A mutation as a cause of intelligence

[Luisrah]

My biology teacher told me about a mutation that happened in whatever hominide came before us that made us "be born before the time".
If we look at other animals they are much more independent from their parents than us. For example, we can't walk when we are born, and most animals can.

And so the argument was that, the fact that we were born like that made us have to learn all those things, and the developed our brain enough for us to be intelligent.

Now my question is, do you agree or disagree, and how could one conciliate this with the Marxist theory that humans developed to be such because of language, producing stuff, using their hands to experiment, creating tools, etc?

[ZeroNowhere]

Um, isn't the exact point that man needs to produce in order to survive precisely because of his weakness as a species, lacking the natural tools which other animals have (long necks, sharp claws, venom, etc)? In order to produce, and manipulate nature according to their need as a continual process, necessary for their survival, humans must therefore understand it. For a comparison, if a painter is given the three primary colours yellow, blue and red, and had continually to produce specific mixtures of these, in other words had to be able to produce a specific colour according to need, then he would have to learn that, say, blue + yellow = green, red + blue = purple/violet, etc, which we may compare to physical laws (which may progress from 'things fall', or things tending towards their natural place, to the law of universal gravitation and beyond, similar to how we may progress from blue + yellow = green to 2 parts blue + 1 part yellow = a particular shade of green, and accordingly progress in production or painting).

"Confined to the use of his own physical power, man is one of the most helpless animals. In proportion to his size and requirements, he is unquestionably very weak and slow. But the superiority of his organism consists precisely in the aptitude of his brain, and the fitness of his hands, for the contrivance and use of mechanical devices, though which he may take from nature, by artifice, these forces in which he is naturally wanting. Every such contrivance is to him like a new organ by which his power of motion is increased. But the point is soon reached in the development of the artificial organs, where a single individual cannot produce or use them. Beyond the most primitive of hunting, fishing, and cultivating implements, every tool, not to speak of the more complex machine, requires, in its making, or in its handling, or in the purpose for which it is handled, the cooperation of several individuals."

- Daniel De Leon.

[Luisrah]

Thank you very much! :)

So I guess this can be inserted into the equation. This mutation would develop the brain enough to be able to use the hands to change the world in order to compensate for the fact that we are physically weak, and since it still wasn't enough, men worked together, from which resulted language, and all this together separated him from the animal kingdom.

[See You Latour]

I don't know much about biology, so if I'm wrong please correct me, but I don't see how we'd be talking about one mutation. There are at least two distinct processes going on, the time of birth and the capabilities of the brain. For example, if I'm not mistaken, a kangaroo gives birth to an animal that can effectively only do one thing, climb up to its mother's pouch. So clearly, it takes more than a behaviorally undeveloped birth to produce the type of social organization human beings are capable of. How these two developed, however, I really don't know much about.

[Luisrah]

Yes, you make a good point, one that I thought about but couldn't find an answer to.

However, I guess that ZeroNowhere answers it. Kangaroos are well adapted to their habitat (or else they'd all be dead), so they aren't physically weak, nor do they have hands to create things to compensate for it.

By Darwin's theory of evolution, there is variety between individuals of a species (due to mutations), and when there is an alteration in the environment (or the habitat, place where they live, the conditions they live in, such as predators, etc) only those that are adapted to those new conditions survive.

We survived as a species eventhough we are a weak species, so the only explanation is that we used intelligence and cooperation to compensate. Using intelligence to fabricate tools which would compensate for our weakness, such as spears for hunting, and doing it in groups for se same reason.

[See You Latour]

Well, I'm not sure what you mean by a weak species, as in, compared to what?

[Luisrah]

Well, I'm not sure what you mean by a weak species, as in, compared to what?

Weak as in, not fast, not strong, don't have horns or spikes, no venom, no claws or big teeth, no wings, etc. The best we can do is probably climb trees since we are closely related to primates, and leopards can climb trees too heh :D

[See You Latour]

Weak as in, not fast, not strong, don't have horns or spikes, no venom, no claws or big teeth, no wings, etc. The best we can do is probably climb trees since we are closely related to primates, and leopards can climb trees too heh :D
I guess I don't need to point out that while some animals are faster, stronger, or whatever than humans, a lot of animals are not. "Weak" is a relative term.

[Jimmie Higgins]

My biology teacher told me about a mutation that happened in whatever hominide came before us that made us "be born before the time".
If we look at other animals they are much more independent from their parents than us. For example, we can't walk when we are born, and most animals can.

And so the argument was that, the fact that we were born like that made us have to learn all those things, and the developed our brain enough for us to be intelligent.

Now my question is, do you agree or disagree, and how could one conciliate this with the Marxist theory that humans developed to be such because of language, producing stuff, using their hands to experiment, creating tools, etc?
I don't think this is correct from a materialist or evolutionist view. First of all for any mutation to actually be passed down and become a regular part of an animal, it has to be a beneficial mutation. If a mutation is harmful then the animal will probably not be able to pass it on, if it was neutral mutation then, at most, it would be passed down but not be favored and lead to a widespread appearance of the mutation in the general population. The description of adaptations finding uses after they develop would be an inversion of my understanding of how materialist evolutionary scientists and Marxists see it. What I mean is that being born early but not being able to fend for yourself at such an early age would just lead to the offspring dieing off and not passing the mutation on. In addition, human babies can't fend for themselves, they actually need others to take care of them, so the mutation would have to be 2 things: a pre-human spices developing early births and child-care techniques at the same time - so that makes me think this is not a very probable scenario.

Wikipedia says this on the subject:

By 2.4 million years ago Homo habilis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_habilis) had appeared in East Africa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Africa): the first known human (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_%28genus%29) species, and the first known to make stone tools (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_tool).
The use of tools conferred a crucial evolutionary advantage, and required a larger and more sophisticated brain to co-ordinate the fine hand movements required for this task. The evolution of a larger brain created a problem for early humans, however. A larger brain requires a larger skull (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_skull), and thus requires the female (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female) to have a wider birth canal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_canal) for the newborn's larger skull to pass through. But if the female's birth canal grew too wide, her pelvis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelvis) would be so wide that she would lose the ability to run: still a necessary skill in the dangerous world of 2 million years ago.
The solution to this was to give birth at an early stage of fetal development, before the skull grew too large to pass through the birth canal. This adaptation enabled the human brain to continue to grow, but it imposed a new discipline (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline). The need to care for helpless infants for long periods of time forced humans to become less mobile. Human bands increasingly stayed in one place for long periods, so that females could care for infants, while males hunted food and fought with other bands that competed for food sources. As a result, humans became even more dependent on tool-making to compete with other animals and each other, and relied less on size and strength.
I think this explanation might be a little better in that early birth was a useful adaptation to existing pressures, rather than a neutral or harmful adaptation (early birth) that creates a new evolutionary pressure (the need to learn) which then leads to a useful adaptation (larger brains).

But the thing that might be harder to swallow from a marxist perspective is that our brains developed because we needed to learn how to use tools better - it implies some kind of desire for an adaptation rather than adaptations being the result of material pressures.

As I understand it there has been a long-standing debate about human development and if big brains led to tool-making and bipedal locomotion or the other way around. Engels believed that human ancestors did not develop intelligence first, but that changes in the way pre-humans behaved and secured food led to the increased capacity for intelligence. The anthropologists who come down on the same side of that debate argue (or at least they did when I was reading about this stuff 14 years ago) that human ancestors probably developed tools which lead to an advantage in getting a wider variety of food and eventually more meat (whereas pre-homo species and other great apes generally eat less meat) and this allowed a diet with all the fats and so on necessary for a larger brain to develop.

[Luisrah]

But that would mean that 2 mutations would have to happen too! One which makes the brain grow more and one which makes the baby be born earlier!

And I have another question. Do we need a good/big/developed brain to create tools?

If we don't, then how do we create tools if we are ''stupid''?
And if we do need, the brains would have come before, making it possible for good coordinations to make a tool.


And what changes is Engels talking about? If everything is the same, why would pre-humans start to behave in a different way (thus leading to the developing of the brain)?

More, is there are specific book on this? I'd like on from each perspective if you know of any please.

Thanks.

[∞]

Well, what severity of mutation?
An interesting case for human intelligence would be Albert Einstein. Neuro scientists have actually said his temporal lobes were 15% wider, he had a "highly-developed" parietal lobe.

I guess you can consider that a rather positive "mutation". If it is one...