A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness

Drawing on his theory of the origins of the modern mind, Merlin Donald's thesis presents the forces, both cultural and neuronal, that power our distinctively human modes of awareness. Donald proposes that the human mind is a hybrid product of interweaving a supercomplex form of matter (the brain) with an invisible symbolic web (culture) to form a "distributed" cognitive network. This hybrid mind, Donald suggests, is our main evolutionary advantage, for it allowed humanity as a species to break free of the limitations of the mammalian brain.