Quote:
Originally Posted by Vandal
They teach you guys in Europe a hell of a lot more then they teach us in the US. Then again here there is a lot of resistance to teaching evolution. I knew humans evolved on plains rather then the forest although I never really considered that a factor for why we are more intelligent. Given the predators that humans would have to compete against though I'm not surpised.
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Right. On the open savanna there was great advantage to standing upright so that one could see long distances over the tops of the tall grasses. This in turn freed up hands, no longer being used at all for walking or for swinging through trees, to be used for a lot of new things, such as making and manipulating tools.
Also, not a particularly powerful or swift animal, Australopithecus and his descendants would've been social animals, living in the relative safety of a group, just as his ancestors in the forest before him did and as primates still do. The forebrain is where social complexities are handled, so it had already developed more than most other mammalian brains. The freeing up of the hands opened up more possibilities for those with the forebrain to really make use of those hands. It took many many many generations, but the descendants of those with brains just a little bit bigger (in the forebrain area) survived in larger numbers than those with not so large brains.