On the Convolutions of the Human Brain

Holloway believes that he can tell from a creatureБЂ™s cranium whether BrocaБЂ™s area is present, and he has found evidence of an emerging BrocaБЂ™s area in the brain of Homo habilis some two million years ago-just the time of the first constructions and the first tools. To this limited extent there is something to the phrenological vision. It is very plausible that human thought and industry went hand in hand with the development of articulate speech, and BrocaБЂ™s area may in a very real sense be one of the seats of our humanity, as well as a means for tracing our relationships with our ancestors on their way toward humanity. And here was BrocaБЂ™s brain floating, in formalin and in fragments, before me. I could make out the limbic region which Broca had studied in others. I could see the convolutions on the neocortex. I could even make out the gray-white left frontal lobe in which BrocaБЂ™s own BrocaБЂ™s area resided, decaying and unnoticed, in a musty corner of a collection that Broca had himself begun. It was difficult to hold BrocaБЂ™s brain without wondering whether in some sense Broca was still in there-his wit, his skeptical mien, his abrupt gesticulations when he talked, his quiet and sentimental moments ...»