dumber

For millions of years, the evolution of hominids was marked by a constant increase in the size of the skull and, therefore, of the brain itself, which marked a super important point in cognitive development that has led us to where we are until now. However, the current fossil and archaeological record indicates that Our brain is smaller than that of our ancestors. Many questions. Far from being a simple anatomical curiosity, this phenomenon has unleashed an intense debate in the scientific community. When did our brain start to lose mass and, above all, why? And the question that bothers us most: does this mean that we are becoming less intelligent than our ancestors? What we know. One of the most controversial recent milestones in this debate was the publication of an analysis of 985 human skullsboth fossils and modern. Through a statistical change point analysis, the researchers proposed that the human brain experienced a reduction in size only about 3,000 years ago, coinciding with the transition to the late Holocene. And to explain this loss of brain mass, the authors looked to evolution itself, since the fact of now living in increasingly larger, cooperative and complex societies meant that humans began to depend on collective intelligence and social specialization. In other words: we no longer needed as much vital information to survive, so the brain could afford to save energy in this way. There are doubts. In science there is no absolute truth, and we see it quite clearly when a new team decided to analyze this same data in order to verify if the 3,000-year theory was true. And their conclusion was that the brain did not shrink then of history and that the original study had serious statistical deficiencies. These deficiencies would focus on the sampling of the skulls analyzed, the critical failures when controlling brain volume in proportion to the body size of the time, and inaccuracies in chronological dating. That is why, despite agreeing that the size of the brain is reducing, the reality is that they suggest that it could be much older or gradual than estimated. Size or intelligence. Regardless of the exact chronology of when brain size began to be lost, the big question here is whether it affects our intellect. Here the logic states that we are now more intelligent than in ancient times and that is why it does not quite fit with our brain being smaller, which is a sign of ‘inferiority’. Here science suggests that there is a positive correlation between these two variables, but surprisingly small between absolute brain volume and cognitive performance or IQ. The important thing inside. In this way, experts point out that the raw size of the brain does not mark the intelligence of the human being in a significant way. Here what is truly important is the internal organization of the brain and how the different neurons are connected to achieve greater intelligence. In this way, having a smaller brain is not equivalent to being less clever, but rather it is equivalent to having a much more optimized organization. And this is precisely what we have been experiencing over the years. There are several theories. If collective intelligence is not the only answer there is, scientific reviews they point out an amalgam of environmental, social and biological factors. One theory suggests, for example, that, just as wolves reduced their aggression when they evolved into domestic dogs, humans had undergone self-domestication driven by the need to be more sociable and tolerant. Another theory suggests that, because the brain is an extremely energy-demanding organ, climate scarcity or high pathogen load has caused the body to prioritize resources to maintain the immune system instead of supporting very large brains. Images | freepik In Xataka | We had always believed that evolution had been arrested for thousands of years. The redheads were telling us the opposite