Abstract

Although humans are not unique in their ability to recognize themselves in mirrors, the acquisition of a fully-developed human sense of self presumably had to await the attainment, in one hominid lineage, of the symbolic consciousness that allows internalized mental self-representation. While indicating an episodic increase in the complexity of hominid interactions with the outside world over the last 2.5 million years, behavioral proxies preserved in the tangible archaeological record suggest that this cognitive status was achieved only subsequent to the emergence of "Homo sapiens" as a recognizable anatomical entity.