When and Why Did Human Brains Decrease in Size?

[Gustav3Y]

When and Why Did Human Brains Decrease in Size? A New Change-Point Analysis and Insights From Brain Evolution in Ants

Human brain size nearly quadrupled in the six million years since Homo last shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees, but human brains are thought to have decreased in volume since the end of the last Ice Age. The timing and reason for this decrease is enigmatic. Here we use change-point...

www.frontiersin.org

We find that hominin brains experienced positive rate changes at 2.1 and 1.5 million years ago, coincident with the early evolution of Homo and technological innovations evident in the archeological record. But we also find that human brain size reduction was surprisingly recent, occurring in the last 3,000 years. Our dating does not support hypotheses concerning brain size reduction as a by-product of body size reduction, a result of a shift to an agricultural diet, or a consequence of self-domestication. We suggest our analysis supports the hypothesis that the recent decrease in brain size may instead result from the externalization of knowledge and advantages of group-level decision-making due in part to the advent of social systems of distributed cognition and the storage and sharing of information. Humans live in social groups in which multiple brains contribute to the emergence of collective intelligence. Although difficult to study in the deep history of Homo, the impacts of group size, social organization, collective intelligence and other potential selective forces on brain evolution can be elucidated using ants as models.

 

[Kayaker]

The problem of Alzheimer's disease as a clue to immortality Part 2

Ray Peat

raypeat.com

They are advancing a myth about human nature, so I will advance a counter-myth. At the time people were growing their large brains they lived in the tropics. I suggest that in this time before the development of grain-based agriculture, they ate a diet that was relatively free of unsaturated fats and low in iron--based on tropical fruits. I suggest that the Boskop skull from Mt. Kilimanjaro was representative of people under those conditions, and that just by our present knowledge of the association of brain size with longevity, they--as various "Golden Age" myths claim--must have had a very long life-span. As people moved north and developed new ways of living, their consumption of unsaturated fats increased, their brain size decreased, and they aged rapidly. Neanderthal relics show that flaxseed was a staple of their diet.

 

[BearWithMe]

Ray's quote posted above is spot on, but also:
Use it or lose it

 

[akgrrrl]

Ray's quote posted above is spot on, but also:
Use it or lose it

"Use it..."
Could be a thread in and of itself. They have dumbed us down for so long.
Even on rpf, many writers who express valid points fail the 4 letter words test:
Dont understand the difference between then and than
Between lose and loose
Between too, two, to
Between you are, you're, and your
Between waist and waste
Between bear and bare
It is everywhere.

 

[Kayaker]

"Use it..."
Could be a thread in and of itself. They have dumbed us down for so long.
Even on rpf, many writers who express valid points fail the 4 letter words test:
Dont understand the difference between then and than
Between lose and loose
Between too, two, to
Between you are, you're, and your
Between waist and waste
Between bear and bare
It is everywhere.

Yes, I don't understand why people write with bad grammar and punctuation.

Is that a subliminal message? Lose to your bare waist? ?

 

[akgrrrl]

Yes, I don't understand why people write with bad grammar and punctuation.

Is that a subliminal message? Lose to your bare waist? ?

I don't think so...wait, hmmm

 

[BearWithMe]

Shots fired ?

 

[akgrrrl]

Shots fired ?

I can't help it. There are so many smart people on this forum--it pains me when a crisp, maybe brilliant post is dampened by inaccurate language, poor spelling, poor readability, incorrect punctuation.

 

[BearWithMe]

I can't help it. There are so many smart people on this forum--it pains me when a crisp, maybe brilliant post is dampened by inaccurate language, poor spelling, poor readability, incorrect punctuation.

Seiously though, if the post is otherwise brilliant, grammar errors are likely caused by autocorrect / spell checker.


View: https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/s4jhcp/is_spell_check_getting_worse_on_purpose/

 

[Kayaker]

Seiously though, if the post is otherwise brilliant, grammar errors are likely caused by autocorrect / spell checker.


View: https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/s4jhcp/is_spell_check_getting_worse_on_purpose/

Insightful people in my experience turn off autocorrect. As for spellchecker, the one in my browser is glitchy.

 

[BearWithMe]

Insightful people in my experience turn off autocorrect. As for spellchecker, the one in my browser is glitchy.

Insigtful people are not always tech savvy.

Autocorrect is turned on by default on most devices. Turning it off might not be a trivial task for many people. But that doesn't mean they are not insightful or brilliant in other areas of expertise.

 

[Riesensackteil]

Seiously though, if the post is otherwise brilliant, grammar errors are likely caused by autocorrect / spell checker.


View: https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/s4jhcp/is_spell_check_getting_worse_on_purpose/

Many write quickly without rereading, too.
But there are more people in this world who do not speak English as native language than people who do. More often than not the average American has the same proficiency in his main foreign language as the second of the average European. Might be overstated though.
Grammar does not seem like a good proxy for intelligence at all.

Edit: Foreigners tend to turn off autocorrect, too, because the phone tends to correct back to the user's native language

 

[Kayaker]

Insigtful people are not always tech savvy.

Autocorrect is turned on by default on most devices. Turning it off might not be a trivial task for many people. But that doesn't mean they are not insightful or brilliant in other areas of expertise.

You're right, older people aren't tech-savvy. I was referring to the difference between observant people who find a way to turn it off and careless people who never turn it off and get annoyed by it. It's something I noticed among younger people.

 

[Kayaker]

More often than not the average American has the same proficiency in his main foreign language as the second of the average European. Might be overstated though.

That seems silly. An American would write better English than a European whose first language isn't English most of the time.

 

[BearWithMe]

That seems silly. An American would write better English than a European whose first language isn't English most of the time.

I'm European who lived in America for 8 years. This is absolutely not true in my experience.

But the post you are quoting is saying something else.

 

[Riesensackteil]

That seems silly. An American would write better English than a European whose first language isn't English most of the time.

You failed the test

 

[Kayaker]

I'm European who lived in America for 8 years. This is absolutely not true in my experience.

Where would a European have the opportunity to practice speaking English?

 

[Kayaker]

You failed the test

I assume I made a grammatical misstep.

 

[Riesensackteil]

I assume I made a grammatical misstep.

I was a bit slick there, indeed.
I was talking about foreign language. Let's say the American chooses French as his main foreign language and the European chooses French as his second foreign language (his main foreign language is probably English and his native tongue being German for example).

I claim that the German (European) in this example is on average better at French than the American.

If we play this game of grammar being a proxy for intelligence then, pardon, it would look grim for the Americans. Or does it not count if you are proficient in languages other than English? Then do not take this as a sign for intelligence, specifically on the world wide web.

This might partially explain the phenomena of smart posts but silly grammar mistakes

 

[Kayaker]

I was a bit slick there, indeed.
I was talking about foreign language. Let's say the American chooses French as his main foreign language and the European chooses French as his second foreign language (his main foreign language is probably English and his native tongue being German for example).

I claim that the German (European) in this example is on average better at French than the American.

If we play this game of grammar being a proxy for intelligence then, pardon, it would look grim for the Americans. Or does it not count if you are proficient in languages other than English? Then do not take this as a sign for intelligence, specifically on the world wide web.

This might partially explain the phenomena of smart posts but silly grammar mistakes

I see what I missed. Well, a German is more likely to travel to France than an American. Here, it's just an option as a language class, and fluency isn't important unless someone wants to live in Canada.

I've spoken to Europeans with bad English and it's pretty funny.