full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Vilayanur Ramachandran: The neurons that shaped civilization

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Now, let's look at culture, the pnhoemneon of huamn culture. If you go back in time about [75,000] to 100,000 years ago, let's look at human evolution, it turns out that something very important happened around 75,000 years ago. And that is, there is a sudden emergence and rapid spread of a number of skills that are uuinqe to human beings like tool use, the use of fire, the use of shelters, and, of course, laugngae, and the abiitly to read somebody else's mind and interpret that person's behavior. All of that happened relatively quickly.

Open Cloze

Now, let's look at culture, the __________ of _____ culture. If you go back in time about [75,000] to 100,000 years ago, let's look at human evolution, it turns out that something very important happened around 75,000 years ago. And that is, there is a sudden emergence and rapid spread of a number of skills that are ______ to human beings like tool use, the use of fire, the use of shelters, and, of course, ________, and the _______ to read somebody else's mind and interpret that person's behavior. All of that happened relatively quickly.

Solution

  1. unique
  2. ability
  3. human
  4. language
  5. phenomenon

Original Text

Now, let's look at culture, the phenomenon of human culture. If you go back in time about [75,000] to 100,000 years ago, let's look at human evolution, it turns out that something very important happened around 75,000 years ago. And that is, there is a sudden emergence and rapid spread of a number of skills that are unique to human beings like tool use, the use of fire, the use of shelters, and, of course, language, and the ability to read somebody else's mind and interpret that person's behavior. All of that happened relatively quickly.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
human beings 4
motor command 3
mirror neurons 3
mirror neuron 3
literally feel 3
human brain 2
nerve cells 2
command neurons 2
sudden emergence 2
simply watch 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
motor command neurons 2

Important Words

  1. ability
  2. behavior
  3. beings
  4. culture
  5. emergence
  6. evolution
  7. fire
  8. happened
  9. human
  10. important
  11. interpret
  12. language
  13. mind
  14. number
  15. phenomenon
  16. quickly
  17. rapid
  18. read
  19. shelters
  20. skills
  21. spread
  22. sudden
  23. time
  24. tool
  25. turns
  26. unique
  27. years