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We call that anatomically modern human or early modern human, and we have fossils going back over 300,000 years. An infant from 300k years ago, if brought to m

We call that anatomically modern human or early modern human, and we have fossils going back over 300,000 years. An infant from 300k years ago, if brought to modern times, should grow up and be capable of everything modern humans are.

dash2 2y ago
Behaviourally modern is thought to be a bit more recent, isn't it... partly because of evidence like art!
mkoubaa 2y ago
Yes exactly. Though I would expect that they may be more neurotypical on average than modern humans
- RoyalHenOil 2y ago
  Out of curiosity, why do you think that? My instinct is that the selection pressure against autism would not have been meaningfully stronger back then (and might actually have been weaker, due to people living in much smaller communities).
  - mkoubaa 2y ago
    I think people who are eager and happy to do repetitive tasks are adapted towards agriculture as opposed to hunting.
    - dividedbyzero 2y ago
      There are a lot of highly repetitive tasks in a hunter and gatherer lifestyle (e.g. gathering, making tools and clothes, tracking, plus all of the memorizing that comes with a non-written cultural tradition). I'm sure someone with a deep special interest in horse behavior would have been extremely useful for groups that subsist on the wild horses of the European tundra. Same for people with ADHD, someone who is highly motivated by novelty and prone to risk-taking should be pretty useful for finding new hunting and gathering opportunities and adapting to changing environments. You won't find out there are plump tasty BBQ birds on that island in the distance if you don't brave the journey.
      - mkoubaa 2y ago
        In any case this isn't exactly a testable hypothesis
        wdh505 2y ago
        Not without some simulations of proto human societies with resources scattered. We are far from that level of simulation such that we could place any weight on it.
IncreasePosts 2y ago
This ignores any evolution that is not present in a skeleton. So, their brains could have been very different from ours, but we have no way of knowing.
- bloopernova 2y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocast https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocast
  - IncreasePosts 2y ago
    The cranial vault is an open space surrounded by bone. Yes, some evolutionary brain changes would reflect themselves in the endocast, but would all major brain changes do that?
- dsign 2y ago
  > . So, their brains could have been very different from ours, but we have no way of knowing. Great point. I like to consider birds for questions like this one. Bird brains come in a relatively set range of sizes, but in a wider range of skills[^1], and hominids living in earlier times may have definitely needed different skills. Birds have had many millions of years to evolve. To remain flying they needed to keep their bodies small, nimble and light and they can't grow larger heads, so evolution works within those constraints. Now, there are generalists among birds, and even tool users, but who knows how long it took them to evolve their "3 nanometer process." On the other hand, hominid's brains are very plastic, which can be due to evolution saving on "design optimization time" (and we haven't been around for as many millions of years as birds). A figurative way to explain it is this: to fish at the local pond, it's more economical to buy two general purpose computers ("have more general-purpose thinking matter") and to pay for their upkeep than to design a new computer from scratch. Later, if you decide to live from honey-farming, your computing could be used for that as well. You may need an order of magnitude or two more fish or honey to pay for your higher mental elasticity running in a sub-optimal "300 nanometer process", but it's a small price to pay for not being hostage to a fixed ecological niche. So, I bet that humans that had made it in a short period of time from Africa to a different continent where highly adaptable, and they could probably understand most things we do today. [^1]: https://phys.org/news/2018-07-neuroscientists-uncover-secret-intelligence-parrots.html https://phys.org/news/2018-07-neuroscientists-uncover-secret...

dash2 2y ago

Behaviourally modern is thought to be a bit more recent, isn't it... partly because of evidence like art!

mkoubaa 2y ago

Yes exactly. Though I would expect that they may be more neurotypical on average than modern humans

RoyalHenOil 2y ago
Out of curiosity, why do you think that? My instinct is that the selection pressure against autism would not have been meaningfully stronger back then (and might actually have been weaker, due to people living in much smaller communities).
- mkoubaa 2y ago
  I think people who are eager and happy to do repetitive tasks are adapted towards agriculture as opposed to hunting.
  - dividedbyzero 2y ago
    There are a lot of highly repetitive tasks in a hunter and gatherer lifestyle (e.g. gathering, making tools and clothes, tracking, plus all of the memorizing that comes with a non-written cultural tradition). I'm sure someone with a deep special interest in horse behavior would have been extremely useful for groups that subsist on the wild horses of the European tundra. Same for people with ADHD, someone who is highly motivated by novelty and prone to risk-taking should be pretty useful for finding new hunting and gathering opportunities and adapting to changing environments. You won't find out there are plump tasty BBQ birds on that island in the distance if you don't brave the journey.
    - mkoubaa 2y ago
      In any case this isn't exactly a testable hypothesis
      - wdh505 2y ago
        Not without some simulations of proto human societies with resources scattered. We are far from that level of simulation such that we could place any weight on it.

IncreasePosts 2y ago

This ignores any evolution that is not present in a skeleton. So, their brains could have been very different from ours, but we have no way of knowing.

bloopernova 2y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocast https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocast
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  The cranial vault is an open space surrounded by bone. Yes, some evolutionary brain changes would reflect themselves in the endocast, but would all major brain changes do that?
dsign 2y ago
> . So, their brains could have been very different from ours, but we have no way of knowing. Great point. I like to consider birds for questions like this one. Bird brains come in a relatively set range of sizes, but in a wider range of skills[^1], and hominids living in earlier times may have definitely needed different skills. Birds have had many millions of years to evolve. To remain flying they needed to keep their bodies small, nimble and light and they can't grow larger heads, so evolution works within those constraints. Now, there are generalists among birds, and even tool users, but who knows how long it took them to evolve their "3 nanometer process." On the other hand, hominid's brains are very plastic, which can be due to evolution saving on "design optimization time" (and we haven't been around for as many millions of years as birds). A figurative way to explain it is this: to fish at the local pond, it's more economical to buy two general purpose computers ("have more general-purpose thinking matter") and to pay for their upkeep than to design a new computer from scratch. Later, if you decide to live from honey-farming, your computing could be used for that as well. You may need an order of magnitude or two more fish or honey to pay for your higher mental elasticity running in a sub-optimal "300 nanometer process", but it's a small price to pay for not being hostage to a fixed ecological niche. So, I bet that humans that had made it in a short period of time from Africa to a different continent where highly adaptable, and they could probably understand most things we do today. [^1]: https://phys.org/news/2018-07-neuroscientists-uncover-secret-intelligence-parrots.html https://phys.org/news/2018-07-neuroscientists-uncover-secret...