Brain Change
Although the advent of anatomical physical modernity cannot confidently be linked with palaeoneurological change, it does seem probable that hominid brains evolved through the same selection processes as other body parts. Genes that promoted a capacity for symbolism may have been selected suggesting the foundations for symbolic culture may well be grounded in biology but behaviour that was mediated by symbolism may have only come later, even though this physical capacity was already in place much earlier. Skoyles and Sagan for example argues that human brain expansion by increasing the prefrontal cortex would have created a brain capable of symbolizing its previously nonsymbolic cognition, and that this process, slow to begin with, increasingly accelerated during the last 100,000 years. Symbolically mediated behaviour may have feedback upon this process by creating greater ability to manufacture symbolic artifacts and social networks that were organized upon them.
Read more about this topic: Middle Stone Age
Famous quotes containing the words brain and/or change:
“Where is Hollywood located? Chiefly between the ears. In that part of the American brain lately vacated by God.”
—Erica Jong (b. 1942)
“I leave the governor’s office next week, and with it public life ... [which] has been on the whole a pleasant one. But for ten years and over my salaries have not equalled my expenses, and there has been a feeling of responsibility, a lack of independence, and a necessary neglect of my family and personal interests and comfort, which make the prospect of a change comfortable to think of.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)