research on human environmental scanning?

[Regimecass]

I was wondering if there exist research on humans evolutionary and unconsciouses judgment of potentials and danger in the surroundings?

 

I know that John Falk has made the savannah theory about evolutionary preferences linked to the habitat, in which the origine of humans where living.

 

But does anyone had a look at the process itself? Does human scan the environment all the time?

[pioneer]

The environment can set the potentials associated with selective advantage. The optimized needs of an animal in the desert is different than in the jungle. Selective advantage would imply evolving/learning to become optimized to lay of a particular land. One may evolve water retention in the desert. etc. This has no advantage in the jungle, but could slow you because of the extra weight being carried in body tissue. This lay of the land is better optimized with less water retention.

 

Human evolution would have also been influenced by the environment, with migration one of the best ways to require that unconscious mental adaption need to move faster than biological adaption.

 

If one is migrating in a desert, it may take many generations for biology or genetics to change toward the needs of environmental optimization. If the migration into the desert is only a generational pass through, heading toward the savanna, biology will not have time. Adaption for survival in the desert will be more brain dependent. If we also pass through the savanna, in another generation, etc.. the brain is again on its own, since biology just doesn't the time.

 

The apes, still in the jungle, have all the time in the world for genetics to slowly adapt to that lay of the land. Under those conditions the brain can be the follower, behind the genetics, unless new things periodically pop up. But if we made the apes march out of the jungle, northward out of Africa, over a couple of centuries, they would be forced to use their brain beyond the speed of genetic adaptions.

 

I often wondered what was the homing pigeon instinct in humans which kept them in migratory flux, forcing the brain to do more. Eventually they found what they were looking for and settled in to start civilization. All that mental workout paid off.