ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIAN ACCOUNTING AND HUMAN COGNITIVE EVOLUTION

Accounting Historians Journal, The, Dec 2004 by Mouck, Tom

According to Schmandt-Besserat, the development of abstract counting was, in turn, the crucial move in the development of writing. It had a freeing effect on the system of pictographs in the sense that they could be modified more easily, and expanded, to represent concepts that were not immediately associated with counting. Thus, the system of pictographs "could expand to communicate any subjects of human endeavor" [Schmandt-Berrerat, 1992, p. 194]. This capability was further enhanced as signs began to be linked with phonetics early in the 3rd millennium B.C. Thus, Nissen et. al. [1993] note that, "[f]rom the early third millennium B.C., script had factually the potential to faithfully represent spoken language" [p. 117]. And due to the flexibility of the cuneiform script system [Nissen, et. al., 1993, p. 123], it was adaptable by languages other than Sumerian, thus facilitating the spread of writing "to Egypt, Elam, and the Indus Valley" [Schmandt-Besserat, 1992, p. 1].

As noted by Hallo [1992], Schmandt-Besserat's views have been refined to deal with previous challenges, and at least some of the revisions presented in Before Writing will probably be challenged. Before Writing [1992], however, "furnishes to date the most coherent working hypothesis to account for the prehistory of the historic invention known as writing" [Hallo, 1992, p. xi]. According to that account, the ancient clay token accounting system of Mesopotamia played a major role in the development of writing and the invention of numerals. But SchmandtBesserat pushes the claim a bit further by noting that the token accounting system actually ushered in a revolution in human cognitive capabilities: "Tokens and clay tablets functioned as an extension of the human brain to collect, manipulate, store, and retrieve data" [Schmandt-Besserat, 1992, p. 197]. She doesn't elaborate on this claim, but it is a claim that is quite congruent with Donald's [1991] theory of human cognitive evolution. The goal here, accordingly, is to employ Donald's theory to focus attention on the role played by this early accounting system in the establishment of new cognitive pathways that, in turn, paved the way for the cognitive skills used in writing and reading.

ANCIENT ACCOUNTING AND NEW COGNITIVE PATHWAYS

Donald's [1991] account of human cognitive-cultural evolution involves four stages - episodic, mimetic, linguistic (oral mythic culture), and external symbolic storage (theoretic culture). For each new stage, new neural-cognitive pathways were required to enable new types of representations and new types of cognitive processing. The first two transitions - from episodic to mimetic and from mimetic to linguistic - required the biological evolution of new innate neural systems. The third transition - from oral-linguistic to external symbolic storage - was not accompanied by any change in the innate biological brain. It was a transition that relied solely on the plasticity of neural networks. That is, the cognitive changes related to the third transition are changes that rely upon the ability of the brain to literally generate new neural circuitry as a result of our experiences in the world (both physical and socio-cultural). The neuro-cognitive research program that supports this perspective on plasticity is increasingly referred to as "neural constructivism" and two of its most influential proponents are Steven Quartz (Director of the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology) and Terrence Sejnowski (Director of the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory at the SaIk Institute). A technical outline of their view was published as "The neural basis of cognitive development: A constructivist manifesto" [1997]. A more accessible version, which is interwoven with an exploration of implications for understanding human socio-cultural evolution, is available in their book Liars, Lovers, and Heroes: What the New Brain Science Reveals About How We Become Who We Are [2002]. A full review of neural constructivism is beyond the scope of the present paper, but some of the ideas will be introduced below in support of Donald's account of cognitive/cultural evolution.