The Cognitive Foundations of Ritual Monumentality: Multicausal Pathways to the Neolithic in Southwest Asia

Abstract

This article reconceptualizes the Neolithic transformation in Southwest Asia as a cumulative and recursive process shaped by the interplay of symbolic cognition, ecological thresholds, ritual innovation, and demographic intensification. Departing from linear or monocausal models, it proposes that the emergence of agriculture, sedentism, and monumentality resulted not from discrete breakthroughs but from feedback loops between communication, cooperation, and cosmology. Drawing on recent archeological evidence from sites such as Göbekli Tepe, Körtik Tepe, WF16, and Jericho, as well as theoretical insights from cognitive evolution and ritual theory, the paper argues that symbolic institutions—ritual, architecture, and myth—were not consequences of surplus, but preconditions for its development. It distinguishes between ancient symbolic potential and the formalization of shared meaning into durable, transmittable cultural systems. Rather than treating Göbekli Tepe as an anomaly, the study situates it within a broader regional network of symbolic convergence and architectural innovation, tracing how ritual ecologies stabilized early social complexity. The article concludes by offering a multicausal, testable framework for understanding the Neolithic as a transformation in relations—between humans, environments, and shared representations.