Neurons — a fuckton of them — are what make us smarter than other animals
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Neurons - a fuckton of them - are what make us smarter than other animals
Here's something new to consider being thankful for at the dinner table: the long evolutionary journey that gave you your big brain and your long life.
Courtesy of our primate ancestors that invented cooking over a million years ago, you are a member of the one species able to afford so many cortical neurons in its brain. With them come the extended childhood and the pushing century-long lifespan that together make human beings unique.
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All these bequests of your bigger brain cortex mean you can gather four generations around a meal to exchange banter and gossip, turn information into knowledge and even practice the art of what-not-to-say-when.
You may even want to be thankful for another achievement of our neuron-crammed human cortices: all the technology that allows people spread over the globe to come together in person, on screens, or through words whispered directly into your ears long distance.
I know I am thankful. But then, I'm the one proposing that we humans revise the way we tell the story of how our species came to be.
Brains made of cells, but how many?
Back when I had j