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?

Question

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?

In: 16

Answer 1

Because the underlying physiology (areas 39, 40, etc) enabled learning skills like reading, likely. Whatever the original purpose of those neutral centers was before literacy/numeracy was a thing.