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2000 BC...
Ancient Egyptians believed that the heart, and not the brain
recorded all good and evil deeds. In fact, when someone died, they would
weigh their heart on a scale agianst a feather, and it would either be
heavy with sin and evil, or light without. To the Egyptians, the brain was
held in such absolute disrepute, it was actually sucked out of the nose of
the deceased with a crude, straw-like apparatus.

500 BC...
Hippocrates, (460 - 377 BC) said: "Men ought to know that from
nothing else but the brain comes our joys, delights, laughter, and sports,
and sorrows, griefs, despondency, and lamentations,... in a special manner
we see, and hear,... In those ways, I am of the opinion that the brain
exercises the greatest power in the man." Hippocrates is clearly stating a
central tendency to the brain for all actions.
Plato (428 -348 BC) , another greek philospher of the time,
took a different approach. He divided the mind into three different parts.
One, which was located in the brain, was the main source of intellect. The
second, which he stated revolved around fear, anger, courage, etc... resided
in the liver (I had a gut feeling...). The third, and last part of Plato's
mind was in the intestine. This one handled all of the person's , greed,
and desire. Also, he decided that at the time of death, one of the many
problems that scientists, and philosophers both deal with in their theories,
the liver and the intestine would be gone, but the brain part would live
forever. This allowed for memories of our lives after we die.
The Greek physician Erisistratus (304 -250 BC) divided the
brain into two regions : big (the cerebrum) and small( the cerebellum).
He also noticed that we have more folds on the surface of our brain than
other mammals. He deduced (and correctly too) that humans have more brain
power than them.
At the same time, from his dissections made in Alexandria , the
Greek anatomist Herophilus (born 320 BC) found out that there are two kinds
of nerves - those that transmit impulses from the nerves to the brain (say,
sensing a pat on your back ), and those that conduct impulses from the brain
to the nerves (making the decision to raise you arm).
Aristotle (384-322 BC), Plato's pupil, saw it differently. He
thought that the mind was located in the heart. He observed that the heart
was warm, and the brain cold, and since, in Greek tradition, warmth was
associated with sensation (ie - I had a warm, fuzzy feeling.), he concluded
that the heart must be the place where our feelings, and emotions were born.
This was actually the commonly accepted theory for many years.
130 AD...
Early Greek, and Roman doctors are exploring the mysteries of
the brain. Claudio Galeno, one such doctor is born. Galeno performs many
experimentations, and discovers many new aspects about the brain,
unfortunately, he was only able to examine monkeys and not normally human
brains. This was a problem faced by most doctors at this time.
Around the same time, Galen, a physician to the Roman
gladiators, was exploring the brain. But, he wanted an close up look.
Nowadays, this would be called an "autopsy" (a word, surprisingly enough,
coined by Galen), but back in this time, these "autopsies" were not allowed.
Galen, still wanting to explore took other patients, barbary apes. After
the apes had died, he would observe the brains, attempting to prove that
brain convolutions (bumps) could be used to tell about the person (ie - a
person with a bump here, is intelligent). But, after looking at camel brains,
and observing how intricate their cortexes were, he concluded that there
was no truth to his theory.

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