Introduction: toward a historical/anthropological approach in neuropsychology.

Anthropology has striven to adequately understand what human living conditions were like 10000, 20000 or 100 000 years ago. Stone Age (usually divided into the Old Stone or Paleolithic Age, and New Stone or Neolithic Age) extended until some 6000-7000 years ago (Hours, 1982). Agriculture appeared some 10 000 years ago; the first cities some 6000 years ago; the first civilizations about 5000 years ago; writing has only five or six thousand years' history; and arithmetical abilities, about 6000 years (Childe, 1936; Sampson, 1985). However, contemporary man (Homo sapiens sapiens) has lived on earth for at least 50000 years (and perhaps, according to current evidence, for 100000 years). We can state with a certain level of security that during this time his brain structural changes have been minimal (Harris, 1983; Kochetkova, 1973). Human brain adaptation was accomplished to survive more appropriately in Stone Age living conditions (existing for about 90% of this time span on earth) than in those conditions existing today. Only by starting with an analysis of these original conditions, can we understand the specific characteristics and idiosyncracies of human brain adaptation. It would seem reasonable for any neuroscien-tist to raise the question: to process what type of information did the human brain become adapted for? And consequently, which are the basic cognitive abilities of humans? The search for universal characteristics has guided an important proportion of the anthropological and linguistic activity during the last decades. Anthropology and linguistics have utilized three different approaches, attempting to reconstruct the way of life and the languages spoken by prehistoric man. (1) Archeological findings are used as elements to reconstruct prehistoric ways of life. (2) Comparing existing human groups, it is possible to find some common social, behavioral, and linguistic characteristics. These common characteristics most likely already existed in prehistoric times, and are probably the result of specific human biological adaptation. Several thousands of different cultures have been described (Ber-natzik, 1957), and contemporary man speaks over 3500 different languages (Swadesh, 1967). Comparing all these cultures and all these languages, some universal characteristics can be discovered (Greenberg, 1978; Wilson, 1975). (3) Taking existing cultures and/or living languages, similar in specific parameters to prehistoric cultures and/or languages, it is possible to propose how prehistoric living forms and language characteristics could have been with regard to that particular parameter. The validity of this last approach is highly questionable, but it is still used due …