Allocation of skills and functions to the innate mechanisms

These are the skills that are specified in the genome and automatically converted into brain-based information-processing capabilities. Some of the conversion will happen before birth, and the remainder after birth during the maturing period.

There are some indications that the conversion-process is influenced by experience, i.e. is not fully determined by the genomic specification.

Parts of the mechanism for evolution:

1. Decrease variation: natural selection of parents
• Skill contribution to the mating of parents & the mating of offspring
2. Increase variation: mutation
   • Randomization (mutation) that modifies skill-variants to produce new skill-variants
3. Copy: Mating of parents to maturation and use of skill by offspring
   • Merging the skill-encodings for the father and the mother
   • Maturation: a compiler-like process that takes the skill-encoding and generates neural structures in the brain that do the information-processing required for the innate skills

Skills: to model as illustration

1. Basic locomotion, including balance
2. Changing direction from eye-movement to hip-rotation, with variants
3. Prediction: changing direction when the target is temporarily obscured behind a tree or rock
4. Pose mimicry
5. Movement mimicry

Prerequisites for the mechanisms and processes of evolution:

1. An encoding of the innate skills in the genome
2. Cooperation as illustrated by:
   • mating: mother and father
   • nursing for mammals: mother and offspring
   • parenting: feeding, sheltering & protecting

Innate functions to investigate & required for subsequent skills:

1. 'Strampeln' - a German word for the seemingly random limb-movements of babies that then convert to systematic and coordinated action.
2. Babbling, the seemingly random production of sounds that slowly modifies to speech sounds.
3. Learning, i.e. being able to repeat poses and movements first encountered with mimicry
4. Learning to mimic mirror-inverted movements (common in learning while facing the master, e.g. manual tasks, footwork for new dances).
5. Communication - both reception and emission - required for cooperation
6. Timing - selection, starting, and stopping skills - for cooperation
7. Tool use
8. Tool manufacture and maintenance