A major “application” of cognitive memory involves the act of thinking. Sensory inputs are processed, clustered, and recognized by cognitive memory, with the results being supplied to an executive for purposeful execution. The result is situational improvement for the thinking animal. A “thinking system” consists of (1) sensors (eyes, ears, touch, etc.), (2) a cognitive memory, and (3) an executive to implement the cognitive memory output. Nature’s purpose for the thinking system is to improve the circumstances of the thinking animal. Thinking began in animals striving to satisfy their basic needs of food, water, shelter, reproduction, etc. Satisfaction of these needs was and still is essential for survival of the species and requires elementary thought. Our human ancestors were hunter-gatherers, and their thinking revolved around objects found in their surroundings. They began to alter their natural environment, and this led to the development of tools to aid in hunting (and much later to agriculture), building shelters, etc. The more that they altered their world, the more objects they had to think about. One step leads to another. Thoughts build upon thoughts, and memory was essential to sustain these thoughts. They were able to produce sounds and eventually began to devise sounds that corresponded to objects, and eventually, language was born. Association of spoken “words” to objects made it possible to record thoughts in cognitive memory. Over eons of time, one step led to another, and now there are many other modern tools and conveniences which are outgrowths of thinking about objects and speech development.