From: John K Clark (johnkc@well.com)
Date: Tue Sep 03 1996 - 11:56:52 MDT
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On Mon, 2 Sep 96 1996 hanson@dosh.hum.caltech.edu (Robin Hanson) Wrote:
>If hands were so hard, why did they happen so soon after
>brains were near ready to use them?
Short answer, I don't know, but you could ask the question in another way.
If big brains were so hard to make, why did they happen so soon after hands
developed that were nearly ready to be used by them?
>if you take a long view, graphing encephalization on a log
>plot over a hundred million years, growth really is roughly
>steady since the dinos were killed.
If you take the average of all animals on earth then that's true, but we're
not interested in all animals, just the ones that led up to humans because
they're the ones that made it through the filter, we hope. The brains of our
ancestors got almost 5 times as big in just 3 million years, and it all
started at the same moment we developed a first rate hand. Perhaps it's jus
t a coincidence, but one thing is certain, that is not an ordinary increase
in brain size, that is extraordinary.
John K Clark johnkc@well.com
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