While visiting the religion forum on this site a very interesting question occured to me. Were Spinal reflexes innate in the human beings from the get go. Humans did not discover fire as soon as they came to be so when they did finally discover the miraculous force and touched it did it send a message up to the spinal cord to pull the hand away....how could it really since fire had not been known to our species before. I am sure the human being that did discover fire pulled his/her hand away but did he/she do it quickly through spinal reflex or till the pain eventually redistered to the brain. What i am really asking is "Did spinal reflex came to us built in or did nature implent it after a need for it was discovered after fire was discovered????" seeing as how The brain would eventually take over but too much damage might have been done in that time. I know that somebody here will eventually give me a obvious answer and prove me wrong and stupid but hey it doesn't hurt to ask.
Spinal reflexes evolved like any other system within the body. I don't think spinal reflexes evolved from encounters with fire however. They probably evolved much before that. Spinal reflexes are due to any kind of pain, not just heat. So I'd guess they'd evolve a short (evolutionary short that is) time after we were able to feel pain.
many animals exhibit spinal reflexes, so assuming evolution theory is accurat, and humans came from animals, I would estimate that spinal reflexes evoleved as the nurologicall system did. Prolly back when the noto-chord was evolving into the spinal chord, and the gangleon was evolving into the brain, the signals sent to the muscle tissue directly from the chord and not the brain, could be considered the first "spinal reflexes". Prior to that, before there was a nerve cluster that acted as a central prossesing unit, I bet the signals came from along the entire nerve chord, sort of like having one long, thin, really simple brain (like earth worms today). I'd say that spinal reflexes evolved first, if you are just talking about muscle driving signals that originate from outside the brain.
