And they were much better at predicting animal movements and laying plans to ambush and kill wildlife

And they were much better at predicting animal movements, and laying plans to ambush and kill wildlife.Originally we used language for social reasons, Dr Mithen thinks We gossiped, just as we do today. In addition, modern man made weapons for hunting different animals in specific sorts of circumstances. Bone points are more durable than flint points because they don't break and snap as frequently, and they can be sharpened as well as honed easily into differing widths and heights. People are suddenly using material culture for transmitting, recording and storing information."The modern humans also made all sorts of new hunting weapons using bone and antler. It's used for story-telling, it's used for passing on hunting information It's the key to memory. It helped early humans to survive in the harsh glacial conditions "The art is a bit like the CD-Rom today," says Dr Mithen "It's full of information.

How can that be? The message must be that the cognitive abilities for art were all present in the human mind, but isolated from one another.The change in the mind which enabled the art suddenly to be put on paper, or rather on cave walls, was adaptive. In Europe the first manifestations were in the French cave paintings, which were technically brilliant and brimming with emotion and expression There was no gradual emergence of such art It was all there from the start. It was Homo sapiens, however, whose mind adapted to have the cognitive fluidity of the modern mind and who spread out around the European continent to replace Neanderthal man. But archaic Homo sapiens and Homo erectus were similar to poor old Neanderthal man. We talk about the mind being like a cathedral or a computer.We have, of course, evolved from archaic Homo sapiens. If we didn't think about these metaphors, it would be much harder to think about the ideas at all The classic case is the way we think about the mind We need imagery. Richard Dawkins doesn't simply talk about climbing mountains and selfish genes as ways to help sell his books He uses them to explain the reasons for evolution.

The modern mind is epitomised by our ability to make connections - in our use of metaphor, for example Take the way science is communicated to the general public The use of metaphor is critical. "But Neanderthals really had a different kind of mind to what we have today."Their minds had technical intelligence divided from social intelligence, knowledge of natural history and language. In short, they were under very severe adaptive stress."If you imagine any modern human under stress like that, we would really start innovating, developing new tools, new ways of living, and we can see that modern hunter-gatherers after 30,000 years ago do that," argues Dr Mithen. Almost every Neanderthal skeleton carries the scars of physical injuries or degenerative disease Hardly any survived beyond the age of 40. They had immense technical skills but couldn't put those skills to good use by applying creative thought or innovation in the way we would have done It was not as if they had no reason to change They were living in harsh environments Europe during the last Ice Age was no picnic Bears, wolves and lions were roaming the continent.

We can think of the Neanderthal mind as having not a single intelligence but separate, modular intelligences, and that fits neatly with arguments coming from psychology at the moment as to how minds really are constructed and how they could have evolved."Neanderthals made some very good tools but used them simply as thrusting spears. "We get the sudden appearance of art, belief in supernatural beings, major technological changes and the start of the technological innovation that's still going on today."My argument is that something fundamental happened to the mind at that time. Neanderthal man had a limited cultural repertoire - no art, no religion, no burial rituals, simple technology, crude weapons."Between 100,000 and 30,000 years ago there was a dramatic cultural change," says Dr Mithen. Indeed, many people would argue that we are still mentally adapted to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, that is, living in small social groups. So this new field has evolved which we refer to as cognitive archaeology."During most of those 6 million years, humans were living by hunting and gathering.