Megatrend 09| upright-walking primates become smarter

William W. By C. Berg

The grand evolutionary process of life continues. Tall trees of flowering plants facilitated the evolution of apes, and then among the apes appeared the great apes, who were accustomed to climbing between branches. Stereoscopic vision and socialized lifestyles have made primates' brains larger than those of other animals, while apes with more erect bodies, flatter chests, wider shoulders, and more flexible forelimbs are even better at brain power. Apart from humans, no other animal can wave its arms as flexibly as we do.

Around the same time as the apes evolved, in seasonally dry habitats, grasslands began to expand, and the number of large herbivorous mammals increased dramatically. These nutrient-rich four-legged foods, in turn, irritated the upright-walking African apes, causing them to triple their brain capacity over a staggering 3 million years. I don't know if you've ever seen a classic American commercial in which an old lady yells at a hamburger: "Where's the beef?" If you ask an ecologist to answer this question, the answer would be very simple: "Beef is on the prairie!" There are not many cattle in the dense evergreen forest, but the open grasslands can support a considerable number of livestock animals. Although our ancestors were omnivores, they also knew that the meat of large herbivores was the best food. After learning to walk upright, our ancestors were able to free their hands to throw stones and forge sharp spears, so they became the most efficient hunters.

Humans, much like ants in ant nests, form tribes in a "full cooperative" way of acting and compete with other human tribes for food and water. Group prejudices, national superiority, and distinctions between the "self" and the "other" are the result of the evolution of this way of behaving. Humans are social animals, and in human habitats, the biggest opponents are other human groups. This competition drives the evolution of our brains, but also allows our language skills to develop. By channeling through language, males in human populations can unite more efficiently to protect habitats and survival resources. Competition among human groups has not only enhanced human brain power, but also driven some humans out of the tropics and into more challenging environments. By crafting tools and weapons, cooking more digestible food, and communicating with sound language, humans have become the most versatile animals ever built on Earth.

Some scholars believe that human intelligence suddenly evolved 100,000 years ago, but I don't agree. The Israeli historian Yuval Harari once summed up this view as a "cognitive revolution" for humanity. Human intelligence has tripled in 3 million years, and it seems to me that our intelligence has slowly improved during this time, slowly improving our language skills, expanding our imagination, and developing more complex social behaviors. The increasing number of Homo sapiens over the past 200,000 years is actually a cultural phenomenon, and our brains have long since developed.

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