3 ms·

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...

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...