A three year old is shown a doll holding a marble.  The child watches as the doll puts the marble into a small basket and then covers it with a blanket.  Then the doll leaves.  While that doll is gone, another doll comes, steals the marble, and hides it in a box near the aforementioned basket.  When the original doll returns, the child is asked where it will look for the marble.  Nearly all three-year-olds will say that the doll will look in the BOX first when trying to find the marble.  This is evidence that a three-year-old does not have the ability to see a situation from another’s eyes.

The same test is given to a five-year-old.  Nearly all five-year-olds will say that the doll will look in the basket first, evidence that, by that age, a human can see something from someone else’s eyes.

An adult chimpanzee is given the same test.  No adult chimpanzee has ever been able to pass this test or any other similar test that measures one’s ability for such abstract thought.  A human’s frontal lobes, the lobes of the brain responsible for abstract and deep thought, are much more developed those of chimpanzees.

I saw this test on a video I watched in my World Civilizations class.  I just found it very interesting.  By the way, where the hell does the Homo neandertalensis come into play in the evolutionary pattern?  I was taught to me that, from our early primate ancestor, first evolved Australopithecus.  Then came Homo erectus (he he you said Homo erectus) and then Homo sapiens.  Well there is evidence that Homo sapiens interacted with neandertals (Homo neadertalensis) so where the hell did they evolve from and when did they die out?