Building upon the development of individual tools, mankind replaced and augmented the more simple instruments with more complex mechanisms. Recently, the wheel and axle formed one of the mechanisms that enhanced the ability to move materials more easily; perhaps to enable living in more defensible locations. Also, as social organization improved, it became plausible to integrate a variety of mechanisms into systems; systems to provide offensive capabilities, defensive capabilities or to enhance the provision of food and water both to enhance security and to provide for physiological needs.

Larger and more complex groups gave rise not only to enhanced systems, with their constituent mechanisms, but to sub-groups responsible for their use. The rise of armies and the construction of forts are examples of such agencies aimed at the safety and security of the group. Quite obviously, agencies aimed at the meeting of physiological needs offered great benefit to the group as well. Finally, there arose the concept of administration of the social and physical environments in order to mitigate threats and to ensure safety and security by proactive measures of provision and prevention, rather than merely through reactive measures.

Next in the ascending hierarchy of stimuli is that of belonging. Metaphorically, we represent the individual or family response to this stimulus with grooming. The emphasis is placed on the concept of basic connection between members of the group. This experience has been described by Robin Dunbar in Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language. At the level of family, the connection is physiologically based before subsequently becoming cognitively based. For the larger familial groups, the connection can be represented by gossip, a form of grooming that doesn’t require immediate physical contact.

At the level of the tribe, a larger group is involved and a more extensive belonging must ensue, that afforded by the propagation of societal links through imitation, or rather mimesis, as we want to express the cognitive aspects of the experience. For example, cohesion within the extended group can be enhanced through reenactment of the group’s beginning and continuing, as described by René Girard in Violence and the Sacred. For even larger groups, this elaboration rigidifies in its structured form; that represented by ritual, a process expressed by Victor Turner in The Anthropology of Performance. Within the much extended group, the story becomes more formal and, in current societies, has given rise to law.

Belonging gives rise to esteem. Esteem is based upon a commonly shared sense of value and a representation of self-worth within that domain. While grooming directs meaning in the context of physical wealth, barter represents a progression of the concepts of values as a more abstract characteristic. The shell signifies a representation of direct, immediate value. The bulla represents an object of exchange, conveying the concept of counting discrete values and propagating them over distance. Gold is illustrative of the arriving at an absolute representation indicative of different value systems, with the prospect that some rate of exchange can or could be established among them. Finally, we arrive at the concept of commerce, deriving from many domains comprising many value systems in a single infrastructure. Thus, we see the range of esteem: from the basic concepts of just living, for example a good provider, to eminence in the broader reaches of social systems, for example a great statesman.

Beyond the needs of esteem, the cognitive appetite seeks for a more conscious fulfillment. At the most basic level, cognition derives from the display of purpose, effected through the individual’s sensori-motor system. The ability to develop concepts based on the sensori-motor system and then to extend those concepts through metaphor is central to the human cognitive system, as shown by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in Metaphors We Live By. Building upon metaphorical understanding, the cognitive facility is further extended through the mechanism of blending; the

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