Thank you for the great question.

Correct! All living things are the result of evolution by natural selection. This means that all brains, whether human brains, dog brains, or even ant brains, are also a result of evolution by natural selection. That is, the genes (DNA) that create brains in different animals are successful at replicating themselves because they help solve problems, like finding food, that affect survival and reproduction. But then what makes brains different from animal to animal? What makes human brains so special that we do things like build skyscrapers and write poetry? Why don’t all animals have the sort of brain we do if that brain is so great?

The answer is that different animals faced different problems over the course of their evolution. In response to these different problems, natural selection built different brains with different abilities that solve those problems. Also, brains are really expensive to have in terms of the fats they are made out of and the amount of energy they consume. So natural selection will avoid selecting for big complex brains unless they really help the animal exploit its environment. The lesson here is that evolution does not “want” to create bigger brains, rather evolution produces the brains needed to solve the problems the particular animal has given its way of life.

Human brains are no different. Our brains were designed by natural selection to solve problems that our ancestors faced, including finding food, avoiding predators, helping your relatives and friends, navigating the world, and communicating with each other.

Also, many of our most amazing abilities like writing and math and culture come about as by-products of systems in the brain that were designed for other solving problems we faced over evolutionary time. We can explain extraordinary powers of human thinking by studying our evolutionary history, what problems we faced in the last million years, and how the brain evolved to solve them.