Mother Schema, Obstetric Dilemma, and the Origin of Behavioral Modernity.
Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) December 6, 2019 Richard Parncutt 8 citations
A speculative theory proposes that uniquely human behaviors such as language, religion, and music emerged around 100,000 years ago, rooted in the mother-infant relationship. The mother schema, a multimodal representation of the carer from the fetal/infant perspective, organizes prenatal stimuli like voice and heartbeat, fostering fearless trust. Bipedalism and encephalization led to earlier births and more fragile infants, driving cognitive advances in communication and manipulation of carers. Later, mother schema emotions were triggered in ritual settings by repetitive sounds, subdued light, and other sensory cues, explaining cross-cultural commonalities in altered states and spiritual beings. Reflective consciousness arose as infant-mother dyads explored intentionality and carers predicted accidents. Evidence is circumstantial; falsification is problematic.