is it true?

>30,000 years ago
The world hadn't even been created yet, take this pseudoscience to >>>/x/

>>2230949
Even if it were, what difference would it have made? Human beings were hardly self aware at that point.

>The increase in brain size stopped with neanderthals. Since then, the average brain size has been shrinking over the past 28,000 years.[8] The cranial capacity has decreased from around 1,550 cm3 to around 1,440 cm3 in males while the female cranial capacity has shrunk from around 1,500 cm3 to around 1,240 cm3.
yes its shrunk, but not as much as that pic suggests. Also there isn't inherently a correlation between the physical size of a brain and level of intelligence.

>>2230949
Intelligence is determined by the folds in the brain, not exactly the size.

>>2231207

It's been shrinking because larger brains = larger heads; which leads to... Come on now, you can figure this one out!

It is only with the development of forceps in the 16th century, that this progression has probably stopped.

>>2230949

Higher brain size doesn't mean higher intelligence.

annunaki had massive brains. have you seen some of the nepahlim skulls that were dug up?

>>2230949
A sperm whale's brain is 5 times bigger. Imagine...

>>2230949

Kind of but not really. In addition to modern brains having a greater surface area (more folds), the important metric is not raw brain size but brain size as a proportion of total body mass. Neanderthals had larger brains but they also had more massive bodies.

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>>2231224
>Come on now, you can figure this one out!
So.. Where does it lead exactly?

>>2231639
Why would the body mass be relevant?

>>2230969
noice b8 m8

>>2231639
But wouldn't we be larger now?

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Brains became smaller and rounder as humans got domesticated by farming, modern humans are the Chihuahua Cro Magnon were the wolves.

>people make fun of Africans for having smaller brains
>turns out they're ahead of the curve

Dear Lord.

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>>2231703
skull in vagiana, skull stuck in hole very bad

>>2231731
Taller, yes, but not physically larger.

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What did they mean by this?

>>2231703

Babby gets stuck in mum, mum goes into traction.

Both die.

Natural selection by default breeds for babby's with smaller brains. This is not bad though because it leads to greater surface area in the number of folds.

The use of forceps means that mum no longer dies just because babby has big head. Forceps reduced infant-mother mortality rates enormously. Consequently the continued pressures towards smaller babby brains are alleviated. The trend should now actually be reversing over a long enough period of time due to the increase in protein and vitamin d in the mother's diet. However we can't actually start looking for this data because it's been nowhere near enough generations.

We may actually never get to look into this study because of genetic tampering on our part. CRISPR and other systems will likely render total disruption to the slow, natural changes that would have otherwise occurred.

>>2231785
>>2231799
Alternatively, baby is born with smaller head but grow larger over time. This results in slightly slower maturity rate for those people but higher brain capacity later on.

>>2231731

Neanderthal's skeletons were extremely thickset, allowing for the growth of a ton of muscle mass. If you look into the bones of those who were known to be extremely muscular, you will find that they have thicker than average bones as well due to the stresses put onto their frames by the repetitive work (or weight lifting) done by them. Basically, Neanderthals were swole because their bodies were made to be swole, like chimps, gorillas, etc.

We also won't get any larger (in terms of height) than we are now because we've hit the cap of what good diet can do to the human body. People who are say 6'6" and shit are aberrations. Even if they are in great shape, by definition they are making their bodies work much harder. This is why you almost never see old tall guys, but manlets seem to live forever.

>>2231785
>>2231799
So how did we then evolve large heads in the first place?

>>2231809
More body mass= tons of cell division, reducing the telomeres

Less telomeres = faster death


Smaller diet + low height (if eaten with healthy portions) = long life

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>>2231796
Really fires up your limited supply of neurons

>>2231816
you get to a point of diminishing returns
in both directions

>>2231816
Need to breed stronger/bigger human to fight off large predators. Once large predators died off, the humans devolved to specialize in cognitive functions that deal with long term planning than short term gains.

>>2231816

Continued growth of the species, and the uterine canal allowed for big brained off-spring. This was also selected for because, big brains continued to go along with a larger pre-frontal cortex. Meaning smarter off-spring, meaning more likely to pass on genes. Eventually a peak was hit once mothers could no longer support additional growth, and nature began selecting in the opposite direction.

>>2231796
That we should accept our new mongol overlords and that the us and canada have been subverted by a small group of inuits who rule everything behind the scene and secretly implanting superior eskimo genes into new born new england babies.

>>2231722

Because you need brain to operate your body. Look at whales, much larger brains than us but nowhere near as smart, their brain:body ratio is much lower than ours. Likewise, women have smaller brains than men, but this isn't reflected by a lower intelligence because women also have smaller bodies. Men and women have the same brain:body ratio.

>>2231731

Not necessarily, domesticated breeds of mammals tend to be smaller than wild breeds, possibly this is related to aggression levels and neoteny.

>>2231859
brain:body weight is dum

a baby has much lower brain:bodyweight ratio but they're dumb as a rock

>>2231816
>>2231855

>inb4 y not just bigger baginas

Human body cannot literally support this change without massive restructuring. This is why babies of hominids come out useless for such a long period of time, unlike other species who hit the ground running. They can gestate fully, while we (and our ape cousins) must continue gestation outside of the body. Which is a really fucking weird thing when you think about it. This quirk though has an interesting effect. It makes for much stronger bonding between mother and child, which allows stronger social bonds down the road. This is where communal living comes from. It is also speculated that because humans take such a long time to mature, that this gave us a distinct advantage over Neanderthals who were much more solitary in nature. When times got bad, you in theory had a group of people working to keep shit going. Unlike the neanderthals who had much smaller pairings, and as a result couldn't rely on the work of a group.

Nomadic communes eventually turned into villages. Which eventually turned into towns. Which eventually turned into cities.

>>2231816

We were lucky enough to catch a mutation that changed the way our bodies processed certain types of fat. This lead to an increase in brain size, but also problems like body fat and clogged arteries. This adaptation was successful, in the sense that it spread widely, presumably because these apemen were slightly smarter than regular apemen, despite their health problems. Later on, these big-brained apemen caught another mutation, this time one that reduced musculature significantly, which sounds terrible until you realise that in apes, there is a huge bundle of muscles connecting the jaw to the skull. This gives apes tremendous biting power, but also restricts the growth of the skull. Without this, these apemen were able to grow significantly larger brains, which again was a successful adaptation, presumably because these apemen were smarter still, and out-survived the apemen with the massive muscles.

>>2231871

A baby isn't a species so it's irrelevant. Brain size : body eight correlates near perfectly with iq.

>>2231886

>someone else knows about the bite strength hypothesis

My nigga.

>>2231890
An ant isn't smarter than you. Aboriginals aren't smarter than regular humans even though they have a lower ratio of brain:bodyweight.

Brain:bodyweight is pseudoscience at its best.

>>2231890
not it doesn't
asians have the same sized brains as whites, but higher IQs, far from perfect
>>2231946
it's not pseudoscience it's just stating the fact that if you are a bigger animal you ought to have a bigger control unit - fatter nerves, more axons, more neurons

if you roughly compare animal sizes and ratios you can get some ideas. It's inexact in that being smart is something else, having a good memory is something else - those are much "smaller" processes

>>2231816
painfully

>>2230969
fkn lol

>>2231150
how do you know?

>>2232171
Because God didn't create "early humans" with souls.

>>2230969
Underrated

>>2232183
oh that's right my bad my bad

>>2232183

Proof?

>>2232210
The bible, dum shit.

>>2232210
I have proof of God, took a pic of him, I'll post it in a bit.

I'd imagine surface area and latent neural pathing has more effect on brain power than overall size alone

>>2232210
this fuckin guy

>>2231858
i've been trying to tell people this for years. fucking sheep

>>2231796
>Khoisan have bigger brains than the rest of Africa but have the lowest IQ of any race

Big brains aren't everything.

Birds include some of the smartest animals on the planet and their brains are tiny. They're capable of rudimentary communication previously only thought possible with chimps and apes.

>>2233043
The new Caledonian crow is by far the smartest bird...And also coincidentally has the largest brain of the birds.

>>2233043
Oh yeah and Dolphins, but they seem to be well beyond rudimentary communication. Rather, Dolphins seem capable of communication on par with a child, at least receptively. They seem to understand language better than any species except other humans, but we have no way to really understand what they're saying to us. But they're one of the easiest animals to teach things to.

>>2233057
Yes. But their brains are still much smaller than the vast majority of brains in mammals despite them being much smarter.
Brain size certainly matters, but raw size is an almost useless factor in determining intelligence.

>>2231946

I don't think it's an exact science but generally speaking if you have a bigger brain as a human relative to your body size you are going to be more intelligent.

As usual, exceptions and odd cases do apply. When you are speaking generally it is an examination of the average.

Large brain sizes don't perfectly correlate with higher intelligence however there isn't a single animal with a massive brain that ISN'T noted for its superior intelligence.

>>2233096
I think you meant to say there isn't a single animal with a superior intelligence that isn't noted for its massive brain (relative to other comparable species' brain sizes)

Cause we got some tiny ass brains compared to quite a few different animals, but we're still far more intelligent than them.

>>2233077

Why would you compare the brain sizes across species? That's ridiculous. They've evolved to do different things.

Look at brain size to body size ratio between species members and how intelligent they are instead. Obviously some may have brains that are smaller yet more naturally optimized but it shouldn't be a mystery as to why a larger brain would usually result in higher intelligence.

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Modern day humans are basically domesticated brainlets.

>>2233106
i can remove very large parts of your brain and you'd still be just as intelligent

>>2233136

Which is why the differences between humans of retarded and exceptional intelligence aren't THAT significant

it's more a matter of the differences in size and optimization in the abstract and logical reasoning portions of the human brain (frontal lobe)

>>2230969
fpbp

Certain brain functions relating to functioning in the wild degrade with domestication. It's not a sign of lowered intelligence however.

Our brain sizes have also been steadily increasing since the sharp dip at the advent of agriculture.

>>2233151
>it's more a matter of the differences in size and optimization in the abstract and logical reasoning portions of the human brain (frontal lobe)
Ah so it's not the brain size, it's the size of a part of it.

>>2233166
Size is only part of the equation. If our brains are forming more efficient neural connections, they'll function better than a larger brain that does not.

>>2233166

Larger total size usually indicates this region is larger as well. There isn't much of a selective pressure on the primal portions of our brain which simply address things like motor control and hunger. The human species is characterized by the fact that we essentially abandoned better senses for higher logical thinking.

>>2230969
10/10 great first post

>>2231746
"Homo floresiensis had a brain the size of a tangerine, but there appears to be no technological gap between them and modern humans of the same time and region." --My paleoanthropology professor

>>2231886
I thought the discovery of fire and therefore tender meat contributed to this development over time.

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>tfw too smart for modern humans

>>2233117
This, people like to think that early human technology was simple and easy but the truth is most modern people wouldn't be able to make most simple tools without a fair bit of guidance.

>>2232210
It's something called 'respect', bitch.