Abstract

This paper proposes a paleoanthropological account of evolutionary and cultural convergence grounded in structural constraint rather than stochastic contingency. Challenging the Gouldian thesis of radical contingency, the study examines recurrent hominin traits-bipedalism, manual precision, encephalization, and the emergence of symbolic behavior-as evidence that evolutionary trajectories are channeled through constrained morphospaces within adaptive landscapes. Parallel convergences in lithic technologies, mortuary practice, and symbolic cognition across Neanderthal, Denisovan, and Homo floresiensis lineages suggest that cultural forms, no less than anatomical ones, emerge within definable cognitive and ecological basins of attraction. Drawing on the convergentist framework of Simon Conway Morris and the theoretical morphospace modelling of George McGhee, the paper argues that hominin evolution reflects the progressive navigation of predetermined geometric and functional archetypes embedded in the fabric of biological possibility. DNA is reframed not as an open generator of unlimited novelty but as a regulatory interface reflecting deeper structural symmetries that prefigure viable biological and cultural forms. Engaging Teilhard de Chardin’s Omega Point and Geerhardus Vos’s biblical theology alongside fossil and archaeological evidence, the study interprets the hominin lineage as structured recurrence rather than historical accident-a discovery of forms that were, in a meaningful sense, already there..

Keywords:Convergent evolution; Hominin encephalization; Morphospace constraint; Palaeolithic Symbolic cognition; Neanderthal material culture; Teleological structuralism