Evolution and humans: caves and jewelry (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, May 10, 2018, 18:14 (2387 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID’s comment: More evidence of little use of our big brain for a very long time after its arrival.My interpretation is it took time to learn to use it.

dhw: To repeat: As with all stages of human evolution, there were long periods of stasis once the brain had expanded. Not a matter of “learning to use the new brain”. What is being learned if there has been no progress? It needs geniuses to come up with new ideas, or major changes in the environment to either necessitate new ways of thinking or provide new opportunities.

At each stage, whether in small groups like hunter-gatherer, or larger settlements as farming appeared, humans learned to depend upon each other and different people took different cooperative roles to play. But it still took 305,000 years for this to happen, and all the while before farming, the brain sat in survival mode. Then the use of the brain exploded in exponential terms. It was waiting there for us to use. There is no evidence of prior conceptual pressure causing enlargement, for the new concepts from habilis to sapiens were not very different 315,000 years ago. Habilis survival, sapiens survival. No evidence of thinking pressure to enlarge.