Re: did h.sapiens brain over-evolve?
From: William Morse (wdmorse_at_twcny.rr.com)
Date: 03/25/05
- Next message: Gil Lawton: "Re: sci.bio.evolution mailing list"
- Previous message: Perplexed in Peoria: "Re: Paper: Genome-wide non-mendelian inheritance of extra-genomic information in Arabidopsis"
- In reply to: feedbackdroids_at_yahoo.com: "did h.sapiens brain over-evolve?"
- Next in thread: Peter F - for EIMC Internetional Ptd. Lty.: "Re: did h.sapiens brain over-evolve?"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 22:58:22 -0500 (EST)
feedbackdroids@yahoo.com wrote in news:d1v1la$i3s$1@darwin.ediacara.org:
> Related to the recent thread regarding whether humankind's brain
> actually evolved beyond that necessary to solve the then-current
> requirements for survival ....
>
> I recently read about something the "Law of 150". As it turns out, the
> value of 150 is a "natural" size for human groups and organizations.
> Eg, companies of soldiers, divisions of a corporation, etc. For groups
> up to this general size, it's possible for a given human to actually
> form personal relationships with everyone else within the group, and
> *ALSO* to have an understanding of the paired-relations between *ALL*
> other members of the group. This amounts to being able to store info
> about 150 elements taken 2 at a time, or 11,175 relationships. This
> seems like a large#, but it seems to be backed up by empirical
> evidence. Apparently, once groups get to be much larger than this, then
> they are too large for the members to be able to attain and remember
> details about all of the paired-relationships. Eg, increasing
> membership to 200 almost doubles the #paired-relationships to 19,900.
>
> In any case, monkeys can also store info about paired relationships
> within their groups, but the groups are much smaller. Eg, they know
> which kids belong to which adults, etc. One imagines packs of wolves
> and prides of lions do likewise. However, it appears that the
> #paired-relationships that other animals are able to deal with drops
> off extremely rapidly, as compared to humans. Some people think that
> the large brain of humans evolved to be able to deal with problems of
> interpersonal relationships within the group. However, one wonders
> that, as indicated in the prior thread, the ability of humans didn't
> evolve "beyond" that necessary to solve the level of problems existing
> at the time. Another way of conjecturing about this is ... did early
> h.sapiens run in packs of 150?
I would guess (or maybe I have read it) that the 150 number is the group
size needed to prevent significant inbreeding. So the limitation on the
ability to remember relationships could be a function of that rather than
an inherent limitation in brain processing power.
I had argued in that earlier thread that the brain's processing power was
needed for language ability. Note that even very retarded people can
speak. Can they also attain and remember details about 11,175
relationships? If they can, I might have to consider your suggestion as a
significant factor in determining the complexity of the human brain.
Yours,
Bill Morse
- Next message: Gil Lawton: "Re: sci.bio.evolution mailing list"
- Previous message: Perplexed in Peoria: "Re: Paper: Genome-wide non-mendelian inheritance of extra-genomic information in Arabidopsis"
- In reply to: feedbackdroids_at_yahoo.com: "did h.sapiens brain over-evolve?"
- Next in thread: Peter F - for EIMC Internetional Ptd. Lty.: "Re: did h.sapiens brain over-evolve?"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]
Relevant Pages
|
|
