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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (246506)	8/18/2005 5:25:01 PM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572397

"What is the quality that makes us different.......smarter? Is it simply because we have opposable thumbs?" There were probably many factors. Bonobos, chimps and humans have pretty complex societies and tend to be generalists. As generalists, they can exploit feeding opportunities as they come up. So they are more immune to climate and other changes that would force other animals to migrate or die. Or both. I suspect strongly that the ancestors of humans were forced out of the forests onto the coast by some climate change. Because they weren't well suited for that environment, intelligence was a decided advantage. There also were some physical changes like losing the hair, bipedal locomotion, subcutaneous fat, swimming, the hair pattern on the back, etc. Maybe a relationship with porpoises was developed during that period and the dolphins remember what we forgot... Frans de Waal delivered a lecture on bonobos at Texas A&M. We took advantage of that.