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The Ādam Paradox Hypothesis
6
The Adam Paradox
Three strands converge:
1. Anatomical modernity as early as ~315 kya.
2. Sporadic sparks of symbolism that flared and vanished.
3. Sudden ignition of symbolic culture ~70 kya, global and irreversible.
If cognition were merely the by-product of larger brains, symbolic traces
should have accumulated gradually. Instead, we see a long silence, broken by
sparks, and then a revolution.
Steven Mithen summarized it well:
“The archaeological record demonstrates a long
silence, followed by a remarkable florescence
” (Mithen, 1996, p. 165).
This is the Adam Paradox: anatomy was ready long before cognition
was ignited.
Bridge to Chapter 2
Bones and fossils give us the first strand of the paradox. They show the
hardware of humanity complete, but silent. The next step is to examine this
hardware more closely—what the bones reveal about brains, and why the
mind remained mute.
