Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition Book

An ambitious attempt to trace the cognitive steps that led to the modern day human thought form. I was often lost in the density of the material and would've preferred a less verbose extrapolation, though I suppose it was written with a particular audience in mind. Definitely worth multiple reads for those with greater patience.

The focus is mainly forms of communication and symbolic thought. You are guided from mimetic to theoretic culture, ultimately ending on thought that exists as an interplay somewhere between biological organisms and their externally manipulated ideas.

He may have explained why he chose mainly communication as the representation for the development of the mind, though nothing stands out in my memory. As a point of personal conjecture, I believe it was for its utility in expression of deeper cognitive processes and comparative historical and taxonomic referents.

Even with the emphasis on communication and symbols, Donald employs a broad range of studies into his postulates. He presents his ideas methodically and keeps abstraction grounded in empiricism as well as possible given the subject matter. As stated previously, I got lost in the density of some proofs and would, after numerous pages of dissection, forget the original topic of discussion. Even though I feel like his transitions and outlines could be ambiguous, I again refer to the fact that this was probably written to those of the proper frame of reference.

Regardless, he did a very good job considering the subject matter and amount of evidence that needed to be presented.