Stone age minds in modern skulls
from The Descent of Man Hosted by ABC Radio National and ABC Science Online
Do we have stone age minds in modern skulls? Are we cavepeople cast adrift in a modern world? What's the mental arithmetic for choosing a mate? Are our genes our matchmakers? Our mind is fundamental to who we are, and to the way we feel and function. But many evolutionary psychologists reckon if we want to understand the way our minds work, we need to go back 100,000 years to the times when our ancestors were hunter-gatherers. This latest breed of Darwinists reckon our brains have not evolved significantly since those times. The things our brains were designed to do by evolution are things that were needed by hunter-gatherer humans to respond to the environment in which they lived. So, rather than the mind being one multi-purpose supercomputer, it's a set of 'modules', each of which is adapted to a particular task, like interpreting the messages from our eyes, ears and noses, using language, looking for food and attracting a mate. But do we need to go back to the Stone Age to find the perfect mate? What gets boys and girls together, and for that matter girls and girls, and boys and boys - evolutionary programming or a nice pair of cheekbones? And why do we experience sexual desire - for the sake of offspring or an orgasm?
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