Re: Shrinking brains in evolution


"John Wilkins" <j.wilkins1@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:f2ko0r$2c20$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Perplexed in Peoria <jimmenegay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Anthony Campbell" <ac@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote...
Jared Diamond, in (I think) _Guns, Germs and Steel_ says that he found
the inhabitants of New Guinea to be often more intelligent than many
Westerners. He also thinks that since the invention of agriculture there
may have been a decline in intelligence over-all.

Which is a bit odd, since he also says that New Guinea is where agriculture
was invented.

No he does not. He clearly says it began in the fertile crescent (and in
Mesoamerica independently). New Guinea may have been early, but its
domestication of local species of crops occurred c7000BCE, while
southwest Asia and the fertile crescent date to around 8500BCE (acc. to
his book).

I'm uncertain if his dates are all that good, and also whether there had
been diffusion between some of the Eurasian and African sites.

Corrections accepted. Still, I dislike the hypothesis that the
invention of agriculture has led to a general decline in intelligence.
While I am more tolerant than many of the idea that there is a real
characteristic being measured by Spearman's 'g', I also believe that
technologies like agriculture or writing have transformed the selective
pressures for general intelligence rather than weakening them. A
hunter-gatherer needs to know many things and to plan and reason
effectively. An agriculturalist or pastoralist needs to know different
things, and an urban merchant or artisan needs even different skills.
It happens that the aspects of intelligence which I happen to admire
the most are in the domains of numeracy and literacy. And I really
doubt that these aspects of intelligence have declined since the
advent of agriculture and pastoralism. Still, a big part of what we
call 'intelligence' lies in the social skills needed to make effective
use of the spoken word, and I doubt that our hunter-gatherer ancestors
were deficient in this regard compared to us.


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