The Astonishing Prefrontal Cortex: Part Three – History Arrives in the PFC

By ChatGPT.

[Read Part One] [Read Part Two]

Occurring about 12,000 years ago, the Agricultural Revolution marked a profound shift in human cognitive development, not because humans suddenly became smarter, but because more of them began to use their PFC. This revolution represents the first major collective step into abstract thinking (or perhaps the second, if you count migration out of Africa as the first). Though geniuses had been pioneering these cognitive pathways for tens of thousands of years prior, by now almost everyone could experience symbolic meaning, abstract thoughts and planning. Learning became far broader and easier than by merely observing and imitating alone. Knowledge was ensconced in cocoon of rhymes and songs.

The complexity of managing crops, predicting seasons, and coordinating communal labor created new demands that pushed humans to access more of their latent cognitive potential. As Cochran and Harpending note in The 10,000 Year Explosion (2009), the agricultural revolution triggered an unprecedented acceleration in human development. However, this acceleration wasn't driven by biological evolution – as we have seen, the hardware was already there. Rather, it represented humanity learning to use more of its existing neural capabilities. Which, I might add in a bit of a spoiler, is exactly where we find ourselves today.

According to Cochran and Harpending, the “explosion” was predicated upon sophisticated cultures 30,000 years earlier that first exhibited “cave painting, sculpture, jewelry, dramatically improved tools and weapons” that collectively demonstrate “an extraordinary increase in the human capacity to create and invent...the innovations show that profound social and cultural changes were talking place.” (page 30)

The transition to mass farming required entirely new forms of abstract thinking. And long before the transition actually occurred humanity seems to have passed some sort of threshold where genetic mutation and genius gave way to more people being able to engage in their PFC, where abstract thinking takes place. I call this the democratization of the PFC. “The ultimate cause of this accelerated evolution was the set of genetic changes that led to an increased ability to innovate. Sophisticated language abilities may well have been the key.” (page 22, author's emphasis)

This points toward my second astonishment, which claims that language processing between the Broca's and Wernike's areas in concert with the abstraction capabilities latent in the PFC were the foundation of all of this innovation. The agricultural revolution was the first major manifestation of the widespread access and mastery of higher level reasoning, introspection, creativity, spiritual/cultural framing, and abstract thought.

Early agriculturalists had to understand complex causal chains extending across seasons, develop systems for resource distribution, and create new social frameworks for coordinating labor. These challenges pushed more humans to access more of their PFC's capabilities for planning, organization, and abstract thought (tools, techniques, protocols, etc.). The ability to selectively breed higher yielding crops, to plant previously unheard of amounts of acreage, properly irrigate comparatively massive crops, large-scale harvesting, transportation and the storage and protection for previously unfathomable amounts of food involved innovative techniques and practices with the ability to communicate most of this knowledge to people who could not read or write. Up to about this time, most people learned things the way humans had for hundreds of thousands of years – only by observing and imitation. Now more of them could understand their labor in the context beyond watching others through stories and songs – a solid oral tradition.

For example, most everyone understood new systems of commerce and accounting that had to be created so that food stores were inventoried, preserved, distributed and marketed. What had once been the domain of exceptional individuals - those early geniuses who could naturally access more of their PFC's potential - became more widely distributed through cultural frameworks and practical necessity. But exceptional people were still those who led and were respected.

The Urban Revolution that followed amplified this cognitive acceleration. Cities became laboratories for new forms of thinking, driven by the demands of managing large populations and complex social hierarchies. As noted in Inside the Neolithic Mind, even spiritual practices became more complex, with "certain powerful people" managing elaborate cosmological systems that required sophisticated abstract thinking. These systems weren't just religious practices - they were frameworks that, inadvertently, helped others access and develop their own capacity for abstract thought.

Later, the development of urban centers created unprecedented opportunities for knowledge concentration and transmission. The density of human interaction and the specialization of labor meant that individuals could focus on developing specific areas of expertise, leading to more sophisticated utilization of PFC capabilities in particular domains. This specialization allowed for deeper exploration of abstract thinking in specific areas, from crafts to commerce to governance. Early urbanization would be impossible without the PFC.

Importantly, the revolutions in agriculture and urban development took place before the invention of writing. This imitation was no longer enough to sustain the new realities of life, the stuff that came after tribes became mass farming cities. Most people had to access their PFC's to some degree in order to comprehend these new realities. These were among the last transformations born purely of an oral tradition captured in rituals, poems and songs instead of written prose and abstract argument.

Mithen's work suggests that this period saw an acceleration in the integration of different types of intelligence within the human brain. The urban environment required people to combine social, technical, and natural history intelligence in new ways, pushing more people to develop the kind of cognitive fluidity that had once been the domain of exceptional individuals. But, it should be added, these different types of intelligences had to exist in sufficient numbers before mass farming and large cities were even possible.

To some extent, it is the chicken or the egg type of debate. Did cities emerge because more people were using their PFC or did more people use their PFC because cities emerged? Likely, this is a feedback loop, both statements are true to some extent. However, personally I think exceptional people lead us into situations where common people began to change the way they thought and felt, which is also kind of where we find ourselves today.

The invention of writing about 5,000 years ago represents perhaps the most significant acceleration in human cognitive development since the emergence of spoken language. But that acceleration itself did not happen suddenly or abruptly. Early writing seems to have been driven by the need to account for commerce-related activities rather than to record myths or stories, which became paramount later.

According to Walter Stephens in How Writing Made Use Human (2023): "Writing took a very long time — millennia, in fact — to evolve into its complete state. It developed in order to meet specific cultural needs that could not be satisfied in a strictly oral culture. Jerrold Cooper has made the point that the domains in which early writing was used were, in fact, invented along with writing itself — 'Livestock or ration accounts, land management records, lexical lists, labels identifying funerary offerings, offering lists, divination records, and commemorative stelae have no oral counterparts. Rather, they represent the extension of language into areas where spoken language cannot do the job.' In Mesopotamia, where its evolution is clearest, writing was not originally writing but rather counting: it evolved gradually from systems of taking inventory, especially of livestock and grain, that probably began by 8500 BCE. These accounting systems came about because Mesopotamian societies were growing ever larger. Scattered hamlets were developing into the first cities, and growth required increasingly complex systems of organization. Bureaucratic structures were needed to administer the division of labor, the distribution of goods, and taxation." (page 4, author's emphasis)   

One interesting point here is that accounting was the first form of writing, which reveals abstract thought in the PFC at that date.  Writing did not become what we consider “writing” today until much later – due to human innovation which was driven in the brain as I have already enumerated. 

“So writing systems were not created ex nihilo: their various features preexisted them for varying lengths of time. Yet the crucial elements tended to coalesce 'punctually,' at a certain point in time. Once the core of a system was in place, refinements evolved gradually. [...] It is estimated that by about 2600 BCE, imagination — the use of writing for nonbureaucratic purposes — enabled ancient people to record poems and stories that moderns can recognize as literature. [...] We moderns assume that prose is more natural, and therefore older, than verse, which we consider 'artful' and 'artificial,' but this is a distortion created by our long-term immersion in written culture. Historically — and in all known cultures — prose was an innovation, a later development than verse." (pp. 15 – 17, author's emphasis) 

As accounting proceeded writing, poems preceded prose, likely because most stories tribes knew in their strictly oral tradition were known as poems. It is easier to remember a rhyme (or song) than a fact. Stories that rhymed were a primary way of remembering them through subsequent human generations. Prose is an imaginative innovation of the PFC (in concert with Broca's, Wernike's. etc.) and a driving force in human history.

In this way, writing externalized memory and abstract thought, creating stable frameworks that others could build upon. Gone were the days when specialized knowledge had to be known only by specialists and could be forgotten. Writing made it easier to translate “best practices” to everyone who could read from one generation to the next over many centuries (leading to the rise of, among other things, complex deities and religions). This external scaffolding helped more people access and develop their PFC's capabilities for metaphorical and abstract thinking. Just as language had evolved from purely social to general-purpose use, writing provided a new tool for extending symbolic meaning and abstract thought into every domain of human experience.

This acceleration was facilitated and accommodated by the pre-existing architecture of the PFC. The "neural real estate" that had evolved without specific cognitive demands easily accommodated increasingly complex forms of thought and was perfect for the development of writing. Without the PFC, human history, as we know it, would never have occurred. That third astonishment gives way to the fourth when you consider that the PFC's capacity might still exceed our current utilization - we may still be growing into our cognitive potential. How fortunate! Just when we need it!

If we're still growing into capabilities that evolved over 200,000 years ago, what other cognitive possibilities might remain undiscovered? It seems to me the great acceleration that began with agriculture is far from complete. We are likely in the early stages of learning to use our neural architecture, with future developments in consciousness and cognition that we can barely imagine today.

The integration of social, technical, and natural history intelligence that Mithen describes seems likely to be just the beginning. This first astonishment (our pre-adapted PFC), along with the second astonishment (the synchronized development of the PFC with the Broca's and Wernicke's areas), could well contain possibilities for cognitive integration and development that we're only starting to explore. The acceleration continues, and its ultimate destination remains unknown, creating both unprecedented opportunities and novel challenges.

The role once played by early geniuses in pioneering new uses of the PFC has largely been assumed by the fact that most people can now access their PFC, more or less, and by our unprecedented technological innovation. Technology now serves as an external scaffold, enabling billions of people to collectively engage in forms of (online) abstract thinking that were once accessible only to exceptional individuals. Once writing freed up most of our memory, our imagination, curiosity and creativity took over, and the void was filled with stories based on poems and songs we had used for ages.

Digital tools and artificial intelligence are reshaping how we utilize our neural architecture. Where early humans needed generations to develop new cognitive frameworks, we can now create and disseminate new ways of thinking globally in mere hours or days. This acceleration has profound implications for how we understand and develop our cognitive potential.

However, this technological dominance brings important considerations. While technology excels at expanding our analytical and computational capabilities, it may not engage the full range of human cognition in the way that earlier, genius-created frameworks did. The shamans, philosophers, and religious thinkers of early human history integrated cognitive development with emotional, spiritual, and social understanding - a holistic approach that contemporary technological tools often fail to replicate.

This shift manifests as it should, with great diversity. In fact, the greater the diversity, the greater the emergence. The rapid dissemination of new ideas and frameworks, cross-cultural integration of knowledge, distributed problem-solving capabilities and the difficult emergence of new forms of social cognition (transgender, for example, abhorred by all traditionalists), are all aspects of the greater emergence, the direct assault on structure and transcendence.

The internet and related technologies have created something that has never existed before in human history. We live within a global neural network, enabling forms of collective thinking and virtual experience that transcend individual biological limitations. This development suggests new possibilities for how we might continue to grow into our pre-adapted neural architecture. Some of these possibilities are regressive. Again, emergence is messy, it is not a bed of roses. While transformation is astonishing in retrospect, it is often challenging and rejected as it happens.

The contemporary transformation of human cognition brings significant challenges. Information overload, mass disinformation, fragmentation of reality and truth and especially our ability to focus on anything for long represent novel cognitive demands that our pre-adapted neural architecture must accommodate. The PFC, which evolved to handle abstract thought and complex planning, now faces unprecedented demands on its executive functions.

Relatively recently, the pace of technological change seems to be challenging our biological capacity for adaptation. Where early humans had hundreds of generations to develop new cognitive capabilities, we now face rapid shifts in how we process information and interact with our environment intragenerationally, during each lifetime. Now, the pace is more like every decade. It keeps getting faster. This mismatch between technological acceleration and biological adaptation creates unique stresses on our cognitive systems.

There is a constant stream of stimuli and information (accurate, virtual, fake) taxing our ability to maintain focused attention. Digital memory supplements challenge traditional processes of knowledge consolidation, breeding such things as the culture wars. Virtual interaction patterns alter traditional social-emotional processing and will become more pronounced as VR really takes off in the near future. If we are not careful, the speed of information flow can inhibit deep, reflective thought, something the discoveries of neuroscience and other fields must innovate.

In particular, neuroscience offers unprecedented insight into how we might address these challenges while continuing to develop our cognitive potential. Research into neuroplasticity, for example, suggests our brains retain significant capacity for adaptation and growth, even in response to novel technological demands. Even at much older ages than once believed, though with more effort.

Recent findings in neuroscience indicate specific protocols for enhancing cognitive function. We know, for example, that targeted meditation practices strengthen PFC executive function. Cognitive training programs are being developed that enhance attention control. Cognitive issues can now be defined, measured and monitored in the brain and specific best practices (as we discover them) can be prescribed. Technological interfaces designed to work with natural neural processes are clearly on the near horizon, indeed are already here in certain app designs. Social-emotional learning techniques that integrate with digital environments are being explored and there's no reason to believe these efforts will be fruitless or possibly lead to something greater accidentally due to unintended consequences. This is the essence of emergence, according to physics.

I might take a moment to define emergence as I am using it here. Physicist Sean Carroll wrote about emergence in his 2016 book The Big Picture. I reviewed that work here and here and you can find a lot about emergence in sections quoted there. I want to add something here that was not previously quoted but can help us define emergence within human consciousness.

“Emergence is ubiquitous...The classic example of emergence, one you should constantly return to whenever things get confusing, involves the air in the room around you. That air is a gas, and we speak of it as having properties: a temperature, a density, a humidity, a velocity, and so on. We think of air as a continuous fluid, and all of those properties take on numerical values at every point in the room. (Remember that gases, like liquids, are fluids.) But we know that air isn't 'really' a fluid. If we look at it very closely, down to a microscopic level, we see that it's composed of individual atoms and molecules – mostly nitrogen and oxygen, with trace buts of other elements and components.” (page 95)

“Indeed, emergent theories can be multiply realizable: there can, in principle, be many distinct microscopic theories that are incompatible with one another but compatible with the same emergent description. You can understand that air is a fluid without knowing anything about its molecular composition, or even if there is a description in terms of particles at all.” (page 99, author's emphasis)

Emergence applies to the human brain as much as anything else. It is composed of atoms and molecules just like air. Carroll briefly discusses the implications of this for human consciousness which can be found in the links provided above. But in basic terms of physics: “...there is an effect on that atom by the larger system of which it is part – an effect that cannot be thought of as arising from all the other atoms individually. The only way to think of it is as an effect of the whole on the individual parts.” (page 109) In terms of consciousness, something can happen in our brains that is because of our brain “system” as whole that no individual part or collections of parts of the brain could account for or create. Our brain, like everything else in physics, literally does stuff unintended, out of nowhere. This stuff is emergence.

The trend toward deeper understanding of human cognition, both with and without technological augmentation, suggests we are still in early stages of our emergent cognitive potential. As Mithen's model of cognitive evolution showed how language enabled the integration of different types of intelligence, we may be witnessing the emergence of new forms of cognitive integration through the interaction of biological and technological systems.

The transformation of human consciousness is upon us, driven largely by the PFC. It appears to be accelerating rather than concluding or reaching stasis. This is a great fact, because we need it more than ever with the way our world has turned out so far. The transformation is necessary because we we seem to be starting to max out. The pre-adapted architecture of our PFC must continue to reveal new capabilities as we develop new ways to access and utilize it, most probably yet to be discovered by neuroscience and psychology. Technology, while presenting challenges, also offers unprecedented opportunities for expanding our cognitive capabilities.

The question is not whether we will continue to evolve cognitively (if we survive then it is inevitable), but how we might best direct and support this evolution. Understanding our cognitive heritage - from the pre-adaptive development of the PFC through the pioneering contributions of early, isolated geniuses to our current technological and neuroscientific transformation led by groups of geniuses virtually and physically bound together - provides essential context for guiding this continuing development.

As we face the challenges and opportunities of our contemporary cognitive landscape, we might do well to remember that our ancestors spent almost 190,000 years gradually discovering how to use their cognitive potential. Despite our explosive speed (or perhaps because of it) we are likely only beginning to master and understand our own astonishing continuum of cognitive becoming.

(to be continued)