RESEARCH BASE
Search 3,721 documents across 34 fields — every claim tier-rated by evidence
3,633 are the core, quality-scored corpus (34 lettered sections — see How We Work); the remaining 88 are cross-corpus synthesis documents (68 InterDocs, 12 Connections, 8 Theories) also indexed here.
467 results for "cognitive evolution" — page 1 of 24
R_2_07 — Stoned Ape Hypothesis — Psilocybin, Cognitive Evolution, and the McKenna Theory
The "Stoned Ape Hypothesis," proposed by ethnobotanist Terence McKenna in Food of the Gods (1992), posits that the consumption of psilocybin-containing mushrooms by early hominids (particularly Homo erectus and Homo erga
R_2_12 — Tool Use in Animals: Corvids, Primates, Dolphins, and Cognitive Evolution
Tool use — the employment of an external object to alter the form, position, or condition of another object or organism — was once considered uniquely human, a defining cognitive threshold separating Homo sapiens from al
R_2_01 — Human Brain Evolution and the Cognitive Revolution
The human brain tripled in size over 3 million years — from ~400 cm³ (Australopithecus) to ~1,400 cm³ (modern Homo sapiens). This is the most dramatic encephalization in the history of life, and NO consensus exists on wh
T_5_25 — Cognitive Evolution: The Development of Human Mental Capacities
Cognitive evolution — the study of how human mental capacities emerged and developed over evolutionary time — addresses one of the deepest questions in science: how did a lineage of African primates develop language, sym
G_2_15 — Cognitive Archaeology — Mind in the Archaeological Record
Cognitive archaeology investigates the cognitive abilities, mental processes, and symbolic capacities of past peoples through the material record they left behind — seeking to understand not just what ancient people did,
G_4_13 — HADD and Agency Detection — Why We See Beings Everywhere
The Hyperactive Agency Detection Device (HADD) — a term coined by cognitive scientist Justin Barrett (2000) building on work by Stewart Guthrie (1993) and Pascal Boyer (2001) — refers to the proposed cognitive mechanism
T_5_18 — Cognitive Science of Religion: How Minds Create Gods
The Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) is an interdisciplinary field — emerging in the 1990s from cognitive psychology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, and neuroscience — that explains religious beliefs and practice
Z_3_01 — Genetics of Brain Development — ASPM, Microcephalin, HAR1
The human brain is approximately three times larger than expected for a primate of our body size, with a vastly expanded cerebral cortex containing ~86 billion neurons. Identifying the genetic basis for this extraordinar
U_1_05 — Musical Instruments: Archaeology & Evolution
Musical instruments are among humanity's oldest manufactured artifacts, with bone flutes from the Swabian Jura (southern Germany) dating to ~40,000 BP — contemporary with the earliest figurative art and suggesting that m
U_4_03 — Cultural Evolution — Dual Inheritance and Cumulative Culture
Cultural evolution theory applies Darwinian principles — variation, selection, inheritance — to the transmission and transformation of cultural information (beliefs, technologies, norms, institutions). The dual inheritan
ZH_1_11 — Copernicus, Kepler, and the Astronomical Revolution
The astronomical revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries — transforming humanity's understanding of its place in the cosmos from an Earth-centered (geocentric) to a Sun-centered (heliocentric) model — is one of the mos
Z_1_16 — Transposable Elements: Jumping Genes and Genome Evolution
Transposable elements (TEs) — sequences of DNA capable of moving ("jumping") from one genomic location to another — constitute approximately 45% of the human genome and up to 85% of the maize genome, making them the sing
Z_1_10 — Chromosome Evolution and Karyotype
Karyotype — the number, size, and morphology of chromosomes in a cell — varies enormously across species, from n=1 in the ant Myrmecia pilosula to n=630 in the fern Ophioglossum reticulatum. Humans have 2n=46 (23 pairs),
K_3_07 — Evolution of Consciousness
The question of when, how, and why consciousness evolved is one of the deepest unsolved problems at the intersection of biology, neuroscience, and philosophy. Two major recent proposals have attempted to identify the evo
K_4_12 — Noosphere — Teilhard de Chardin, Vernadsky, and the Thinking Layer
The noosphere ("sphere of mind") is a concept developed independently by Russian geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky and French paleontologist-priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in the 1920s, describing a layer of collective hu
E_2_19 — Volcanism and Human Evolution: Eruptions That Shaped Our Species
The relationship between volcanism and human evolution operates on multiple scales and through multiple mechanisms — from the geological forces that created the landscapes where hominins evolved, to the catastrophic erup
ZG_3_05 — Language and Thought: Cognitive Semantics
The relationship between language and thought — whether the language we speak shapes, constrains, or determines how we perceive, categorize, and reason about the world — is one of the oldest and most debated questions in
Q_2_04 — Stellar Evolution: The Life Cycle of Stars
Stars are born in collapsing molecular clouds, live by nuclear fusion for millions to trillions of years, and die in ways determined almost entirely by their initial mass. Low-mass stars (< 8 M☉) shed their outer layers
ZB_2_06 — Immune System Evolution: From Innate to Adaptive Defense
The immune system represents one of evolution's most complex adaptive innovations — a multi-layered defense system that distinguishes self from non-self and remembers past encounters. All multicellular organisms possess
ZB_2_18 — Phage-Bacteria Coevolution: Arms Races in the Microbial World
Bacteriophages (phages) — viruses that infect and replicate within bacteria — are the most abundant biological entities on Earth (~10³¹ total particles, outnumbering bacteria ~10:1 in most environments), and their coevol
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