How Did Humans Become So Creative? A Computational Approach

This paper summarizes efforts to computationally model two transitions in the evolution of human creativity: its origins about two million years ago, and the ‘big bang’ of creativity about 50,000 years ago. Using a computational model of cultural evolution in which neural network based agents evolve ideas for actions through invention and imitation, we tested the hypothesis that human creativity began with onset of the capacity for recursive recall. We compared runs in which agents were limited to single-step actions to runs in which they used recursive recall to chain simple actions into complex ones. Chaining resulted in higher diversity, open-ended novelty, no ceiling on the mean fitness of actions, and greater ability to make use of learning. Using a computational model of portrait painting, we tested the hypothesis that the explosion of creativity in the Middle/Upper Paleolithic was due to onset of contextual focus: the capacity to shift between associative and analytic thought. This resulted in faster convergence on portraits that resembled the sitter, employed painterly techniques, and were rated as preferable. We conclude that recursive recall and contextual focus provide a computationally plausible explanation of how humans evolved the means to transform this planet.