The Post-Partisan Emporium

  Recent evolution of the ability to read and write The Visual Word Form Area provides an interesting case of gene-culture coevolution. Written by Peter Frost. The Visual Word Form Area is a brain region that helps us recognize written words and letters. (We can read without it, albeit less easily.) When a man suffered an accidental lesion to his VWFA during brain surgery, he lost much of his reading ability but experienced no loss of object recognition and naming, face processing or general language abilities. Six months later he had partially recovered, but reading still took twice as long as it had before the surgery ( Gaillard et al, 2006 ). The VWFA is composed of neurons that were once used for face recognition: Thus, learning to read must involve a ‘neuronal recycling’ process whereby pre-existing cortical systems are harnessed for the novel task of recognizing written words. … [Such areas of the cortex] possess the appropriate receptive fields to recognize the small co...

  How Christianity rebooted cognitive evolution The aftermath of a collapse Peter Frost Portrait of Augustine, 6th century fresco Mean cognitive ability fell under Imperial Rome but rose again as the Empire became Christian. Cognitive ability is the capacity to process information, recognize patterns, and solve problems. It initially served to meet the challenges of hunting and gathering – a way of life that, by 30,000 years ago, spanned the full range of natural environments from the equator to the Arctic. Colder environments presented a greater number of cognitive challenges, as shown by the inverse correlation between temperature and technological complexity among present-day hunter-gatherer groups (Hoffecker, 2002, p. 10, Figure 1.5). The coldest and most challenging environments existed during the last ice age, and covered northern Eurasia until about 12,000 years ago. Food was potentially abundant but made up largely of “meat on the hoof” – large herds of wandering reindeer a...