The Clash of Civilisation and Human Brain 
Evolution

This is the question emerging from contemporary neuroscience research - and the answer may reshape how we understand ourselves as a species.

The evidence suggests that human brain evolution is incomplete. The rapid development of cognitive abilities that allowed us to create language, art, and civilization may have come at a cost: insufficient time for the cellular and molecular mechanisms governing our brains to be refined and stabilised. As Somel and colleagues observed in 2013, the pace of cognitive evolution may not have provided sufficient time to make these regulatory processes effective and protective against environmental and genetic stresses.

The implications are profound. If our neural architecture remains a work in progress, this may help explain why dialogue so often fails, why conflict escalates to violence, and why mental health challenges prove so intractable. Our brains evolved for survival in environments radically different from the ones we now inhabit.

Consider ADHD - attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. We label it a disorder, yet many individuals with ADHD display remarkable creativity and other positive traits. Leonardo da Vinci almost certainly had ADHD, which may explain both his visionary genius and his well-documented struggles with time management and concentration.

Recent research offers a striking reframe. Barack and colleagues (2024) found that in virtual foraging tasks, ADHD participants more readily moved between resource patches and achieved higher reward rates than neurotypical participants. They avoided overharvesting and overstaying. In ancestral environments, this bias toward exploration over exploitation provided a significant survival advantage.

ADHD, in this light, is not a malfunction but an evolutionary remnant - neural wiring optimised for hunter-gatherer existence. The restlessness, the hyperawareness, the irregular sleep patterns: these traits served our ancestors well. Yet we now expect students and workers to sit at desks for eight hours. We pathologise attributes that once ensured survival.

This raises an uncomfortable question: if such traits have become largely obsolete in modern environments, why haven't our brains evolved to exclude them? The answer is time. Evolution operates across millennia. Civilisation has transformed human existence in mere centuries. Our biology has not caught up.

The consequences extend far beyond ADHD. Look at the growing population of unhoused people in our cities. We blame addiction, depression, schizophrenia - but these are symptoms. The deeper issue is that we have failed to grasp the mental health challenges underlying them, challenges rooted in brains that remain incompletely adapted to the world we have built.

Accelerated neuroscience research holds the promise of illuminating these complex issues. The goal is not a quick fix - not chemical compounds to mask our behavioural imperfections. Rather, it is to understand the inner workings of the human brain well enough to foster positive and constructive attitudes, active minds, and active bodies.

We are gaining unprecedented insight into human brain connectivity: how information flows between cells and regions, how synaptic complexity shapes ideas, thoughts, and decisions. We are identifying human-specific evolutionary elements - human-accelerated regions and rapidly evolving conserved elements - that distinguish our neural architecture from that of other primates.

We are learning how mutations in developmental gene regulators may have driven the cognitive burst that enabled human culture some 200,000 years ago.

This knowledge will yield practical benefits. It will help us delay the onset of dementia and slow its progression. It will improve quality of life as we age. But it may also contribute something more fundamental: a deeper comprehension of why we struggle to live together peacefully, and what might be done about it.

If we can heighten aspects of our brain activities toward constructive pursuits, we may retain and enhance individual identities while creating new frontiers of knowledge. We may improve relationships and our environment. We may find paths away from hate, war, intolerance, and violence - not through ideology or willpower alone, but through understanding the biological substrates of human behaviour.

Communities and decision-makers must facilitate this journey. True freedom - the inner freedom within each of us - depends on comprehending the machinery that generates our thoughts and impulses. Only then can we begin to master them.

The evolution of our brains is incomplete. Acknowledging this is not an excuse for our failures, but an invitation to address them at their source. Neuroscience offers that opportunity. We should seize it.

This is my opinion, not that of my institution.