From: Stuart, Ian (Ian.Stuart@woolpert.com)
Date: Thu Nov 03 2005 - 13:07:30 MST
>Female Elephants have
>chimp-level encephalization quotients, complex social groups of size
similar
>to those of hunter gatherers, fine manipulators, tool use, long lives,
and
>human sized or larger neocortexes, but in the million years or so of
their
>existance (20 million if Mastadons count) they have not developed any
>culture comparable to ours and specifically have not domesticated other
>animals or adapted to a range of climates to spread globally. They are
also
>ineffective in defending themselves against human hunter-gatherers.
But I do not believe that elephants, or in fact any other creature as
far as my Googling has found, has 6 full layers of cortical tissue, and
it is this, rather than total area or volume of tissue which allows us
to think on a more abstract level than that of other creatures and gives
us our "creative" edge. As I understand it, area relates proportionally
to bandwidth while each layer allows the generalizations created from
the detailed input of the lower layer to be generalized and abstracted
to a greater degree. Please correct me if I am mistaken here, as my
primary source of input about this topic has been Mr. Hawkins' book. If
there are seminal papers or texts that I should read in order to ask
better questions I would love to know about them.
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