Conrad Montell
brain, 50 million years in its formation, did that
quite well. Other primate species, lacking human
imagination, have survived quite well, in diverse
and changing environments (Mithen 1996). There is
a counter theory in “the psychology of imagination,
pointing out the origins of this capacity in the devel-
opment of object consistency relative to the stimu-
lus of vanished objects” (Rangell 1988, p63); this is
similar to Beres idea of the mental representation of
an absent object (1960). Such a useful capacity, I sug-
gest, might develop as a byproduct. It is useful to
preserve an image of a real object after it vanishes
from the senses. However, it would be essential for a
created image, an “object” that could never other-
wise return to be “sensed”. Storing would be the only
way to “sense” the image of something that never
existed, and without imagination would never re-
turn—could never return. It is the preservation of
such unreal and distorted images, vital for human
survival, as I hope to show, that would drive the evo-
lution of imagination. Once in place, imagination
would serve in many other ways for human survival.
Primate senses were old and successful devices in
hunting within the real environment. An inner-di-
rected sense, creating its own reality, would seem to
have been designed for some different purpose, one
that would lead to nascent psychological adapta-
tions for survival. Mithen, in considering evolution-
ary research, speaks of “integrating material from
evolutionary ecology and human psychology ... [to-
wards] a Darwinian psychology [that] lies ahead”
(Mithen 1989, p492). I suggest that research in the
evolution of human imagination should be an im-
portant part of such a Darwinian psychology.
Rangell describes the functional evolution of imag-
inative products known as fantasies: “With reference
to the linkage between the cognitive and the affec-
tive, fantasies are cognitive products designed to
produce a wished-for affective result. The aim is to
produce pleasure and safety, while keeping anxiety
or any other form of unpleasure at bay” (Rangell
1988, p65). Just such imaginative mental activities
are involved in the process of developing religious
behavior and in other responses to awareness of
death.
Recent work in neuroscience identifying areas of
the brain especially active during religious experi-
ence (Ramachandran/Blakeslee 1998) and on parts
of the brain’s autonomic systems stimulated by reli-
gious rituals and practices (d’Aquili/Newberg 1998)
may advance part of my argument. Cutting across
disciplines, an important area barely touched on in
this paper, is gender studies: studies of the special
role women must have played in the evolution of
imagination and religious behavior.
Women, from earliest times seen as the source of
life, would also, with stillbirths and infant deaths, be
seen as a source of death. Even before imagination
was directed elsewhere, women would naturally be
looked to for clues in understanding the great mys-
terious processes of birth and death. Not only men,
looking from the outside, but women themselves, as
imagination evolved, would surely give special
thought, imaginative thought, to their bodies and to
understanding themselves in relation to life forces
and those of death. Not merely as the fertility figures
shown in early artifacts, women, at an early stage in
human evolution, would naturally be looked to for
spiritual guidance, based on their special bodily in-
telligence. Elaine Showalter describes such special
female awareness as “the corporeal ground of our
intelligence” (1998, p. 338). Imagination would also
find employment in sexual relations and pair bond-
ing. Far beyond my ability to explore here, I suggest
that, early in the evolution of imagination, sexual
dreams and fantasies would intertwine with fears of
death and hopes of some rebirth. It might well be
that from this bonding would come some of the first
imaginative communication: “the earliest source of
the profound and complicated relation in human
life among sexuality, aging, the certainty of death,
and the knowledge of time” (Fraser 1988, p488). At
the very least, such use of imagination by a bonding
pair would tend to dispel morbid thoughts and lead
to better survival strategies. As apprehension of
death developed, women, in using their power and
ability to choose a mate and potential father, would
tend to favor one who at least offered some alterna-
tive reality mitigating the pervasive threat.
The Evolutionary Pathway to
Imagination
What might have driven the engine of evolution to
such a unique adaptation as that of human imagi-
nation? I suggest the following rough-and-ready ac-
count of a long complex process, as a likely se-
quence of events. In this account, complex
questions of the nature and function of self and self-
awareness will, of necessity, be simplified. In human
evolution, there came a stage when big-brained, cu-
rious hominids, having practical tools but lacking
those associated with mind, took an evolutionary
pathway leading to human self-awareness and
awareness of “other”, perhaps as the inevitable con-
sequence of their smartness and inquisitiveness.
Evolution and Cognition ∣ 7 ∣ 2002, Vol. 8, No. 1