How did human beings become so intelligent through natural selection?

Question

Like millions of years ago when early hominids were no smarter than the average ape what challenges did our early ancestors face that caused offspring to have bigger and bigger brains?

Answer 1

I didn't know we were. I thought we were a bunch of animals doing all the same mistakes over and over.

Answer 2

"This book is hailed as the beginning of the enlightenment age and set the foundation for what we know scientifically today..." No it wasn't. The Enlightenment began in the 18th century. Darwin's book wasn't published until 1859, nearly 100 years after The Enlightenment began. You are wrong. "If nature can only select from what it has, where did the new information come from?" Mutation. It's called a duplication mutation. This can happen at the genome level (we've witnessed this in bacteria), the gene level (we've witnessed this in our own species), or even smaller sequences (we've witnessed this across the board). Duplication mutations do nothing to the fitness of an organism. Therefore, natural selection doesn't have a reason to select against it, which is why they are likely to be passed on. You are confusing Natural Selection (which selects from the variations) and mutations (the source of the variations). "We've then devolved--if you will--to the point where our(humans) survival is dependent upon the care of a parent...How can that be?" You are a collection of trillions of cells. A single cell on its own has a very low survival rate. The collective cells which make up your body have a much higher survival rate. You are being inconsistent with your example because you are focusing on the survival of one cell and then not comparing that to the cells that make up the organizational system we call a human. Remember, you are not simply one entity. You are trillions of cells working in unison for mutual benefit and survival. "I will argue that mutation is a form of creation, so once again you can't get something from nothing." Who ever said that mutations come from nothing? Your straw man accounts of evolution seem to know no bounds. Mutations are the result of genome recombination, radiation, and transcription errors. We know where mutations come from in most cases, and it certainly isn't from "nothing." Straw Man Burned.

Answer 3

It wasn't really the challenges it was the conditions. We were at one point apes in a forest. The forest slowly turned into open plans.

Our food source shifted and we began to eat meat. This added protein gave us more energy, and thus more mobility and energy. The more active we go, the more me found food and the more we ate.

Our "Smarts" evolved as a side effect of attaining and maintaining what was (at the time) a better and more comfortable life.
"The smarter I think, the more I out think my neighbors, the more I eat. The more I eat the less my neighbors have the more they die off, the better off my kids will be."

Now multiply that over some 4 million years or 160,000 generations and you have computers with which to reach and and ask that neighbor just how did we get so smart. ;-)

How Ironical...

Answer 4

Probably one of the biggest challenges early man faced was competition their Neanderthals neighbors. Bigger and tougher, tools users these guys probably would of won out but for the fact early man had better communication skills. The ability to communicate complex information made man better work as a group. This team play was effective enough to bring down prey as large as mastodons. (The evidence suggests these early huters were so good at this task they pushed these furry beasts over the edge into extinction.)

Answer 5

Actually I saw a Discovery show on how our developing brains expanded after we started eating meat (protein). Now I don't think that we are the smartest "animals" on the planet; but we are able to destroy entire countries more efficiently than any other living species.

The link below is a great place to find all sorts of questions that are about the human evolution.

Answer 6

Survival of the fittest my friend...think about it. Back in "Cave man" times, if there just so happened to be one Cave Man a little smarter than the other ones, he would put those "smarts" to his advantage. He could manage to make himself the Alpha Male, there by becoming the dominant male. He would teach his offspring things and so on and so forth. Only problem is, is that we haven't gotten that far.

Answer 7

Predation. Accident. Illness. Injury. Climate. Child-rearing. Starvation. Warfare.

Answer 8

That's one of the unsolved problem regarding human evolution.
In fact humans use only about 10% of their brains at present.
Fighting competition from fellow humans or escaping from a predator doesn't require you to develop a supercharged brain capable of launching spacecrafts... Other animals have managed to do that for millions of years! (And I don't think our brains capacities have increased in the last 30,000-40,000 years.)

Answer 9

Back millions of years ago, humans were still being eaten, like by large cats, etc. Also, we had to find food and water. Also, different species of neanderthals/early man/members of the genus Homo had a tendency to fight and kill each other. So, if you were smart enough to not be eaten, to not be killed, and to find sufficient food and water, then you survived long enough to reproduce and pass on your intelligent genes.

Answer 10

Are we certain that we are smarter than the average ape? They seem to have a fairly easy life. Maybe they laugh at us everyday for complicating the world!

Answer 11

We aren't that intellegent. Any animal would beat us instinctively, we are simple told what to do and how to act from older generations. I think its just because we have a different types of functions in our brain that makes us different and rule the planet.