Up From Dragons: The Evolution of Human Intelligence [Hardcover]

John Skoyles (Author), Dorion Sagan (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0071378251 | ISBN-13: 978-0071378253 | Publication Date: May 17, 2002 | Edition: 1

A breathtaking account of the "unnatural" history of consciousness and human intelligence

Taking its cue from The Dragons of Eden, Carl Sagan's 1977 classic and New York Times bestseller, Up from Dragons traces the development of human intelligence back to its animal roots in an attempt to account for the vast differences between our species and all those that came before us. In a book that will spark a storm of debate, neuroscientist John Skoyles and awardwinning author Dorion Sagan introduce a controversial theory of the origins of human intelligence that may hold the answers to questions that have haunted scientists about mind, consciousness, and the evolutionary odyssey of humankind. It also introduces the revolutionary concept of "mindware"­­the human, evolutionary equivalent of computer software­­and describes how the evolution-accelerating symbol-using programs that make it up have empowered us with the unprecedented ability to take charge of our own evolutionary destiny.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When Carl Sagan published The Dragons of Eden in 1977, his speculations on the development of the human brain drew on the still-nascent field of neuroscience. Now science writer Dorion Sagan (Carl's son) and brain theorist Skoyles present a follow-up that includes not only new discoveries about brain functions but also a coherent theory as to how and why humans developed the intelligence that sets them apart from other primates. Key to this evolution, they argue, are two facts: the plasticity of the brain (particularly in the prefrontal cortex), which means that it "is not fixed in what it can do"; and our status as social beings. Because the ape brain had already evolved into a "biocomputer with a wide range of mental skills that was ready, without further physical evolution, to do totally novel things," it could accommodate the need for pre-humans to use symbols to negotiate increasingly complex social relationships. And symbols "made the mind of the human-ape unlike that of any other," enabling its capacity for kinship, emotion and abstract reasoning. "Human evolution," Sagan and Skoyles argue, "did not fix our brain's information processing but instead created reprogrammable neural circuits that could evolve new kinds of intelligence." This thesis may generate controversy, but it is supported with creative arguments and intriguing evidence. Concluding with a sketch of how brain evolution might progress in the coming millennium, Sagan and Skoyles offer a thrilling, accessible biological narrative.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From the Back Cover

One of the most exciting discoveries to emerge from the recent explosion in brain research is the phenomenon of neural plasticity. With the discovery of neural plasticity, the traditional view of the brain as a hard-wired collection of modules, virtually fixed for life by early childhood, is being replaced by a revolutionary new image of an amazingly versatile biocomputer able to quickly adapt and reshape itself in response to its external environment and, more significantly, to its internal, symbolic environment.

Now, in a book that is sure to have a profound impact on the contemporary discourse on consciousness and its origins, John Skoyles, a neuroscientist working at the cutting edge of brain-mind research, and coauthor, award-winning science writer, Dorion Sagan, explain how the discovery of the brain's remarkable flexibility changes the entire story of the evolution of human intelligence, consciousness, and culture. In the process they deal a devastating blow to currently fashionable concepts of genetically programmed minds promulgated by evolutionary psychologists such as Steven Pinker.

Bringing together a vast array of hitherto unconnected facts from the fields of neuroscience, computing and artificial intelligence, cognitive science, developmental psychology, anthropology, art history, and more, the authors reconstruct the 100,000-year evolutionary odyssey of the human mind. Beginning with our simian forebears, they trace the parallel developments of the neocortex­­the brain's symbol-using "conductor"­­and increasingly complex primate societies held together by symbolic bonds. Step by step, Skoyles and Sagan reconstruct the slow evolution of increasingly sophisticated symbolic systems and show how the process eventually led to the development of a set of evolution-accelerating, symbol-using programs called mindware­­the evolutionary equivalent of a Windows or Macintosh operating system, and the basis for consciousness. Drawing on startling new insights into the brain's workings yielded by new brain-scanning technologies, the authors reveal how mindware functions to provide us with the sense of an "I" and the world in which it resides, and how the neocortex deploys mindware to supersede genetically programmed behaviors and impulses and to alter the very structure of the brain.

Taking its cue from Carl Sagan's 1977 classic, The Dragons of Eden, Up from Dragons is a breathtaking account of the "unnatural" history of consciousness and human intelligence.

"This endowment, this changeling nature, this plasticity, makes us unique among animals. Other species, for the most part, remain as they were when they evolved; we instead broke that older pattern of nature and went on to discover new forms of life, thought and enjoyment. No other animal species before us has traveled so much evolutionary territory in so little time. And yet, the ticket for this immense trip is not genetic; genetically when you look in the mirror what you see could be a hunter gatherer who was living at the beginning of our species. Another kind of ticket existed that was to purchase the journey on this great evolutionary odyssey. What was it? In our view, this question is one of the greatest scientific mysteries. It can perhaps be answered simply, even glibly, with notions such as "culture " or "ideas." But until now science has not been able to provide any sort of detailed answer. Here we shall explore what happened to that hunter gatherer in the mirror. How did that person get here? What had evolved earlier in their brain to help them? And how did they get here so damned fast."

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (May 17, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071378251
• ISBN-13: 978-0071378253
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #736,345 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Ascent of the Reptile Brain ?, October 7, 2002

By 

Anthony R. Dickinson (WashU Med School, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Up From Dragons: The Evolution of Human Intelligence (Hardcover)

Championing the ascent of reptiles as much as the descent of man, this thoughtful volume on the evolution of intelligence by Skoyles and Sagan is a welcome addition to the nature/nurture neurophilosophy shelf. The authors take us well beyond the 'usual suspects' listing of gross anatomical brain structure and function of the familiar phyla, traveling a welcome breadth of comparative data to include a wide variety of species (including our earlier selves). Rather than merely outline the familiar shopping list(s) of evolving structures culminating in the development of the modern human cerebral cortex, Skoyles & Sagan do not end with the discussion of its distinctive "associative" or "silent" areas of the brain of old (as so many other authors are still content to do). Instead, and throughout the book's eighteen chapters, we are treated to a series of detailed proposals concerned with the continuously adaptive neural architecture of both the intra- and inter-cerebral structures underlying the evolution human intelligent behavior.
Reminiscent of learning the names of Tolstoy's characters in the early pages of 'War & Peace', one meets here parts of the brain rarely mentioned (let alone claimed to be of any significance in explaining who we are and why we behave as we do). Following the publication of this volume, the long overdue and normally restricted cast of human brain features will now include the structure and functional connectivities of the anterior cingulate, the amygdala, the insula, the orbital and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of the brain (and these are just a few of the characters amongst many others that might have been introduced here). We may still not be able to agree upon how best to measure intelligence (IQ, in my view, still tautologically measuring 'what IQ tests measure'), but the physiological substrates of the brain supporting intelligent behavior are slowly coming to be located and characterized. Many of the examples and theoretical components put forward may perhaps appear predictable to those familiar with modern paradigms in comparative psychology and the study of intelligent systems (both biological and man-made), but the real strength of this book is to be seen in its successfully discussing adaptive neural systems for the technical non-specialist. The story as told here is a great achievement for a book aimed at the popular science reader.

The basic thesis of the book follows the development of the nervous system in the aftermath of the 'KT event' (coincident with the demise of the reptilian dinosaurs), which favored flexible, mobile species with nocturnal, cold-adaptable behaviors, capable of finding shelter and forage. In contrast, species with relatively reflexive nervous systems, whilst satisfactory when situated in a stable, predictable environment, can often fail to adapt to changes within the time course of sudden catastrophic events. En route to the architecture of the modern human brain, we meet the aetiology of social and emotional life and their associated neural substrata in the prefrontal cerebral and limbic cortex (amongst other structures). The level of neuroanatomical detail is sufficient to provide a coherent and consistent story of successive adaptations leading to the development of 'higher intelligence', but the pathway taken argues not for this result deriving solely from phylogenetic mutation (per se), but, and more importantly, from ontogenetic neural plasticity and enculturation despite the SAME genetic makeup.

If this idea is new, and at first glance appears to be an uncomfortable one, don't panic! If the authors are right, your prefrontal brain cortex will soon get to work in generating some reflex inhibition, allowing one to assess (and reassess) the situation, temporarily delay one's actions, and then to organize and activate novel planned behaviors towards worked goals. Whether the modern human can prove him/herself to be intelligent enough to plan the survival of any future catastrophe (whether it be of our own making or another KT-like event) we will have to wait and see. In the meantime we have in this book, an accessible version of a still-emerging story telling how, and as the solution to what challenges, the intelligence of a variety of species (including modern humans) currently evolved to demonstrate.

Excellently referenced throughout, with bibliography aplenty for those wishing to read more of the detailed research literature, my only gripe with this book would be with its lack of visualization aids for those unfamiliar with the brain areas mentioned. Although the text is sufficiently detailed to allow the reader to construct crude schematics for him/herself (as one may have done in the case of Tolstoy's family trees?), both anatomical and flowchart illustrations might be of help in hastening the orientation of those perhaps new to the anatomy and neurophysiology of the brain.
Whether this would indeed have been the book that Carl Sagan would have written in 1977 had he possessed the vast corpus of knowledge concerning the brain now available, one may only guess? It is my own view that Skoyles & Sagan's title serves more than to merely pay homage to 'The Dragons of Eden', in whose memory this book is in part written.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Huge research effort, but a massive failure to grasp the basics, August 20, 2008

By 

Carmi Turchick "tribalypredisposed" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Up From Dragons: The Evolution of Human Intelligence (Hardcover)

A hundred pages of references, but some very simple concepts elude these two authors. The fundamental question they attempt to examine and answer is how and why human intelligence evolved. Unfortunately for the authors and their readers this question requires that they first master the application of the Theory of Evolution, and here they fail quite dramatically.

Making frequent use of chimpanzees as examples, they uniformly fail to address the question of what made humans evolve a larger and more intelligent brain than the chimps did. Which is really the question they need to answer. Fine, chimps need some smarts for their social lives and so on as they discuss, but last I looked we are not living in small bands like chimps do. And we are considerably smarter. Why are we smarter? How are humans different socially? Does that have anything to do with the question at hand? I assert that it does but the authors never mention it or examine human social structure.

Robin Dunbar has done some interesting and pursuasive work on the issue of grooming (Grooming, Gossip...) asserting that verbal skills evolved to allow social bonding in groups too large to bond by grooming, and that they replaced grooming in humans because we evolved to not have much hair to groom. To me this is a much more logical argument for the evolution of intelligence via verbal skills than the one that these authors make.

The authors instead assert the classic cop-out of evolution, that it was sexual selection driving verbal skills/social skills to increase leading to greater intelligence. Sexual selection has its place of course. But here the authors assert that it drove the evolution of larger brains even at the cost of female fitness (well, they actually fail to mention the cost for females despite it being incredibly obvious). This just is not what sexual selection does. Sexual selection is the evolution of a trait that has fitness costs for the gender being selected, not for the one doing the selection, and the marker indicates the fitness of the individual selected. Here the authors assert that females selected for larger brains, effectively, while paying the fitness cost themselves by dying in labor. They further assert that intelligence itself had no direct fitness benefits beyond the chimp level. Evolutionary Theory says no, that is not a possible scenario. If intelleigence is not a fitness marker for males but was simply a "preference" that randomly arose, if it provides no fitness advantages to humans (and given that it has a fitness cost for females) as they assert, then we would be chimps. Because these factors together select out the females that prefer intelligent males. If they had grasped the Theory of Evolution they would have known this.

The dust jacket claims that this book destroys the work of Pinker and others in the area of evolutionary psychology. Instead it shows that these two have a lot of knowledge of details but very little ability to understand or apply the most basic concepts involved in the question they seek to answer. To attempt to refute evolutionary pscyhology one needs at least a sound grasp of evolution, and these authors do not have one.

Finally, by rejecting evolutionary psychology they have remained ignorant of the work of scholars like Dunbar and many others that could have greatly informed their quest to answer the question at hand.

Humans did not evolve greater intelligence than chimps because we were just like chimps but the females decided they liked smart boys. That is their arguement in simplified form and it is not even a weak one, it is a clearly wrong and not even theoretically possible one.

16 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interweaving of primate politics and brain evolution, August 13, 2002

By 

Monica Huskey (Columbus, Georgia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Up From Dragons: The Evolution of Human Intelligence (Hardcover)

This book was a revelation. I had heard that we only use ten percent of our brains but this book seems to prove it. Thirty years of brain research are summarized with a new story of "mindware"--how the brain, in our highly social ancestors, programmed itself to do new things. Mother-child attachments, thinking about loved ones when they are not there, our status as a species which must keep track of others in our heads were all involved deeply in the transition from hunter-gatherer to modern human. Genetically we are no different from our ancestors a hundred thousand years ago. The difference between us and apes is thus obviously not a genetic ones. This excellent book by John Skoyles and Dorion Sagan provides the missing link between us and primate ancestors: the neurally changeable brain. This book has many exciting examples, such as the bull rider whose legs seemed paralyzed in his mind in the same position they were in when he was thrown, the boy who uses sonar on his bike to navigate, and the man who experiences orgasm in his feet. Highly recommended.