eli5 Why do people have a brain center for reading comprehension (areas 39, 40) when we clearly did not need to have this skill for the majority of our history as a species?
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Evolution didn’t stop 40,000 years ago. Imagine that 4,000 years ago you had a gene variant that made reading and writing easier for you, compared to the median human. How much of a reproductive advantage would that give you? 2,000 years ago? 200 years ago?
Early in history, the personal advantage was small, but the advantage to a society of having some people who could read/write was large; that still counts. More recently, the advantages in reading/writing provide massive economic (and therefore reproductive) advantages.
Obviously, the above is speculation. It’s hard to prove, unless we can identify the particular genetic changes and when they became widespread.
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