Human evolution; possibly we first appeared earlier (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, February 01, 2018, 18:01 (2487 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID’s comment: H. sapiens are only as old as the oldest fossil we can find, and those fossils are few and far between. We still don't know when we appeared in our earliest form. The article concentrates on the arguments about the significance of the tools. But it raises the issue of how long we had a big complex brain and didn't use it much. Under the dhw theory that concepts had to be implemented and that necessity 'pushed' the appearance of a larger, more complex brain, one must wonder why it took so long to really use it. What happened to the 'push'.

dhw: “Necessity” is a misleading term. My hypothesis is that at different stages of evolution, new concepts exceeded the implemental capacity of existing brains, and so the process of implementation resulted in expansion (greater capacity), until the brain reached optimum size in sapiens. There is no mystery about why larger-brained erectus hung around for one or two million years not making many (if any) advances,

My point is the erectus brain was incapable of any further advances than the artifacts produced and living in caves, hunting and picking fruit and nuts. dhw implies just the same: without implementation from a larger brain, nothing further could happen.
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dhw:It is you who have created a mystery because of your insistence that your God is in control and his sole purpose was to produce the brain of sapiens. So why all these other pre-sapiens brains and the millions and millions of years before he came up with the one he wanted?

Because it is obvious from history God preferred to evolve progress in evolution.

dhw: Once you take off your anthroblinkers and accept the (theistic) alternative that your God set up the initial mechanism whereby organisms autonomously made their own evolutionary way, you have a clear explanation for the ever changing bush and all the “gaps”.

The complexity of the biochemistry of living organisms is well beyond that approach. Intense design is required to create the emergence of life from lifeless organic molecules, from which, when their function is coordinated properly, actual life emerges. It is this concept that separates your thinking from mine, which comes from my training in biochemistry.