Most important, according to evolutionary biologists, standing up seems to have triggered a rapid increase in brain size. You would think that the exact opposite would happen, and that standing up would cause our feet to swell instead. But that's not what happened.
Here's the theory: standing up left our hands free, and after a while we realized that we could use them to hold and manipulate objects. So we started using tools -- spears, axes, chopsticks -- and that required far more brain connections to co-ordinate the more precise movements of our hands and fingers. So a feedback loop was created: better hands, bigger brains, bigger brains, better hands. Pretty smart, Mother Nature. Worthy of a deep bow.
Standing upright also left our arms free to carry our stuff around with us, and after a few million years we started migrating out of Africa. Nobody knows exactly why we left, but I suspect it was to look for Chinese food. At the time our brains were only half the size they are today, otherwise we would have been smart enough to just send out for Chinese food.
Anyway, we started wandering around the planet, and got caught in an ice age or two, and that may be one reason our brains kept growing -- we had to think hard and fast how to stay warm. Of course, it would have been easiest just to grow a heavy coat of fur, but at the time our brains just weren't big enough to figure that out. So instead of a fur coat we grew a bigger brain and learned how to make fire. Then we started huddling around that fire and telling stories about ourselves. Stories like this one about evolution.
Excerpted with permission from Crazy Wisdom Saves the World Again! (Stone Bridge Press,) © 2008 Wes Nisker.
Wes "Scoop" Nisker is an author, radio commentator, Buddhist meditation teacher, and performer. His most recent book is entitled Crazy Wisdom Saves the World Again! (Stonebridge Press). Other titles include The Big Bang, The Buddha, and the Baby Boom (HarperSanFrancisco, 2003), the newly edited version of his national bestseller, Essential Crazy Wisdom (Ten Speed Press, 2001), and Buddha's Nature (Bantam, 1999). Mr. Nisker is also the founder and co-editor of the international Buddhist journal Inquiring Mind.
Mr. Nisker has studied Buddhist meditation for over three decades with teachers in Asia and America, and for the past twenty years has been leading his own retreats and workshops in Buddhist insight meditation and philosophy at venues internationally. He is an affiliate teacher at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California, and does regular workshops at Esalen Institute and other venues. Visit his homepage: http://www.wesnisker.com
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