Dear Dr. Qwerty, Below is a link to the forthcoming BBS target article Archaeology and Cognitive Evolution by Thomas Wynn http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Wynn/Referees/ This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. If you are interested in submitting a commentary on this paper, or would like to suggest someone else as a potential commentator on this paper, please read on. Commentators must be BBS Associates or nominated by a BBS Associate. 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To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for this article, an electronic draft is retrievable from the online BBSPrints Archive, at the URL proceeding the abstract below. _______________________________________________________________________ ARCHAEOLOGY AND COGNITIVE EVOLUTION Thomas Wynn Department of Anthropology University of Colorado Colorado Springs KEYWORDS: archaeology, symmetry, spatial cognition, evolution, Homo erectus ABSTRACT: Archaeology can provide two bodies of information relevant to the understanding of the evolution of human cognition - the timing of developments, and the evolutionary context of these developments. The challenge is methodological. Archaeology must document attributes that have direct implications for underlying cognitive mechanisms. One example of such a cognitive archaeology is that for spatial cognition. The archaeological record documents an evolutionary sequence that begins with ape-equivalent spatial abilities 2.5 million years ago and ends with the appearance of modern abilities in the still remote past of 400,000 years ago. The timing of these developments reveals two major episodes in the evolution in spatial ability, one 1.5 million years ago and the other one million years later. The two episodes of development in spatial cognition had very different evolutionary contexts. The first was associated with the shift to an open country adaptive niche that occurred early in the time range of Homo erectus. The second was associated with no clear adaptive shift, though it does appear to have coincided with the invasion of more hostile environments and the appearance of systematic hunting of large mammals. Neither, however, occurred in a context of modern hunting and gathering. http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Wynn/Referees/ ====================================================================== IMPORTANT Please do not prepare a commentary yet. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the article. We will then let you know whether it was possible to include your name on the final formal list of invitees. ======================================================================= *** SUPPLEMENTARY ANNOUNCEMENT *** (1) Call for Book Nominations for BBS Multiple Book Review In the past, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) had only been able to do 1-2 BBS multiple book treatments per year, because of our limited annual page quota. 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