Since Time Began ...

Today I want to take a step out and away from the day-to day-stuff of life.  In fact I want to go to the other extreme and take in a huge perspective – the history of life on earth.  No less!

Since we stumbled out of the primordial swamp (no apologies to creationists – I think you’re wrong) we human beings have been 400 million (ish) years in the making.  We have had 100 million years of being reptiles and another 300 million years of being mammals.  We – homo sapiens – only arrived on the planet 200 thousand years ago.

Let’s zoom back in. It is clear that we were built by forces of evolution to face very different survival pressures than we face in today’s world.  What then is our genetic legacy?

As reptiles we had a simple brain to instinctively deal with immediate threats to survival and opportunities to stay alive and procreate.  As mammals we developed a more sophisticated brain that allowed us further intelligence to deal with not only our individual survival but also that of our offspring, to provide shelter, to care and nurture. 

When we evolved into a homo species then our brains started to rapidly evolve intelligence that ultimately allowed us to transcend our day-to-day existence, to plan, to dream and hope; to imagine how we can achieve greater wellbeing for ourselves, our loved ones and our planet; to develop arts, science, technology and progress the human condition to a place and at a pace unimaginable even 100 years ago.

We are only aware of our human brain because this is where we have consciousness, this is where we think. The problem is that these earlier stages of our evolution are still present in the structure of our brains, functioning below our 
conscious awareness and driving our behaviour. 

We have three brains but we only think we think with one.

I will be looking at the implications of this in the next blog or two.

For more on this subject read ‘The Triune Brain in Evolution’ by Paul D. McLean.