| Abstract: |
The term <i>modern human behavior</i> (or alternatively, <i>modernity</i>) plays a central role in nearly all recent discussions of the origins and geographical dispersal patterns of modern humans (<i>Homo sapiens</i>) populations. The aim of this paper is to review the different approaches to the concept and definition of "modern" human behavior as reflected in the recent archaeological and evolutionary literature. Three broadly different approaches to these questions can be identified in the recent literature: those based strictly on archaeological evidence from different regions of the world
those based on more hypothetical models of underlying shifts in the innate neurological structures and associated behavioral capacities of the evolving human brain—especially the capacities for explicitly "symbolic" thinking and the emergence of fully modern language and those derived from recent complete-genome studies of samples of "ancient" (Neanderthal) DNA, in comparison with those of present-day populations. Other relevant issues relate to the role of environmental adaptations, demographic history and the "founder effects" of progressive geographical dispersals of modern human populations in shaping the different expressions of cultural and cognitive "modernity" in different geographical regions, as well as the notion of apparent "revolutions" in human behavioral patterns at specific times in the past. The available archaeological evidence for the appearance of distinctively modern behavioral patterns is reviewed from the respective regions of Europe, Asia and Africa. Unsurprisingly, these appear to reflect an emergence of specific features of modern behavior in Africa that is more gradual than in other regions, in accordance with the generally accepted evolutionary origins of anatomically and genetically modern <i>Homo sapiens</i> populations in the African continent. Overall, the evidence appears to support the hypothesis that the documented contrasts between the behavioral and cognitive patterns of archaic (e.g., Neanderthal) and fully modern populations reflect, at least in part, a significant shift in the cognitive and neurological capacities of the progressively evolving human brain, extending over at least the past half-million years.
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