"Modern human behavior" is out, generic human potential is in

There is a hypothetical model in Prehistory on something vague and ethereal which has been called "Modern human behavior" (MHB). It's not about nuclear weapons, Internet addiction nor commuting to work; it's not either about the printing machine, the Industrial Revolution and the ideals of Human Rights; it's not even about farming, living in cities and through sailing the seas... it's about something extremely vague and ill-defined but which, by definition would set apart "modern humans" (H. sapiens) from "archaic humans" (other Homo species, particularly Neanderthals).

While it is almost intangible and every day more dubious, a large number of prehistorians, some as notorious as Mellars, Stringer or Bar-Yosef, strikingly influenced by religious ideas setting an arbitrarily absolutist line between "humans" (i.e. Homo sapiens) and the rest (including other humans), have insisted for decades on the validity of such notion. Now three researchers challenge the model radically:

Christopher J. H. James, Julien Riel-Salvatore & Benjamin R. Collins, Why We Need an Alternative Approach to the Study of Modern Human Behaviour. Canadian Journal of Archaeology Volume 37, Issue 1 (2013). Pay per view → LINK

Abstract

In this paper we review recent developments in the debate over the emergence of modern human behaviour (MHB) to show that despite considerable diversity among competing models, the identification of given material traits still underpins almost all current perspectives. This approach, however, allows assumptions over the biological relationship between archaic and modern humans to permeate the definitions of MHB and, as a result, has effectively stultified archaeology’s potential contribution to the issue. We suggest that the concept of MHB as currently defined is flawed. It must either be redefined in strictly behavioural terms before reincorporation into the debate over modern human origins or, more productively, discarded all together to avoid the harsh and unrealistic dichotomy it creates between a modern and non-modern archaeological record.

The paper has been uploaded by Riel-Salvatore at Academia.edu.

They essentially argue that: that the model (of which there are several, often contradictory variants) is extremely useless and confusing, that there are "archaic humans" with many or even all traits of MHB and there are "modern humans" without many or even most of them.

They tentatively argue for a throughout revision of the model but then they seem to lean rather for the whole abandonment of the idea suggesting instead a mosaic and punctuated evolution pattern that is socio-cultural rather than merely genetic or essentialist:

(...) the rapidly accumulating evidence for a mosaic pattern of behavioural change (...) and the evidence of behavioural advances appearing and rapidly disappearing in the MSA, make the harsh dichotomy model untenable. What it does suggest is a punctuated or saltation model that led to widespread adoption of more complex behavioural patterns once the demographic circumstances were appropriate (...).

Somehow this made me recall one of my all-time favorite bands: Suicidal Tendencies and their 1990 hit "Disco's out, murder's in" (surely not apt for pop, techno and folk music lovers):