Back to brain expansion (Humans)

by dhw, Sunday, October 25, 2020, 13:31 (1489 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You are using the Darwinian interpretations in the articles. Naturally they would say the environmental changes provoked the larger brain. The bold of 320,000 years ago marks a beginning, not an exact driving force, of new products, just at the exact time H sapiens new big brain suddenly appeared according to our fossil record at this time. I'll stick with God as speciating the big brain.

dhw: You had told us there were no new requirements to justify my proposal that the effort to meet new requirements caused brain expansion. Now we learn that there were multiple new requirements. We needn’t go over the rest of the discussion. I am simply pointing out that your major objection to my theory has been removed.

DAVID: Not removed. The timing of events and brain expansion is not clear. A chicken and egg problem. The timing simply shows the Big Brain is strictly related to the new events. I view the responses by sapiens as a result of better thinking capacity. God drives evolution not nature.

dhw: Yes, we’ve been over all that. But your main objection to my argument that meeting new requirements triggered the expansion of the brain was that we did not know of any new requirements that took place when our brains expanded to their present size. Apparently there were lots of new requirements, and although that does not change your belief that God expanded brains in anticipation of them, it does remove your main objection to my own proposal.

DAVID: There are always changing conditions. Forcing changes is pure Darwinism I don't accept. Apes did continue to live under each new change and are still apes. Doesn't explain why we were so unusually changed.

Yes, yes, we’ve been through all that. I proposed that brains expanded when they no longer had enough cells to meet new requirements, whereupon you told us that there were new artefacts found among Moroccan fossils from 315,000, and there were no known new requirements. We now know that in different parts of Africa there WERE new artefacts and new requirements. That’s it. That is the only new development here. We don’t need to go through all the pros and cons of your theory and mine. This particular objection of yours has been squashed by the new discoveries, but you will continue to argue that God operated on the brains in anticipation of new requirements, and I will continue to propose that the brain expanded because of the effort to meet new requirements. We do not need to repeat the rest of the discussion, which has been covered over and over again over the last few months.

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QUOTE: "'It was probably through very clever empirical observation that the ancient Maya saw this particular material was associated with clean water and made some effort to carry it back," Dunning said."

DAVID: Stone-age sapiens could think with their big brain, no matter where they were and in what climate they lived. Europe and China were not always first.

Agreed. Just to set the record straight: No one could possibly argue that once sapiens had his big brain, he was able to meet all sorts of new requirements, whether of his own making or forced upon him. The brain stopped expanding and complexified instead. The controversy is limited to what caused the expansion in the first place.