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This theme issue brings together researchers from diverse fields to assess the current status and future prospects of embodied cognition in the age of generative artificial intelligence. In this introduction, we first clarify our view of embodiment as a potentially unifying concept in the study of cognition, characterizing this as a perspective that questions mind–body dualism and recognizes a profound continuity between sensorimotor action in the world and more abstract forms of cognition. We then consider how this unifying concept is developed and elaborated by the other contributions to this issue, identifying the following two key themes: (i) the role of language in cognition and its entanglement with the body and (ii) bodily mechanisms of interpersonal perception and alignment across the domains of social affiliation, teaching and learning. On balance, we consider that embodied approaches to the study of cognition, culture and evolution remain promising, but will require greater integration across disciplines to fully realize their potential. We conclude by suggesting that researchers will need to be ready and able to meet the various methodological, theoretical and practical challenges this will entail and remain open to encountering markedly different viewpoints about how and why embodiment matters. This article is the part of this theme issue 'Minds in movement: embodied cognition in the age of artificial intelligence'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cultural reproduction of lithic technology, long an implicit assumption of archaeological theories, has garnered increasing attention over the past decades. Major debates ranging from the origins of the human culture capacity to the interpretation of spatiotemporal patterning now make explicit reference to social learning mechanisms and cultural evolutionary dynamics. This burgeoning literature has produced important insights and methodological innovations. However, this rapid growth has sometimes led to confusion and controversy due to an under‐examination of underlying theoretical and methodological assumptions. The time is thus ripe for a critical assessment of progress in the study of the cultural reproduction of lithic technology. Here we review recent work addressing the evolutionary origins of human culture and the meaning of artifact variation at both intrasite and intersite levels. We propose that further progress will require a more extended and context‐specific evolutionary approach to address the complexity of real‐world cultural reproduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fluvio-lacustrine sediments of the Hadar and Busidima Formations along the northern Awash River (Ethiopia) archive almost three million years (3.4 to The pre-2.92 Ma record (Hadar Formation) is characterized by low-gradient fluvial, paludal, and lacustrine deposition in an undissected topography most analogous to reaches of the modern middle Awash River near Gewane. The Gona area experienced repeated deep dissection and aggradation by the Awash River, starting between 2.92 and ca. 2.7 Ma and continuing through the top of the record at Stone artifacts (Oldowan; 2.6-2.0 Ma) at the oldest archaeological sites are only associated with the axial Awash system, in the bedded silts or capping paleosols of the fining upward sequences. The implements were made from rounded cobbles from the channels, but manufacture and use of the tools was always away from the channel bars, on the nearby sandy banks and silt-dominated floodplains. Archaeological sites higher in the record (Acheulian; Mature paleosols in the Hadar and Busidima Formations are mostly pale to dark-brown Vertisols typified by abundant clay slickensides, pseudo-anticlinal and vertical fracturing, and carbonate nodules. Such calcic Vertisols are common in the region today, demonstrating that the paleoclimate over the past 3.4 m.y. has been semi-arid and strongly seasonal. Carbon isotopic results from pedogenic carbonates in the Vertisols allow reconstruction of the proportion of [C.sub.3] plants (trees and shrubs) to [C.sub.4] plants (grasses) through time. The [[delta].sup.13]C results from the Hadar Formation prior to 2.9 Ma range from -9.3 [per thousand] to -4.1 [per thousand], indicating a dominantly forested environment but with locally substantial (average 34%) grasses on the Awash floodplain. The [[delta].sup.13]C values from soil carbonate in the lower Busidima Formation (2.7-1.6 Ma) increase (-6.5%0 to -2.7%o) in floodplain paleosols, indicating -50% average grass cover. Vertisols of the upper Busidima Formation ( Keywords: Gona, Ethiopia, carbon isotopes, early hominids, Oldowan, first stone tools, Awash, paleoenvironment.

Technology is central to human life but hard to define and study. This review synthesizes advances in fields from anthropology to evolutionary biology and neuroscience to propose an interdisciplinary cognitive science of technology. The foundation of this effort is an evolutionarily motivated definition of technology that highlights three key features: material production, social collaboration, and cultural reproduction. This broad scope respects the complexity of the subject but poses a challenge for theoretical unification. Addressing this challenge requires a comparative approach to reduce the diversity of real-world technological cognition to a smaller number of recurring processes and relationships. To this end, a synthetic perceptual-motor hypothesis (PMH) for the evolutionary–developmental–cultural construction of technological cognition is advanced as an initial target for investigation. Evolutionary theory and paleoanthropological/archaeological evidence motivate a theoretical definition of technology as socially reproduced and elaborated behavior involving the manipulation and modification of objects to enact changes in the physical environment. This definition helps to resolve or obviate ongoing controversies in the anthropological, neuroscientific, and psychological literature relevant to technology. A review of evidence from across these disciplines reveals that real-world technologies are diverse in detail but unified by the underlying demands and dynamics of material production. This creates opportunities for meaningful synthesis using a comparative method. A 'perceptual‐motor hypothesis' proposes that technological cognition is constructed on biocultural evolutionary and developmental time scales from ancient primate systems for sensorimotor prediction and control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been claimed that a unique feature of human culture is that it accumulates beneficial modifications over time. On the basis of a couple of methodological considerations, we here argue that, perhaps surprisingly, there is insufficient evidence for a proper test of this claim. And we indicate what further research would be needed to firmly establish the cumulativeness of human culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constraint has played a major role in brain evolution, but cannot tell the whole story. In primates, adaptive specialization is suggested by the existence of a covarying visual system, and may explain some residual variation in the constraint model. Adaptation may also appear at the microstructural level and in the globally integrated system of brain, body, life history and behavior.

We present a new road map for research on “How the Brain Got Language” that adopts an EvoDevoSocio perspective and highlights comparative neuroprimatology – the comparative study of brain, behavior and communication in extant monkeys and great apes – as providing a key grounding for hypotheses on the last common ancestor of humans and monkeys (LCA-m) and chimpanzees (LCA-c) and the processes which guided the evolution LCA-m → LCA-c → protohumans → H. sapiens. Such research constrains and is constrained by analysis of the subsequent, primarily cultural, evolution of H. sapiens which yielded cultures involving the rich use of language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative approaches to language evolution are essential but cannot by themselves resolve the timing and context of evolutionary events since the last common ancestor with chimpanzees. Archaeology can help to fill this gap, but only if properly integrated with evolutionary theory and the ethnographic, ethological, and experimental analogies required to reconstruct the broader social, behavioral, and neurocognitive implications of ancient artifacts. The current contribution elaborates a technological pedagogy hypothesis of language origins by developing the concept of an evolving human technological niche and applying it to investigate two key transitions posited by Arbib’s Mirror System Hypothesis: (1) from complex action recognition and imitation to proto-language, and (2) from proto-language to language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wynn shows that intentionally standardized artifacts (handaxes) provide evidence of the ability to conceptualize form (symmetry). However, such conceptual ability is not sufficient for the actual production of these forms. Stone knapping is a concrete skill that is acquired in the real world. Appreciation of its perceptual-motor foundations and the broader issues surrounding skill acquisition may lead to further important insights into human cognitive evolution.

Increasing reliance on skill-intensive subsistence strategies appears to be a hallmark of human evolution, with wide-ranging implications for sociality, brain size, life-history and cognitive adaptations. These parameters describe a human technological niche reliant on efficient intergenerational reproduction of increasingly complex foraging techniques, including especially the production and effective use of tools. The archaeological record provides a valuable source of evidence for tracing the emergence of this modern human condition, but interpretation of this evidence remains challenging and controversial. Application of methods from psychology and neuroscience to Palaeolithic tool-making experiments offers new avenues for establishing empirical links between technological behaviours, neurocognitive substrates and archaeologically observable material residues. Here we review recent progress and highlight key challenges for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stone tools provide some of the most abundant, continuous, and high resolution evidence of behavioral change over human evolution, but their implications for cognitive evolution have remained unclear. We investigated the neurophysiological demands of stone toolmaking by training modern subjects in known Paleolithic methods (“Oldowan”, “Acheulean”) and collecting structural and functional brain imaging data as they made technical judgments (outcome prediction, strategic appropriateness) about planned actions on partially completed tools. Results show that this task affected neural activity and functional connectivity in dorsal prefrontal cortex, that effect magnitude correlated with the frequency of correct strategic judgments, and that the frequency of correct strategic judgments was predictive of success in Acheulean, but not Oldowan, toolmaking. This corroborates hypothesized cognitive control demands of Acheulean toolmaking, specifically including information monitoring and manipulation functions attributed to the "central executive" of working memory. More broadly, it develops empirical methods for assessing the differential cognitive demands of Paleolithic technologies, and expands the scope of evolutionary hypotheses that can be tested using the available archaeological record. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The human faculty for object-mediated action, including tool use and imitation, exceeds that of even our closest primate relatives and is a key foundation of human cognitive and cultural uniqueness. In humans and macaques, observing object-directed grasping actions activates a network of frontal, parietal, and occipitotemporal brain regions, but differences in human and macaque activation suggest that this system has been a focus of selection in the primate lineage. To study the evolution of this system, we performed functional neuroimaging in humans' closest living relatives, chimpanzees. We compare activations during performance of an object-directed manual grasping action, observation of the same action, and observation of a mimed version of the action that consisted of only movements without results. Performance and observation of the same action activated a distributed frontoparietal network similar to that reported in macaques and humans. Like humans and unlike macaques, these regions were also activated by observing movements without results. However, in a direct chimpanzee/human comparison, we also identified unique aspects of human neural responses to observed grasping. Chimpanzee activation showed a prefrontal bias, including significantly more activity in ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, whereas human activation was more evenly distributed across more posterior regions, including significantly more activation in ventral premotor cortex, inferior parietal cortex, and inferotemporal cortex. This indicates a more "bottom-up" representation of observed action in the human brain and suggests that the evolution of tool use, social learning, and cumulative culture may have involved modifications of frontoparietal interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Early stone tools provide direct evidence of human cognitive and behavioral evolution that is otherwise unavailable. Proper interpretation of these data requires a robust interpretive framework linking archaeological evidence to specific behavioral and cognitive actions. Methodology/Principal Findings: Here we employ a data glove to record manual joint angles in a modern experimental toolmaker (the 4th author) replicating ancient tool forms in order to characterize and compare the manipulative complexity of two major Lower Paleolithic technologies (Oldowan and Acheulean). To this end we used a principled and general measure of behavioral complexity based on the statistics of joint movements. Conclusions/Significance: This allowed us to confirm that previously observed differences in brain activation associated with Oldowan versus Acheulean technologies reflect higher-level behavior organization rather than lower-level differences in manipulative complexity. This conclusion is consistent with a scenario in which the earliest stages of human technological evolution depended on novel perceptual-motor capacities (such as the control of joint stiffness) whereas later developments increasingly relied on enhanced mechanisms for cognitive control. This further suggests possible links between toolmaking and language evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the key challenges confronting cognitive science is to discover natural categories of cognitive function. Of special interest is the unity or diversity of cognitive control mechanisms. Evolutionary history is an underutilized resource that, together with neuropsychological and neuroscientific evidence, can help to provide a biological ground for the fractionation of cognitive control. Comparative evidence indicates that primate brain evolution has produced dissociable mechanisms for external action control and internal self-regulation, but that most real-world behaviors rely on a combination of these. The archeological record further indicates the timing and context of distinctively human elaborations to these cognitive control functions, including the gradual emergence of increasingly complex hierarchical action control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the tool-use and tool-making in human evolutionary which links bipedalism, dexterous hands, articulate language, culture, and a large brain. It mentions that the earliest direct evidence of hominid technological activity and social interaction comes from stone tools and cut-marked bones as much as 2.6 million years ago was at Gona, Ethiopia. It notes that coincidence of two of the most striking trends in human evolution suggests a relationship. An overview of the discussion which explains the significance of took-making to human evolution is offered.

The article reports on the Palaeolithic research at the Institute of Archaeology. The Institute has been an important center of research on Pleistocene environments and Palaeolithic archaeology since its foundation in 1937. The Institute's staff outline their research on archaeology of human evolution, human dispersals in Europe, adaptations to past environments in the Iberian Peninsula, and subsistence changes since the most recent glacial epoch.

• Tool use is ubiquitous in human life. • Six author groups respond to four questions on tool use in humans and nonhuman animals. • They differ in what they identify as tool use and the involved psychological processes. • None identified even a single psychological process that is specific to humans. • This discussion will foster a more comprehensive understanding of tool use. The ubiquity of tool use in human life has generated multiple lines of scientific and philosophical investigation to understand the development and expression of humans' engagement with tools and its relation to other dimensions of human experience. However, existing literature on tool use faces several epistemological challenges in which the same set of questions generate many different answers. At least four critical questions can be identified, which are intimately intertwined—(1) What constitutes tool use? (2) What psychological processes underlie tool use in humans and nonhuman animals? (3) Which of these psychological processes are exclusive to tool use? (4) Which psychological processes involved in tool use are exclusive to Homo sapiens ? To help advance a multidisciplinary scientific understanding of tool use, six author groups representing different academic disciplines (e.g., anthropology, psychology, neuroscience) and different theoretical perspectives respond to each of these questions, and then point to the direction of future work on tool use. We find that while there are marked differences among the responses of the respective author groups to each question, there is a surprising degree of agreement about many essential concepts and questions. We believe that this interdisciplinary and intertheoretical discussion will foster a more comprehensive understanding of tool use than any one of these perspectives (or any one of these author groups) would (or could) on their own. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although many species display behavioural traditions, human culture is unique in the complexity of its technological, symbolic and social contents. Is this extraordinary complexity a product of cognitive evolution, cultural evolution or some interaction of the two? Answering this question will require a much better understanding of patterns of increasing cultural diversity, complexity and rates of change in human evolution. Palaeolithic stone tools provide a relatively abundant and continuous record of such change, but a systematic method for describing the complexity and diversity of these early technologies has yet to be developed. Here, an initial attempt at such a system is presented. Results suggest that rates of Palaeolithic culture change may have been underestimated and that there is a direct relationship between increasing technological complexity and diversity. Cognitive evolution and the greater latitude for cultural variation afforded by increasingly complex technologies may play complementary roles in explaining this pattern.