Bernabé Mallo
Doctor en Filosofía por la Universidad del País Vasco (UPV/EHU)
Investigador
en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte. / PhD in
Philosophy – University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)
Researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origins of art.
A review of Merlin Donald's book (1991): Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition
Introduction: the definitive question
How did the human mind acquire its incomparable power? This question, which Merlin Donald considers the "definitive question" of the life sciences, runs through his work Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition, published in 1991 . Donald, professor of psychology and cognitive neuroscience at Queen's University (Canada) and later at Case Western Reserve University, proposes in this book an original theory of the evolution of human cognition that has profoundly influenced neuroanthropology and evolutionary psychology.
Donald's central thesis is that the human mind is not the product of a single evolutionary leap, but of three radical cognitive transitions that have taken place over the last two million years . Each of these transitions has endowed our species with a new system for representing reality and a new form of culture. The result is a hybrid mental architecture, composed of vestiges of earlier biological stages and new external symbolic devices that have radically altered its organisation.
Donald's proposal sits at the intersection of palaeontology, linguistics, anthropology, cognitive science, and, most relevantly, neuropsychology. His approach emphasises cognition as the mediator between brain and culture, in an iterative loop in which changes at one level reverberate through the others. This perspective connects directly with the interests of our research, which seeks to understand art as an emergent phenomenon of the interaction between biology, cognition, and social environment.
The first transition: mimetic culture
The first great cognitive transition, according to Donald, took place with the appearance of Homo erectus, approximately two million years ago . At this time, our ancestors acquired mimetic skill: the capacity to represent knowledge through voluntary motor acts, deliberately and systematically.
Mimesis is, in Donald's words, the "key adaptation" that initiated the human journey . It is not the simple imitation that we also find in other primates, but a much more sophisticated capacity: that of rehearsing and refining body movements, remembering those rehearsals, and reproducing them on demand . This ability allowed early hominins to create pre-linguistic representations of reality through gestures, rituals, dances, and crafts.
Evidence for this capacity is found in the very existence of very ancient stone tools, which cannot be manufactured without the capacity for systematic rehearsal and without the ability to imagine an idealised execution. As Donald notes, Palaeolithic toolmakers learned their skills in the same way modern humans do: by imagining their executions in a social context and representing them as dramatic scenarios.
Mimetic culture has several crucial consequences. First, it profoundly modifies the primate mind, giving rise to what Donald calls "mimetic imagination": the capacity to imagine and modify one's own actions . Second, it transforms culture, creating a shared performance space where roles can be enacted and rehearsed . This culture of performance and stagecraft remains alive today in sport, ritual, and the performing arts.
The second transition: mythic culture
The second cognitive transition coincides with the development of spoken language, probably in the early populations of Homo sapiens . Mimetic capacity served as a preadaptation for this development, providing the foundation for symbolic communication.
With language, humans acquired the capacity to represent reality through words, to construct narratives, to transmit complex knowledge from generation to generation. This transition gave rise to "mythic" culture, characterised by storytelling, the creation of myths, and the construction of shared cosmologies. Mythic culture enabled our species to develop complex pre-literate societies, which still survive in many parts of the world.
The importance of language in this process cannot be overstated. As Donald notes, the properties of brain, culture, and cognition have co-evolved in a "tight iterative loop", where the main event of human evolution has occurred at the cognitive level, mediating change at the anatomical and cultural levels. Language, by enabling the transmission of symbolic information, accelerated this co-evolutionary process.
The third transition: symbolic and technological culture
The third and final transition, which Donald places at the development of writing and external symbolic systems (cuneiform, hieroglyphics, alphabets, mathematics), represented an even more radical change than the previous ones . With the invention of these systems, human biological memory became an inadequate vehicle for storing and processing collective knowledge.
This is the moment when our species began to externalise its memory. External symbols —engraved in stone, written on papyri, printed in books— became a new type of "storage device" that exponentially expanded the mind's capacity to retain and manipulate information . Symbolic literacy, according to Donald, consists of the complex set of skills necessary to interact with this external memory system.
The most profound consequence of this transition is that the architecture of human memory has been altered. We no longer need to store all information in our biological memory; we can delegate part of that load to the external system. This has changed the way the human brain deploys its resources and, with it, the shape of modern culture.
Donald notes that this transition is far from complete. Computer technology intensifies the changes initiated by writing, offering even more extensive capacities for external storage and retrieval of information . His observation, formulated in 1991, is even more relevant in the age of artificial intelligence and virtual reality.
The hybrid mind: vestiges and new devices
One of Donald's most original contributions is his conception of the modern mind as a hybrid structure. We have not abandoned the capacities of earlier stages; we have integrated them. The modern mind contains vestiges of mimetic cognition (in dance, ritual, sport), of linguistic cognition (in language and narrative), and of external symbolic cognition (in reading, writing, and mathematical thinking).
This hybrid architecture is revealed, according to Donald, in the way the mind breaks down after brain injury. The independence of the three representational systems —mimetic, linguistic, and external symbolic— suggests that they are supported by distinct, though interconnected, neural mechanisms.
Furthermore, Donald notes that humans are "symbol-using creatures", but that the symbol is not a fixed mental module. It is the product of an inventive capacity that unfolds in the social sphere . Each of the three systems is based on an inventive capacity, and the products of those capacities —languages, symbols, gestures, rituals, images— continue to be invented and evaluated on the social stage.
Parallels with the S/Y/C model: an integrative reading
Donald's theory and the S/Y/C model of neuronal functioning that forms the core of our research (Mallo, 2023, 2025, 2026a, 2026b) converge on several fundamental points, despite starting from different disciplines and levels of analysis. While Donald traces cognitive evolution through cultural transitions, our proposal focuses on the single function of the nervous system. This convergence is not coincidental: both perspectives point to the same reality, that of a species that has been weaving its mind over time, integrating successive layers of capacities.
The S (Survival) dimension finds its evolutionary correlate in Donald's mimetic culture. The capacity to rehearse and refine actions, to imagine idealised executions, is a tool of adaptation that improves the ability of human groups to obtain resources, process food, make tools, and ultimately survive. Mimetic culture, as Donald notes, is the platform on which all complex performance, including language, has been built . Palaeolithic stone tools, which cannot be manufactured without the capacity for systematic rehearsal, are a testament to this adaptation . The neuronal function we call S is not an abstraction: it is the biological basis that made possible the development of mimetic capacity.
The Y (Symbolon) dimension is illuminated by the second transition, that of language and mythic culture. Language is symbolon par excellence: a system of shared codes that enables mutual recognition, the transmission of meaning, and the construction of symbolic worlds. Mythic culture, with its stories and cosmologies, is a manifestation of the human capacity to create symbols that transcend immediate experience. Palaeolithic cave art, which Donald situates within the context of mythic culture, is an expression of this symbolic capacity. Y is not, therefore, a cultural add-on, but the manifestation of a neuronal function that is activated and developed within the context of culture.
The C (Wholeness) dimension manifests in the third transition, that of external symbolic systems. Writing, mathematics, and external storage systems are tools for closing forms, for creating coherent totalities from fragments of information. The drive toward wholeness, which in art manifests as the need to create finished works, extends here to the entire domain of knowledge. External symbolic systems allow us to construct cognitive totalities that transcend the capacities of individual biological memory. C is, in this sense, the impulse that leads us to complete and close circuits of meaning, whether in a work of art or in a system of knowledge.
Donald does not use our language, but his description of the three cognitive transitions points in the same direction. What he describes as the emergence of new capacities for representation —mimetic, linguistic, and external symbolic— is the manifestation, at the level of culture, of a single neuronal function that unfolds in three concatenated dimensions. The hybrid mind that Donald describes is the result of this concatenation, in which each new layer does not replace the previous one, but integrates and transforms it. This is precisely the principle that underlies the Law of Biological Coherence S/Y/C.
Final considerations: the continuing evolution of the mind
Merlin Donald's book reminds us that the evolution of the human mind is not a concluded process. As he notes in his 1993 Précis, "cognitive evolution is not yet complete: the externalisation of memory has altered the actual architecture of memory within which humans think" . We are in the midst of a third transition that has not yet revealed all its consequences.
The question Donald poses at the end of his work —and which we can make our own— is how this externalisation of memory is changing the way humans think and, with it, the shape of our culture. Digital technology, artificial intelligence, and external storage devices are the direct heirs of the earliest symbolic systems. The modern mind, hybrid and constantly evolving, remains an open project.
As Donald notes, when we study literate adults living in technologically advanced societies, we are observing a subtype that is no more typical of the entire human species than, for example, members of a hunter-gatherer group . Our science, our philosophy, and our art would be shaped differently if they had been based on a different type of culture. Understanding this cognitive diversity, and how it has been shaped over the three great transitions, is essential for understanding who we are and where we are going.
References
Donald, M. (1991). Origins of the modern mind: Three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition. Harvard University Press.
Donald, M. (1993). Précis of Origins of the modern mind: Three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 16(4), 737–748. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032647
Mallo, B. (2023). La construcción neuro-simbólica. Una aproximación al funcionamiento del cerebro desde una perspectiva multidisciplinar [Doctoral thesis, University of the Basque Country - Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea]. ADDI Repository. http://hdl.handle.net/10810/62701
Mallo, B. (2025). Arte y biología: Una aproximación neurofilosófica al origen de la experiencia estética. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0E8Y5WZMK
Mallo, B. (2025). Art and biology: A neurophilosophical approach to the origin of aesthetic experience. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0E8Y6C2XN
Mallo, B. (2026a). De la filosofía quirúrgica a la ley de coherencia biológica S/Y/C: Hacia una investigación sobre el origen del arte en la especie Homo. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57196
Mallo, B. (2026a). De la filosofía quirúrgica a la ley de coherencia biológica S/Y/C: Hacia una investigación sobre el origen del arte en la especie Homo [Kindle edition]. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYGTJD5C
Mallo, B. (2026b). From surgical philosophy to the law of biological coherence S/Y/C: Toward a study of the origin of art in the Homo lineage. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57197
Autor / Author
Bernabé Mallo
Doctor en Filosofía – Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
Investigador independiente en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte.
Bernabé Mallo
PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
Independent researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origin of art.
Enlaces / Links
Página de autor Amazon / Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9002-9728
Plataforma EHUenRed / Link EHUenRed: https://www.ehu.eus/es/web/masterrak-eta-graduondokoak/red-latinoamericana-de-posgrados
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@neuroideas815
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBsf6OZ482NjST6QA-hvYtQ
Publicaciones y proyectos en desarrollo / Publications and projects:
https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
https://ehuenred.theglocal.network/ideas/el-origen-del-arte-en-el-cerebro-de-makapansgat-al-moma-del-primate-al-sapiens