This blog maintains that upright posture is the sine qua non human trait because: 1) humanity is defined by a shift to collective functioning; 2) collective function requires a “public” communication system to coordinate the behavior of individuals; and 3) upright posture enabled the face-and-upper-body to become the instruments of the simultaneous-and-continuous communication that is …
Simplifies an understanding of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, language, religion, self-awareness, free will, and the experience of being human for the last three million years.
Or are we undergoing a progressive awakening to our tribe’s ancient mission to transform the power of aggression into the bounty of communion
A follow-on to the last post. When multicellular organisms were first expanding their internal complexity five hundred million years ago, neurological systems were evolved to co-ordinate their behavior. The key is rapid and continuous real-time communication to all constituents of the organism. How could such communication have been established in the first hominin group-organisms? To …
The fundamental divide between right and left is the clash between the role of the individual vs. the role of the collective. The right wins this argument because, in a post-Darwinian world without religion, the very existence of a collective will is in question—it has been made an orphan in Darwin’s age bereft of evolutionary …
For a fossil to be designated a hominin there must be evidence of upright posture. However, any orthopedic surgeon can tell you that upright posture produces extreme vulnerability for injuries to the lower back (perennially among the top ER visits), hips and knees, so it is reasonable that the evolutionary advantages of such a costly …
Forth in series: click for first, second, or third There is evidence that, in a period of sharply declining temperatures, a collapse in the ape population occurred at the time hominins split off from apes. My view is that in the context of birthrates falling toward extinction, hierarchical dominance competition became a dangerous waste of …
Second in a series: Click for first or third It is not generally understood that there is virtually no scientific knowledge about how the mind of apes evolved into our own mind. Huge amounts of scientific knowledge about the minds of apes and humans (particularly children) are neatly being stacked upon the cliffs on either …
From this week’s Science (Vol.355:1299-1301) is an article entitled “How ‘you’ makes Meaning.” The abstract: “You” is one of the most common words in the English language. Although it typically refers to the person addressed (“How are you?”), “you” is also used to make timeless statements about people in general (“You win some, you lose …
Look at the back of a one-dollar bill. On the left, you will see a pyramid with the “eye of providence” at the apex. Above this image are the two words Annuit Coeptis, meaning “He approves [or has approved] [our] undertaking,” and below it are three more words, Novus Ordo Seclorum, meaning “New Order of …
The most basic activity of this blog is to maintain vigilance of ongoing science, particularly in the fields of psychiatry and paleoanthropology but also in numerous other fields, and to apply all relevant new findings to the Blog’s broad paradigm of the human mind. In the September 2nd issue of Science an article entitled, …
Hominin language has always been centrally engaged in the attempt to achieve a “running” consensus about which of a limited number of narratives corresponded to the chaotic events that were happening all around them.
My uncle used to work at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He was an artist in his soul and, among many other activities, designed the dioramas for the various exhibits. His favorite by far was the work he did at the Hall of Human Origins. He would often talk with great …
This alternative view of human nature is a deeper, richer, and far more noble narrative of our exclusively human legacy: that of an indomitable spirit possessed of a will for justice and sustained through the millennia by the bounty that it fosters.
Linguist Steven Levinson criticizes evolutionary psychologist Michael Tomasello and linguist Derik Bickerson for being unable to shake loose of the “cold” abstract cognitive prerequisites rather than the “hot” motivational and interactive instincts that lie behind the universal patterns of multimodal communication.
How horses were hunted with spears by hominins 300,000 years ago in an ancient German lake.
In Brian Hare’s book, “The Genius of Dogs,” he discovered that freshly domesticated foxes in Russia automatically have the cognitive abilities that only exist in dogs and humans.
The mystery and complexity of many aspects of human language can be simplified by considering the emotional dynamics that underlies it.
Mechanism as to how the superego is installed in the child is described and related to the mode of learning in pre-human hominids.
Although language and tool making evolved together, much more important was the evolution of coordinated behavior.