The chapters dedicated to prehistoric times serve as the explanatoty for the development of cognitive abilities. It originated in the brain of African forest apes when they descended from the trees onto the ground in search of new sources of food. It was hunger that facilitated evolution and laid the groundwork for the development of intellect. Over three million years, the apes evolved into vertically-walking two-legged semi-apes. Genetic changes and mutations took place in their brain cells, which accelerated their development and formation of new nervous centers and ties. At the very early stages, rudimentary intellect was expressed through development of the simplest skills – the use of sticks and stones for defense and hunting. Gradually developing intellect led to the use of fire, to construction of shelters and creation of weapons made of stone and bone.
About one hundred fifty thousand years ago the development of the most perfect type of the two-legged creature – homo sapiens, a thinking human being – appeared. New human beings spread all over the world. During that phase, their highest intellectual achievements were the creation of spoken language as a means of communication of information, and the development of visual art. The concept of faith to explain the incomprehensible forces of Nature settled in their minds. That was the beginning of religious worship.lt was the manifestation of a new ability to abstract from the concrete, the particular to the general. Early forms of religion arose in that manner. Cave drawings in Western Europe, created thirty thousand years ago, were the oldest examples of religious worship. That skill could represent the beginning of the development of European civilization, a progression which was halted by sliding glaciers ten thousand years later.
The next chapters of the book cover the application of intellect to the development of the wheel, to the concept of counting and time measurement, and to creation of written languages and alphabets.
The next known intellectuals after Imhotep lived in Greece about three thousand years ago. They included the first poets Homer and Hesiod. Their epic poems laid the foundation for classical literature and the mythology of polytheism. That period in the development of intellectualism sparked the transition to scholarly and logical philosophy as the school of life. Several chapters are then dedicated to the life and work of Greek philosophers Thales, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and their influence on intellectualism during the subsequent centuries. Stories about the flourishing of the Hellenic culture of Athens, about its dissemination throughout the empire created by Alexander of Macedonia, and about the Alexandria school of scholars and philosophers are also included.