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is that God created everything. Another is evolution. Evolutionalists believe that there was a "big bang" which brought forth everything. In this paper, I'm going
Submitted by ariel42566 on January 24, 2006
Category: Science
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THE BIG BANG OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
The hominid brain grew at an accelerating pace until it reached its present size of 1500cc about 200,000 years ago. Yet uniquely human abilities such the invention of highly sophisticated "standardized" multi- part tools, tailored clothes, art, religious belief and perhaps even language are thought to have emerged quite rapidly around 40,000 years ago a sudden explosion of human mental abilities and culture that is sometimes called the "big bang." If the brain reached its full human potential or at least size 200,000 years ago why did it remain idle for 150,000 years? Most scholars are convinced that the big bang occurred because of some unknown genetic change in brain structure. For instance, the archeologist Steve Mithen has just written a book in which he claims that before the big bang there were three different brain modules in the human brain that were specialized for "social or machiavellian intelligence", for "mechanical intelligence" or tool use, and for "natural history" (a propensity to classify). These three modules remained isolated from each other but around 50,000 years ago some genetic change in the brain suddenly allowed them to communicate with each other, resulting in the enormous flexibility and versatility of human consciousness.
I disagree with Mithen ingenious suggestion and offer a very different solution to the problem. (This is not incompatible with Mithen's view but its a different idea). I suggest that the so-called big bang occurred because certain critical environmental triggers acted on a brain that had already become big for some other reason and was therefore "pre-adapted" for those cultural innovations that make us uniquely human. (One of the key pre adaptations being mirror neurons.) Inventions like tool use, art, math and even aspects of language may have been invented "accidentally" in one place and then spread very quickly given the human brain's amazing...
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