I've noticed when cruising through threads that there is an impression that today's humans are the most intelligent. Far be it from me to refute this, but I can throw up some evidence to jar this idea. Particularly with everyone's stereotypical dumb caveman, Neandertals.
Average humans have a cranial capacity (not brain size... but how big the carrying case is) of 1350 cc's, spectacular given a chimpanzee's already remarkable 350 cc's. However, Neandertals come with a whopping 1500 cc average, including the largest known hominid cranial size, 1700 cc's!. That's a chimpanzee cranial capacity, plus the author of this paragraph's cranial capacity.. and then some!
Some have countered that this was to have more cerebral fluid due to the ice age... but Neandertals lived in a relatively short span of time from 125,000 to 20,000(?) years ago. Evidence from the Marine Oxygen Isotope Curve (MOIC) show that their species time was split between an interglacial and glacial period, with the interglacial period slightly cooler than the current one we are living in. This means that the beginning half of Neandertal evolution was... NOT IN AN ICE AGE! So the idea that their cranial capacities reflect only cerebral fluid is humbug, although I must admit that the higher end-marks to typify the glacial period.
Some scientists, such as Tattersal and Bordes have argued that the simpler Mousterian technology when contrasted with the more complex Aurignacian technology of H. sapiens is evidence for greater intelligence among our closest human ancestors. Essentially, the argument used to be that the more clumsy-looking Mousterian points were indicative of less intelligent humans, while the more advanced and bladelike Aurignacian technology indicated more intelligent humans. However, Howard Dibble of the University of PA put this debate on it's head when pointing out that Mousterian points could easily be re-touched into Aurignacian points, and that the real question was about transportation and efficiency. If you live a sedentary lifestyle(like Neandertals seem to), it's more facilitative to go out and grab a new stone to make, and discard an old one. If you're more nomadic (say, coming out of Africa), it would be more efficient to re-work larger points into smaller ones, thus making the Aurignacion technology, aka recycling rock. And of course I could ask any of you reading this to make a Mousterian cutter to prove your intelligence... but I think the point has been made.
So, the end result, why do Neandertals have to be dumb cavemen? Sure, they're unattractive on our standards, and their women may have had volumous amounts of facial hair... but there is nothing against a group of Neandertals sitting around a campfire with Mousterian points discussing the nature of reality and having elaborate and complex social relations. Similarly, our ancestors(?) could have just been more skinny and violent, and the survival of one species(?) over the other could have been more about vicious competition than a test of intelligence.
So, the real question is, is human evolution really the same thing as the evolution of intelligence?
P.S. For a quick description of MOIC, check out
File:Ice Age Temperature.png - Wikipedia
This message has been edited by Theus, 08-07-2005 06:35 PM
This message has been edited by Theus, 08-07-2005 06:36 PM
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