14 DAY TRIAL // University of Colorado archaeologists say that the results of their latest investigations seem to suggest that humans developed their super-brain sometime around 75,000 years ago. Since then, our ever-developing cortices allowed us to become the dominant species on the planet.
Yet, the data also indicate that the aforementioned evolution did not take place later than this period. It was before 75 millennia ago that our ancestors got the ability to invent and think about new things.
This is the single, most important thing that allowed humankind to evolve and reach its current state. The conclusion belongs to a study led by UC archaeologist John Hoffecher, Daily Galaxy reports.
The expert says that the first signs that the brain began getting larger were produced around 1.6 million years ago, some 900,000 years after hominids had learned to walk upright. The latter achievement finally cleared out ancestors' hands for other uses.
They could then fashion and carry tools and other cargo, as they no longer had to rely on all fours to walk about. Interestingly, the evolution of the human super-brain is very similar to the way bees, ants and other social insects adapted to their respective environments.
Even if each ant, for example, is an individual, it works within the colony as a cell in a super-organism. From this perspective, the organism (the colony) gathers, processes and shares information in the same way that we, as individuals, do.
But “human societies are not super-organisms – they are composed of people who are for the most part unrelated, and societies filled with competing individuals and families,” Hoffecker explains.
Since the human brain began developing, its volume and size increased three times over. By 75,000 years ago, the UC team says, the evolution was complete. This was marked by the creation of the first geometric designs, perforated shell ornaments and other similar artifacts.
“With the appearance of symbols and language – and the consequent integration of brains into a super-brain – the human mind seems to have taken off as a potentially unlimited creative force,” the group leader explains.
These conclusions are interesting to think about because they paint a new perspective of they way in which we are evolving right now. While our species advanced at Darwinian time scale, of hundreds of thousands of years, we are now moving a lot faster.