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Show 6: The Mind's Big Bang |
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57 minutes, 8 DVD chapters |
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Chapter 1. Prologue (3:09) |
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Introduction to the show's theme: changes in human development and the birth of creativity
- Searching French caves for early human paintings
- The birth of the human mind and human expression
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Chapter 2. Stone Age Tools (7:45) |
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Early tool-making and the evolution from hominid to human
- Archeological research into hominid artifacts
- Paleolithic hominids and their development of tools
- The evolution of hominids and modern humans
- Human migration out of Africa
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Chapter 3. The World's First Beads (7:16) |
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Early modern humans using technology to express social identity
- Excavating a Turkish cave, home for early modern humans
- The discovery of 43,000-year-old beads, the oldest in the world
- Migration of early humans across Europe
- Beads as evidence of the mind's "big bang": humans' creative and cultural beginnings
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Chapter 4. Neanderthals and Humans (7:07) |
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Technological and social differences between modern humans and Neanderthals
- Description of Neanderthals, another descendent of hominids
- Comparing Neanderthal and human burials; human use of symbols and art, while no evidence of Neanderthal symbolic life
- Examining Neanderthal and human hunting tools
- Human communication and expression, no Neanderthal equivalents
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Chapter 5. Modern Humans and Art (2:49) |
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Exploring early modern humans' art and music
- Studying cave art techniques
- Why did early modern humans create this art?
- Cave instruments and music
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Chapter 6. Components of the Human World (7:31) |
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The evolution of the modern human brain
- Biological changes in the brain and its wiring
- Studying chimpanzees to understand human social behavior before the human mind's "big bang"
- Humans and a theory of mind; we can recognize and infer others' thoughts
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Chapter 7. Language (11:41) |
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Language's importance to human relationships and culture
- The critical window for learning language
- Studying a new sign language in Nicaragua for parallels to early language development
- The significance of syntax (rules) in all human languages
- The evolutionary advantages of language
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Chapter 8. Cultural Evolution (9:11) |
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Cultural forces surpassing biological forces in determining human evolution
- Through behavior, humans copy and pass along memes (ideas, habits, skills) that are the building blocks of cultural evolution
- Human ingenuity triumphing over biological evolution, with the examples of diabetes and insulin, near-sightedness and glasses
- Changes in human lifestyle over the past 50,000 years have more to do with the evolution of memes, not genes
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Buy the DVD |
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