who asked the first question? - International Research Center For ...

332distant ancestors. So the question about two individuals, one of whom is able to askquestions and the other who is unable to ask questions, must be understood in the contextof hominid and human evolution: what advantage would the first “questioning hominid”have when the ability of asking questions emerged at some point in human or hominidprehistory? The advantages seem to me so obvious and so important that I think it wouldbe fitting to declare that with the emergence of questioning behavior the evolution ofour mental abilities made a crucial turn towards human intelligence.Maybe the most important consequence for each “questioning” individual is thatthe emergence of the question phenomenon turned the hominid brain into an open, selfdevelopingsystem. We self develop cognitively by asking questions and looking for theanswers. A child develops by asking an array of questions, and the “runaway brain”evolution (Wills, 1993) begins with questions -- both in phylogeny and ontogeny.• What evolutionary advantage could the ability ofasking questions have given to human groups?Although we have just discussed the advantages that the new ability to askquestions would give to the first human, the true winner of the new ability of askingquestions must have been the whole group, the first human society. This advantage musthave been particularly obvious when the whole group had the mental ability to askquestions.If you imagine two groups of humans or hominids, one asking questions of eachother within the group, and the other group members unable to ask questions of eachother, the difference will be so obvious and big that it would be correct to speak in thefirst case about group of humans, and in the second case about hominids, or pre-humans.The ability of asking questions drastically changes the intellectual capacity and behaviorof the group.The evolutionary significance of the ability to ask questions first of all was arevolutionary enhancement of the cognitive ability of a whole group of individuals, bycoordinating their cognitive abilities. Suddenly the members of the first human societystarted asking each other questions, more actively sharing information and discussingproblems. With the appearance of the ability to ask questions hominid communicationof exchanging information turned into a human dialogical communication. This newability to formulate and ask questions created totally new phenomena -- group cognitionand mental cooperation. The unique human ability of mental cooperation pushed ourancestors on to a completely new stage of cognitive development, previously unknown tothe animal kingdom. Therefore, the importance of the new ability to ask questions wasnot only an increased cognitive ability of each hominid individual, but also arevolutionary new level of group cognition and mental cooperation. We can concludethat, with the emergence of the ability of asking questions, each member of our ancestors’society became smarter, but the combination of these smart individuals, put together as adiscussing group, was much bigger than the simple sum of several smart individuals. Isuggest that our ancestors passed a cognitive threshold after they started askingquestions.