@BrightNoon,
BrightNoon;65446 wrote:Good thoughts all, but I just thought of a major problem...can't believe I missed it before. How could enhanced mental processing of this kind be inherited? Let's assume that an australopithicine ate some bad barley, tripped his monkey face off, learned alot, grew wise, and even became the favored male of the group, got tons of that sweet australo-tang and thus had a huge progeny. His children would 'inherit his brain' as it was before he tripped.
I like the way you describe it.
Your objection is totally right in terms of genetical progress.
However we don't necessarily have to interprete sympathiepains idea genetically.
Remember in A.C.Clark's novel it was the monolith that caused a significant leap of the ape's intelligence, meaning that something from outer space triggered the step to a higher consciousness.
This change doesn't have to be understood as a genetical change.
I'd rather see it actually as a little trigger in the apes mind being pulled, causing a huge chain reaction.
What Clark assumed to have come from outerspace certainly also could have been a trigger that grew on mother earth.
An ape having halluzinations and seing things from a different perspective could also have made the big invention, which in the film was using an object as a weapon.
Seeing this as an evolutionary step can be criticized but one can certainly argue that a terrestrial trigger is more likely than one from outerspace.
Personally it don't see a necessity of a spark that lightened the fire anyway, because it was a very slow process, and mother nature is patient.
But anyway if we want to believe that an illuminating spark was necessary, a psychedelic drug might come in just as handy as aliens.
