Re: Mediterranean Flood
George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Wed, 06 Oct 1999 08:31:23 -0400
mortongr@flash.net wrote:
...................
> Dean Falk states:
>
> "The oldest evidence for Broca's area to date is from KNM-ER 1470, a H.
> habilis specimen from Kenya, dated at approximately two million years ago.
> >From that date forward, brain size 'took off,' i.e., increased
> autocatalytically so that it nearly doubled in the genus Homo, reaching its
> maximum in Neanderthals. If hominids weren't using and refining language I
> would like to know what they were doing with their autocatalytically
> increasing brains (getting ready to draw pictures somehow doesn't seem like
> enough)." ~ Dean Falk, Comments, Current Anthropology, 30:2, April, 1989,
> p. 141-142. ...................
A question about theory rather than observation: How do we know that this
increase in brain size happened "autocatalytically" - a word he uses twice?
(N.B. It's fine with me if it did - I'm as much of a fan of nonlinearity &
nonequilibrium thermo as anyone. But does the word here mean anything more than "we
don't know the mechanism"?)
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/