The Casts of Fossil Hominid Brains

M an is not the largest of the pri­ mates (the gorilla is larger), but he has the largest brain. How did this come about? The question is hardly a new one, but a considerable amount of new evidence is now available to those in search of the answer. In brief the evidence suggests that, contrary to what is widely believed, the human brain was not among the last human organs to evolve but among the first. Neurologically speaking, brains whose organization was essentially human were already in existence some three million years ago.