SCIENCE sciencemag.org 10 JULY 2020 • VOL 369 ISSUE 6500 149
T
he other day, I pulled into a gas sta-
tion and swung around the pumps
to reach my gas fill. After refueling, I
turned back onto the road and drove
some distance before realizing that I
had turned the wrong way. Was I be-
ing inattentive, or do I just have a poor sense
of direction? Or was this perhaps indicative
of a larger problem? Have we replaced in-
stinct with culture and, lacking local knowl-
edge, had I lost my bearings? Or could it be
that somewhere in my brain, there lurks a
navigational capacity that has been dulled
but could be revived? In his new book, From
Here to There, Michael Bond guides readers
through the neurological research
and anecdotal tales that show
how the brain supplies the equip-
ment upon which our species has
built its wayfinding skills.
Bond begins by accepting the
fallacious characterization of
contemporary hunter-gatherers
as having “changed little” and
thus being identical in their
navigational habits to Paleo-
lithic hominins. If, as he argues
throughout the rest of the book,
our ability to find our way is more learned
than instinctual, his failure to attrib ute any
history or cultural distinctiveness to such
peoples starts us in the wrong direction.
Back on the right path, Bond reviews the
science of wayfinding with graceful accounts
of current research. Neuroscientists have
demonstrated that there are distinct cells in
the brains of rats that are activated to estab-
lish place, to mark position, to orient with
reference to boundaries, and to capture a
heads-up direction. Humans, however, tend
to align themselves not so much with cardi-
nal markers as with landmarks, giving prom-
inence, at times, to a mental map that is built
upon one’s relation to particular sightings.
Research has shown that the human brain’s
entorhinal cortex appears to feed this infor-
mation to the hippocampus, although the
author acknowledges that how these cells in-
teract with one another remains mysterious.Wayfinding places a premium on memory,
and Bond cites many examples of the differ-
ent personal and cultural modes through
which such recall is inscribed. From the
Australian aborigines who can find their
way through seemingly featureless terrain
to the Inuit who cross trackless oceans of
ice, research indicates that these abilities
come not simply from an innate capacity
to organize space but by way of the learned
process of noting our surroundings and tak-
ing advantage of our cognitive equipment.
As one researcher put it, the hippocampus
helps us navigate life, not just space.
Bond is especially good at confronting
stereotypes. Studies, he writes, do show
that men are marginally better at spatial
navigation than women, but with
proper encouragement and op-
portunity the differences evapo-
rate. Similarly, he challenges the
idea that some people are simply
better endowed with wayfind-
ing abilities than others, arguing
instead that even orienteering
champions, Polynesian seafarers,
and phenomenal navigators ex-
cel primarily through trained at-
tentiveness and experience. Not
surprisingly, Bond cites approv-
ingly the wayfarer’s admonition that you
should “trust your skills, not your instinct.”
But what happens when those skills are
severely attenuated? Bond rues the fact that
British children rarely explore away from
home anymore, thus muffling the biologi-
cal ability to find their way. So, too, do the
80,000 men kept in solitary confinement in
U.S. prisons often lose their sense of direc-
tion. Meanwhile sufferers of Alzheimer’s dis-
ease, who also lose spatial control, may, like
Bond’s grandmother, express their confusion
with the plaintive query “Am I here?” He de-
scribes the cases of lost individuals who make
the mistake of racing to find a way out rather
than staying put and awaiting rescue: As he
notes, “no one gets smarter under stress.”
Bond writes in an easygoing, chatty style,
free of jargon and strained analogies. He
concludes that, by setting aside our GPS de-
vices, by redesigning parts of our cities and
play areas, and sometimes just by letting
ourselves get lost, we can indeed revivify our
ability to find our way, to the benefit of our
inner world no less than the outer one. j
10.1126/science.abd1847NAVIGATIONChanging course
Navigational skills require nurturing, lest we lose our way
The reviewer is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor
Emeritus of Anthropology at Princeton University, Princeton,
NJ, USA, and adjunct professor emeritus at Columbia Law
School, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
Email: [email protected]By Lawrence RosenFrom Here to There
Michael Bond
Belknap Press, 2020.
304 pp.both captured attitudes circulating about pa-
leoart in the late 2000s and, [in] arguing for
greater originality and bolder speculation in
paleoartworks, set a clear course that inspired
a lot of debate and discussion.”
Whereas previous generations attempted to
eliminate overt speculation about long-dead
species, Witton, like many other contempo-
rary practitioners, embraces it: “There are
very few aspects of extinct animal anatomy
that we can’t say something intelligent about.
A big new paper can spark a wave of new art-
work and dissection among the paleoart com-
munity, and feedback and development of dif-
ferent interpretations can be rapid.”
That newfound dynamism seems to have
helped paleoart become more popular as an
artistic genre. “Paleoart was not considered
‘proper’ art, unlike classic botanical and zoo-
logical painting,” van Gelder explains. “But
when Zoë Lescaze published her book Paleoart
in 2017, with magnificent, high-quality repro-
ductions, it became possible to convince my
colleagues that we were dealing with a genre
that possessed genuine artistic merit” ( 5 ).
Paleontologists use art not only to popular-
ize their science but also to gain insights into
their work that can be difficult to achieve us-
ing other means. “I’m definitely inspired by
depictions of extinct animals that include
‘real’ behavior, in other words, not just roar-
ing and eating, but grooming, display, and
other natural things all animals get up to,”
notes University of Oxford paleontologist Elsa
Panciroli. “It makes me wonder if those behav-
iors are likely—or even possible—and how I
might scientifically approach finding out.”
The genre still has some hurdles to tackle,
including the fact that many museums lack
budgets for commissioning paleoart. This has
led to a constant recycling of older images, re-
inforcing the genre as both scientifically and
artistically dated. But change is under way.
“There’s so much more discussion and inter-
action than there used to be. None of us re-
ally work in isolation anymore,” says Witton.
“Social media and the increase in online pub-
lishing have allowed people interested in pa-
leoart—the artists themselves, their followers,
paleontologists—to connect in ways we were
unable to a decade or so ago.” j
REFERENCES AND NOTES
- Saurier – Die Erfindung der Urzeit [Saurians – The Invention
of Prehistoric Times], Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein Gotha,
Gotha, Germany, 6 February 2021 to 22 August 2021. - Paläo-Art. Von Jugenstil bis in die Moderne [Paleo-Art.
From Art Nouveau to Modernism], Paläontologisches
Museum München, München, Germany, 5 September
2019 to 30 June 2020. - Dinomakers, Teylers Museum, Haarlem, Netherlands, 31
January 2020 to 23 August 2020. - J. Conway, C. M. Kosemen, D. Naish, All Yesterdays: Unique
and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric
Animals (Irregular Books, 2012). - Z. Lescaze, Paleoart: Visions of the Prehistoric Past
(Taschen, 2017).
10.1126/science.abd3642
INSIGHTS