Recent findings show that when the human midbrain reached its present-day level of evolutionary complexity (250,000 to 300,000 years ago), our ancestors at that time experienced a 20 percent increase in actual mass of the neocortex, the thinking, reasoning area of the human brain.1 This sudden acceleration in the volume and density of brain mass appears to have occurred spontaneously and unexplainably, as opposed to the normal, linear course of evolution. Our rapid 20 percent outgrowth of gray matter is responsible for the superiority of the human brain. What caused this explosive brain
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