The Evolution of the Human Brain: How Does It

Account for the Knowledge Explosion?

The evolution of the human brain is a point of much debate

among evolutionary biologists. Paleoneurology, which
studies the evolution of the human brain, seems to be
caught on the horns of a dilemma.
In evolutionary biology, there is the thought that the
human brain attained it's current size roughly 200,000 years
ago: "The evolution of a large, complex brain has been the
defining feature of the human lineage although human
brain size has not changed over the past 200,000 years."
(http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7974 ).
This poses a huge question: if the incredibly complex
human brain has been around for that long, why has the
great advancement of human knowledge only taken place
within the last couple of thousand years, leading to the
great knowledge explosion we have seen in recent history?
Human knowledge builds upon itself; why didn't the
knowledge explosion take place 80,000 or 100,000 years
ago, if the human brain has been roughly the same size
during this time? Were human beings (homo sapien) out
there "beating around the bush," hunting bugs and
rodents, for all those thousands and thousands of years,
even though they were walking around with an incredibly
complex brain?
This apparent problem has indeed puzzled the great
thinkers of our time. A recent approach has been to label
the evolution of the human brain a "Special Event." The
normal pace of evolution was somehow set aside, and the

human brain evolved much more rapidly than normal. From

a recent study:
"Genes that control the size and complexity of the brain
have undergone much more rapid evolution in humans than
in non-human primates or other mammals, according to a
new study by Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers."

"The accelerated evolution of these genes in the human

lineage was apparently driven by strong selection. In the
ancestors of humans, having bigger and more complex
brains appears to have carried a particularly large
advantage, much more so than for other mammals. These
traits allowed individuals with better brains to leave behind
more descendants. As a result, genetic mutations that
produced bigger and more complex brains spread in the
population very quickly. This led ultimately to a dramatic
speeding up of evolution in genes controlling brain size and
complexity."
People in many fields, including evolutionary biology,
anthropology and sociology, have long debated whether the
evolution of the human brain was a special event, said
senior author Bruce Lahn of the Howard Hughes Medical
Institute at the University of Chicago. I believe that our
study settles this question by showing that it was.
Lahn and his colleagues reported their data in a research
article published in the December 29, 2004, issue of the
journal Cell ."
(taken from an article on the Howard Hughes Medical
Institute website, http://www.hhmi.org/news/lahn3.html )
This presents a recurring problem for the Darwinian theory
of evolution. Evolutionary theory is built upon the premise
that evolution occurs gradually, over hundreds of thousands

of years of time. Whenever data occurs that doesn't fit the

theory, the theory of very gradual change through natural
selection is set aside, and a new theory of rapid change is
introduced. This is how the Darwinian theory of evolution
"absorbs" evidence that contradicts the theory. However,
once you allow various exceptions to the theory of evolution,
you no longer have the foundation upon which the theory is
built, and the theory needs to be set aside. Then the search
for new scientific theories, better aligned to the facts, can
begin.
The idea of "punctuated equilibrium" is another example of
changing the theory of evolution to account for rapid
change. Because there is a lack of evidence in the fossil
record of very gradual change from one species to another,
the idea of "punctuated equilibrium" has been introduced,
which says that there have been sudden spurts and dramatic
changes caused by mutations in various species. Again,
gradual change is set aside, in favor of a theory of rapid
change.
Concerning the evolution of the human brain, there is a
contradictory school of thought in Paleoneurology, that the
evolution of the human brain has actually slowed down over
the past couple of million years:
ScienceDaily (Dec. 29, 2006) "Despite the explosive
growth in size and complexity of the human brain, the pace
of evolutionary change among the thousands of genes
expressed in brain tissue has actually slowed since the split,
millions of years ago, between human and chimpanzee, an
international research team reports in the December 26,
2006, issue of the journal, PLOS Biology."
"We found that genes expressed in the human brain have in
fact slowed down in their evolution, contrary to some earlier
reports," says study author Chung-I Wu, professor of
ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago. "The

more complex the brain, it seems, the more difficult it

becomes for brain genes to change...."
The article goes on to report, "Genes that are expressed
only in the brain evolved more slowly than those that are
expressed in the brain as well as other tissues, and those
genes evolved more slowly than genes expressed
throughout the rest of the organism."
"The authors attribute the slowdown to mounting
complexity of interactions within the brain. "We know that
proteins with more interacting partners evolve more slowly,"
Wu said. "Mutations that disrupt existing interactions aren't
tolerated."
This article also acknowledges the problem presented by the
apparent "rapid evolution" of the human brain: "Humans
have an exceptionally big brain relative to their body size.
Although humans weigh about 20 percent more than
chimpanzees, our closest relative, the human brain weighs
250 percent more. How such a massive morphological
change occurred over a relatively short evolutionary time
has long puzzled biologists."
(University of Chicago Medical Center (2006, December 29).
Complexity Constrains Evolution Of Human Brain Genes.
ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 15, 2008, from
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/0612260954
21.htm
Has the evolution of the human brain rapidly increased, or
has it slowed down over the past couple of million years?
Scientists differ radically in their conclusions.
There are other unanswered questions that can only be
mentioned here: How can scientists "prove," in any
scientific sense of the term, the pace of genetic evolution
within the human brain, going back 50,000 or 100,000
years? Are there any repeatable scientific experiments

which can conclusively "prove" how fast the human brain

evolved 50,000 or 80,000 or 100,000 years ago? Or are we
dealing with great amounts of speculation in this area?
The even more difficult dilemma for evolutionary theory is
to explain why the explosion in human knowledge has only
taken place within very recent history, using the
evolutionary time scale.
Human knowledge accumulates over time - that knowledge
builds upon itself and increases, to where we have the
explosion in knowledge that is so evident today. How did it
happen? Why did it happen so suddenly? Two or three
thousand years, as compared to 200,000 years, is a very
short amount of time. Yet it is claimed that the human brain
has remained the same size for the past 200,000 years.
(some scientists may speculate that it has been the same
size for the past 150,000 years, but the obvious point still
remains).
Human knowledge is transmitted through language, and
then through writing. This transmission of knowledge is a
key in the accumulation and development of human
knowledge. Some evolutionary researchers have estimated
that human speech developed around 150,000 years ago:
"Phillip Lieberman has investigated the origin of speech for
many years and has used this research to form hypotheses
about the evolution of language. Lieberman suggests that
speech improved greatly about 150,000 years ago when the
larynx descended into the throat. According to the work of
Lieberman and his colleagues, this descension improved the
ability of early homonids to make key vowel sounds.
Whereas the Neanderthals had a vocal tract similar in many
respects to that of a new born baby, the elongated pharynx
of a modern adult human is thought to enable production of
a more perceptible repertoire of speech sounds. Lieberman
suggests that though Neanderthals probably had some form

of language, they may have failed to extend this language

because they lacked the physical apparatus for producing a
more sophisticated set of speech sounds."
(From "The Evolution of Language," at
http://www.brainconnection.com/topics/?main=fa/evolutionlanguage6 ).
This estimate that human speech began to develop 150,000
years ago makes the problem even more obvious: How
could homo sapiens (man) have developed speech that long
ago, having an incredibly complex computer called the
human brain, and yet not have made great advances in
language, writing, and the transmission of knowledge?
It is estimated, based on archological discoveries, that
writing developed around 3,500 B.C. in Mesopotamia (see
"Ancient Mesopotamia: The Invention of Writing" / Oriental
Institute of the University of Chicago, at
http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/MUS/ED/TRC/MESO/writing.html).
This makes for a huge, huge gap between the development
of speech, and the development of writing. For humans to
have 144,000 plus years of speech, without developing
writing, seems totally incredible. The human mind is much
more clever than that. How could people be able to speak
for that long, (or even half that long) without attempting to
communicate through written symbols?
In fact, no matter which way these estimates and theories
are developed, there are huge problems. The idea that
man evolved very gradually, over hundreds of thousands of
years of time, is full of problems and contradictions. If one
takes the position that the human brain has slowed down in
it's evolution since separating from the chimpanzee over a
million years ago, then we have an incredible computer
which is incredibly silent over hundreds and thousands of
years of time.

If one takes the position that the evolution of the brain was
a "Special Event" in which the normal pace of evolution was
somehow miraculously sped up, then you have abandoned
the Darwinian theory of very gradual evolution through
natural selection, and you have introduced a new theory, of
rapid change.
We need to think seriously about how long 150,000 years
is, and how incredible the human brain is: with this great
computer having the ability to reason, to think, to speak and
communicate with other human beings, wouldn't knowledge
have advanced much more rapidly? 150,000 years is a long,
long, long time for man's knowledge to be flat-lined, until
the gradually increasing curve of human knowledge in recent
human history. This knowledge curve is now accelerating at
a greater and greater rate.
The fact that the human brain does not fit in to the
timescale of evolutionary theory is perhaps why scientists
have felt compelled to theorize that the evolution of the
human brain was a "Special Event," in which the
evolutionary progress of the human brain was somehow
dramatically increased. As quoted earlier, "Although
humans weigh about 20 percent more than chimpanzees,
our closest relative, the human brain weighs 250 percent
more. How such a massive morphological change occurred
over a relatively short evolutionary time has long puzzled
biologists."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/0612260954
21.htm
In "The Origin of the Species," Charles Darwin himself
acknowledges that without a complete dependence on very
slight, successive modifications to organisms through natural
selection, his whole theory would break down: "If it could be
demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could
not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive,

slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break

down." (Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p. 189).
Well, it has already been demonstrated, even by Darwinian
evolutionists themselves, that rapid change must be
introduced into evolutionary theory in various instances (two
of which were cited above), to explain the facts. Thus,
Darwin's theory has broken down.
Perhaps it's time to leave the sacred soil of evolution, and
explore new options. Is it possible that the reason the
knowledge explosion has only happened gradually within the
last couple of thousand years, with greater and greater
acceleration in recent time, is that human beings haven't
been around that long, relatively speaking? A more recent
appearance of man would explain the "massive
morphological change that has long puzzled biologists," the
great difference in brain size between humans and
chimpanzees. A more recent appearance of man would also
explain why the rapid advancement in knowledge has only
occurred relatively recently. For man's incredible computer,
the human brain, to be silent for hundreds of thousands of
years is just not a viable option.
Is it possible that man is the product of some kind of
creative intelligence, introduced onto planet earth? Rather
than an automatic stonewalling by much of the academic
community, why not consider the possibility that there may
be higher intelligence in the universe than ourselves?
Perhaps thinking that we are the highest intelligence in the
universe is the current day equivalent of thinking that the
sun revolves around the earth. In other words, it is a
paradigm that is outdated.

One could also make great advancements in the pursuit of

honesty and truthfulness, and rather than engage in endless

amounts of scientific speculation about what happened

100,000 or 500,000 or 1,000,000 years ago, we could
simply admit that, scientifically speaking, we just don't
know for certain what happened that long ago, in regard to
mans origins. Some of the scientific community needs to
recover the clear distinction between proven scientific facts
(proven by repeatable scientific experimentation), and large
amounts of speculation.
In light of the knowledge explosion, and our knowledge of
the human brain, the theory that humankind evolved from
lower primates gradually over hundreds of thousands of
years of time is just not fitting in with the facts.

by M. A. Erickson
(Updated 4/20/08)
-Bibliography

1. Inman, Mason, Human Brains Enjoy Ongoing Evolution.

NewScientist, 09 September 2005,
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7974
2. Human Brain Evolution Was a 'Special Event' Howard Hughes
Medical Institute,
December 29, 2005,
http://www.hhmi.org/news/lahn3.html
3. Complexity Constrains Evolution Of Human Brain Genes. Science
Daily, Dec. 29,2006,
http://www.sciencedaily.com/release/2006/12/061226095421.html
4.
Peterson, Bret, The Evolution of Human Language. P.6, Brain
Connection, http://www.brainconnection.com/topics/?main=fa/evolutionlanguage8

5. Ancient Mesopotamia: The Invention of Writing. The Oriental Institute

of the University of Chicago,
http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/MUS/ED/TRC/MESO/writing.html