Stibbard-Hawkes makes a timely contribution to an ongoing debate in hunter-gatherer archaeology. He correctly identifies symbolism as an emergent consensus among archaeologists to identify behavioural modernity in a cognitive sense and outlines the inferential difficulties of linking material culture to cognitive capabilities, to which he adds a quantitative account on the likelihood of preservation of symbolic artefacts from three different hunter-gatherer groups.

This contribution comes at a time when many archaeologists have seemingly settled for symbolism as the benchmark of behavioural modernity in a cognitive sense, but the problem extends beyond matters of preservation because of another dimension to which behavioural modernity is intricately linked: The question of when humans became “like us” (Conard, Reference Conard2008, Reference Conard2010; Wadley, Reference Wadley2013). Decades of debate (Ames, Riel-Salvatore, & Collins, Reference Ames, Riel-Salvatore and Collins2013; Henshilwood & Marean, Reference Henshilwood and Marean2003; McBrearty & Brooks, Reference McBrearty and Brooks2000; Mellars, Reference Mellars1989; Nowell, Reference Nowell2010; Scerri & Will, Reference Scerri and Will2023; Shea, Reference Shea1998, Reference Shea2011; Zilhão, Reference Zilhão2007) have tried to refine the theoretical connection between a variety of technologies and behaviours and how these can function as indicators of behavioural modernity. In theory, these efforts reconceptualized behavioural modernity in a way that opened the possibility for hominins other than Homo sapiens to be recognized as behaviourally modern as well. However, the very question of what makes us different from other hominins is based on a presumed (genetic) purity concept (Keel, Reference Keel2017) which almost automatically creates a dichotomous hierarchy between “archaic” and “modern” because we are the only hominin species remaining (Peeters & Zwart, Reference Peeters and Zwart2020). This is exemplified in the way symbolic evidence in Neanderthals is discussed.

More often than not, evidence for symbolic behaviour in hominins other than Homo sapiens, especially in Neanderthals, is acknowledged but at the same time discounted as not rich enough to qualify them as “fully modern.” This is partly due to a lack of theoretical engagement with semiotic theory (see also Wynn, Overmann, & Coolidge, Reference Wynn, Overmann and Coolidge2016), but also due to double standards in interpretation where, for example, personal adornments count as symbolic evidence in Homo sapiens, but they do not for Neanderthals (Botha, Reference Botha2008, Reference Botha2010; Wynn et al., Reference Wynn, Overmann and Coolidge2016). Operating in such a theoretical void also leads to overreaching interpretations of discoveries (e.g., Baquedano et al., Reference Baquedano, Arsuaga, Pérez-González, Laplana, Márquez, Huguet and Higham2023), making evidence for Neanderthal symbolic behaviour easy to dismiss. We are almost reminded of the well-known joke that archaeologists will interpret anything of which they do not know the function as “ritual.” In Palaeolithic archaeology it seems that anything that has no subsistence-related function will qualify as symbolic. This practice does little to overcome the historic misconceptions about Neanderthals that were based on a “merciless” mischaracterization rooted in the race science of the nineteenth and early twentieth century (Madison, Reference Madison2020, Reference Madison2021). Putting aside the complex theoretical underpinnings of recognizing symbolism for the sake of argument, even one artefact of symbolic nature in the archaeological sense would prove Neanderthals’ cognitive ability to produce them. The fact that they manufactured pendants (e.g., d'Errico et al., Reference d'Errico, Vanhaeren, Barton, Bouzouggar, Mienis, Richter and Lozouet2009; Zilhão et al., Reference Zilhão, Angelucci, Badal-García, d'Errico, Daniel, Dayet and Montes-Bernárdez2010) and buried their dead (e.g., Stiner, Reference Stiner2017), should lead us to this conclusion. We certainly rely on symbolism more than any other species we know of today and this seems not to be the simple result of preservation (Kelly, Mackie, & Kandel, Reference Kelly, Mackie and Kandel2023). However, as far as cognitive capacity is concerned, the frequency of symbolic artefacts should not matter as a single one would establish the capacity to produce them. Stibbard-Hawkes’ analysis of living populations’ symbolic lives and their low chances of being recognized as fully modern by archaeological standards powerfully shows that putting all our inferential eggs into one (symbolic) basket is not a viable way forward.

In fact, any generalized threshold for what counts as modern, or in other words, what it takes to be human, will exclude some populations on a variety of grounds highlighted by Stibbard-Hawkes. Since there is no one answer to the question of what it means to be human, the assumption that we will eventually find the one difference between us and not us (e.g., Meneganzin & Currie, Reference Meneganzin and Currie2022) will always lead to the constant arbitrary moving of the goal posts, which characterized much of the debate on behavioural modernity in the past (see, e.g., the discussion in Blessing, Reference Blessing2023).

The suggested solutions for this problem range from recognizing Neanderthals and Homo sapiens as archaeologically indistinguishable (Villa & Roebroeks, Reference Villa and Roebroeks2014; but see Wynn et al., Reference Wynn, Overmann and Coolidge2016), to changing the terminology (e.g., Shea, Reference Shea2011; Wadley, Reference Wadley2013) – as also suggested by Stibbard-Hawkes – or abandoning the concept altogether (Shea, Reference Shea2011). Changing the terminology, be it cultural complexity or behavioural variability for instance, will suffer from similar inferential issues as behavioural modernity does (e.g., Conard, Reference Conard2011; Nowell, Reference Nowell2011), though it might provide us with a less loaded term. Even though Stibbard-Hawkes throws into question the link between material culture and cognition, abandoning the question of what makes or made us human should not be the conclusion we reach here and is not what he calls for. Some recent publications from the field of genome-wide association studies, or the continued use of national IQs, which I will not honour with a citation here, show that race science is, sadly, alive and well and therefore what is at stake. Thus, retreating from this field of research would mean to leave the playing field – once more – to racist misconceptions about human evolution and to perpetuate the cycle of marginalization of non-western lifestyles.

What we need instead is a theoretical reconceptualization that honestly allows for other species to be recognized as behaviourally modern (or whichever term one might prefer). Conflating the question of what it means to be human and when humans became like us presupposes that only we can be human. A continuation of this conflation will always lead to theoretical shortcomings and unbridgeable inferential gaps because there is no one way to be human. It also shows that, despite all notions to the contrary, archaeology was never truly ready to divorce biological and behavioural modernity. It is here, where an honest reconceptualization of behavioural modernity must begin.