Conrad Montell
Considering the controversy over the respective
roles of genes and memes in evolution (Boone/Smith
1998), a useful analogy with the development of
imagination may be that of the development of fire.
There is the matter of creating the initial sparks for
ignition: genetic, and then the matter of fuel to ex-
pand and keep it going: social-cultural material.
With regard to my thesis here, both the initial spark
of awareness of the problem of mortality, and the
initial spark of imagination offering a “solution”,
would seem, of necessity, to be genetically based. By
one or another sudden variation or more gradual
change to that part of the brain beyond my knowing,
imagination would begin with a genetic spark.
Given that spark, the “fuel” would come from the
need and social-cultural material at hand.
With a growing awareness of mortality, I suggest,
would come debilitating apprehension. In order for
those individuals to function and survive, that
awareness, as with current mortality awareness,
would need to be managed (Pyszczynski/Greenberg/
Solomon 1997). Such awareness would tend to be
most debilitating for a creature lacking even the abil-
ity to commiserate with others: the linguistic ability
to express such apprehensions. I suggest that it was
such social needs, more than any direct survival
need, which led and sped the evolution of those
mental processes we loosely call “mind”, partly in-
dividual in nature and partly communal processes:
evolution of individual structures and abilities, as
well as complex social organization. “Knowledge of
the inevitability of death gives rise to the potential
for paralyzing terror which would make goal di-
rected behavior impossible” (Pyszczynski/Green-
berg/Solomon 1997, p2). How could an increasingly
smart but bare-brained creature lacking cultural sup-
port come to terms with the emerging sense or feel-
ing that he or she, as all others in the tribe, might
die? Freud in considering this question writes, “what
primitive man regarded as the natural thing was the
indefinite prolongation of life—immortality. The
idea of death was only accepted late, and with hesi-
tancy. Even for us it is lacking in content and has no
clear connotation” (Freud 1950, p76). The human
senses were well-equipped to sense and perceive the
natural world, the local environment in which to
hunt and gather, to find a place to sleep secure from
leopard and other predators. But how were early hu-
mans to secure themselves from this most pervasive
and awesome predator? Undoubtedly, from its first
glimmer, it would be a problem they would focus on.
During the long hours of night, awake and in
dreams, there would be few if any more vital matters
of thought. How were they to avoid that sleep with-
out end, that change of warm and vital flesh into
something cold and unresponsive? Dead bodies
would be salient; death itself, quite likely would be
viewed as something caused by unseen predators.
Nothing appeared in the sensed environment that
offered a defense against these predators, nothing
that the brain and its information sensors could dis-
cover. Another sensor was needed to look beyond
the others, to perceive a more distant or hidden
world that might offer such defenses. Needed too
was the ability to share perceptions of such a world
with others in the tribe, and hence, a brain with long
term memory devices for storing the products of
imagination.
The human brain reached 80% of its current vol-
ume about 200,000 years ago, after a 300,000-year
spurt of growth (Donald 1991; Mithen 1996). Ar-
chaeologists can find no major change in the arche-
ological record correlating with this second period
of Homo erectus brain expansion; the same basic
hunting and gathering lifestyle continued, with the
same limited range of tools (Mithen 1996). Thus, the
first expressions of what we can identify as products
of human imagination (about 70,000 years ago) oc-
cur much after the last major brain expansion. I sug-
gest that it was in the period between 200,000 and
70,000 years ago that fear of death had reached a
stage where it might have negative impact on hu-
man survival. The brain housing that fear would
surely be large enough to store the products of imag-
ination. At this stage of awareness, individuals with
feelings of apprehension and an inability to deal
with the perceived danger, would tend to be less fit
in hunting, would be less willing to take the risks
necessary for success, and would lose their leading
edge in the struggle for survival. Fear involving those
dangers that can be guarded against has survival
value (Leyhausen 1973). Fear of impending death,
anxious feelings of foreboding, would tend to immo-
bilize, and must be considered to have negative sur-
vival value. As well as individuals, entire tribes with
such fear might experience higher mortality. If so,
natural selection might start selecting for survival in
an extraordinary way. It would not simply be those
individuals and tribes who had the best physical
equipment for adapting to changing environments
who would prove the fittest for survival. Instead, it
would be those who developed, along with physical
equipment for use in hunting and gathering of food,
imagination and other mental equipment for use in
dampening the debilitating effects of this growing
awareness and fear.
Evolution and Cognition ∣ 13 ∣ 2002, Vol. 8, No. 1