Re: Shrinking brains in evolution


"John Wilkins" <j.wilkins1@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:f2op73$158m$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Perplexed in Peoria <jimmenegay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"John Wilkins" <j.wilkins1@xxxxxxxxx> wrote...
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.

I think that intelligence is related in part to the inconstancy of the
environment. Foragers have to deal with a range of conditions, and so
intelligence is going to be selected for. Agriculture is less
inconstant. However, I really cannot think that a few thousands of years
is any real time in which to make major changes here. I suspect the
difference in intelligence (and I do not accept the biological reality
of what Spearman's "g" stands for) is based on the culture - in an
agrarian society, culture is less diverse than in a society in which
each village or clan can generate its own culture and each individual is
a substantial contributor to it.

Pity that you think so little about what can come up given 2K years of
efforfilled fortunate and unfortunate and failure-prone farming, infighting,
outfighting, famines, famous successes of siring (and successes of becoming
mothers that gave good enough mothering) and enormous amounts of the same
over and over; all of which was as if both 'containing' and as if 'soaking
itself' in a (EPTly recognized) motivating ("in realtime actention
selecting") as well as naturally pruning and 'positively
selection-pressuring' marinade of SHITS-come-CURSES and primarily
procreation promoting Opportunities, respectively.

One might have to be vicious not to become warned-off becoming wise! ;-)

P


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