-cations of human creativity, and the anthro-pological evidence for concurrent changes inthe size and shape of the cranial cavity. Wethen examine various hypotheses that havebeen put forward to explain these data.

2.1 The Earliest Evidence of HumanCreativity: Homo habilis

It is generally agreed that ancestral humansstarted diverging from ancestral apesapproximately six million years ago. Thefirst Homo lineage, Homo habilis, appearedapproximately 2.4 million years ago inthe Lower Paleolithic. The earliest knownhuman inventions, referred to as Oldowanartifacts (after Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania,where they were first found), are widelyattributed to Homo habilis (Semaw et al.,1997), although it is possible that they werealso used by late australopithecines (deBeaune, 2004). They were simple, mostlysingle faced stone tools, pointed at oneend (M.D. Leakey, 1971). These tools weremost likely used to split fruits and nuts (deBeaune, 2004), though some of the morerecent ones have sharp edges, and are found

with cut-marked bones, suggesting that theywere used to sharpen wood implements andbutcher small game (M.D. Leakey, 1971;Bunn & Kroll, 1986).

These early tools were functional but sim-ple and unspecialized; by our standards theywere not very creative. Feist (2008) refersto the minds of these early hominids as pre-representational, suggesting that hominids atthis time were not capable of forming rep-resentations that deviated from their con-crete sensory perceptions; their experiencewas tied to the present moment. Similarly,Mithen (1996) refers to minds at this timeas possessing generalized intelligence, reflect-ing his belief that domain general learningmechanisms, such as Pavlovian conditioningand implicit learning (e.g., A.S. Reber, 1993),predominated.

Nevertheless, the early tools of thisperiod mark a momentous breakthrough forour species. Today we are accustomed toseeing everywhere the outcomes of whatbegan as a spark of insight in someone’smind, but when the world consisted solelyof naturally formed objects, the capacity toimagine something and turn it into a real-ity may well have seemed almost magical.As de Baune (2004) puts it, “the momentwhen a hominin . . . produced a cutting toolby using a thrusting percussion . . . marks abreak between our predecessors and thespecifically human” (p. 142).

2.2 The Adaptive Larger-BrainedHomo erectus

Homo habilis persisted from approximately2.4 to 1.5 million years ago. Approximately1.8 million years ago, Homo erectus appeared,followed by Homo ergaster, archaic Homosapiens, and Homo neanderthalensis. The sizeof the Homo erectus brain was approxi-mately 1,000 cc, about 25% larger than that ofHomo habilis, and 75% of the cranial capac-ity of modern humans (Aiello, 1996; Ruff,Trinkaus, & Holliday, 1997; Lewin, 1999).Homo erectus exhibit many indications ofenhanced ability to creatively adapt to theenvironment to meet the demands of sur-vival, including sophisticated, task-specific


EVOLUTIONARY APPROACHES TO CREATIVITY 281

stone hand axes, complex stable seasonalhabitats, and long-distance hunting strate-gies involving large game. By 1.6 millionyears ago, Homo erectus had dispersed as faras Southeast Asia, indicating the ability toadjust lifestyle to vastly different climates(Anton & Swisher, 2004; Cachel & Harris,1995; Swisher et al., 1994; Walker & Leakey,1993). In Africa, West Asia, and Europe, by1.4 million years ago Homo erectus developedthe Aschulean hand axe (Asfaw et al., 1992),a do-it-all tool that may even have had somefunction as a social status symbol (Kohn& Mithen, 1999). These symmetrical bifacestone tools probably required several stagesof production, bifacial knapping, and con-siderable skill and spatial ability to achievetheir final form.

Though the anatomical capacity for lan-guage was present by this time (Wynn,1998), verbal communication is thought tohave been limited to (at best) presyntacti-cal protolanguage (Dunbar, 1996). Thoughtduring this time period was most likely onlyfirst order; the capacity for thinking aboutthinking (i.e., metacognition) had not yetdeveloped.

2.3 Possible Explanations for the Onsetof Human Creativity

It has been suggested that these early archae-ological finds do not reflect any underly-ing biological change but were simply aresponse to climactic change (Richerson &Boyd, 2000). However, given the signifi-cant increase in cranial capacity, it seemsparsimonious to posit that this dramaticencephalization allowed a more sophisti-cated mode of cognitive functioning andis thus at least partly responsible for theappearance of cultural artifacts (and thebeginnings of an archaeological record).

There are multiple versions of thehypothesis that the onset of the archaeo-logical record reflects an underlying cogni-tive transition. One suggestion is that theappearance of archaeological novelty is dueto the onset of the capacity to imitate(Dugatkin, 2001), or the onset of a theory ofmind – the capacity to reason about the men-

tal states of others (Premack & Woodruff,1978). However, other species possess atheory of mind (Heyes, 1998) and imitate(Byrne & Russon, 1998; Darwin, 1871), yetthey do not compare to hominids withrespect to creativity. Moreover, althoughthese hypotheses may explain how newideas, once in place, spread from one indi-vidual to another, they are inadequate asan explanation of the enhanced capacity forcoming up with new ideas in the first place.

Yet another proposal is that Homo under-went a transition at this time from an episodicmode of cognitive functioning to a mimeticmode (Donald, 1991). The episodic mindof Homo habilis was sensitive to the sig-nificance of episodes, and it could encodethem in memory and coordinate appropriateresponses. But it could not voluntarily accessthem independent of cues. The enlargedcranial capacity of Homo erectus enabledit to acquire a mimetic form of cognition,characterized by possession of what Donald(1991) refers to as a “self-triggered recall andrehearsal loop,” or SRRL. The SRRL enabledhominids to voluntarily access memoriesindependent of cues and thereby act outevents that occurred in the past, or thatcould occur in the future (indeed the termmimetic is derived from the word “mime”).Thus not only could the mimetic mindtemporarily escape the here and now, butthrough gesture it could bring about a sim-ilar escape in other minds. The SRRL alsoenabled hominids to engage in a stream ofthought, such that attention is directed awayfrom the external world toward one’s inter-nal model of it, and one thought or ideaevokes another, revised version of it, whichevokes yet another, and so forth recursively.Finally, the SRRL enabled the capacity toevaluate and improve motor acts throughrepetition or rehearsal, and adapt them tonew situations, resulting in more refinedartifacts and survival tactics.

It seems reasonable that a larger brainmight be more likely to engage in self-triggered recall and rehearsal, but Donald’sscenario becomes even more plausible whenconsidered in light of the structure anddynamics of associative memory (Gabora,



2003, 2010). We know that neurons are sen-sitive to microfeatures – primitive attributesof a stimulus, such as a sound of a particu-lar pitch, or a line of a particular orientation(Churchland & Sejnowski, 1992; Smolensky,1988). Episodes etched in memory are dis-tributed across a bundle or cell assemblyof these neurons, and likewise, each neu-ron participates in the encoding of manyepisodes. Finally, memory is content address-able such that similar stimuli activate and getencoded in overlapping distributions of neu-rons. It seems reasonable that brain enlarge-ment entails a transition from a more coarse-grained to a more fine-grained memory, suchthat episodes are encoded in more detail.This means there are more ways in whichdistributions can overlap, and thus moreroutes by which one can evoke another, pro-viding an anatomical basis for self-triggeredrecall and rehearsal, and the forging of cre-ative connections. The enhanced ability tomake connections would in turn have pavedthe way for a more integrated internal modelof the world, or worldview.

3. Over A Million Years ofCreative Stasis

The hand axe persisted as the almost exclu-sive tool of choice for over a million years,spreading by 500,000 years ago into Europe,where was it used until about 200,000 yearsago. Indeed during this period not only isthere almost no change in tool design, butlittle evidence of creative insight of any kind,with the exception of the first solid evidencefor controlled use of fire some 800,000 yearsago in the Levant (Goren-Inbar et al., 2004).

3.1 A Second Increase in Brain Size

Between 600,000 and 150,000 years ago therewas a second spurt in brain enlargement(Aiello 1996; Ruff et al., 1997). But althoughanatomically modern humans had arrived,behavioral modernity had not. It wouldmake our story simple if the increase in brainsize coincided with the burst of creativityin the Middle/Upper Paleolithic (Bickerton,

1990; Mithen, 1998), to be discussed in thenext section. It does correspond with therevolutionary advancement of the Levalloisflake, which came into prominence approxi-mately 250,000 years ago in the Neanderthalline. But although one sees in the artifactsof this time the germ of modern-day repre-sentational thought, it is clear that cognitiveprocesses are still primarily first order – tiedto concrete sensory experience – rather thansecond order – derivative, or abstract. R.Leakey (1984) writes of anatomically mod-ern human populations in the Middle Eastwith little in the way of culture, and con-cludes that “the link between anatomy andbehavior therefore seems to break” (p. 95).

It may be that this second spurt in brainsize exerted an impact on expressions of cre-ativity that leave little trace in the archae-ological record, such as finding ways ofmanipulating competitors for purposes ofsurvival and reproduction (Baron-Cohen,1995; Byre & Whiten, 1988; Humphrey, 1976;Whiten, 1991; Whiten & Byrne, 1997; Wil-son, Near, & Miller, 1996; Dunbar, 1996).However it is possible that what we see inthe archaeological record really does reflectwhat was happening at the time, i.e. thatthere really was a rift between anatomi-cal and behavioral modernity. We e willreturn to this mystery after examining howthe spectacular creativity of modern humanscame about.

4. The Creative Minds ofModern Humans

The European archaeological record indi-cates that a truly unparalleled culturaltransition occurred between 60,000 and30,000 years ago at the onset of theUpper Paleolithic (Bar-Yosef et al., 1986;Klein, 1989a; Mellars, 1973, 1989a, 1989b;Soffer, 1994; Stringer & Gamble, 1993).Considering it “evidence of the modernhuman mind at work,” Richard Leakey(1984:93–94) describes the Upper Pale-olithic as “unlike previous eras, when sta-sis dominated, . . . [with] change being mea-sured in millennia rather than hundreds of



millennia.” Similarly, Mithen (1996) refersto the Upper Paleolithic as the “big bang”of human culture, exhibiting more inno-vation than in the previous six millionyears of human evolution. At this timethat we see the more-or-less simultaneousappearance of traits considered diagnostic ofbehavioral modernity. It marks the begin-ning of a more organized, strategic, season-specific style of hunting involving specificanimals at specific sites, elaborate burial sitesindicative of ritual and religion, evidenceof dance, magic, and totemism, the colo-nization of Australia, and replacement ofLevallois tool technology by blade cores inthe Near East. In Europe, complex hearthsand many forms of art appeared, includingnaturalistic cave paintings of animals, deco-rated tools and pottery, bone and antler toolswith engraved designs, ivory statues of ani-mals and sea shells, and personal decorationsuch as beads, pendants, and perforated ani-mal teeth, many of which may have beenused to indicate social status (White, 1989a,1989b). Indeed, White (1982:176) also writesof a “total restructuring of social relations.”What is perhaps most impressive about thisperiod is not the novelty of any particu-lar artifact but that the overall pattern ofcultural change is cumulative; more recentartifacts resemble older ones but have modifi-cations that enhance their appearance or fu-nctionality. This appears to be uniquely hu-man (Donald, 1998) and it has been referredto as the ratchet effect (Tomasello, 1999).

Despite a lack of any overall increasein cranial capacity, there was a signifi-cant increase in the size of the prefrontalcortex – and particularly the orbitofrontalregion (Deacon, 1997; Dunbar, 1993; Jeri-son, 1973; Krasnegor, Lyon, & Goldman-Rakic, 1997; Rumbaugh, 1997), and it waslikely a time of major neural reorganiza-tion (Klein, 1999; Henshilwood, d’Errico,Vanhaeren, van Niekerk, & Jacobs, 2004;Pinker, 2002). These brain changes may havegiven rise to what Feist (2008) refers to as“meta-representational thought,” or the abil-ity to reflect on representations and thinkabout thinking. Along similar lines, Den-nett (1976) suggests that an important tran-

sition in the evolution of Homo sapiens isfrom first-order intentionality to second-order intentionality. A first-order intentionalsystem has beliefs and desires but cannotreflect on those beliefs and desires, whereassecond-order intentional system has beliefsand desires about the beliefs and desires ofthemselves and others.

Whether this period was a genuine rev-olution culminating in behavioral moder-nity is hotly debated because claims to thiseffect are based on the European Paleolithicrecord, and largely exclude the Africanrecord (McBrearty & Brooks, 2000; Hen-shilwood & Marean, 2003). Indeed, mostof the artifacts associated with a rapidtransition to behavioral modernity between40,000 and 50,000 years ago in Europe arefound in the African Middle Stone Agetens of thousands of years earlier. Theseinclude blades and microliths, bone tools,specialized hunting, long-distance trade,art and decoration (McBrearty & Brooks,2000), the Berekhat Ram figurine fromIsrael (d’Errico & Nowell, 2000), and ananthropomorphic figurine of quartzite fromthe Middle Ascheulian (ca. 400 ka) siteof Tan-tan in Morocco (Bednarik, 2003).Moreover, gradualist models of the evolu-tion of behavioral modernity well beforethe Upper Paleolithic find some supportin archaeological data (Bahn, 1991; Har-rold, 1992; Henshilwood & Marean, 2003;White, 1993; White et al., 2003). If mod-ern human behaviors were indeed gradu-ally assembled as early as 250,000 to 300,000

years ago, as McBrearty and Brooks (2000)argue, it pushes the transition into align-ment with the most recent spurt in humanbrain enlargement. However, the traditionaland probably currently dominant view isthat behaviorally modern humans appearedin Africa approximately 50,000 years ago,and spread throughout in Europe, replac-ing others who had not achieved behavioralmodernity, including the Neanderthals (e.g.,Ambrose, 1998; Gamble, 1994; Klein, 2003;Stringer & Gamble, 1993). From this pointonward, anatomically and behaviorallymodern Homo sapiens were the only livinghominids.



4.1 Cognitive Explanations

Whether one believes the change happenedgradually or suddenly, it is accepted that theMiddle/Upper Paleolithic was a period ofunprecedented creativity. How and why didit occur? What kind of cognitive processeswere involved? We now review the mostpopular hypotheses for what kind of biolog-ically evolved cognitive advantages gave riseto behavioral modernity at this time.

4.1.1 ADVENT OF SYNTACTIC LANGUAGEIt has been suggested that humans under-went at this time a transition from a predom-inantly gestural to a vocal form of commu-nication (Corballis, 2002). Although owingto the ambiguity of the archaeological evi-dence we may never know exactly whenlanguage began (Bednarik, 1992:30; David-son & Noble, 1989), most scholars agreethat although earlier Homo and even Nean-derthals may have been capable of primitiveprotolanguage, the grammatical and syntac-tic aspects of language emerged near thebeginning of the Upper Paleolithic (Aiello& Dunbar, 1993; Bickerton, 1990, 1996; Dun-bar, 1993, 1996; Tomasello, 1999). Carstairs-McCarthy (1999) presents a modified versionof this proposal, suggesting that althoughsome form of syntax was present in theearliest languages, most of the later elab-oration, including recursive embedding ofsyntactic structure, emerged in the UpperPaleolithic. Syntax enabled language tobecome general purpose and put to usein a variety of situations. It enhanced notjust the ability to communicate with others,spread ideas from one individual to the next,and collaborate on creative projects (therebyspeeding up cultural innovation), but alsothe ability to think things through preciselyfor oneself and manipulate ideas in a con-trolled, deliberate fashion (Reboul, 2007).

4.1.2 SYMBOLIC REASONINGAnother suggestion is that the creativity ofthe Middle/Upper Paleolithic was due to theemergence of an ability to internally rep-resent complex, abstract, internally coher-ent systems of meaning, including sym-

bols and the causal relationships amongstthem (Deacon, 1997). According to Dea-con, we shifted from iconic representation, inwhich the representation physically resem-bles what it ‘stands for’, to indexical represen-tation, in which the representation impliesor ‘points’ to the thing it stands for, to sym-bolic representation, in which there is no sim-ilarity or implied relationship between therepresentation and what it stands for. Dea-con claims that the onset of symbol usecolored our existence by making us viewobjects and people in terms of the roles theycould play in stories, and the point or mean-ing they could potentially have, or partici-pate in.

4.1.3 COGNITIVE FLUIDITYIt is undoubtedly the case that symbolicrepresentation plays a fundamental role inthe mental life of modern humans. Oth-ers however believe that the transition fromiconic to indexical to symbolic representa-tion was a secondary consequence of onsetof the intuitive, divergent, associative pro-cesses by which we unearth relationships ofcorrelation (or roughly, similarity), such asthrough the discovery of analogies. Faucon-nier & Turner (2002) propose that the excep-tional creativity of the Middle/Upper Pale-olithic was due to the onset of the capacityto blend concepts, which facilitated anal-ogy formation and the weaving of expe-riences into stories and parables. A simi-lar explanation is put forward by Mithen(1996), drawing on the evolutionary psy-chologist’s notion of massive modularity(Buss, 1999/2004; Cosmides & Tooby, 1992;Dunbar et al., 1994; Rozin, 1976; for anextensive critique see Buller, 2005). Mithensuggests that the creativity of the modernmind arose through the onset of cognitivefluidity, resulting in the connecting of whatwere previously encapsulated (functionallyisolated) brain modules devoted to natu-ral history, technology, social processes, andlanguage. This he claims gave us the abilityto map, explore, and transform conceptualspaces, referring to Boden’s (1990) definitionof a conceptual space as a “style of think-ing – in music, sculpture, choreography,



chemistry, etc.” Sperber (1994) proposesthat the connecting of modules involveda special module, the “module of meta-representation” or MMR, which contains“concepts of concepts,” and enabled cross-domain thinking, and particularly analogiesand metaphors.

Note that the notion of modules amountsto an explicit high-level compartmentaliza-tion of the brain for different tasks. How-ever, this kind of division of labor – and theensuing creativity – would emerge unavoid-ably as the brain got larger without explicithigh-level compartmentalization, owing tothe sparse, distributed, content-addressablemanner in which neurons encode informa-tion (Gabora, 2003; 2010). As noted ear-lier, neurons are tuned to respond to dif-ferent microfeatures, and there is a sys-tematic relationship between the contentof a stimulus and the distributed set ofneurons that respond to it, such that neu-rons that respond to similar microfea-tures tend to be near one another. Thus,as the brain got larger, the number ofneurons increased, and the brain accord-ingly responded to more microfeatures, soitems could be encoded in more detail.Neighboring neurons tended to respond tomicrofeatures that were more similar, anddistant neurons tended to respond to micro-features that were more different. Thereforethere were more ways in which distributedrepresentations could overlap and creativeconnections could be made. Thus a weakmodularity of sorts emerges naturally at theneuronal level without any explicit high-level compartmentalization going on, andit need not necessarily correspond to howhumans carve up the world, that is, to cat-egories such as natural history, technology,and so forth. Moreover, explicit connectingof modules is not necessary for creative con-nections to be made; all that is necessary isthat the relevant domains be simultaneouslyaccessible.

4.1.4 CONTEXTUAL FOCUSThe above proposals for what kind ofcognitive change could have led to theUpper Paleolithic transition stress different

aspects of cognitive modernity. Acknowl-edging a possible seed of truth in eachof them, we begin to converge toward acommon (if more complex) view. Concep-tual blending is characteristic of divergentor associative thought, which tends to beautomatic, intuitive, and diffuse. This isquite different from convergent or analyti-cal thought, which tends to be logical, andcontrolled. It is widely believed that themodern mind engages in both (Arieti, 1976;Ashby & Ell, 2002; Freud, 1949; Guilford,1950; James, 1890/1950; Johnson-Laird, 1983;Kris, 1952; Neisser, 1963; Piaget, 1926; Rips,2001; Sloman, 1996; Stanovich & West, 2000;Werner, 1948; Wundt, 1896). This is some-times referred to as the dual-process the-ory of human cognition (Chaiken & Trope,1999; Evans & Frankish, 2009) and it is con-sistent with current theories of creative cog-nition (Finke, Ward, & Smith, 1992; Gab-ora, 2002, 2010; Smith, Ward, & Finke, 1995;Ward, Smith, & Finke, 1999). Divergent pro-cesses are hypothesized to occur during ideageneration, whereas convergent processespredominate during the refinement, imple-mentation, and testing of an idea. It hasbeen proposed that the Paleolithic tran-sition reflects a mutation to the gene(s)involved in the fine-tuning of the biochem-ical mechanisms underlying the capacity toshift between these modes, depending onthe situation, by varying the specificity ofthe activated cognitive receptive field (Gab-ora, 2003, 2010; for similar ideas see Howard-Jones & Murray, 2003; Martindale, 1995).This is referred to as contextual focus1 becauseit requires the ability to focus or defocusattention in response to the context or sit-uation one is in. Defocused attention, bydiffusely activating a broad region of mem-ory, is conducive to divergent thought; itenables obscure (but potentially relevant)aspects of the situation to come into play.Focused attention is conducive to conver-gent thought; memory activation is con-strained enough to hone in and perform

1 In neural net terms, contextual focus amounts tothe capacity to spontaneously and subconsciouslyvary the shape of the activation function, flat fordivergent thought and spiky for analytical.



logical mental operations on the most clearlyrelevant aspects. Thus in an analytic modeof thought the concept giant might only acti-vate the notion of large size, whereas inan associative mode the giants of fairytalesmight come to mind. Once it was possibleto shrink or expand the field of attention,and thereby tailor one’s mode of thoughtto the demands of the current situation,tasks requiring either convergent thought(e.g., mathematical derivation), divergentthought (e.g., poetry), or both (e.g., techno-logical invention) could be carried out moreeffectively. When the individual is fixated orstuck, and progress is not forthcoming, defo-cusing attention enables the individual toenter a more divergent mode of thought, andworking memory expands to include periph-erally related elements of the situation.This continues until a potential solution isglimpsed, at which point attention becomesmore focused and thought becomes moreconvergent, as befits the fine-tuning andmanifestation of the creative work.

Thus the onset of contextual focus wouldhave enabled the hominid to adapt ideas tonew contexts or combine them in new waysthrough divergent thought, and to fine-tunethese strange new combinations throughconvergent thought. In this way the fruitsof one mode of thought provide the ingre-dients for the other, culminating in a morefine-grained internal model of the world.

4.1.1 SHIFTING BETWEEN IMPLICITAND EXPLICIT THOUGHTIn a similar vein, it has been proposed thatcognitive fluidity enabled hominids to movenot just ‘horizontally’ between domains (asMithen [1996] suggests), but also ‘verti-cally’ between implicit and explicit modesof thought (Feist, 2008). Implicit and explicitcognition map roughly onto divergent andconvergent modes of thought. While explicitcognition is equated with advanced abilitiessuch as planning, reasoning, and hypothesis-guided deduction, implicit cognition is asso-ciated with the ability to automaticallydetect complex regularities, contingencies,and covariances in our environment (e.g.,A.S. Reber, 1993). Implicit cognition plays

a significant role in structuring our per-ceptions and behavior (Berry & Broadbent,1988; Cleeremans & Jimenez, 2002; Hassin,Uleman, & Bargh, 2005; Lewicki & Hill,1987; Lewicki, Czyzewska, & Hoffman, 1987;S.B. Kaufman, 2007; McGeorge & Burton,1990; A.S. Reber, 1967, 1993; P.J. Reber &Kotovsky, 1997; Squire & Frambach, 1990).It is thought to be useful for making broadassociations and arriving at creative ideas,and believed to be a fundamental aspect ofour humanness (Bowers, Farvolden, & Mer-migis, 1995; S.B. Kaufman, 2008, in press).

It may be that the fruits of associative orimplicit processes come to awareness onlyonce they have been honed into a formthat is sufficiently well-defined that we canmentally operate on them, or on symbolicrepresentations of them. Then the execu-tive functions associated with explicit cogni-tion use this information to produce thoughtand behavior that is more complex thancould have resulted from either associa-tive/implicit or analytic/explicit processesalone. A contributing factor to the emer-gence of the ability to shift between thesemodes of thought may have been the expan-sion of the prefrontal cortex, and the asso-ciated executive functions and enhancedworking memory2 capacity that came withthe expansion. Enhanced working memoryallowed humans more control over theirfocus of attention so as to maintain task goalsin the presence of interference. Indeed, indi-vidual differences in working memory arestrongly related to fluid intelligence amongmodern humans (Conway, Jarrold, Kane,Miyake, & Towse, 2007; Engle, Tuholski,Laughlin, & Conway, 1999; Kane, Hambrick,& Conway, 2005; S.B. Kaufman, DeYoung,Gray, Brown, & Mackintosh, 2009).

4.2 The Multi-Layered Mind and a Returnto the Lag between Anatomicaland Behavioral Modernity

Several researchers emphasize that the mod-ern human mind consists of various “kinds of

2 Working memory is the ability to maintain, update,and manipulate information in an active state.



minds” layered on top of one another (A.S.Reber, 1989, 1993; A.S. Reber & Allen, 2000;Dennett, 1995, 1996). According to theseaccounts, these multiple minds are continu-ously operative, giving rise to many internaland external conflicts amongst members ofour species, as well as contributing to ourmost distinctly human intellectual and cre-ative accomplishments. Arthur Reber pro-poses that implicit cognition is evolution-arily older than explicit cognition. It maystem from the oldest parts of the brain andin its crudest form be involved in the execu-tion of behavior patterns that are prewired,reflexive, and tied to survival-related goals,while our later-evolving explicit capacitiesfor reflection and deliberate reasoning mayallow us to override strictly survival-relatedgoals (Stanovich, 2005).

Alternatively, it may be that more braintissue simultaneously allowed for not justthe onset of explicit reasoning but also aqualitatively different kind of implicit pro-cessing, one in which the detection of gra-dations of similarity paves the way for cog-nitive flexibility. Let us return briefly tothe question of why the burst of creativ-ity in the Upper Paleolithic occurred wellafter the second rapid increase in brain sizeapproximately 500,000 years ago. A largerbrain provided more room for episodes to beencoded, and particularly more associationcortex for connections between episodesto be made, but it is not necessarily thecase that this increased brain mass couldstraightaway be optimally navigated. Thereis no reason to expect that information fromdifferent domains (whether strongly mod-ular or weakly modular) would immedi-ately be compatible enough to coexist ina stream of thought, as in the productionof a metaphor. It is reasonable that it tooktime for the anatomically modern brain tofine-tune how its components “talk” to eachother such that different items could beblended together or recursively revised andrecoded in a coordinated manner (Gabora,2003). Only then could the full potential ofthe large brain be realized. Thus the bot-tleneck may not have been sufficient brainsize but sufficient sophistication in the use of

the memory already available, through con-textual focus, or shifting between implicitand explicit thought. It is worth noting thatother periods of revolutionary innovation,such as the Holocene transition to agricul-ture and the modern Industrial Revolution,occurred long after the biological changesthat made them cognitively possible.

4.3 “Recent” Creative Breakthroughs

Of course the story of how human creativ-ity evolved does not end with the arrival ofanatomical and behavioral modernity. Theend of the ice age approximately 10,000

to 12,000 years ago witnessed the begin-nings of agriculture and the invention of thewheel. Written languages developed around5,000 to 6,000 years ago, and approximately4,000 years ago astronomy and mathematicsappear on the scene. We see the expressionof philosophical ideas around 2,500 yearsago, invention of the printing press 1,000

years ago, and the modern scientific methodabout 500 years ago. And the past 100 yearshave yielded a technological explosion thathas completely altered the daily routines ofhumans (as well as other species), the con-sequences of which remain to be seen.

5. Creativity and Cultural Evolution

We have examined how the capacity for cre-ativity evolved over millions of years. In thissection we explore the possibility that cre-ative ideas themselves evolve through cul-ture, in the sense that they exhibit “descentwith modification,” or incremental adapta-tion to the constraints of their environment.(A related idea is that the creative processnot at the cultural level but within the mindof one individual is Darwinian; this is dis-cussed in Chapter 9, this volume.)

5.1 Creative Cultural Changeas a Darwinian Process

It has been proposed that the processby which creative ideas change over timeas they pass from person to person can



be described in Darwinian terms (Aunger,2000; Blackmore, 1999; Boyd & Rich-erson, 1985; Cavalli-Sforza & Feldman,1981; Dawkins, 1975; Durham, 1991). Thisapproach is sometimes referred to as “dualinheritance theory,” the idea being that weinherit cultural as well as biological infor-mation, and the units of cultural informa-tion are sometimes referred to as “memes.”The rationale is clear; since natural selec-tion is useful for explaining the astonishingcreativity of nature, perhaps it is also use-ful for explaining the astonishing creativityof human culture. There are many paral-lels between the two. Clearly, new inven-tions build on existing ones, but it isn’t justthe cumulative nature of human creativitythat is reminiscent of biological evolution.Cumulative change is after all rather easy tocome by; in the days of taping music, eachtime a tape was copied it became cumu-latively more scratched. The creativity ofhuman cultures is reminiscent of biologicalevolution because of the adaptive and open-ended manner in which change accumulates.New inventions don’t just build on old ones,they do so in ways that meet our needs andappeal to our tastes, and as in biological evo-lution there is no limit to how any particularinvention or creative work may inspire orinfluence other creative works. Moreover,culture generates phenomena observed inbiological evolution, such as drift3 andniches4 (Bentley et al., 2004; Gabora, 1995,1997). A theory that encompasses the twowould put us on the road to uniting thesocial sciences with the biological sciences.

3 Drift refers to changes in the relative frequenciesof variants through random sampling from a finitepopulation. It is the reason why variation is reducedin reproductively isolated populations such as thoseliving on a small island. Drift has been shown tooccur in a culture context with respect to suchthings as baby names and dog breed preferences(Neiman, 1995; Madsen et al., 1999; Bentley et al.,2004). In a computer model of cultural evolution,the smaller the society of artificial agents, the lowerthe cultural diversity (Gabora, 1995).

4 Just as the biological evolution of rabbits createdniches for species that eat them and parasitize theirguts, the cultural evolution of cars created nichesfor seat belts and gas stations (Gabora, 1997, 1998).

In order to see how Darwinian theorymight be applied to the evolution of creativ-ity ideas in culture, let us examine what kindof process natural selection can describe, andhow it works. The paradox faced by Dar-win and his contemporaries was the follow-ing: How does biological change accumu-late when traits acquired over an organism’slifetime are obliterated? For example, a ratwhose tail is cut off does not give birth torats with cut-off tails; the rat lineage losesthis trait. Note that this kind of continual“backtracking” to an earlier state (e.g., in theabove example, the state of having a fulltail) is unique to biology; if, for example,an asteroid crashes into a planet, the planetcannot revert to the state of having not hadthe asteroid crash into it.5

Darwin’s genius was to explain how livingthings adapt over time despite the fact thatnew modifications keep getting discarded,by looking from the level of the individualto the level of the population of interbreed-ing individuals. He realized that individualswho are better equipped to survive in theirgiven environment tend to leave more off-spring (be “selected”). Thus, although theiracquired traits are discarded, their inher-ited traits (loosely speaking, the traits theywere born with) are more abundant in thenext generation. Over generations this canlead to substantial change in the distribu-tion of traits across the population as awhole. Natural selection was not put forthto explain how biological novelty origi-nates. It assumes random variation of her-itable traits, and provides an explanation forpopulation-level change in the distribution ofvariants.

We now ask: Can natural selection simi-larly explain the process by which creativeideas evolve through culture? A first thingthat can be noted is that the problem for

5 Although Darwin observed that this was the case,he did not know why. We now know that the rea-son acquired traits are not inherited in biology isthat organisms replicate using a template – a self-assembly code that is both actively transcribed toproduce a new individual, and passively copied toensure that the new individual can itself reproduce.



which natural selection was put forward asa solution does not exist with respect to cul-ture (Gabora, 2008). That is, there is no sensein which the components of creative ideascyclically accumulate and then get discardedat the interface between one generation andthe next. For example, unlike the choppedoff tail which does not get transmitted tooffspring, once someone invented the spouton a teapot, teapots could forever after havespouts. One might ask if Darwin’s solutionis nevertheless applicable; might processesoutside of biology evolve through selectioneven if selection was originally advanced asa solution to a paradox that is unique tobiology? The problem is that since acquiredchange can accumulate orders of magni-tude faster than inherited change, if it is notgetting regularly discarded, it quickly over-whelms the population-level mechanism ofchange identified by Darwin. This is par-ticularly the case with respect to creativeideas since they do not originate throughrandom processes – or even processes proneto canceling one another out – but throughstrategic or implicit, intuitive processes,making use of the associative structure ofmemory.

Darwinian approaches to culture positthat the basic units of this second Darwinianprocess are discrete elements of culture thatpass from one person to another intactexcept for random change akin to muta-tion that arises through copying error orbiased transmission (preferential copying ofhigh-status individuals). Copying error andbiased transmission are sources of changethat take place at the time an idea spreadsfrom one individual to another, whichcreativity researchers tend to view as arelatively minor source of creative changecompared with cognitive processes suchas imagining, planning, analogizing, con-cept combination, and so forth. The reasonthat Darwinian theories of culture focus onsources of change that occur when an ideaspreads from one individual to another is notaccidental; it stems from the fact that nat-ural selection is of explanatory value onlyto the extent that there is negligible trans-

mission of acquired characteristics. This isthe case in biology, as we saw with the cut-off tail example; change acquired during anindividual’s lifetime is not generally passedon to its offspring. As another example, youdidn’t inherit your mother’s tattoo – some-thing she acquired between the time she wasborn and the time she transmitted geneticmaterial to the next generation.

However, few scholars accept that thereis negligible transmission of acquired char-acteristics in culture. The cultural equiva-lent of the individual is the creative idea.A new “generation” begins when this ideais transmitted from person A to person B,and lasts until the idea is transmitted fromperson B to person C. Any changes to anidea between the time B learned it and thetime B expressed it are “acquired character-istics.” If B mulls the idea over or puts it intoher own terms or adapts it to her own frame-work, the process by which this idea changescannot be explained by natural selection,because as mentioned earlier, this kind of‘intragenerational’ change quickly drownsout the slower intergenerational mechanismof change identified by Darwin; it “swampsthe phylogenetic signal.” The Darwinianperspective on culture therefore leads toa view of the human condition as “memehosts,” passive imitators and transmitters ofprepackaged units of culture, which evolveas separate lineages. To the extent thatthese lineages “contaminate one another” –that is, to the extent that we actively andcreatively transform elements of culture inways that reflect our own internal modelsof the world, altering or combining them tosuit our needs, perspectives, or aesthetic sen-sibilities – natural selection cannot explaincultural change. It has been argued thatdue to this “lack-of-inheritance-of-acquired-characteristics” problem, not just the evo-lution of creative ideas (Gabora, 2005) andthe evolution of culture (Gabora, 2004,2008), but the evolution of early life itself(Gabora, 2006; Vetsigian et al., 2006), andeven of many features of modern life (e.g.Jablonka & Lamb, 2005; Kauffman, 1993;Newman & Muller, 1999; Schwartz, 1999),



cannot be described by Darwin’s theory ofnatural selection.

5.2 A Non-Darwinian Theoryof How Creative Ideas Evolve

If creative ideas do not evolve through selec-tion, how do they evolve? One possibil-ity is that the evolution of creative ideasthrough culture is more akin to the evo-lution of the earliest biological life formsthan to present-day DNA-based life (Gab-ora, 2000, 2004, 2008). Recent work sug-gests that early life emerged and replicatedthrough a self-organized process referred toas autocatalysis, in which a set of moleculescatalyze (speed up) the reactions that gen-erate other molecules in the set, until as awhole they self-replicate (Kauffman, 1993).Such a structure is said to be autopoietic,or self-regenerating, because the whole isreconstituted through the interactions of theparts (Maturana & Varela, 1980). These ear-liest precursors of life evolved not throughnatural selection at the level of the pop-ulation, like present-day life, but commu-nal exchange of innovation at the individ-ual level (Gabora, 2006; Vetsigian, Woese,& Goldenfeld, 2006). Since replication ofthese pre-DNA life forms occurred throughregeneration of catalytic molecules ratherthan (as with present-day life) by using agenetic self-assembly code, acquired traitswere inherited. In other words, their evolu-tion was, like that of culture, Lamarckian.

This has led to the suggestion that world-views evolve through culture, through thesame non-Darwinian process as the earli-est forms of life evolved, and creative prod-ucts such as tools and dances and architec-tural plans are external manifestations of thisprocess; they reflect the states of the par-ticular worldviews that generate them. Theidea is that like these early life forms, world-views evolve not through natural selection,but through self-organization and commu-nal exchange of innovations. One does notaccumulate elements of culture transmittedfrom others like items on a grocery list, buthones them into a unique tapestry of under-standing, a worldview, which like these early

life forms is autopoietic in that the wholeemerges through interactions amongst theparts. It is self-mending in the sense that, justas injury to the body spontaneously evokesphysiological changes that bring about heal-ing, events that are problematic or surprisingor evoke cognitive dissonance spontaneouslyevokes streams of thought that attempt tosolve the problem or reconcile the disso-nance (Gabora, 2008). Thus, according tothis view it is not chance, mutation-likeprocesses that propel creativity, but theself-organizing, self-mending nature of aworldview.

6. Why Did Creativity Evolve?

We have discussed how human creativityevolved, and in what sense creative ideas canbe said to evolve. We now address a funda-mental question: Why did human creativityevolve?

6.1 Creativity as Evolutionary Spandrels

Some forms of creativity enhance survivaland thus reproductive fitness. For exam-ple, the invention of weapons most likelyevolved as a creative response to a need forprotection from enemies and predators. Forother forms of creative expression, however,such as art and music, the link to survival andreproduction is not so clear-cut. Why do webother?

One possibility is that art, music, humor,fiction, religion, and philosophy are notreal adaptations, but evolutionary span-drels: side-effects of abilities that evolvedfor other purposes (Pinker, 1997; see alsoCarroll, 1995; Gabora, 2003; J.C. Kaufman,Lee, Baer, & Lee, 2007; McBrearty & Brooks,2000). Pinker likens these forms of creativityto cheesecake and pornography – culturalinventions that stimulate our senses in novelways but do not improve our biologicalfitness.

The “spandrels” explanation assumes thatwhat drives creativity is biological selectionforces operating at the individual level, andthere is some empirical support for this.



Some forms of human creativity, such asart and music, indeed demonstrate the fea-tures of a naturally selected adaptation (Dis-sanayake, 1988, 1992). First, many forms ofcreativity are ubiquitous. Although stylesdiffer, every culture creates works of art andmusic. Second, many forms of creativity arepleasurable for both the artist and the audi-ence, and evolutionarily adaptive behaviorsare usually pleasurable. Third, many formsof human creativity require considerabletime and effort. The fact that creativity iscostly is suggestive of a selective pressure atwork.

6.2 Group Bonding

Even if creativity is at least in partdriven by individual-level biological selec-tion forces, other forces may also be atwork. Natural selection is believed to oper-ate at multiple levels, including gene-levelselection, individual-level survival selection,individual-level sexual selection, kin selec-tion, and group selection. Although thereis evidence from archaeology, anthropology,and ethnography that individual-level sur-vival selection plays a key role in humancreativity, other levels may have an impactas well. For example, some anthropologistsview the function of forms of creativitysuch as art and music as strengthening agroup’s social cohesion. For music in partic-ular, Mithen (2006) presents evidence thatthe melodious vocalizations by our earli-est ancestors played an important role increating and manipulating social relation-ships through their impact on emotionalstates.

6.3 Sexual Selection

Miller (2000a) argues that group-bondingaccounts of creativity ignore the possiblerole of sexual selection in shaping creativebehavior, and cannot account for the sexualattractiveness of various forms of creativity.This idea has its roots in Darwin, who oncesaid, “It appears probable that the progen-itors of man, either the males or femalesor both sexes, before acquiring the power

of expressing mutual love in articulate lan-guage, endeavored to charm each other withmusical notes and rhythm” (Darwin, 1871,p. 880).

According to the sexual-selectionaccount, there is competition to mate withindividuals who exhibit creative traits thatare (in theory) metabolically expensive,hard to maintain, not easily counterfeited,and highly sensitive to genetic mutationbecause they are the most reliable indicatorsof genetic fitness. In recent years, Miller(1998; 2000a; 2000b; 2001; J.C. Kaufmanet al., 2007) has developed and popularizedthis theory. He argues that sexual selectionplayed a much greater role than naturalselection in shaping the most distinctivelyhuman aspects of our minds, includingstorytelling, art, music, sports, dance,humor, kindness, and leadership. He con-tends that these creative behaviors are theresult of complex psychological adaptationswhose primary functions were to attractmates, yielding reproductive rather thansurvival benefits. Miller notes that culturaldisplays of human creativity satisfy theserequirements. According to this account,cultural displays are the result of efforts tobroadcast courtship displays to recipients:“art evolved, at least originally, to attractsexual partners by playing upon their sensesand displaying one’s fitness” (Miller, 2000a,p. 267).

Along similar lines, Marek Kohn andSteven Mithen (Kohn, 1999; Kohn &Mithen, 1999) propose what they refer to asthe “sexy-hand axe hypothesis.” Accordingto this hypothesis, sexual-selection pressuresmay have caused men to produce symmet-ric hand axes as a reliable indicator of cog-nitive, behavioral, and physiological fitness.As Mithen (1996) notes, symmetrical handaxes are often attractive to the modern eye,but require a huge investment in time andenergy to make – a burden that makes it hardto explain their evolution in terms of strictlypractical, survival purposes. Since hand axesmay be viewed as the first aesthetic artifactsin the archeological record, these productsmay indeed be the first evidence of sexualselection shaping the emergence of art.



While it is conceivable that sexual selec-tion plays some role in the evolution ofornamental or aesthetic forms of creativ-ity, such as art, music, dance, and humor,it is less conceivable that it plays a role inthe evolution of forms of creativity withdirect survival benefits, such as technolog-ical advances (Feist, 2001). Moreover, tomake the argument convincing it wouldbe necessary to show that creative peopleare indeed considered more attractive, andhave greater reproductive success. Althoughthere is some evidence that intelligent andcreative individuals are considered moreattractive and have more sexual partners(Buss, 1989; Griskevicius, Cialdini, & Ken-rick, 2006; Nettle & Clegg, 2006; Prokoschet al., 2009), there is also evidence that cre-ative people tend to be less likely to marryand, when they do, have fewer children(Harrison, Moore, & Rucker, 1985), a fac-tor that surely also impacts their reproduc-tive success. Moreover time spent on cre-ative projects may be time taken away frommating and child rearing.

Mithen (2006) presents evidence that themusicality of our ancestors and relatives didin fact have considerable survival value as ameans of communicating emotions, inten-tions, information, and facilitating cooper-ation, and thus sexual selection may wellnot be the sole or primary selective pressurefor musicality. Additionally, he notes thatalthough it may appear at first blush that cre-ative men have more short-term sexual part-ners because of their creativity, their attrac-tiveness may be more the combination ofgood looks, style, and an antiestablishmentpersona.

Perhaps the most reasonable conclusion isthat sexual selection may have helped rampup the evolution of creativity, exaggeratingcertain forms, or making them not so purelyfunctional but also ornamental.

6.4 Non-biological Explanationsfor Creativity

If culture constitutes a second form of evo-lution, it may also exert pressures on us thatdiffer from, or even counter, those exerted

on us by our biology. The drive to create isoften compared with the drive to procreate,and evolutionary forces may be at the gene-sis of both. In other words, we may be tin-kered with by two evolutionary forces, onethat prompts us to act in ways that foster theproliferation of our biological lineage, andone that prompts us to act in ways that fos-ter the proliferation of our cultural lineage.For example, it has been suggested that weexhibit a cultural form of altruism, such thatwe are kind not only to those with whom weshare genes but with whom we share ideasand values (Gabora, 1997). By contributingto the well-being of those who share ourcultural makeup, we aid the proliferation ofour “cultural selves.” Similarly, when we arein the throes of creative obsession, it may bethat cultural forces are compelling us to giveall we have to our ideas, much as biologicalforces compel us to provide for our children.

Note that all of the theories discussed sofar in this section attempt to explain whyhumans are creative at all, but even withthese same pressures operating we wouldnot be particularly creative if we did notlive in a richly fascinating world that affordscreativity. Rosch (1975) provides evidencethat we form concepts in such a way as tointernally mirror the correlational structureof the external world. Similarly, much cre-ativity is inspired by the goal of understand-ing, explaining, and mastering the world welive in. Thus the beauty and intricacy ofour ideas, and how they unfold over time,reflects in part the beauty and intricacy ofour world, not just the world we actuallylive in, but the potential worlds suggested bythe world we live in, and the fact that as ourinternal models of the world – our world-views – change, so does this halo of poten-tial worlds. Indeed one could say that humancreativity evolves by compelling susceptibleindividuals (those whose minds are poised tosolve particular creatively challenging prob-lems or engage in creative tasks) to tem-porarily put aside concerns associated withsurvival of the “biological self,” and to reachinto this “halo of possibility,” rework familiarnarratives, or juxtapose familiar objects andreconceptualize their interrelationships, and



thereby hone a more nuanced “cultural self.”In sum, the creative process is compellingand our creative achievements unfold withbreathtaking speed and complexity in partbecause we are fortunate enough to live ina world that offers infinite possibilities forexploring not just the realm of “what is” butthe realm of “what could be.”

7. Conclusions

This chapter addressed a number of ques-tions that lie at the foundation of who weare and what makes human life meaning-ful. Why does no other species remotelyapproach the degree of cultural complex-ity of humans? How did humans become sogood at generating ideas and adapting themto new situations? Why are humans drivento create? Do creative ideas evolve in thesame sense as biological life – through natu-ral selection – or by some other means?

We began with a brief tour of the his-tory of Homo sapiens, starting six millionyears ago when we began diverging fromour ancestral apes. The earliest signs of cre-ativity are simple stone tools, thought to bemade by Homo habilis, just over two millionyears ago. Though primitive, they markeda momentous breakthrough: the arrival ofa species that would eventually refashion toits liking an entire planet. With the arrival ofHomo erectus roughly 1.8 million years ago,there was a dramatic enlargement in cranialcapacity coinciding with solid evidence ofcreative thinking: task-specific stone handaxes, complex stable seasonal habitats, andsigns of coordinated, long-distance hunt-ing. It has been proposed that the largerbrain allowed items encoded in memoryto be more fine grained, which facilitatedthe forging of creative connections betweenthem, and paved the way for self-triggeredthought, rehearsal and refinement of skills,and thus the ability mentally to go beyond“what is” to “what could be.”

Another rapid increase in cranial capac-ity occurred between 600,000 and 150,000

years ago. It preceded by some hundredsof thousands of years the sudden flour-

ishing of creativity between 60,000 and30,000 years ago in the Middle/Upper Pale-olithic, which is associated with the begin-nings of art, science, politics, religion, andprobably syntactical language. The time lagsuggests that behavioral modernity aroseowing not to new brain parts or increasedmemory but a more sophisticated way ofusing memory. This may have involved theonset of symbolic thinking, cognitive flu-idity, and the capacity to shift betweenconvergent and divergent or explicit andimplicit modes of thought. Also, the emer-gence of metacognition enabled our ances-tors to reflect on and even override their ownnature.

This chapter also reviewed efforts tounderstand the role of creativity in not justbiological but also cultural evolution. Somehave investigated the intriguing possibilitythat the cultural evolution of ideas andinventions occurs through a Darwinian pro-cess akin to natural selection. A problemfaced by Darwinian approaches is that nat-ural selection is inapplicable to the extentthat there is inheritance of acquired traits,and so such an approach is inappropriateto the extent that individuals actively shapeideas and adapt them to their own needsand aesthetic tastes. They can account forcreative change that occurs during trans-mission (e.g., owing to biased transmis-sion or copying error), but not for changethat occurs because of thinking throughhow something could work. Nevertheless,ideas clearly exhibit phenomena observedin biological evolution, such as adaptation,niches, and drift. If they do not evolvethrough selection, how might they evolve?It was noted that the self-organized, self-regenerating autocatalytic structures widelybelieved to be the earliest forms of lifedid not evolve through natural selectioneither, but through communal exchange ofinnovations. It has been proposed that whatevolves through culture is individuals’ inter-nal models of the world, or worldviews, andthat like early life they are self-organized andself-regenerating. Worldviews evolve notthrough ‘survival of the fittest’ but through‘transformation of all’ (the fit and the



less fit), as new elements get incorporated,reflected upon, and adapted to new circum-stances. Because no self-assembly code (suchas the genetic code) is involved, their evolu-tion is Lamarckian; acquired characteristicsare inherited.

Finally, this chapter addressed the ques-tion of why creativity evolved. Somepropose that creativity emerged as anevolutionary spandrel, that it promotedgroup bonding, or that sexual selec-tion played an important role in shap-ing aesthetic/ornamental forms of creativ-ity. Another possible answer derives fromthe theory that culture constitutes a secondform of evolution, and that our thought andbehavior are shaped by two distinct evolu-tionary forces. Just as the drive to procre-ate ensures that at least some of us makea dent in our biological lineage, the driveto create may enable us to make a dentin our cultural lineage. This second deeplyembedded way of exerting a meaningfulimpact on the world and thereby feelingpart of something larger than oneself maywell come to be important as our planetbecomes increasingly overpopulated. Thus,by understanding the evolutionary origins ofhuman creativity, we gain perspective onpressing issues of today and are in a bet-ter position to use our creativity to directthe future course of our species and ourplanet.

Acknowledgments

This work was funded in part by grants tothe first author from the Social Sciences andHumanities Research Council of Canada andthe GOA program of the Free University ofBrussels, Belgium.

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