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The Ascent of Mind. Ice Age Climates and the Evolution of Intelligence
Investigates the rapid evolution of the ape brain into the hominid brain, and explains why understanding our evolutionary past can help us survive an uncertain future
302 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1990
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160 people want to read
About the author
William H. Calvin
36 books36 followersWilliam H. Calvin, Ph.D., is a theoretical neurobiologist, Affiliate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is the author of a dozen books, mostly for general readers, about brains and evolution.
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January 26, 2022Two and a half million years ago, our proto-human ancestors had ape-sized brains. Over the next million years--a blink of evolutionary time--their brains grew to up to four times their previous size. Along with this expansion came with a corresponding increase in creative intelligence. From an unremarkable species of primate, our ancestors progressed rapidly (on an evolutionary scale) to taming fire, making tools, wearing clothing, believing in gods, and painting pictures on the walls of caves. They leaped from the middle to the top of the food chain. They began to fill the Earth and subdue it. Planetary mastery beckoned. All thanks to their big new brains.
In The Ascent of Mind, theoretical neurophysiologist William Calvin refers to this development as the "Great Encephalization.” The Big Brain, he argues, resulted from the selective pressure that the Ice Age exerted on our ancestors. If they were to survive a world shackled by merciless ice, they had to become smarter.
"Matching wits with the fickle climate," he writes, "is how we became human."
Published over thirty years ago, The Ascent of Mind appears now to be almost forgotten. Most undeservedly, in my opinion. Sure, after the lapse of a generation, it’s bound to be dated on a few technical points, as any blend of speculative and popular science will be. Calvin himself is modest about its status in the history of ideas. “While I naturally hope that my scenario will turn out to be correct in both outline and details,” he writes, “the more realistic aspiration is that it might demonstrate the breadth of the explanatory power that theories need.”
But while more recent discoveries might well have modified Calvin's thesis, it's hard for me to imagine they've overthrown it altogether. If the Ice Ages didn’t ignite the intelligence explosion, what did?
Of course, the climate wasn’t the sole culprit. It couldn’t have been. There’s never just one. Evolution doesn’t work that way. But the plunging of planetary temperatures coincided so exactly with the Great Encephalization that it seems almost impossible to dismiss it a major factor. The greater burden of proof, it seems to me, must fall upon a claim to the contrary. I doubt this book is obsolete.
I could be wrong. I’m not a scientist. Is there a book out there that debunks The Ascent of Mind? I’ll gratefully consider a suggestion. Or perhaps one that supports its thesis, but with more up-to-date research? I’m feeling a need to get better educated on this subject.
At any rate, I found The Ascent of Mind worth revisiting as literature. I appreciate Calvin’s use of anecdotes from his travels to set the stage for the reader. He begins his chapters with observations of far-flung landscapes of Earth, which he places in their geological context. He uses these reflections as a springboard to discuss important but little-appreciated facts about Earth’s deep history. He considers the implications of these facts, not just for humanity’s distant past, but also for its long-term future.
In one memorable early passage, for example, Calvin draws the reader’s attention to the fact that millions of humans inhabit Europe at the same latitudes where mere thousands, at most, live in Asia and North America. Why? Because Europe, despite its northern orientation, enjoys a relatively benevolent climate. The reason is the Atlantic Gulf Stream, which carries warm air up from the Gulf of Mexico. For now. But a shift in this ocean current could leave Europe as cold as Canada. It’s happened in the past and will again in the future. The change, Calvin claims, could occur in as little as a generation. If that's true, a single lifetime could see a reversal of the worldwide trend of migration from south to north, with millions of Europeans fleeing the fatal cold of a new Ice Age.
Calvin uses a deep knowledge of the past to paint arresting pictures of the centuries and millennia to come. He reminds us that contending with the climate will always remain a preoccupation of our big human brains.
I recommend The Ascent of Mind to everyone who struggles to comprehend the incomprehensible vastness of time.
In The Ascent of Mind, theoretical neurophysiologist William Calvin refers to this development as the "Great Encephalization.” The Big Brain, he argues, resulted from the selective pressure that the Ice Age exerted on our ancestors. If they were to survive a world shackled by merciless ice, they had to become smarter.
"Matching wits with the fickle climate," he writes, "is how we became human."
Published over thirty years ago, The Ascent of Mind appears now to be almost forgotten. Most undeservedly, in my opinion. Sure, after the lapse of a generation, it’s bound to be dated on a few technical points, as any blend of speculative and popular science will be. Calvin himself is modest about its status in the history of ideas. “While I naturally hope that my scenario will turn out to be correct in both outline and details,” he writes, “the more realistic aspiration is that it might demonstrate the breadth of the explanatory power that theories need.”
But while more recent discoveries might well have modified Calvin's thesis, it's hard for me to imagine they've overthrown it altogether. If the Ice Ages didn’t ignite the intelligence explosion, what did?
Of course, the climate wasn’t the sole culprit. It couldn’t have been. There’s never just one. Evolution doesn’t work that way. But the plunging of planetary temperatures coincided so exactly with the Great Encephalization that it seems almost impossible to dismiss it a major factor. The greater burden of proof, it seems to me, must fall upon a claim to the contrary. I doubt this book is obsolete.
I could be wrong. I’m not a scientist. Is there a book out there that debunks The Ascent of Mind? I’ll gratefully consider a suggestion. Or perhaps one that supports its thesis, but with more up-to-date research? I’m feeling a need to get better educated on this subject.
At any rate, I found The Ascent of Mind worth revisiting as literature. I appreciate Calvin’s use of anecdotes from his travels to set the stage for the reader. He begins his chapters with observations of far-flung landscapes of Earth, which he places in their geological context. He uses these reflections as a springboard to discuss important but little-appreciated facts about Earth’s deep history. He considers the implications of these facts, not just for humanity’s distant past, but also for its long-term future.
In one memorable early passage, for example, Calvin draws the reader’s attention to the fact that millions of humans inhabit Europe at the same latitudes where mere thousands, at most, live in Asia and North America. Why? Because Europe, despite its northern orientation, enjoys a relatively benevolent climate. The reason is the Atlantic Gulf Stream, which carries warm air up from the Gulf of Mexico. For now. But a shift in this ocean current could leave Europe as cold as Canada. It’s happened in the past and will again in the future. The change, Calvin claims, could occur in as little as a generation. If that's true, a single lifetime could see a reversal of the worldwide trend of migration from south to north, with millions of Europeans fleeing the fatal cold of a new Ice Age.
Calvin uses a deep knowledge of the past to paint arresting pictures of the centuries and millennia to come. He reminds us that contending with the climate will always remain a preoccupation of our big human brains.
I recommend The Ascent of Mind to everyone who struggles to comprehend the incomprehensible vastness of time.
May 24, 2019
For a neurophysiologist he sure loves geology.
It can be a bit heavy for leisurely reading material.
It can be a bit heavy for leisurely reading material.
July 11, 2007
This is a fascinating book - Calvin is a really interesting writer, he chats away effortlessly about brains and how they evolved. Over the years he has had two major ideas about how brains got to be bigger and able to do the sorts of things that ours do. One idea was that we learnt to throw stones - we are the only of the apes able to do this with any accuracy - and that this had an impact on our ability to do sequential reasoning. Ok, so it is a long shot, but an interesting idea. Pinker takes him to task on this in The Blank Slate, but such is life.
In this book he talks about the impact of climates on human intelligence and does a lovely discription of the likely effect of global warming on European climate and the stopping of the gulf stream.
In this book he talks about the impact of climates on human intelligence and does a lovely discription of the likely effect of global warming on European climate and the stopping of the gulf stream.
September 3, 2024
AN ARGUMENT THAT THE ICE AGE CLIMATES PRODUCED EVOLUTIONARY CHANGES
William H. Calvin (born 1939) is a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, and a well-known popularizer of neuroscience and evolutionary biology (e.g., see his books 'Inside the Brain,' 'Conversations With Neil's Brain: The Neural Nature Of Thought And Language,' etc.).
He wrote in the Preface to this 1990 book, "There are several things I hope to contribute to the debate about human evolution through this book... The first is that... There were many abrupt [climate] shifts during the last 2.5 million years of fluctuating climate known as the Ice Ages... That 2.5 million-year period is exactly when our brains enlarged and reorganized beyond the ape standard, exactly when tool-making became prolific... A second involves how hominids might have discovered hunting... Third, I suggest that there is a three-part cycle of evolutionary alterations in body proportions... another predicted result is a considerable fluctuation in adult height during ape-to-human evolution." (Pg. xiv-xv)
He observes, "evolution above the one-call level didn't really get going until crossing-over was invented by eukaryotes about one billion years ago; promptly thereafter, multicellular life developed in a big way, inventing about 50 major ways of structuring a body plan during the next half-billion years. Mutation didn't accomplish that: it was permutation. What affects the rates at which genes come to stick together, or develop new points at which to break apart during crossing-over? That's one of the unsolved problems of basic biology." (Pg. 57)
He admits, "Actually, it isn't clear that bigger brains are even necessary; an ape-sized brain reorganized to facilitate language and plan-ahead might work equally well. Yet... big heads cause a lot of trouble at childbirth. Big heads not only kill themselves but... their mothers. Thus all potential siblings... will also be eliminated from the surviving gene pool. It is hard to imagine any form of natural selection that is more powerfully negative; modern genetic diseases such as hemophilia pale by comparison. Big heads are a candidate for the worst genetic disease of all time. By all rights, any straightforward tendency toward bigger heads should have been promptly squelched." (Pg. 160)
He suggests, "[A] 'Juvenilization Plus' argument can be made for language, its usefulness selecting those variants in brain wiring that facilitated organizing our ideas, communicating them to others. It's not clear what demands this makes on the brain, or what its niche-expanding properties there are, or if there is a decent growth curve involving many redoublings. But there were certainly some aspects of speech that appear to have been under considerable selection sometime in the past." (Pg. 204)
This book will interest those who enjoy speculative theories about human evolution.
William H. Calvin (born 1939) is a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, and a well-known popularizer of neuroscience and evolutionary biology (e.g., see his books 'Inside the Brain,' 'Conversations With Neil's Brain: The Neural Nature Of Thought And Language,' etc.).
He wrote in the Preface to this 1990 book, "There are several things I hope to contribute to the debate about human evolution through this book... The first is that... There were many abrupt [climate] shifts during the last 2.5 million years of fluctuating climate known as the Ice Ages... That 2.5 million-year period is exactly when our brains enlarged and reorganized beyond the ape standard, exactly when tool-making became prolific... A second involves how hominids might have discovered hunting... Third, I suggest that there is a three-part cycle of evolutionary alterations in body proportions... another predicted result is a considerable fluctuation in adult height during ape-to-human evolution." (Pg. xiv-xv)
He observes, "evolution above the one-call level didn't really get going until crossing-over was invented by eukaryotes about one billion years ago; promptly thereafter, multicellular life developed in a big way, inventing about 50 major ways of structuring a body plan during the next half-billion years. Mutation didn't accomplish that: it was permutation. What affects the rates at which genes come to stick together, or develop new points at which to break apart during crossing-over? That's one of the unsolved problems of basic biology." (Pg. 57)
He admits, "Actually, it isn't clear that bigger brains are even necessary; an ape-sized brain reorganized to facilitate language and plan-ahead might work equally well. Yet... big heads cause a lot of trouble at childbirth. Big heads not only kill themselves but... their mothers. Thus all potential siblings... will also be eliminated from the surviving gene pool. It is hard to imagine any form of natural selection that is more powerfully negative; modern genetic diseases such as hemophilia pale by comparison. Big heads are a candidate for the worst genetic disease of all time. By all rights, any straightforward tendency toward bigger heads should have been promptly squelched." (Pg. 160)
He suggests, "[A] 'Juvenilization Plus' argument can be made for language, its usefulness selecting those variants in brain wiring that facilitated organizing our ideas, communicating them to others. It's not clear what demands this makes on the brain, or what its niche-expanding properties there are, or if there is a decent growth curve involving many redoublings. But there were certainly some aspects of speech that appear to have been under considerable selection sometime in the past." (Pg. 204)
This book will interest those who enjoy speculative theories about human evolution.
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