5 ms·

Easy: we've offloaded some of our information storage to external media, i.e. writing.

chrisco255 5y ago
From the article it indicates this shrinkage began 70K years ago, or 65K years before writing. In addition, vast majority of the population didn't know how to read or write until 100-150 years ago.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  I definitely move through life seemingly in a mechanical fashion. I suspect in the wild I would be alert, all attention, always anticipating, planning.
  - alcover 5y ago
    in the wild I would be alert I am when I hike alone. Not super alert - since there are few dangerous animals in my country - but alert still. Also, you are very alert when you walk in bad neighbourhoods.
    - necovek 5y ago
      You mean bad neighbourhoods like Wall Street in NYC? :D
  - chrisco255 5y ago
    Only habitual things that you've already learned are done so mechanically. But you've already learned magnitudes more than your ice age ancestors as well as your pre-industrial and pre-information age ancestors. You've flexed parts of your brain and had to use more abstract knowledge than they ever had to. I suspect that some other factor is responsible for the shrinkage. It could just be pure sexual selection. Maybe we find smaller more symmetrical heads to be more attractive and we sexually selected for them over tens of thousands of years. Also could be responsible for domesticated animal brain shrinkage, as we select for more attractive animals. Could it be true that our brains got more complex even as they got smaller or did we legitimately lose some IQ points from the shrinkage?
- dcolkitt 5y ago
  Maybe it’s just language in general. If I’m in a tribe with 100 people, and we all know to talk, not everyone needs to remember every single thing you might ever need. If you forget something, you can ask around, and probably someone remembers.
  - chrisco255 5y ago
    On the contrary, we create more abstractions and complexity from more people which create more complex social dynamics, more inventions, words, ideas, etc. In addition, tribes were not so static in Pre-agricultural eras. Tribes would regularly trade or swap members, and some would grow or collapse entirely.
- Shorel 5y ago
  But memorizing oral history surely was a thing back there. A single narrative for all things is probably simpler than having to figure everything out every lifetime, like octopuses do.
bigodbiel 5y ago
The article argues community living, ie domestication hypothesis. Kind of hard to argue when we can today offload brain power used for memorization with a simple google search

From the article it indicates this shrinkage began 70K years ago, or 65K years before writing. In addition, vast majority of the population didn't know how to read or write until 100-150 years ago.

JKCalhoun 5y ago
I definitely move through life seemingly in a mechanical fashion. I suspect in the wild I would be alert, all attention, always anticipating, planning.
- alcover 5y ago
  in the wild I would be alert I am when I hike alone. Not super alert - since there are few dangerous animals in my country - but alert still. Also, you are very alert when you walk in bad neighbourhoods.
  - necovek 5y ago
    You mean bad neighbourhoods like Wall Street in NYC? :D
- chrisco255 5y ago
  Only habitual things that you've already learned are done so mechanically. But you've already learned magnitudes more than your ice age ancestors as well as your pre-industrial and pre-information age ancestors. You've flexed parts of your brain and had to use more abstract knowledge than they ever had to. I suspect that some other factor is responsible for the shrinkage. It could just be pure sexual selection. Maybe we find smaller more symmetrical heads to be more attractive and we sexually selected for them over tens of thousands of years. Also could be responsible for domesticated animal brain shrinkage, as we select for more attractive animals. Could it be true that our brains got more complex even as they got smaller or did we legitimately lose some IQ points from the shrinkage?
dcolkitt 5y ago
Maybe it’s just language in general. If I’m in a tribe with 100 people, and we all know to talk, not everyone needs to remember every single thing you might ever need. If you forget something, you can ask around, and probably someone remembers.
- chrisco255 5y ago
  On the contrary, we create more abstractions and complexity from more people which create more complex social dynamics, more inventions, words, ideas, etc. In addition, tribes were not so static in Pre-agricultural eras. Tribes would regularly trade or swap members, and some would grow or collapse entirely.
Shorel 5y ago
But memorizing oral history surely was a thing back there. A single narrative for all things is probably simpler than having to figure everything out every lifetime, like octopuses do.

bigodbiel 5y ago

The article argues community living, ie domestication hypothesis. Kind of hard to argue when we can today offload brain power used for memorization with a simple google search