"We must, however, acknowledge ... that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system- with all these exalted powers- Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin." Darwin

As mentioned, the Theory of Options is not special pleading to have human behavior explained by evolution. It is instead two theories, one of behavior, the other of human evolution, each self-supporting;

1. Theory of Human Evolution: Human evolution can be best understood if we consider that the fitness path leading to the modern human physiology was to maximize the options of behavior.
2. Theory of Behavior: Human behavior can be best understood if we consider that each individual strives to maximize his or her options in life. (Individuals strive as psychological compulsion. If they do not succeed, it could lead to frustration, trauma, violence, etc.)

Yet, neither theory above "proves" the other. If anything it should be a minor mystery to us why if Theory 1 is true Theory 2 will follow. Striving to maximize options would not follow if a human child were raised by wolves. So, Theory 2 is only conditionally true depending on circumstances. For the natural connection between Theory 1 to Theory 2 we assume that it applies to all animal life, in that all animals are psychologically motivated to strive in actions they perform best. Horses like to gallop, birds to fly, fish to swim, and humans to maximize options, because in each case the evolved physiology facilitates that behavior. But there is a strong interconnection too between this effect and the social environment in which an individual is raised. Animals can also become disoriented, like a cat raised among dogs, or a duck among humans. So, Theory 2 is not an iron law of nature. It is a hypothesis about the relationship between human motivation and its evolved physiology used to investigate what the actual relationship is.

In a similar manner we use Theory 1 as a hypothesis about the evolution of human novelty. For example, if we wonder why humans evolved a hand delicate enough to perform brain-surgery, we cannot assume it was for that ultimate end. Rather, we ask; 'which design of a hand would maximize the options of behavior?' When we investigate we find that the modern hand offers the most flexibility for a given evolutionary cost to evolve it from what it was (an ape hand) to what it became. A hand more delicate than the human one is conceivable, but all evolutionary change bears a cost. The hand that evolved maximum flexibility for the least evolutionary cost of change happens to be capable of performing brain surgery, although it might not be delicate enough for other tasks we can conceive. A task for which today we might need a robot hand. We gave a similar example with body fur. If we look for the covering offering the most options, a body devoid of fur offers the option of going naked, if other means can be found of keeping warm. But the body need not be completely naked. There is a fitness path to the optimum balance of maximum flexibility against the cost of evolving it. This path leaves the human body mostly devoid of body fur, but with some residual covering.

All human biology evolved along this fitness path of maximizing the options of behavior against the cost of evolving the existing physiology from what it previously was. The most controversial path was that leading to the brain. Physiologically, there was a high fitness cost to evolving a large brain, especially in the dangers of the birth process. More perplexing, pre-humans walked upright, hunted, propagated and survived with a much smaller brain, evolved at far less fitness cost. Plus our large brain is easily traumatized into perceivable unfit behavior, such as neuroses, psychoses, sexual dysfunction, or behavior that restricts options, rather than maximizes them. Yet some force in pre-history must have favored individuals with this large, difficult to bare, easily traumatized brain, to procure more descendants than rival individuals. So, the task of Theory 1 is to explain what those selective advantages were.

Yet explaining human evolution is never easy, especially why humans evolved as far as they did before civilized life began. There were walking apes with body fur and rough features in Middle Africa four million years ago, and it would amaze us less if such rough beasts began tribal life, while modern humans only evolved after early civilization began. But the humans which emerged from evolution, long before civilization, were modern; soft skin, gentle hands, graceful movement, delicate face, reasoning brain, melodious voice. This is because humans were not simply adapted; but were maximally adapted. Human biology is not a point on a continuum of change, but the end condition of a process building since the start of life. This does not mean that humans were purpose designed any more than element 92 (the last naturally occurring one) was purpose designed. But on Planet Earth the process of adaptation through biology reached a maximal end condition with the human form, from whence new, cultural forms of adaptation took over.

The process by which humans evolved to maximize the options of behavior is called emergence. It began over 4 million years (myrs) ago when pre-humans first walked upright. Emergence ended when modern Homo Sapiens "emerged" from the last Ice Age, about 35,000 years ago. Before emergence anthropoid evolution was biological, and can be studied as strict Darwinism. Since emergence human evolution has been largely cultural, and can be studied as sociology, culture or history. But over the period of emergence human cultural and biological evolution interact. So, while all species including humans evolve biologically, during emergence human biological evolution was inseparably bound to its developing culture, with the two processes interacting. It is not biologically fit for humans to evolve delicate teeth and jaws, say, if they do not know how to tenderize food. It is not fit for them to shed natural body fur, especially in an Ice Age, unless they have found alternative ways of keeping warm. And there is no fitness for humans to have sensitive hands if these have not learned to fashion tools and grasp weapons. Yet, here is another problem. Biological modification results from competition between individuals over who will successfully procure offspring. Only cultural evolution arises from cooperation among individuals, who share skills and knowledge. So, we must explain how emerging pre-human individuals were cooperating culturally while competing biologically, so that significant modification took place.

The first act of emergence was when a group of ancestral hominoids split in response to environmental change. One group remained within the given environment, to adapt by usual Darwinian selection. The other group wandered of, in search of a better way to adapt. That "better way" was through cooperation, and sharing skills and knowledge. Many anthropoid species, not just humans, do that too, but this was not the real transformation. The new change was in the processes that drive a species to modify biologically. Chimpanzees and apes adapt culture to their biology; the biology is given. But human ancestors adapted the biology to the culture, and no process of biology explains how that works. Textbooks are replete with statements that activities such as tool-making increased brain size, but that is not correct. Tool making is an acquired characteristic, but brain size is an inherited one. And acquired changes cannot produce inherited ones. So there must have been alternative, but very potent natural selection processes at work, or humans would not have biologically modified as rapidly as they did.

These broader mechanisms of human evolution are explained in the previous section on the new model of evolution. This new model does not dispute the basic process of evolution, such as variation, fitness, selection and reproduction. Instead, it looks at the "history of life", or the evolution of evolvability. As life evolves and new and complex forms come into existence, different evolutionary pathways open, while others become closed off. When human evolution began, life was already at an advanced, saturated stage. There were selective pathways left but most were closed by existing species. The path of further adaptation to forest life say, was already closed by the evolving line of chimps. Pre-humans migrated from woodlands onto the plains. But the pathways for adaptation to four-footed locomotion on the plains were already closed too by other animals such as lions or gazelles, which adapted to life on the plains millions of years previously. For highly evolved life to be fit the organisms must not only be able to adapt to change, but adapt faster than rival organisms. And not just a single line of early hominids was branching from forest life. Numerous hominid sub-species were competing for bi-pedal life on the plains, and there were many sub-branches among lines. In human evolution individuals competed for fitness but along a narrow path to maximize the options of behavior. Along this path the struggle for fitness was still to procure mates and maximize offspring, but it assumed subtle, complex forms.

3.2.2 Mechanisms of Human Selection

Generally, human emergence saw four types of selection, we characterize as follows;

1. Environmentalism: This is "Darwinian" selection in a sense that among a random population, some individuals are born better fitted to the prevailing conditions of struggle, such as light skin being better adapted to cold climates, and so on. Roughly, creatures not as well adapted perish before they can reproduce, so only the best-adapted individuals can pass on offspring. The method of selection is clearly effective only somewhat slow, in that fitness only emerges as a statistical trend out of many random deaths, and it does not allow behavior to effect selection.
2. "Behavior First": Means that advanced species can adapt behavior faster than they can evolve biology. As we say, the first giraffes did stretch their necks to reach tall leaves. However, following initial behavioral adaptation, later environmental, Darwinian, selection will better adapt the species biologically to its new means of survival. Giraffes with tall necks were really selected behaviorally by the proto-species seeking taller leaves. The Darwinian selection was more a mopping-up operation, following behavior "first".
3. Sexual Selection: This means partner selection based on consent or judgment, rather than brute struggle. This increases selectively, because effectively it brings many behaviors among individuals to bare on the problem of selection. Roughly, not just the partners will select, but as in human society group prejudices will influence individual selection. The two successful large animal classes that flourished after the Cretaceous extinction, mammals and birds, both use sexual selection, so the process has several advantages, and speeds up evolution by making selection less statistical, and more dependent on group experience.
4. Splitting-Up: Most evolution is in any case by cladogenesis in which the species splits into sub-groups, rather than by anagenesis in which a single species "evolves" in one line or one place. It now seems there was much migration, sub-branching and splitting into slightly differentiated competing groups in human evolution. Again, splitting-up speeds up evolution by bringing behavioral and group pressures to bare on the selection process. Splitting-up might in other terms be called group selection, meaning that individuals survived or perished as groups. But this is easily confused with the concept that individuals evolve 'for the good' of the group, which is not correct, and not part of the new theory.

All the above processes work in all modern groups, but especially mammals, and especially hominids. Environmental selection works throughout all classes. Only as forms become more modern, the "mix" of selective processes becomes increasingly behavioral. This strongly applied to human evolution.

Take sexual selection. Mention of human sexuality always invokes interest, and much has been written on this aspect of human biology. Yet, if sexuality is a fascination for humans there is a reason for it. One clue is that gestation, childbirth and child-rearing are more arduous for the human female than in any other species. When this occurs elsewhere in nature like nesting and raising young in birds, sexual selection involves rituals like courtship, partner selection, and monogamous pair bonding. Only the partners do cheat. Yet, also in species like ours where the male is physically larger than the female, the other trend is for male sexual dominance, or even harems. But everything else about humans, including the female's concealed ovulation, indicates a sexuality of monogamous pair bonding in which the female plays a significant selection role. And because for human ancestors physical protection most likely came from the group, to a human female physical strength alone might not be a primary selection criteria. Intelligence, adaptability, loyalty and responsibility would also be selection factors, and maybe for the male too.

However, there is another way monogamous pair bonding would affect sexual selection. As mentioned, a bodily larger male than female in a species usually indicates a "bully" factor in male sexual selection, even leading to harems. But if the overriding behavior of the group demands monogamy, then the next best thing a large male can seek is that the mate he will be bonded to for a long time will be attractive. But what is sexually attractive to the human male? The esthetics of sexual partners is of great importance to humans, but few researchers have questioned why. Perhaps the human species was attempting activities natural selection never specialized its body for. In lush forests the body of a female chimp might appear attractive to the male, but hobbling across a hot, dry savanna in a body designed for swinging through trees would force drastic revisions to the esthetics of the body beautiful. On the savanna the lumbering chimp-like pre-humans would see the graceful creatures of the plains; the gazelle, lion, and cheetah, or the birds who winged effortlessly overhead, and must have wondered why they could not move like them. We are primates, but the esthetically pleasing species to us are the swan, crane, deer or the panther. In shame or defeat we protrude the lower lip, hang our heads, and shuffle like the stupid ape who thinks it can walk. In triumph we strut like the lion in its pride. Upright stature, fluid movement, delicate face, graceful walk; perhaps the intense allure of human beauty is not just for the sexuality of procreation, but reflects an innate desire bred of human evolution, to liberate itself from the body of an ape. Other researchers have noted that the male probably also wanted a young partner, so she could produce children for a long time.

The splitting-up process was another strong selection factor in human evolution. All species split into groups, and as groups become reproductively isolated in different environments, they become speciated into distinct varieties. This is normal evolution. But human splitting-up would be strongly behavioral. One ground for a split are the more adventurous migrating to search for new food resources, while the cautious stay with the existing food supply. But some differentiation in individuals such as better mobility, or a curious nature prompted some to stay and others to remain. Whatever it was we infer from modern behavior a human tendency to 'stick with your own' even for slight variations, though this is contentious. Yet, from at least one early split both groups prospered. The stay-at-homes evolved to become modern chimps. The wanderers evolved to become us. But before they became us the split-up process must have occurred thousands of times, and produced hundreds of intermediate varieties.

The fate of these intermediate varieties is controversial. When other species split into groups, one possibility is to find differentiated environmental niches which each can biologically specialize to. When specializing to this environment, individuals within a group who cannot adapt will be swept aside, but both groups will survive as species. But the human 'splitting up' process cannot end this way. Human ancestors are not attempting to specialize to a particular environment, but generalize adaptation to all environments. This ameliorates the Darwinian struggle between individuals, only once a group becomes generalized in adaptation it becomes a ruthless competitor to those intermediate groups, who are not so generalized. There is no survival for intermediate varieties of human evolution, because environmentally there becomes no niche left in which to hide.

This is how we see the results today. Among animals close speciation is common; horses, donkeys and zebras, lions and tigers, a one and two humped camel, African and Indian elephants, and Darwin's finches. Even among primates, those who followed environmental selection remain widely speciated. In South America there is a group of several different species of primates that group together as near-kin species in trees. Because evolution is towards survival in a specific environment, it will result in as many varieties as there are environmental niches to accommodate them. While because selection is forever variable with environment, adaptation to it never saturates. It is an 'open' process. But human evolution is a closed process. Its end point is adaptation to a generalized goal. Once started the process will continue until the species is better adapted for competition and survival than any intermediate type, in every environment on Earth. This is the 'dark side' of human evolution. There is no halfway point to evolving a species with maximum biological options. One variety alone makes it all the way, and the others perish. This is not to suggest that there is a "gene" within humans, which makes us kill off rival groups. Just that there is a splitting-up process among humans, with predictable consequences during the emergence phase of human evolution.

This split-up process helps explain the human propensity to maximize options. Now genes do not "will" anything. They are a recipe for building individuals, and certain mixes of genes exist in some individuals, but not others. Yet, suppose that every time a new human sub-species evolved individuals differentiated it into mixes of genes called "better chances" and "better options". Each gene mix took a gamble on what the environment would do next. "Better chances" reflected that the environment would change slowly, over thousands, or millions of year, time enough to adapt biologically to new needs. So "better chances" could become specialized to an existing environment, and prosper ahead of "better options" while the environment was stable. But that is not what happened. From four to three myrs ago the environment might have been relatively stable, but then it began to fluctuate rapidly. Temperatures rose and fell, rainfall varied, forests shrank, often over periods as rapid as centuries, far faster than biological evolution could adapt. At each drastic environmental change it is possible "better chances" was wiped out, by either failure to adapt, or in competition for resources with the more versatile "better options" individuals in harsh times. In competition between the two groups, better options for survival increased long term chances for survival, more than direct increase of fitness would.

But even after "better chances" genes were wiped out, the differentiation genes survived because they were in both cocktails. The differentiation process would then be repeated. Maybe 'strong but stupid' individuals stayed in one place, while 'slender but smart' individuals formed another group to wander in search of alternative food. Whatever happened, at times of rapid environmental change certain genes were taking safe bets on their ultimate survival. The differentiation gene and the better options gene were surviving no matter what else happened. The Darwinian struggle between individuals was, after all, a mechanism for biological adaptation to change by specialization of individuals. But if there evolved a mechanism for adaptation to environmental change, not dependent on a struggle between individuals, but inherent in the design of a whole species, what would genes care? Perhaps over an era of environmental change, roughly, the Pleistocene Age, a cocktail of genes found a way to guarantee its survival, by progressively refining the design of a species to adapt to survival in any environmental condition. Even so, it would be difficult to evolve totally new genes in a short evolutionary time plus humans share 98% genes in common with chimps. Rather, genetic effect such as favoring groups to split and compete this way would have been building from much earlier in life.

To give an example of how this might work, consider what might have happened when the Earth began to cool during the Ice Ages. One way for a creature to increase chances of survival during cold would be to evolve longer fur for warmth. Only longer fur might not increase options for long-term survival in a fluctuating climate, but could endanger survival as happened to the woolly mammoth. Yet what humans did, abandoning body fur and relying on the artifact of wearing the furs of killed animals during cold periods provides the maximum options for survival in widely fluctuating climates. If the climate warms again, for example, the furs could be simply abandoned or used for something else. This does not mean that all humans were directly affected by cold. Rather, the Ice Ages produced rapid climatic changes over the face of the Earth, and placed a premium on flexibility. Though we might speculate that during an Ice Age a thicker-furred anthropoid variety might have survived better in the cold. Only later when the climate warmed, the thicker-furred adaptation became disadvantaged, and the long-term survival options of the anthropoid species with the artificial fur became manifest. It is the creature that developed options over chances which is the one that survives today.

Humans evolved and their behavior is determined by drives that the genes encode. But those drives do not adapt humans to survival in a specific environment, nor do they depend on further adaptation arising from a struggle between the best adapted individuals to procure offspring. Instead, the adaptation/survival process becomes more sophisticated. Genes differentiate out those individuals who attributes best adapt them to survival in fluctuating environments, and set them competing as a group with individuals more set in their ways. Over the millions of years of this process we end up with a species whose priority is adaptability to environment, to an extent that more primal drives for sex, aggression and even individual physical survival become options, rather than raw biological necessities.

But which selection process of modification guided human emergence?

All four did. While group and sexual selection are significant processes, they only operate once environmental selection has stamped sufficient individual variation for the new processes to select on. (Sexual or group selection can only occur once distinguishable differences between individuals exist.) Plus we must consider which broad process is occurring. Migration, wiping out of subspecies, or major speciation such as increasing cranial capacity, is more likely a group 'split-up' process. Adaptation by an isolated non-migratory group to a local environment, as occurs in the development of racial characteristics, most likely is regression to environmental selection. Possibly, major evolution was splitting of groups while continuous modification was by environmental selection. Sexual selection (plus the less studied "behavior first" effect) occurred all the time.

The history of humanity over the emergence period suggests greatly intermingled selection processes. Splits into major species occurred several times. The first was evolution of Ramidus over 5 myrs ago, followed one million years later by Australopithecus, and its several varieties. The primary evolutionary achievement of these early species was reorientation of the pelvic structure for standing erect. Because this is a major biological modification, plus its gives obvious selective advantages, this early modification might have been straight 'survival of the fittest' selection, to a point of encouraging individually selected 'better walkers' to split up from slower moving cousins. Culturally, Ramidus and Australopithecus species did not achieved much, neither developing tool-making, or pure cultural adaptations of the biology such as greatly increased brain size. So although splitting of groups occurred in the early species, direct competition was possibly the strongest driver of individual variation. Even sexual selection could play a secondary role until repeated split ups created a better sense of sexual esthetics, away from the body of an ape. About 2.5 myrs ago with the appearance of Homo Habilis, tool making emerged as an organized activity, and by 1.5 myrs ago, with Homo erectus human-like ancestors began migrating from Africa at least as far as Asia. Tool making and migration involve considerable cooperation, so by this point environmental selection between individuals must have been largely giving way to a more group-cooperative selection process.

Yet, evidence is also that the migrating species were becoming environmentally specialized at their destinations, while not evolving significantly as a species beyond what was brought from Africa. Signs that beyond the African 'boiling pot' of change, environmental selection was reasserting itself. The final split was from Homo erectus into Homo sapiens, also in Africa, about 500,000 years ago and involved one final migration eventually replacing all other species. Again, there is dispute over this, with some scientists contending that Homo erectus evolved into Homo sapiens over a wide area. Whatever the case, over the 5 million year emergence period a huge variety of biological adaptation was tried, but for reasons mentioned only one final variety emerged.

Thus, emergence is a process of adapting biology to the end point of adaptation by culture. Only this occurs as a fitness struggle, by maximizing the options of behavior. When cultural evolution takes off, the species has no longer a need to further adapt biologically. This is especially important for the human species, considering that they were pushed into the human mode of adaptation exactly because all other environmental niches on Earth had already been filled. So for humans, the "point of emergence" maybe as little as 50,000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age. At that point humans had already maximized their biological options. Beyond then, no 'higher' species emerged from the boiling pot of Africa, to displace species already migrated. At that point too a uniformly human species began to slowly occupy every continent on Earth. Though again the final migration from Africa could have been earlier, and now racially distinct species were 'holding their ground' in Europe and Asia against any further African migrations.

What are we to make of the "point of emergence" corresponding to the end of the last Ice Age?

The question is that if fluctuating climate was driving human evolution, how do we know that when the climate stabilized, humans had "emerged" already optimally biologically adapted? We have no other intelligent species against which to measure man, but as our poets might have it he was already perfectly adapted biologically when he settled the Earth. Basically, the Ice Ages might have accelerated human evolution, but maximum biological optimization of human function was a process that once started, would have continued to an end point regardless of climatic stabilization. The real struggle was between emerging new species and existing sub-species not quite optimally adapted. We presume this process must have reached an end point, because no intermediate sub-species remain on Earth. Even if the African 'boiling-pot' had shut down before emergence was complete, if there was any biological potential left to human evolution some other group might have thrown it up. Unless there was something unique driving the process in Africa.

Perhaps emergence was complete when the centrifugal forces of evolution in African became counterbalanced once all the earlier migrated species could competently resist, by whatever means, any further pressures from African migration. At that point human biological evolution was complete. The end condition, not slow biological evolution, but fast tracking culture evolution would take over. Significantly, when cultural evolution did take off, it was among the migrated species in Europe and Asia. This is a vague reinforcement of a premise that the 'stay-at-homes' were the more successful Darwinian types. But those forced to wander were the more complex adaptations. This is controversial, because the distribution of culture with migration is not a uniform effect.

Also, in some sympathy with poets and philosophers, if we were looking for end points of biological adaptation, having never seen such a thing before, what could it reasonably be the human species did not have? If say, the end point of adaptation of body fur was dispensing it and replacing it with artificial covering, humans reached that. If it were replacing the bumbling gate of a walking chimp with a truly graceful bipedal movement, humans got there too. Humans have a body that can swim underwater or swing on a trapeze, a voice which can sing opera or give technical instructions over radio, hand and eye which can paint the Mona Lisa, fingers delicate enough to perform brain surgery. So even having not seen anything else, we feel like Miranda sighting Ferdinand that we still need look no further. Clearly there is prejudice to this view. Wilson sees the human body "teetering on a jerrybuilt foundation of partly obsolete Ice-Age adaptations" and requiring cloning or genetic modification to improve it. In the Theory of Options we take a Shakespearean view of the human form, expressing biological confidence in the species that maximum biological adaptation was achieved during emergence, and all future adaptation will be cultural.

Finally, from emergence arose the human brain. In one sense the human brain might be unremarkable, in that it could possess a 99% commonality of neural circuit design with the brain of a chimp. But in another sense it is utterly remarkable, in that the large portion of this brain, which forms the cerebral cortex, allows imagination, reasoning and abstraction not possible in a chimp's brain. The makes the human brain the inaugural intelligence device of which humans are aware, and through which they interpret all other facets of existence.

Let us now consider how the human brain works, to provide humans maximum options of intelligence.