Re: is our brain part of evolution?

Paul Myers (myers@netaxs.com)
Sun, 13 Oct 1996 17:10:21 -0400

In article <326138f2.29153039@news.netvision.net.il>, itay@netvision.net.il
(ITAY) wrote:

> Our brain as it is today could not (at least that iswhat i think)
> could not become as comlex as it is just of evolution, why?
> if we watch the western culther, but mostly african or indian, we
> can well see that the brain was used in last 10000-2000 years only
> for simple tasks, i mean not by all people but by most of them,
> so how come that the evuolution made a brain as big as that to become
> so big, if only 10%-30% were used ?
> so either our brain is a freak of nature, or a made by god? or maby we
> werent part of the evolution and have been put here by other?
> is that a stupid theroy? i realy want to know...
>

It's a pretty stupid theory.

Where did you ever get the idea that peoples in African/Indian cultures
were engaged in only simple tasks? Art, religion, social interactions,
etc., are all very sophisticated activities in which these so-called
simple people were deeply involved. If you are voicing the ignorantly
narrow and predominantly Western opinion that only technological
activities count, I'm afraid that the West only developed an obvious
technological lead in _some_ fields in the last few hundred years. Prior
to the Industrial Revolution, European cultures were in many ways backward
relative to some Asian and African peoples.

In _all_ human cultures throughout history, individuals have used the
full capacity of their brains -- this 10-30% figure is nonsense. Of course,
some individuals have also made minimal use of their intellectual capacity,
but that is not something restricted to what you, in a bit of bigoted
provincialism, consider to be a "simple" culture. I think a Khoisan tribesman
telling stories he learned from his grandfather is exercising considerably
more intelligence than the "sophisticated" American sitting around watching
football on TV.

-- 

Paul Myers                               Department of Biology

myers@netaxs.com                         Temple University

http://fishnet.bio.temple.edu/           Philadelphia, PA 19122