Exploring what it means to be thinking matter
This video is full of gorgeous images of planet Earth and its creatures, accompanied by music and the gently inspiring words of Richard Dawkins. It’s one of the finer meditations on the human condition that I’ve ever seen. For all its problems, being a bit of conscious matter on this planet is a rare and precious thing.
Some things that change in time seem to be following a particular trajectory. Hard drives get smaller. Cell phones gain functionality. Internet advertising gets more annoying. Primate brains get bigger. Well, wait a minute. Human technologies may be progressing along a particular path, but the evolution of the primate brain is not quite the same. Evolution adapts organisms to their circumstances over time, and evidently in some primate lineages, this results in smaller rather than larger brains. A recent study, spurred by the discovery of fossilized remains of diminutive (and small-brained) Homo floresiensis, examined brain size and body size over time in a variety of primate species. Although brains have certainly gotten bigger in some lineages, most notably us, in other branches of the primate family tree, brains have gotten smaller. This article from Scientific American has more.
P.S. Oops, I somehow accidentally deleted the sentence about how this study supports the idea that the small brain size of Homo floresiensis is a result of standard evolutionary procedure rather than evidence of deformity.
These days I’ve been experimenting with baking bread using various sourdough cultures. Furthermore, my interest in wine has certainly deepened over the last few years. You could say that I’ve become a big fan of fermentation, and I think sometimes about its importance in human life. My hat is off to whatever curious humans first discovered the process and decided to put it to good use.
Patrick McGovern, an archaeologist who studies human exploration of fermented beverages, believes that it might have been the desire for reliable access to alcohol, not food, that spurred the farming revolution that swept Neolithic culture, largely banishing hunter-gatherer ways from many parts of the world. You can think of this revolution in terms of its benefits: farming allowed for settled and growing populations that fostered the sharing of ideas and nurtured technological and cultural innovations. Alternatively, you can focus on the disease, limited diet, and economic inequities that eventually emerged in farming populations (some scholars go so far as to suggest that agriculture was a bad idea). Either way, it was one of the most significant transitions humans have undergone. Was it really spurred by beer?
McGovern has recently written a book, Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages
P.S. I just remembered a New Yorker article from last year about beer. Luckily it’s available online; toward the bottom, there’s a section about a contemporary brewer who works with McGovern to recreate ancient beers.
I was pleased to learn that the Thinking Meat Project appears among the 15 Best Brain Blogs of 2009 over at Online Colleges and Universities. Check it out!
It’s easy to feel that the milk of human kindness has curdled, or perhaps was sour to begin with. Some religious and social practices seem to assume the worst of people: our selfish, antisocial desires must be kept firmly in check by fear of god or of human authorities. However, compassion and generosity are arguably at least as much a part of who we are as self-interest and greed. This article from Greater Good magazine examines some of the evidence for inborn physiological and psychological mechanisms of kindness and caring.
One part that really struck me was the discussion of the autonomic nervous system, which controls our physiological responses to situations, preparing us to react appropriately to situations. The reaction to a threat is the famous fight-or-flight response, which has a distinctive profile (if you’ve read anything about stress, you know about the ways that breathing and blood flow change to make us more ready to run, or fight, for our lives). There is also a distinctive physiological pattern related to a compassionate response to a situation. When I read this, I wondered if the practice of compassion meditation is in part a deliberate attempt to harness that physiological response.
The Greater Good article also talked about a positive feedback loop between compassionate thoughts and behavior and increased production of oxytocin, a hormone and neurotransmitter that has been linked with feelings of trust, closeness, and empathy. In other words, as you cultivate a compassionate outlook, you may be setting up your neurochemistry for further feelings and behaviors of love and connection. The article also mentions some research that indicates that the brain might be particularly plastic—flexible and open to change—with regard to positive emotions, indicating that we can foster such emotions (especially by the way we raise our children).
In short, this is not only fascinating but comforting. Self-centered, aggressive, or uncharitable behavior might be part of our repertoire, but it’s good to remember that we also have the potential for greater kindness, love, and respect. It’s up to each of us to cultivate it.
Seashells were painted and used as adornment by early humans, and this is commonly taken to indicate an ability to think symbolically. There has been very little evidence that Neanderthals shared this ability. In fact, the belief that Neanderthals were cognitively inferior to humans has been given as a reason for why they died out.
However, a recent find challenges the idea that Neanderthals were incapable of symbolic thought. Scallop and cockle shells showing traces of applied pigment were found in two caves in southeastern Spain. The shells are estimated to be about 50,000 years old; fossil evidence of modern humans in the area goes back only 40,000 years.
Several past discoveries have suggested that Neanderthals might have created what could be considered jewelry or art. The evidence was scanty, and these earlier discoveries were generally not interpreted as true instances of symbolic thinking. This new evidence, however, combined with the earlier finds, seems to indicate that we’ve been underestimating the mental capacities of this fascinating species. In fact, this article from Scientific American even suggests that rather than developing jewelry independently, Neanderthals might have taught humans how to make art, or vice versa.
The findings will appear in the January 11 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, and are available online now:
Symbolic use of marine shells and mineral pigments by Iberian Neandertals
João Zilhão, Diego E. Angelucci, Ernestina Badal-García, Francesco d’Errico, Floréal Daniel, Laure Dayet, Katerina Douka, Thomas F. G. Higham, María José Martínez-Sánchez, Ricardo Montes-Bernárdez, Sonia Murcia-Mascarós, Carmen Pérez-Sirvent, Clodoaldo Roldán-García, Marian Vanhaeren, Valentín Villaverde, Rachel Wood, and Josefina Zapata.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.0914088107
Imagine a scientist going through your house to analyze the purpose and likely use of each of the different spaces based on the tools, supplies, and trash she finds in each place. Now imagine that 750,000 years of history have come and gone, making it hard to even figure out for sure where your house was. Researchers have carried out this kind of detective work at an archaeological site in northern Israel, drawing on plant and animal remains and stone tools found at the site to understand how people lived there 750,000 years ago. They found evidence of areas devoted to specific activities, an organization of space that is believed to be unique to modern humans; earlier research had found such areas going back to only 250,000 years ago.
Two activity areas were identified, one evidently a workshop where flint tools were made and fish were processed and eaten. The second was an area near a hearth where multiple activities were carried out.
This article from Science Daily has more details. The research was recently described in a report in the journal Science.
The American Museum of Natural History has put together a wonderful video that takes you from the surface of the Earth (the Himalayas, to be specific) out to the edges of the known universe. The graphics are cool and all the depictions of astronomical objects are based on our current knowledge of them. This six-and-a-half minute trip made me feel very lucky to be here. Enjoy, and best wishes to everyone for a peaceful and joyful 2010.
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