by Corry Shores
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Our mind came out of that long ago scene and we owe its capacity to our ancient ancestors who faced, survived, and adapted to a challenging, rich, wild milieu that remains etched on our craniums like ancient paintings on cave walls. (51c, emphasis mine)
This game of predation and survival was a long-standing matter of mutual pruning that favored the most swift, cunning, and discerning over those who were slow to catch on and flee. (52a)
A bent tuft of grass, slowly raising its head, clocks the time since it was trampled; a distant call in known terrain says it is the there, and not the here, where attention should be paid. In open terrain, big mobile prey can escape easily and dangerous predators may be forced to strategize from a distance." (52b)
Because of little neural connections, our ancestors were well ahead of most of their kinfolk in the swamps, brush, and forest in terms of discerning the relationships between clues: the color of droppings, the presence of blood, the body language of a pregnant or nursing female, the intentionality of lions, and a thousand other important events that occurred around them. (52c, emphasis mine)
But they brought with them the venerable skills of primate scheming, intrigue, and an arboreal and social agility that had characterized simians for millions of years. (52d)There were important advantages we brought along or perfected: bipedality, larger size, the hand, and, of course, that calculating brain already bigger in ratio to body size than mostmammals possessed. (53a, emphasis mine)
the smell of urine, the age and composition of dung, the drying of bitten stems, or the overall pattern of footprints and traces in a day's experience. Escalated into a year's experience, animal migrations could be anticipated by the signs of plant phenology, the phases of the moon and sun, and the changing sounds of the year. (53b)
Those who fled had to understand the limits of distance, the intentions of others, and the ability to control the abyssal terror that itself would engulf them if they submitted to panic. Out of this immense drama among dozens of species of big mammals, herbivore and carnivore, came brains, mind, memory, and strategy -- spontaneous and conscious. (53-54)
They learned the open-country craft of the hunter and the cunning of the prey, for they were the stalking, tracking predator, the wary, elusive victim, and a passing opportunist in a reciprocity not only between hunter and hunted but within the group and, eventually, aspects of the self. (54b)
Out of their peculiar vulnerability, their proclivity for seeking rock shelters, and their strong primate instincts for communication came the selection of a genome for thinking out events. (54bc)
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