# Ancient Discovery of the Brain. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 5, 2019, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-discovery-of-the-brain/841304 "2019-10-05T05:25:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Jim\_B](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jim_b/32/4338_2.png) [@Jim\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_B)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2019, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-discovery-of-the-brain/841304/1 "2019-10-05T05:25:20Z")
> [@](#): > > “The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o’er a cold decree.” > _The Merchant of Venice_, Act 1, Scene 2. (1596) Anyways, there is a reason why I posted the above quote. Apparently by 1596 (when the play was written), they knew the brain was the seat of the consciousness. My question is, _ **when** _ and _ **how** _ did they finally discover this? I know the ancients apparently believed the mind was to be found all over the body. The emotions were in the heart (we still say, someone has a ‘broken heart’ for this reason). I think the liver was responsible for sadness, or something like that (hence the term ‘melancholia’). And really it does make a lot of sense. The body is the person. So why wouldn’t the mind be found all over it? But again, my question is, who first realized the brain was the mind? And when? And while we’re at it, really _ **how** _ did they realize this? :):):):):):)🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Bear\_Nenno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bear_nenno/32/3358_2.png) [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2019, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-discovery-of-the-brain/841304/2 "2019-10-05T07:12:56Z")
Wiki has a relevant entry on their [neuroscience page:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_neuroscience) > [@](#): > > During the second half of the first millennium BC, the Ancient Greeks developed differing views on the function of the brain. However, due to the fact that Hippocratic doctors did not practice dissection, because the human body was considered sacred, Greek views of brain function were generally uninformed by anatomical study. It is said that it was the Pythagorean Alcmaeon of Croton (6th and 5th centuries BC) who first considered the brain to be the place where the mind was located. According to ancient authorities, “he believed the seat of sensations is in the brain. This contains the governing faculty. All the senses are connected in some way with the brain; consequently they are incapable of action if the brain is disturbed…the power of the brain to synthesize sensations makes it also the seat of thought: The storing up of perceptions gives memory and belief and when these are stabilized you get knowledge.”[2] In the 4th century BC, Hippocrates believed the brain to be the seat of intelligence (based, among others before him, on Alcmaeon’s work). During the 4th century BC Aristotle thought that, while the heart was the seat of intelligence, the brain was a cooling mechanism for the blood. He reasoned that humans are more rational than the beasts because, among other reasons, they have a larger brain to cool their hot-bloodedness.[3] ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2019, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-discovery-of-the-brain/841304/3 "2019-10-05T14:38:56Z")
I’d expect that in a coarse way this was understood many thousands of years ago. Butchering animals would show that the skull contains a large organ. Observing the effect of blows to the heads of humans would show that these affect consciousness in ways that similar damage to other parts of the body does not. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2019, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-discovery-of-the-brain/841304/4 "2019-10-05T18:05:47Z")
Exactly what Xema says. The real question is how anyone (Aristotle) could come to the conclusion that the brain is _not_ where consciousness and thinking happen. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2019, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-discovery-of-the-brain/841304/5 "2019-10-06T19:18:36Z")
Seeing as my thoughts form and are located in the area behind my eyes then it is hardly a huge leap to conclude the big squishy mass might be involved somehow. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2019, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-discovery-of-the-brain/841304/6 "2019-10-06T21:21:45Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > Seeing as my thoughts form and are located in the area behind my eyes then it is hardly a huge leap to conclude the big squishy mass might be involved somehow. This is actually cultural! If you were raised in a culture where the heart was thought to be the organ of thinking, you’d be imagining all your thinking as taking place there. (Plus you’d be much more aware of your heart racing and such and how that ties to what you are currently thinking.) ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-discovery-of-the-brain/841304/7 "2019-10-07T07:20:36Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > This is actually cultural! If you were raised in a culture where the heart was thought to be the organ of thinking, you’d be imagining all your thinking as taking place there. Perhaps, but the question was about when people started to think this and seeing as we have the ability to correctly locate thoughts, images and emotion right behind our eyes (absent of cultural misconceptions) then it is liklely to be a concept that occurred to people throughout antiquity. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-discovery-of-the-brain/841304/8 "2019-10-07T08:10:49Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > Perhaps, but the question was about when people started to think this and seeing as we have the ability to correctly locate thoughts, images and emotion right behind our eyes (absent of cultural misconceptions) then it is liklely to be a concept that occurred to people throughout antiquity. What’s the evidence that we have the ability to correctly locate thoughts, images and emotion right behind our eyes, absent of cultural misconceptions? ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-discovery-of-the-brain/841304/9 "2019-10-07T08:17:14Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > What’s the evidence that we have the ability to correctly locate thoughts, images and emotion right behind our eyes, absent of cultural misconceptions? You don’t think people do that? ---
**Author:** ![EdelweissPirate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8491ac/32.png) [@EdelweissPirate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EdelweissPirate)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-discovery-of-the-brain/841304/10 "2019-10-07T08:23:37Z")
No, but you do, and that’s an extraordinary claim. You know what they say about extraordinary claims… ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-discovery-of-the-brain/841304/11 "2019-10-07T08:27:04Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > You don’t think people do that? Many cultures locate emotions, at least, in the heart or in the guts. Our own did, sufficiently recently that the English language is still strongly marked by this. So I await evidence that the default is to locate them behind the eyes. Images, right enough, we may link with the eyes because, duh, loss of eyes results in blindness. Thooughts? I see no evidence for that. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-discovery-of-the-brain/841304/12 "2019-10-07T08:30:27Z")
> [@EdelweissPirate](#): > > No, but you do, and that’s an extraordinary claim. You know what they say about extraordinary claims… I think you’ve mistaken what I’m saying. I do it. Therefore it can be done. I have no doubt that in history humans that weren’t culturally conditioned otherwise had the ability to do the same. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 8:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-discovery-of-the-brain/841304/13 "2019-10-07T08:31:30Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > So I await evidence that the default is to locate them behind the eyes… yeah, you haven’t properly read what I’ve written ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-discovery-of-the-brain/841304/14 "2019-10-07T08:35:51Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > I think you’ve mistaken what I’m saying. > > I do it. Therefore it can be done. I have no doubt that in history humans that weren’t culturally conditioned otherwise had the ability to do the same. You did it under the influence of cultural conceptions, surely? What makes you think that people not exposed to your cultural conceptions would also do it? ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 8:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-discovery-of-the-brain/841304/15 "2019-10-07T08:55:36Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > You did it under the influence of cultural conceptions, surely? I don’t know, how can I know? who remembers their first conscious thought and where we instinctively located it? Our culture correctly reinforces that the location of thought is the brain. > [@](#): > > What makes you think that people not exposed to your cultural conceptions would also do it? I think it pretty much a certainty that other people in antiquity will have located their thoughts and their “self” in their head without cultural pressure to do otherwise. The only other option is that _none_ of them did so and they all considered areas of the body for locating it but _never the head_ which I find extremely unlikely, especially given that we have our key primary sense organs located right next to the brain. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-discovery-of-the-brain/841304/16 "2019-10-07T14:24:43Z")
The brain’s function was considered to be cooling the blood. The seat of consciousness was considered to be in the organs of the torso. The idea of consciousness being in the brain would have been as alien as you find the concept of consciousness being in the gut. ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-discovery-of-the-brain/841304/17 "2019-10-07T15:25:16Z")
It was certainly known to the Jews of the Talmudic era (c 200-450 CE). In one Talmudic statement, a rabbi says, after hearing the argument of another, “It seems to me he has no brain in his skull.” ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-discovery-of-the-brain/841304/18 "2019-10-07T16:08:05Z")
> [@susan](#): > > The brain’s function was considered to be cooling the blood. The seat of consciousness was considered to be in the organs of the torso. The idea of consciousness being in the brain would have been as alien as you find the concept of consciousness being in the gut. I don’t see on what grounds you assert this, you think no ancient people located consciousness in the head? I find that an extravagant claim and one at odds with some of the ancient people and texts mentioned here in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-discovery-of-the-brain/841304/19 "2019-10-07T16:59:42Z")
I would also think as soon as humans started bashing each other with heavy objects (a few million years before 2001, perhaps) they realized that the head was fragile and contained a very important organ for life. People could be stabbed or bashed all over the body and tended not to die instantly, but serious damage to the brain and the person lost consciousness immediately. This reminds me of previous threads about “when did people realize sex leads to pregnancy?” Old-timey people were not as dumb as we are, they had plenty of time to contemplate the mysteries of life without smartphones and video games to distract them. They figured out there were five other (visible) plants and they figured out their motions. When’s the last time you noticed anything other than the moon moving in the sky? (For me, it was the ISS zipping over in a few minutes). ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-discovery-of-the-brain/841304/20 "2019-10-07T18:49:04Z")
And yet, in one of the greatest of ancient empires, the Egyptians were very careful to preserve the heart in mummies but scooped the brain out and threw it away as useless gunk. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-discovery-of-the-brain/841304.md?page=2)