ABSTRACT
How did humans evolve such remarkable intellectual powers? This is surely one of the most enduring and captivating questions in the life sciences, from paleoanthropology to neuroscience. Modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) far exceed all other species in their ability to learn, reason, and solve novel problems. We are, most strikingly, the only species whose members routinely use words and other abstract symbols to communicate with each other, record ideas in material form, and imagine alternative futures. Perhaps for these reasons we are the only species ever to have developed complex technologies that allow us radically to transform the physical environments we inhabit.
