Rossano argued in “Did Meditating make us human?” that during our evolutionary past, ritual healing was considered an important and unique aspect. The paper proposes that gatherings before an open fire heightened working memory capacity needed for symbolic reasoning. There were five propositions which included, (a) evidence of symbolism existing later in the archaeological record, (b) “late emergence of symbolism as the result of a fortuitous genetic mutation that enhanced human working capacity” (Rossano 2007:47), (c) “environmental conditions that require bodily adaptation… create selection pressure for genetic mutations that permanently establish the adaptive phenotypic state” (Rossano 2007:48), (d) meditation affects areas of the brain…show more content… This argument was supported through a few propositions such as the evidence of late emergence of symbolism. Rossano says, “genetic and fossil evidence points to the emergence of anatomically modern humans… somewhere between 200,000 and 150,000 years bp in Africa” (Rossano 2007:48), and this shows that with evidence there is proof that Peircean symbolism did not occur until the Upper Palaeolithic with the creation of artifacts used for ceremonies. “Higher level” (Rossano 2007:48) symbolism emerged later due to the creation of modern humans, and the idea of higher level Palaeolithic relates to the revolution of human behavior and human thoughts (Rossano 2007:50). Evidence of fortuitous mutations was also presented as mechanism for symbolism is the result of fortuitous genetic mutation, which revamped mind structure and mind capacity, in order to give Homo sapiens “a cognitive advantage over other archaic hominin forms” (Rossano 2007:49). In relation to the emergence of symbolism, our ability to preserve and manipulate information has also evolved with the enhanced working memory
