This article examines the possible origins of modern thinking by evaluating the cognitive models of working memory, executive functions and their interrelationship. We propose that a genetic mutation affected neural networks in the prefrontal cortex approximately 60,000 to 130,000 years ago. Our review of cognitive and archaeological evidence yields two possibilities: either it was non-domain specific, affecting general working memory capacity and its executive functions, or the mutation was domain-specific, affecting phonological storage capacity. We discuss the sequelae of these possibilities for modernity, including language enhancement, greater reasoning, planning, and modelling abilities, and increases in fluid/general intelligence.

Depictions of wounded or dying eland, juxtaposed with images of human or therianthropic figures ‘dying’ in trance or symbolically ‘wounded’, are discussed in the context of ‘sympathetic control’ expressed in southern African rock art. It is suggested that the development of concepts of control included the use of skin costumes in hunting contexts and in ritual, linked to concepts associated with trance.

This article discusses the notion of body metamorphosis as a theory of phenomenal change by examining carved representational and ‘aniconic’ boulders from Lepenski Vir and other Meso-Neolithic sites in the Danube Gorges. The voluminous size of the boulders at Lepenski Vir, the way in which they occupy the three-dimensional space within buildings and around hearths, and the carvings over their surfaces suggest that they were understood as volatile bodies, undergoing continuous metamorphoses. The relationship between the seasonal recurrence of the Danube's migratory fish and these boulders is explored through the notion of animality. These boulders indicate prescribed stages of life-cycle metamorphosis that affected inextricably-linked realms of human and animal worlds. Prescribed stages of social embodiment at Lepenski Vir are discerned by looking at the archaeological context of representational boulders that sometimes directly commemorate particular deceased individuals. The possibility that boulder artworks acted as sacred heirlooms of particular buildings is connected to the social efficacy they might have acquired.

Bu (Syrinx aruanus) shell arrangements are often found in ritual sites across Torres Strait. The position of such sites within Indigenous cosmologies has been ethnographically documented for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This article historicizes Indigenous spiritscapes by tracking back in time the history of this particular material expression of spiritual belief in Western Torres Strait. We argue that the last c. 400 years saw major shifts in ritual engagements with seascapes in Western Torres Straits. These transformations may have been Indigenous responses to the traumatic events of early contact with European seafarers, in particular the earliest Spanish sailors of 1606.

The water supply and distribution system of the Nabataean city of Petra in southwestern Jordan has been explored and mapped. Analysis of the system indicates exploitation of all possible water resources using management techniques that balance reservoir storage capacity with continuous flow pipeline systems to maintain a constant water supply throughout the year. Nabataean Petra was founded c. 300 bc; urban development progressed with later Roman administration of the city starting at ad 106; Byzantine occupation continued to the seventh century ad. Trade networks that extended throughout much of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean world intersected at Petra, and brought not only strategic and economic prominence, but also impetus to develop water resources fully to sustain demands of increasing population and city elaboration. City development was influenced by artistic, cultural and technological borrowings from Seleucid, Syro-Phoenician, Greek and Roman civilizations; the Petra water-distribution system included hydraulic technologies derived from these contacts as well as original technical innovations that helped to maintain the high living standard of city dwellers throughout the centuries. Analysis of the Nabataean water network indicates design criteria that promote stable flows and use sequential particle-settling basins to purify potable water supplies. They also promote open channel flows within piping at critical (maximum) flow rates that avoid leakage associated with pressurized systems and have the design function to match the spring supply rate to the maximum carrying capacity of a pipeline. This demonstration of engineering capability indicates a high degree of cognitive skill in solving complex hydraulic problems to ensure a stable water supply and may be posited as a key reason behind the many centuries of flourishing city life.