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anonymopotamus t1_j2desax wrote

Reply to comment by AllergicToStabWounds in ELI5: How did we realise the mind is in the brain? by theembryo

Ancient Greeks thought that thinking was in the heart, Plato was an early proponent of placing it in the head (in the Timaeus). Before then people in the region would have answered the same way as you, but would have pointed to the heart.

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tommytraddles t1_j2diw4i wrote

Everyone everywhere has known that the answer to Did you get stabbed in head or kicked by horse in face? is You have thinky problems now.

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Jkarofwild t1_j2dkevh wrote

It's not the case that everyone everywhere everywhen has exposure to a corpus of knowledge about head injuries. Hence why some people went with "when I'm embarrassed/infatuated/etc I feel it in my 'heart', that must be where thinking happens".

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Tony2Punch t1_j2e1rf2 wrote

But that isn’t even fully true when you compare the massive amount of illnesses that would have been more common due to poor hygiene. Many of these diseases could infect through any open holes in the body or anything they eat and just give them a bad enough fever they get brain damage.

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