On a creativity that is mundane, cooperative, and material

Whether technological or artistic, creativity is often considered exceptional, individual, and brain-bound. This article looks at three tools that do not fit easily within this definition: stone tools, which arguably made us what we are as a species, and numbers and writing, which are widely considered our greatest achievements as a species. These tools were cumulative outcomes of a creativity that is mundane, cooperative, and material. We briefly examine how these three systems emerged and became more elaborate, and the effects this process had on behaviors, brains, and the material forms themselves. Then, because numbers elaborate differently than stone tools or writing, we consider how resources and constraints work together to systematize its elaboration cross-culturally. The idea of “technological distance” is used to analyze societal choice in responding to limitations in finger-counting. We conclude by thinking about the role of materiality in this slow and incremental but ultimately humanizing process.