Part II: Reading and writing and the elasticity of cognitive development.

Overcoming the brain’s limited memory capacity led to the invention of writing and reading – the unexpected outcome that liberated humanity’s intellectual powers like never before.

We are the only species on the planet that reads. We take reading for granted. But strange as it may seem to us today, we were never born to read, just as we were never intended to fly, breathe underwater, or travel at speeds faster than our limbs could carry us.

However, the invention of writing and reading altered the biological makeup of the brain, w…