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.

[CelesJessa]

Originally Posted by Fifthfiend

You can come up with excuses all day for why that isn't a man with one freakishly long arm standing behind some sort of horrifying prehistoric creature with a dick hanging off its stomach and its arms coming out of its head, but at the end of the day, it's still a man with one freakishly long arm standing behind some sort of horrifying prehistoric creature with a dick hanging off its stomach and its arms coming out of its head.

Also I think that yellow thing is some other kind of prehistoric creature coming down to check out the action.

[POS Industries]

Originally Posted by CelesJessa

Also I think that yellow thing is some other kind of prehistoric creature coming down to check out the action.

It's clearly Hand Banana.

[DFM]

I think it's further down the field, like we've got an isometric view of the ground and it's the next freaky stomach dick creature standing around waiting to get boned by the thing with the ten foot arm.

Edit: I think it has a tail and/or is pooping.

[bluestarultor]

Man, I didn't think people would be analyzing it that much. If I'd known, I'd have put more effort into it. XD

[Fifthfiend]

Originally Posted by CelesJessa

Also I think that yellow thing is some other kind of prehistoric creature coming down to check out the action.

It's a three-legged yellow Yeti.

And by three-legged I mean heh.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I sense some kind of racial message, the red man is dominanting the black man and will soon dominate the yellow man with no white man in site. Is this some kind of alternate history without European existence- showing the American indian ruling all- but a gentle giving love.

[Amake]

We are made to make something better than ourselves.

That's what I think.