Evolution: more genomic evidence of pre-planning Part Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, April 10, 2021, 17:02 (1113 days ago) @ dhw

PART TWO

QUOTE: During this period, the cultures in Africa became more complex and diverse, as evidenced by the discovery of various types of stone tools. The researchers think that biological and cultural evolution are probably interdependent. "It is likely that the earliest forms of human language also developed during this period."

dhw: And so we appear to have a smooth development, with areas of the brain complexifying or expanding, as “triggered” by the innovations of the time. There is no mention of giant leaps or of excessive cells, and why should there be?

DAVID: You are reading Darwinist material which is what I am forced to present in these discussions. Other articles presented here discuss the known volume difference in Erectus and sapiens.

Why must you bring Darwin into it? Are you now telling us that the tools were not discovered, or that they did not coincide with changes to the brain? I’m not disagreeing about volume difference if the experts agree that erectus finished on an average 1200 cc and sapiens went up to an average of 1350 cc. But I will certainly dispute that this was a “huge” gap and therefore only God could have engineered it. Erectus remained erectus but managed an increase of 300 cc.

DAVID: You can't escape from the point that we've reached, why so much potential functionality from a small new need, much more than the new requirement should require, as shown by what happened much later after the recognized stasis period?

dhw: Nobody knows what the new requirements were for ANY of the brain expansions (I listed some, and so did the articles), but they were obviously NOT small. You keep assuming that the brain expanded excessively in anticipation of bigger requirements to come. Why do you find this more logical than the brain expanding to meet a current need, then complexifying or expanding to meet new needs?

DAVID: The brain itself would have to know in advance how to expand in size and wiring complexity to accommodate needed abstract thoughts for future designs. I cannot see a natural cause as you wish, God does it.

Yes, the cells that make up the brain would know when to add to their number in order to meet new requirements. The intelligence required to do this may well have been given to them by your God, just as you think he gave them the ability to complexify.

DAVID: As for sapiens brain, you have forgotten free will. God would not know just how we would use the bigger brain, so as above, it arrived oversized.

So God had no idea how many cells we would need in order to exercise our free will, and therefore gave us more than we needed. And this seems more likely to you than your God giving us a mechanism that would produce new cells when needed, and would discard cells when they were no longer needed.

The new article simply repeats the findings of the others:

QUOTE: "The scientists focused on the brain’s frontal lobes, which are linked with complex mental tasks such as toolmaking and language. Early Homo from Dmanisi and Africa still apparently retained a great ape–like organization of the frontal lobe 1.8 million years ago.

But the frontal lobe was there, and apparently there are human artefacts dating from back then. So here we have the primitive beginnings of expansion/complexification through a far smaller and simpler frontal lobe.

QUOTE: "Future research can investigate what evolutionary pressures might have driven the emergence of modern human–like brain organization. Ultimately such research could reveal how brain reorganization is related to the evolution of language and symbolic thought.

As I keep saying, nobody knows what new requirements caused the brain to keep expanding and/or reorganizing itself, but clearly the evolution of language and symbolic thought started with our early ancestors – there was no sudden leap.

DAVID: This article, like dhw, looks for natural pressures to force evolution. Note my bolds: language and symbolic thought took 245,000 years to appear after sapiens first arrived on Earth.

No they didn’t. You have missed the whole point of all the articles, which is that rudimentary forms of language and symbolic thought must have been present in our early ancestors. The frontal lobe (if we take that as the crucial area of the brain) gradually expanded and complexified, with an accompanying expansion and complexification of its products, as confirmed by the history of human artefacts, though there is a whole list of other possible causes. The sudden leap made by sapiens after 245,000 years of stasis was a number of new ideas and requirements, but instead of the brain expanding, it enhanced its ability to complexify. Erectus hung around for 2 million years, so I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss over 245,000. (See also the evolution of the eye under “Miscellany". I have also shifted "Survival" to that thread.)