Science
In reply to the discussion: Humans are not smarter than animals - we just don't understand them [View all]Lionel Mandrake
(4,076 posts)Reading and writing began about 5000 years ago, which is a brief instant compared to the million or so years that our species has existed (depending on which of our ancestors you wish to call human). Clearly reading and writing did not drive our evolution. Somehow our brains, which evolved for other reasons, have been able to accomplish these unnatural acts.
Few of us are smart enough to invent something new, to innovate, and thereby affect the course of history. But even the imitation that we all do, e.g., learning how to use the technology bequeathed by others, requires remarkable abilities not present in other species.
Nobody can build an iPhone
or even a pencil. Each of those items is built by a great number of people doing various jobs in an organized fashion, including the collection of raw materials, trade in those materials, transportation, manufacturing, and marketing the finished product. Only a civilization can produce the goods and services we take for granted.
What most of us do does not require genius, but it requires abilities that only humans possess. Using computers, the internet, the world wide web, and DU, we are able to dispute our place in nature, our relationships with other species, the impact we have had on the environment, etc.
Do you think a chimp or a dolphin could do any of that? I don't think so. I conclude that we are smarter than they are.
That doesn't mean we are wise. I agree that we had better wise up before the destruction of habitats and the mass extinction of other species go too much farther. But that's a topic for another thread.