1-How do we eat ?
2-Why do we eat?
3-Where are we going for lunch ?
I bet it has to do with the development of spoken language. That had to have freed up some brainpower that was previously tasked with processing body language, smell, context, etc.
god damn austerity, we can’t have shit these days, even our brains have to meet efficiency quotas and “rationalization”.
Shrinkflation!
Eventually rationalization will become impossible and we’ll get our big brains back. And then it’s austerity again. Ad infinitum.
It’s coincidental with the human adoption of farming. We changed the food source people have, and that impacted brain and body development. We absolutely see this modern day with malnutrition.
It’s coincidental with the human adoption of farming.
So far it looks like no hypothesis holds water. For example this one about farming is talking about a timeframe of 10.000 years. The shrinkage started 100.000. So there is a 90.000 years gap, that is left unexplained
via https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2021.742639brain size has remained steady in H. sapiens until a rapid and dramatic change point only 3,000 years ago
and if we estimate farming was 10,000 years ago, we can’t rule out one influenced the other.
Yes, DeSilva published the 2021 paper you linked. In 2022 he got criticism from Villmoare and Grabowski (see: Did the transition to complex societies in the Holocene drive a reduction in brain size? A reassessment of the DeSilva et al. (2021) hypothesis). Then in 2023 DeSilva revised his argument in (link above, in the description), extending the date back, still not giving anwers about the shrinkage observed since 100.000 years ago.
Then in 2023 DeSilva revised his argument in (link above, in the description), extending the date back, still not giving anwers about the shrinkage observed since 100.000 years ago.
yeah, from the last 3,000 to within the last 10,000 years, with the sharp decline ~5,000 years ago… which does line up with widespread adoption of agriculture still.
Of course you can choose to believe what you want.
The point I was trying to make is that there is no scientific consensus on the topic about how global the decline was, when it began and why it happened - as well as if it is related to the formation of complex societies, farming, language, dietary changes, temperature, or body size.
there is no scientific consensus on the topic
Agreed. That is why we are here speculating.
when it began and why it happened
This is what makes it a super interesting topic!
Makes sense. Back then every day was survival and we had to think our way out of a lot of situations, just to live for one more day. Nowadays we wait for our government to feed and cloth us.
Just a FYI, brain size is not a marker for intelegence or neral activity, the amount of connections is however.
brain size is not a marker for intelegence or neral activity
Allow me to read the article for you:
As smaller and better organised brains were able to perform more complex computations, metabolically expensive larger brains simply became unnecessary
Tattersall believes that the catalyst that caused this change in thinking style was the spontaneous invention of language. This led to the neural pathways of the brain being reorganised in a more metabolically efficient way, allowing humans to get more “bang for their buck”.
In other words, as smaller and better organised brains were able to perform more complex computations, metabolically expensive larger brains simply became unnecessary.
Tattersall believes
This is just an educated guess. No one really knows why it happened. All we have is a handful of fossilized skulls to base this on.
While I’ll take their educated guess over my own musings, that doesn’t mean they’re absolutely correct. No one knows for certain.
Oh, so you’ve heard of this thing called “science” before?
We can get some idea of what their brains looked like based upon imprints left on the inside of the skull. We can get an idea of relative intelligence based on artifacts, like tools and art. If you know that cranial volume dropped, but you can see imprints indicating more folds, and you can see cave art indicating more sophisticated culture, and more advanced tools, then you know with reasonable certainly that you’re looking at a more intelligent creature despite the smaller brain.
Has anyone thought of asking evolution? Its a theory not a guess.
Fuck man, I wish I had thought of a way out of reading this dumb comment, my brain can’t afford to shrink any further.
Y’all have a govt feeding and clothing y’all? Mine is just trying to kill me in 100 different ways.
You live a different life than I do…
Must be in a military some where.
You’re free to live in a cave and fight bears everyday or whatever, if you feel that is your calling.
I’m most states technically speaking you can’t do that. The state will harass you to no end about stuff they claim is for your safety and will being but mostly they’re just offended you exist without owing someone for the luxury to exist.
Density of connections matters more than size…
Shrinking and getting wrinkled creates more surface area, like how a shoreline will keep increasing in length the more accurate you measure it. A straight line is as short as it can be, but as you adust for smaller and smaller differences it will keep increasing until you’re measuring every grain of sand and your measurement is 10,000x the straight line.
Nah, today’s world is quite complex
It is complex, but the brain is stimulated to grow far more by the cacophony of the natural world than it is by the bare, low bitrate information we get from the world most inside people live through.
The modern world caters to consciousness, which can process about 120 bits of information a second. The natural world caters to the body’s sensory complex, which takes in a billion bits a second, and when you count all the information created by first-order processing, it’s closer to 11 billion bits a second.
A nervous system grows as a direct reaction to stimulus. More stimulus means more growth.
Do you have a single source? Or are you just talking out your ass?
These are really well studied and basic facts. I was being gracious giving consciousness 120 bits. That’s the absolute limit any measurement has ever even theorized.
https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/thinking-slowly-the-paradoxical-slowness-of-human-behavior
But your still speaking out of your ass. Cause your brain grow thing is total …
Lol wait wait wait, are y’all calling the fact that the nervous system grows as a direct response to stimulus, and neurons seek out new information sources to process, “talking out my ass”?!🤣🤣🤣
Look, don’t come asking for discussions on things you have less than a middle school education on. If you’re genuinely interested, you’ll have to learn the most basic of basic information yourself before we can talk about anything bigger.
y’all calling the fact that the nervous system grows as a direct response to stimulus, and neurons seek out new information sources to process, “talking out my ass”?!
JFC…Albert Einstein’s brain was studied intensely, they found nothing different for any other brain. This is anal verbage.
Humane also created and operate this government. Someone somewhere is always doing the work.
