From Tom Reimchen, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
As a long-time subscriber and reader, I continue to disagree with the cliche that the human brain is “the most complicated structure in the known universe”. What actually is the evidence for this?
Some 50,000 years ago, when early modern humans were cowering in caves with the same essential anatomical brain and genome we have at present, no alien visiting Earth would have recognised any great potential of this biped relative to Neanderthals or any other primate, or to the many large-brained cetaceans. To claim that the brain of those early cave-dwelling humans was the most complicated structure in the universe is yet another instance of human-centric thinking (Letters, 14 October).
