This article offers some hypotheses to explain Later Stone Age lithic miniaturization: the systematic creation of small stone flakes on the finest-grained materials. Fundamentally, this phenomenon appears to represent the prioritization of stone tool sharpness over longevity, and a disposable mode of using stone tools. Ethnographic evidence from Australasia, the Andaman Islands, and Africa is used to suggest some specific functions for miniaturized lithics, as well as their relationship to other aspects of Later Stone Age material culture, including ochre crayons, (...) shell beads, and notched bones. Miniaturized lithic functions are hypothesized to have a common basis in the cognitive capacity for abstraction: having ideas about ideas. The technological and social affordances of abstraction may have given later Homo sapiens significant adaptive advantages over other members of our genus. (shrink)

Kline presents an excellent synthesis of teaching theory and research, with cogent arguments regarding its prevalence. In this, she claims that “active teaching” is human specific, and presents tangible reasons why. But in doing so, she overlooks a critical aspect of the human condition that may have arisen only recently in our evolutionary history: Childhood as a life stage.