Why Is Man Creative?

[katiuska]

Originally Posted by Mauve Mage

Extra freaky: Look at the example of the aquarium dolphins who taught themselves to blow bubble rings. They serve no real purpose: the dolphins blow the bubbles and then push them around with their noses for no reason other than entertaining themselves.

Dolphins also have pretty advanced communication; for example, they've found that if you bring a dolphin out, teach it a puzzle, send it back, and bring in a second dolphin later on, the second dolphin will usually know the answer right away.

My only question is why dolphins feel that stuff is relevant to share in the first place.

Also, dolphins have names! I found that out recently. A lot of things we think of as specific to humans have analogs in other species, though they don't demonstrate them to the same degree.

Originally Posted by Sithdarth

Exactly how did they manage to determine connections from bone records? I know you can make a reasonable guess based on size and how the brain folds, i.e. the wrinkles we have on our brains. However, I was under the impression significantly wrinkled brains didn't show up until after we where out on the plains. At the very least Dolphins and Chimps also have crazy wrinkly brains in their own right. Large wrinkly brains are a good indicator that something is smart but you can't really tell how smart just from that. You need actual behavioral evidence.

Further, I would posit that tool use started as an enhancement to survival. Thus even when we were still in the trees the smartest ones survived the best. Everyone else survived too but not as well. More intelligence is always better for survival even if you aren't making stone axes yet. Then later a true brain explosion occurred when being smart wasn't just a matter of surviving better but surviving at all.

Well, important to tools themselves is the ability to use them, mentally and physically. Simians sort of lucked out, in that they had the capacity to manipulate the environment to a large degree and the capacity to take advantage of it. Other animals may be smart, but it's hard to accomplish what we have without grasping hands.

Anyway, as far as artistic creativity goes, it most likely has roots in early communication; artistic endeavors are still arguably ultimately about communication and expression.

Originally Posted by Krylo

You guys are putting way too much thought into this.

Man is creative 'cause chicks dig poetry.

In all seriousness, "mate selection" is brought up as a possible origin of things like music, but I don't know how much support there is for that.