Friday, May 28, 2010

So with locusts, so with humans?

Productivity is the source of human well-being and it took a marked leap upwards back around 10,000 years ago when people settled down, changed from a hunter gatherer life-style and began to have settled agriculture and shortly afterwards to live in small hamlets, villages, towns and eventually cities. Increasing density of human habitation has paralleled yet higher gains in productivity. Larger communities required better capacity to coordinate and cooperate. More coordination and cooperation required reading and writing. It also required our brains to keep evolving and adapting.

Here is a report from BBC News (by Victoria Gill, May 25, 2010, Swarming 'swells' Locusts' Brains) which reports on discoveries of a similar phenomenon in locusts. Brains continuing to evolve to living conditions, not locusts reading.

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