Preliminaries to Social Advancement and Intelligence?

I was thinking about how humans came to become so intelligent and socially advanced as compared to animals. With this observation, this must mean certain preliminaries exist before social advancement and intelligence can occur.

1. I figure first the race must be at the top of the food chain. With no predators, a sense of safety and security is endowed. With this safety, advancements in intelligence can occur if the capabilities are there. Without this security, the race can only focus on survival.

lol thats all I could think up at the moment but maybe I'm on to something? Or maybe this was already obvious to everyone and I'm an idiot for posting it, you be the judge. Thoughts and opinions are appreciated.

Well first and foremost we have have minds unique to our own species [as far as we know]. A greater level of consciousness that makes us ask 'why,' as compared to other animals who merely live for the 'how.'

So instead of 'how do I get that cheese?' as a mouse might ask, we wonder 'who put that cheese there?', 'is there any risk involved in taking it?', and of course 'why does cheese exist in the first place?' We think abstractly, develop strategies and make advancements together etc., so once we have secured bare survival, our intelligence continues to branch as we find new problems to solve.

Now THAT was obvious.

yah but I was assuming there were preliminaries to this kind of consciousness. yay? nay?

"We think abstractly, develop strategies and make advancements together etc., so once we have secured bare survival, our intelligence continues to branch as we find new problems to solve."

This is born out of the creation of language, which is a direct result of our species having a larynx. Opposable thumbs and highly sensitive nerve tissue have also allowed for key developements, but the larynx is probably the single most important organ we have when it comes to our developing mind in its infant stages. This is due to the fact that it allows us to communicate on such a deep and complex level. Which in turn has caused a growth in humans as a whole over a long period of time. The transfer of language into physical form i.e.- ancient texts, is another jump which sets us well apart from other species.

the larynx doesn't mean shit. If we didn't have that we'd just evolve sign language further or some other form of communication.

A more specific culprit would be our ability to recall history, which is a culmination of all of the apsects that make us unique.

"If we didn't have that we'd just evolve sign language further or some other form of communication."

But we didn't. We used the larynx.

A lot of animals recall history... Why do you think certain bugs appear to look like other bugs which are poisonous or have stingers? Because other bugs FEAR it from being injured in the past or having seen the actual bug with the stinger or poison.. thats called recalling history.

"But we didn't. We used the larynx."

and if you read my post you would see that I said IF we didn't have the larynx we would probably evolve some other type of communication which means that the larynx had no real effect on our intellect or social stature.

What at first seemed a dour thread has turned interesting. Wyote, could you be a little clearer? Are you suggesting that the development of the larynx is prior to the cognitive abilitites which make us human? In evolutionary terms there appear to be two possibilites:

1) The ability to form and manipulate complex and nuanced sounds bestowed on humans a tool for categorizing ideas like no other species before, and this, more than superior brain power, is what supervenes on them their superiority as a species.

ie - larynx development precedes cognitive abilites

2) The ability to think to a level that is recognisably 'human' already existed in earlier species, but until this was augmented by the ability to speak, it could not develop to the complexity demanded in the formation of anything like a 'civilization'.

ie cognitive abilities precedes larynx development

Of course, all this assumes that language is indispensible to 'rational' thought - an assumption which itself might require some investigation.

I still don't believe the larynx was detrimental to our progression, I think other forms of communication would have progressed, maybe at a slower rate but still nonetheless. We use our larynx, yes, but we also use a lot of body language, I'm confident sign language could be a dominant form of communication until an alphabet was comprised and eventually we'd be right where we are now.

Shouldn't this be on the science forum then?

Okay, you deleted the previous post. I'll try to be more accommodating this time. Okay: I would expect a person like you to be more sceptical about telepathy than this. I don't mean to seem excessively contradictory, but I would be much obliged if you could save your religious beliefs for the religion forum. You will probably see this as yet more proof of my 'close-mindedness', but I protest. Quite simply, I don't regard the subject as having the sufficient empirical basis for one to make a conbjecture like this, and as a result, your comment strikes me as questionable to say the least.. Further, the burden of proof is clearly on YOU. Perhaps you would like to enlighten me?

The social advancement and intelligence in homeo sapiens is a result of our succesful ability to adapt to our environmental context over time (so far). Intelligence is not totally genetic, it also develops socially within the environment. Every genetic influence acts in an environmental context. There is no objective means of determining what is intelligent. Or even what is biologically 'normal', 'wrong' or what postmodernists like to refer to as 'The Other', in other words outcasts. That refers to a very subjective point of view, which has its place outside of most if not all modern scientific criterion.

Social advancment and intelligence are derivitive of the evolution of the human mind in the change of genetic composition of a population during successive generations. The development of the brain of humans differs from other species due to the advancment of not only linguistic development but also behavioural cognition, bidpedal locomotion, the ability to modify our environment, technology, and migration distribution, among many other factors. The molecular ecological mechanisms responsible for these advancements are a result of the successive evolutionary steps of genetic drift, gene flow, genetic migration, mutations, genetic recombinations, random mating and natural selection. Remember that every genetic influence acts in an environmental context

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This is born out of the creation of language, which is a direct result of our species having a larynx

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No, language was not at all a direct result of containing a laynx. Instead the laynx is a mechanism that evolved as an adaptative response to the development of our language centre of the brain, located in the left hemisphere (in nearly all adults). Language is a defining feature of the human brain. Until babies turn a year old, they respond to language with their entire brains, but then, slowly, language shifts to the left hemisphere, driven by the acquisition of language itself. Anyways, certain areas of the cerebral cortex (note decius- the cerebral cortex is in all vertebrates ) are devoted to language functions. These include Broac's area and Wenicke's area. Phonemes are the basic perceptual units of which speech is composed and were developed not only as a result of biological factors regionlised within the brain but there were also social origins of speech production. An obvious indication of the biological basis for human speech is that natural selection favoured the configuration thats good for speaking over the configuration thats good for eating (in regards to the structure of the mouth which is involved in speech production). Anyways, at least once through human evolution, a system of verbal communication emerged from proto-linguistic forms of communication. And indeed today language usage is one of the most diagnostic traits that distinguish H. sapiens from other species.