Human socio-technical evolution through the lens of an abstracted-wheel experiment: A critical look at a micro-society laboratory study

Micro-society experimental setups are increasingly used to infer aspects of human behavioural evolution. A key part of human society today is our dependence on, and use of, technology–whether simple (such as a knife) or complex (such as the technology that underpins AI). Previously, two groups of researchers used an abstracted-wheel experiment to explore the evolution of human technical behaviour, reaching fundamentally different outcomes. Whereas one group saw their results as indicating social learning only (void of causal understanding), the other inferred non-social technical reasoning as part of human technical behaviour. Here we report on the third generation of the micro-society abstracted-wheel experiment. We argue that causal reasoning is inseparable from both social learning and technical reasoning, and that these traits probably co-evolved into the current human sociotechnical niche. Based on our outcomes, we present a critical assessment of what this experiment may (or may not) reveal about the evolution of human technical behaviour. We show that the abstracted-wheel experiment reflects behavioural output only, instead of testing for cognition. It is therefore limited in its ability to inform on aspects of human cognitive evolution, but it can provide useful insights into the interrelatedness of social learning, technical reasoning, and causal reasoning. Such a co-evolutionary insight has the potential to inform on aspects of human socio-technical evolution throughout the Pleistocene.