ABSTRACT
Let us start this essay with a brief myth. Imagine that we have found the story among dusty manuscripts in a corner of an old secondhand book store:
When Zeus created the living beings and placed them on Earth, he gave each of them brains that would best fit their owners. He gave the fish a brain that allowed it to swim, wriggle, and swallow the tasty, thick water. He gave the frog a brain that made it as bouncy as a wet rubber ball. He gave brains to the snake and to the turtle; he gave their share to the running, swimming, crawling, and flying birds that fill the sky. He also did not forget about the furry four-legged creatures, marsupials, rodents, and insectivores. He gave brains to the double-hoofed rhinoceros and to the single-hoofed horse, to the beaver and to the squirrel, to the walrus, seal, bear, and tiger, and even to the Bornean pot-bellied orangutan, and even to the gloomy African gorilla.… Man was the last to come.
“Here,” said Zeus with a touch of pride, giving the Man something looking like a pink paté on a plate. “You will be happy with what I give you. This is cortex of large hemispheres that I have endowed with many wonderful features. Look, this place will give you speech. That one will help you understand other people. This convolution will make you grammatical; that fissure will let you write; this corner will let you enjoy music; that part will make your right hand your trustworthy and reliable assistant and will let it master the most complex tools. All these things are for you, and for you only, my beloved child, and none of the other creatures will have them. Are you happy?”
“No, I am not,” answered the Man. “I am sorry, Father, but you yourself made me so insatiable. I cannot restrict myself to only spiritual food. I do not want to live only a mental life, to be a young elder, a monk renouncing all the pleasures of life that you created so beautiful! Look at the horse, how strong his feet are and how endurant he is! Look at the eagle, how powerful his flight is, and how precisely he strikes his prey like your lightning, oh, Thunderer! Look at a swallow rushing through the air like an arrow. I also want to run, jump, climb, and even fly, damn it! Don’t deprive me of all this!”
“Well,” said Zeus, “I will also give you brains of the eagle and of the swallow. So, when you get tired of thinking, you will be able to run and to jump. When fighting your enemies, you will be as powerful as the eagle and as quick as the swallow. Are you happy now?”
“No, not yet,” said Man. “I also need to be as flexible as the snake. I want my body to be able to curl and uncurl like a spring, I want my jumps to be not worse than those of the frog and the flea. I want my body to be free of fatigue and to feel myself as comfortable in all the elements as the fish in the water.”
“You are asking too much, and I am getting bored,” answered Zeus. “I shall give you brains of the fish and the frog, but this will be it. I have already spent on you five times as much time as on all other animals. But listen to what else I am going to say. So that you and all your descendants remember my generosity, each of your children and children of your children will, during their childhood, live through the lives of all those animals whose brains I gave you. Your life is long enough to spend some time as each of these creatures. There will be enough left for a real human life. And now, get lost.”
And so, it happened, as Zeus, the Cloudmaster, the Father of all living on Earth, had said. Man starts his life as a fish and during nine months swims in mother’s waters. Then, he arrives outside, he spreads his lungs but still kicks and wriggles helplessly as a fish on a shore and also croaks his “agoo” without any sense or expression like a frog. After six months of life, his bird brain becomes mature; he learns how to sit and to stand, to maintain equilibrium, then to walk and to run, to quickly grab things and put them into his mouth. At the same time, he repeats words of the others without any sense, like a parrot. During the second year, his mammal brain ripens. His teeth grow, and this is a difference between birds and mammals. He starts to speak and understand the speech of others. Gradually, his forelimbs turn into hands. When a child learns how to use his hands not only to destroy things but also to use them, then he stops being a cub and turns into a Man. He is forced to sit behind a desk or a tool bench, and good-bye happy childhood! https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781410603357/c50aaf86-3a26-4338-a248-f9b1f40f6bf6/content/fig4_1_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
