Uses and Abuses of the Enhanced‐Working‐Memory Hypothesis in Explaining Modern Thinking

Evidence is reviewed here that is contrary to the idea that a small enhancement in working‐memory capacity determined the emergence of the modern human mind as something radically different from previous human minds and materialized only in figurative art, particularly therianthropes. When reviewing the neurological and psychological literature on working memory, it is clear not only that working‐memory capacity varies extensively within modern populations but also that working memory and general intelligence are becoming highly synonymous. In this conception, working memory could appear less obscure, and the idea of a gradual increase in working‐memory capacity along the human lineage would appear to be a parsimonious scenario. In a different vein, the neurological underpinnings of art are reviewed. The geometrical engravings from Blombos Cave, as old as 100,000 years, appear to probe the presence of art in its plainest sense in Africa by that time, much earlier than the emergence of therianthropes in Europe during the Upper Paleolithic explosion of art. Noticeably, the Blombos Cave engravings have much in common with present‐day art. The possibility that most therianthropes are the result of an unsuccessful attempt to merely draw animals is also discussed.