The New Scientist traces the development of the brain from the capacity of “all living cells [to] generate an electrical potential across their membranes by pumping out ions.” Nerves developed as channels to carry signals. At first these were arranged in a simple network, but then they began to be grouped together, and the evolution of the brain followed.
That was back when the first life forms were developing. Later, mammals and within them primates were well-endowed with brains that can perform quite remarkably, given the beginnings.
We struck it lucky amongst the primates about 2.5 million years ago when our jaws became little slacker, reducing the power of our bite. This allowed the brain cavity to expand.
In other primates, the “bite” muscle exerts a strong force across the whole of the skull, constraining its growth.
“In our forebears, this muscle was weakened by a single mutation, perhaps opening the way for the skull to expand. This mutation occurred around the same time as the first hominids with weaker jaws and bigger skulls and brains appeared (Nature, vol 428, p 415)”.
Learning to use tools, to hunt and to cook may have allowed us to reduce the size of our gut and devote more resources to a bigger brain. Language skills (presumably a more flexible mandible facilitated speech) and social co-operation allowed us to become even more proficient at adapting to a variety of environments, but these activities themselves require considerable brain capacity.
However, it is not possible to identify a simple narrative to explain how we became modern brainy beings. The article gets it about right, I think:
The overall picture is one of a virtuous cycle involving our diet, culture, technology, social relationships and genes. It led to the modern human brain coming into existence in Africa by about 200,000 years ago.
The brain requires a lot of energy burning about 20% of what we eat at the rate of 15 watts. We may be somewhere near the limit of what is practicable. Speeding up our neurons 10-fold would require us to burn energy at the rate of Usain Bolt’s legs running the 100 metres.
It’s a bit of a shocker that our brains have shrunk by 3 to 4% in the last 10,000 to 15,000 years. Why this should be, the article gives no help. Perhaps in organised societies our roles become more specialised. Perhaps nutritional standards fell with the development of agriculture. I refuse to believe that it is because we have clever leaders to do our thinking for us. Wikipedia tells us the shrink has been going on for 28,000 years, so it pre-dates agriculture.
Every woman can bear witness that bigger brains are not necessarily better. And it seems that we are becoming cleverer, at least according to IQ tests. This phenomenon is known as the Flynn effect. The article suggests healthcare and education as the causes. I’d suspect nutrition and a more complex and stimulating environment.
That’s only important if you place a great deal of store on “intelligence” as measured by IQ tests, which I don’t. I was more interested in the opening statement which compared the Chauvet Venus (scroll down) of 30,000 years ago with Picasso’s Minotaur Assaulting Girl. We’ve just seen Werner Herzog’s excellent 3D film Cave of Forgotten Dreams. The “Venus” figure is one of the less well-realised works.
The question for me was this. In the evolutionary development of the brain, how far back does artistic capability go? I have no expertise in this field but a bit of googling reveals that ochre used for paint goes back possibly 60,000 years in Australia, while here and here artistic endeavour seems to precede the emergence of Homo Sapiens. So too or even more so, I would venture, with song, music and dancing.
I suspect that artistic expression evolved as we evolved, that it is all mixed up in that virtuous cycle which produced our brain. I’d suggest it is a fundamental part of us, not an effusion that appeared late in the day around 30,000 years ago as you sometimes hear.
“”"It’s a bit of a shocker that our brains have shrunk by 3 to 4% in the last 10,000 to 15,000 years.”"”
And alcohol was first invented……………..
Brian: I see artistic endeavor in what bower birds do. There is enough variation to suggest individual thought about a general scheme for the species.
As we do more and more science we find that some animals do what we used to thing was specific to humans.
John D, I wondered whether some animal mating routines and displays involve an aesthetic sense.
John D and Brian, I had exactly the same thoughts. The claiming and marking of territory is also a primal drive that can give rise to artistic expression. I think that a lot of the answers are in the organisation of the brain.
The difference between homo sapiens and a bowerbird is that bowerbirds have been doing the same thing for millions of years whereas homo sapiens has been dynamic and intellectually restless in searching for the most satisfying mode of representing the world.
Human art has a history. Indeed history is a human art and only a human art.
Fascinatingly, one can see this restlessness and dissatisfaction in the feline representations linked by Brian. And equally fascinating is the possibility that the cave artists took sketches with them into the caves.
Implicit in this act is the recognition that one could do better than last time. And “last time” implies the passage of time and the concept of progress.
No other animal can conceive of progress.
Katz,
I don’t think that this statement
“no other animal can conceive of progress”
is correct.
BilB,
Maybe you can make some progress on that position.
Brian have you ever read 1950s French anthropologist Andre Leroi-Gourhan’s work on this very matter Geste et Parole (Gesture and Speech)? Translated into English about 1991 I believe. Although the second half wanders off into speculation about the path of art development, the first part ‘Technics and Language’ clearly posits the parallel development of the brain, language and technics (by which he means ‘technical gestures’). In effect he says that language and technical gesture (which incl. art and even complex social ritual, as well as the obvious things like tool-making) are closely interrelated. He discusses the related idea of the brain-pan’s expansion being freed by the shortening of the jaw, but this is really only possible with the upright posture of early hominids. So from the spine, hips and the foot of that posture comes not only the expansion of the brain but also the development of the human larynx and the hand specialised towards gesture.
I would not say that one has priority over the other. We developed this things in conjunction bit by bit. We got brainier, and our language developed alongside as we created more sophisticated tools, art and social formations, until voila, homo sapiens.
Tyro, that is interesting and makes a lot of sense.
I’ve only read journal articles and then there’s been the occasional segment on Radio National or TV. I was hoping that someone would have more expensive knowledge on the topic.
One prerequisite for artistic capability is the capacity for abstract thought – we have to be able to understand that an object can stand for something else (e.g. a picture standing for an actual concrete object). There’s been some testing in animals (e.g. dogs, birds etc) which show that they have this capability for abstract thought. I know there’s plenty of examples of these studies but all I could find in a hurry was this blurb in the Guardian.
The other thought I had was that a lot of useful studies have been done on the development of artistic capability and abstract thought in babies – perhaps this parallels the evolution of our own brains?
In return for a reward dog is capable of recognising a picture of a bowl of dog food but as far as I know no dog has ever drawn a bowl of dog food by scratching its outline with its paw.
In the same way my cat likes watching birds on TV, while it is utterly uninterested in planes.
In the same way as my dog is on high alert when we pass a graffiti silhouette of a cat near Brunswick Street, I reckon we have an innate ability to recognize “things” that look like “things”.
Flickering fire light make the bumps and smudges in a cave look like “things” and it’s a short walk from stabilizing and enhancing these images to creating new ones. I’m sure there is work done on this but I’m not aware of it.
Jess, that Guardian link makes reference at the end to an article in the New Scientist reporting on a study of animal intelligence.
I read the article. It’s basic theme was that animal intelligence suffers by being judged by the categories of human intelligence, whereas there are aspects where animals leave us for dead. The classic one, of course, is dogs’ sense of smell.
“In return for a reward dog is capable of recognising a picture of a bowl of dog food”
The dog’s capability is in no way related to the reward. So let’s rephrase that as “in return for a reward, a dog will demonstrate to a human that it can recognise a picture of a bowl of dog food”.
The system of training with reward is our way of making a dog’s intelligence comprehensible to our own.
The must be a great many ways in which this project is incomplete. Wouldn’t you agree Katz?
@5, 11, Katz,
I think your parameters for ‘progress’ and what constitutes skills and abilities is overly anthropocentric.
Certainly, a dog can’t draw (what a human being would recognise as) a picture of a bowl of dog food. But your setting the bar at ‘drawing’ begs the question of what skills and abilities should count as ‘higher’ skills. How convenient for the human species that you happen to choose a skill at which humans are generally proficient.
If, however, you picked the ability to perceive movement in four dimensions, as a dog (and cat, and many other species can) through smell; you might find those other animals turn their noses up at our paltry abilities in that domain…
And, when it comes to early detection of earthquakes, most mammal and bird species leave us, sometimes literally, for dead.
Channeling Dawkins for a moment — ipso facto they are alive at all, then all living brains and organisms are exquisitely adapted to their environment — or they would be fossils instead! In that respect, we humans are equally successful front-runners with all other extant species in the race of life…against that background, it is a classic error to (consciously or unconsciously) construct hierarchies of species based on skills. After all, if you want to make biomass the be-all and end-all of measuring sticks, then surely the phytoplankton have it over everyone else??
…another example…what would you say of the ability of domesticated animals to convince human beings to care for their well-being, and breed them in vast numbers, over territories they wouldn’t otherwise have entered?? Not a great fate of individual domesticated animals of course, but rather a boon for the propagation of their collective genome.
A cat’s meow is a vocalisation that it has developed only in response to human beings — cats don’t meow when people aren’t around…and a cat’s meow is the closest mimic that a cat can make of a human baby’s cries. Cats’ insistent meows evoke in humans much the same response (part nurturing instinct, part aggravation) as a squealing baby. Quite an ingenious bit of manipulation of humans by cats, if you ask me.
If you’re going to construct hierarchies, cats are at the top of every pyramid. They already know this, of course.
Cuteness and snuggliness as evolutionary advantage!
Certain crows can fashion tools including hooks. The hook is actually quite late in human tool development.
dear Tyro Rex
funny you should mention that, i was just looking for “betty” the crow & found report of her at national geographic.
yours sincerely
alfred venison
@14
“The dog’s capability is in no way related to the reward. So let’s rephrase that as “in return for a reward, a dog will demonstrate to a human that it can recognise a picture of a bowl of dog food”.”
Similarly in return for a reward of dog food a dog will demonstrate to a human it can recognise a picture of a stereo speaker.
Conditioning works well with dogs.
I do love your posts on these kinds of topics, Brian.
Didn’t neanderthals have bigger brains than us? This didn’t necessarily mean that they were smarter, however.
I’m sure I’ve read that puppies, kittens and babies are all shaped to provoke an “Awww” response in us. Basically, we’re programmed to like big eyes and small features in baby creatures…
Another really interesting study I read was about domesticated foxes. They started to wag and raise their tails, developed floppy ears and spots – just like domestic dogs. Basically they developed in ways that were more attractive to humans!
I never suggested that human beings had superior skill sets to other animals. Such a claim is patently absurd. Instead, I suggested that human beings had one special and extraordinary skill — the ability to evolve symbols and to have them make sense to other humans. I’d prefer not to be verballed on this point.
At the La Breyer Tarpits in Downtown Los Angeles excavators have dug hundreds of thousands of animal corpses out of the goo. Of those hundreds of thousands only one is human. She had her head bashed in before she was chucked in.
Humans are capable of warning each other against blundering into tar or are capable of retrieving those who do blunder in. Animals have no means to do either. Humans have memories that can encompass abstract thought and planning and can adapt tools on the fly to perform specialised functions, like digging fellow creatures out of tar.
These abilities and skills make humans qualitatively different to all other animals.
Those felines could be even more insidious in their relations with fellow mammals than you think mercurious
That sneaky companion of theirs, Toxoplasmosis, that infects between 25 and 50% or more of us depending upon where you live. Could be partly responsible for some human character and by extension cultural traits.
According to this “Can the common brain parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, influence human culture?” anyway.
An interesting thread of research that continues to unravel this simple but complex lifeform and its role in mammalian biology, it’s association with all cats and the subtle but profound effects it shows on other mammals nervous system. Perhaps on ours as well.
I’m guessing Australia (and its mammal population) would’ve been one of the few places in the globe entirely toxo free before Europeans and their moggies arrived.
Katz,
not at all keen on humans are the only animals that …
I’m old enough to have seen a number of these assertions overturned
Katz: octopuses seem to show abstract thought and planning as well.
Brian: yeah, thanks. I guess I was really interested in how we actually define creativity, and was wondering if there was a sort of ‘lowest common factor’ that could be identified. Abstract thinking seemed to be a key factor to me.
@ 26 — oh yes, and octopoids also arrange lovely little shell gardens in front of their hidey-holes. Is it an aesthetic sensibility??
I once went snorkelling and noticed a few shells laid out in a rough semi-circle in front of a rock. With the Beatles tune running through my head, I nipped under the water to move one shell out of position, and waited.
Sure enough, after only a few breaths, a delicate little tentacle unfurled from under the rock, and moved the shell back to its original position. It was as though the inhabitant…preferred it that way.
…I then snorkelled down to the rock to get a look at the artist itself. It gave me what for all the world appeared to be a look of disapproval!
Legal Eagle @ 21, thanks, and my pleasure. Yes, Neanderthals had bigger brains. That brought to mind my post of earlier this year on Alice Roberts’ book
Towards the end, I also said this:
Great story, Mercurius
Jess @ 26, about 50 years ago I actually did a course on aesthetics. I remember enough to avoid enunciating a definition of “creativity” now. I did later realise that psychologists had a definition of creativity that aestheticians wouldn’t recognise.
I had in mind that some animals respond with pleasure to things like form and colour, which may be an emergent aesthetic sense. So a demand is created for artistic expression.
Brian,
I think it’s fair to say that almost all of what we do is reflected in some way, even if primitively, in other species. For your last para, the trick is to transcend our immediate kin and social groups with these traits and apply it across ours and other species. That, I reckon I’m safe in saying, would be unique.
(Bugger, I’ve outed myself as an idealistic optimist)
[I think Roger's comment refers back to mine @ 29 - Brian]
Roger, I hate to say it, but perhaps you have something in common with Tim Flannery!
It is not all that long ago that we were looking down our European noses at African art because it was “primitive” and didn’t accurately reflect reality. Then European art progressed to the point where we learned to appreciate the power of African art. The point I am making is that concepts like “unique human brain” “more advanced” etc. do change with time.
My observation of human art is that it often goes through periods where conforming to past practices is of overwhelming importance. Bower birds build display structures that follow a general plan – But there is plenty of evidence of bower birds taking advantages of new materials. (Blue pegs is the example that leaps to mind.)
It is also worth noting that many animals show evidence of changing culture. Think whale songs. Think different groups of killer whales developing and maintaining different hunting tricks.
Geez, more verballing.
I said “evolve” symbols, not simply to adopt them.
When monkeys start minting and trading their own banana tokens I’ll admit I’m incorrect.
I do admit that animals don’t verbal their discussants.
I sincerely doubt that
“I do admit that animals don’t verbal their discussants”
is even slightly true.
I think that a study of Dr Robert Sapolsky’s work with baboons would reveal much on the subject under discussion.
I’d be fascinated by an elaboration of your views on this interesting and important topic, BilB.
Katz,
sorry about the verballing
But I did find your example fitted the adopting rather than adapting symbols IMO (animals will warn and will attempt to retrieve a victim on occasions). A good test might be if the symbols carry across generations and are continually adapted over time. E.g., if the unfortunate woman in La Brea was knocked off because of the perception she violated some long-held belief structure. Though I’m not sure that makes the behaviour of those who did the need necessarily any different to what might be driven by base motive.
This is an interesting ethical question I hadn’t thought through properly in this context (Despite thinking long and hard about cultural evolution and risk).
Only tangentially related, but here’s an interesting story from the Beeb on augmentation devices which read brainwaves.
Cyberdene’s Hal suit (which will let disabled people walk again by reading their nerve impulses) looks particularly interesting.
“Cyberdene’s Hal suit (which will let disabled people walk again by reading their nerve impulses)”
I agree, fascinating, but should they have put more thought into the name?
Yea Brian, Brains are beautiful, and i am not just channeling my inner zombie when i say that.
the whole, when did art start, argument is complicated but the lack of agreement among modern humans as to what constitutes art in the first place. my own idea of art includes the scientific method and complex financial instruments as well as the usual painting, dancing, writing, bottle dryers, etc that are usually touted as art.
I am tempted to see art in some way tied to capacities for irrational exuberance and pride. For instance it seems to me that horses, who are well capable of both, dance, and i my understanding of ballroom dancing was assisted when i thought about it in terms of camp drafting, if you wrestle the lead too much, not only does it look inelegant, you can end up in a tangle and hurt. in both cases you have to trust your partner and be adaptable.
Agree brains are beautiful, so sad so few people ever actually use them. The real reason for shrinking brains? Under use perhaps?
I was thinking octapuses based on a documentary highlighting octapus intelligence that my business partner was telling me about.Then I came across this
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111010075530.htm