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In my reading of Mayr I came across an interesting passage he wrote about the brain. He writes, “What is perhaps most astonishing is the fact that the human brain seems not to have changed one single bit since the first appearance of Homo sapiens, some 150,000 years ago.” Pg. 253 Essentially, Mayr claims in this specific story that the brain a hunter-gatherer had hundreds of years ago is no different then the brain that I have today in 2007. This to me is just mind boggling! So much has changed in the world over the past 150,000 yet according to Mayr the human brain has remained the same. To be honest I am skeptical of this claim. I have always believed that the only thing that I can rely on is that change is constant-everything is always changing. That is why it is so difficult for me to believe that the brain has not “changed a single bit” over time. I am really curious to know what are Mayr's observations for making this claim?

One of the things that I also found fascinating in Mayr’s thoughts about the brain is that the rapid growth of the brain has something to do with the development of speech. There is so much that I would like to know about the brain. After all the research we have done we still don’t know very much about the brain. So much about the brain is (and might remain) a mystery. Even though I have more questions then answers about the brain I have always felt that the one thing that distinguishes us from other animals is our ability to speak. Human beings are incredibly unique! And not just becasue of the way we look. Other animals like bees and whales can communicate but, only human beings have language. As Mayr mentions, psychologists have tried in vain to teach language to chimps but, despite their efforts no progress has been made. This makes me realize how powerful language really is and motivates me to research language on a deeper level.