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Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

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376 | HOW THE MIND WORKSstand one ano<strong>the</strong>r. They frequently raid neighboring territories and killany stranger who blunders into <strong>the</strong>irs.We could afford this wanderlust because of our intellect. Peopleexplore a new landscape and draw up a mental resource map, rich indetails about water, plants, animals, routes, and shelter. And if <strong>the</strong>y can,<strong>the</strong>y make <strong>the</strong>ir new homeland into a savanna. Native Americans and Australianaborigines used to burn huge swaths of woodland, opening <strong>the</strong>m upfor colonization by grasses. The ersatz savanna attracted grazing animals,which were easy to hunt, and exposed visitors before <strong>the</strong>y got too close.The biologist George Orians, an expert on <strong>the</strong> behavioral ecology ofbirds, recently turned his eye to <strong>the</strong> behavioral ecology of humans. WithJudith Heerwagen, Stephen Kaplan, Rachel Kaplan, and o<strong>the</strong>rs, heargues that our sense of natural beauty is <strong>the</strong> mechanism that drove ourancestors into suitable habitats. We innately find savannas beautiful, butwe also like a landscape that is easy to explore and remember, and thatwe have lived in long enough to know its ins and outs.In experiments on human habitat preference, American children andadults are shown slides of landscapes and asked how much <strong>the</strong>y wouldlike to visit or live in <strong>the</strong>m. The children prefer savannas, even though<strong>the</strong>y have never been to one. The adults like <strong>the</strong> savannas, too, but <strong>the</strong>ylike <strong>the</strong> deciduous and coniferous forests—-which resemble much of <strong>the</strong>habitable United States—just as much. No one likes <strong>the</strong> deserts and<strong>the</strong> rainforests. One interpretation is that <strong>the</strong> children are revealing ourspecies' default habitat preference, and <strong>the</strong> adults supplement it with <strong>the</strong>land with which <strong>the</strong>y have grown familiar.Of course, people do not have a mystical longing for ancient homelands.They are merely pleased by <strong>the</strong> landscape features that savannastend to have. Orians and Heerwagen surveyed <strong>the</strong> professional wisdomof gardeners, photographers, and painters to learn what kinds of landscapespeople find beautiful. They treated it as a second kind of data onhuman tastes in habitats, supplementing <strong>the</strong> experiments on people'sreactions to slides. The landscapes thought to be <strong>the</strong> loveliest, <strong>the</strong>yfound, are dead ringers for an optimal savanna: semi-open space (nei<strong>the</strong>rcompletely exposed, which leaves one vulnerable, nor overgrown, whichimpedes vision and movement), even ground cover, views to <strong>the</strong> horizon,large trees, water, changes in elevation, and multiple paths leading out.The geographer Jay Appleton succinctly captured what makes a landscapeappealing: prospect and refuge, or seeing without being seen. Thecombination allows us to learn <strong>the</strong> lay of <strong>the</strong> land safely.

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