Tripolye OP wrote
I think civilisation may be causing our brains to shrink.
Pre-civilised people had to deal with reality in its complexity. Civilised people deal with categories/concepts instead. Concepts are much simpler than reality.
Bezotcovschina wrote
Indeed. But, I would like to point out that, when we are talking about something such complex as a homo sapiens brain, bigger not necessary means better. We really can't (and shouldn't) say that 20 000 years ago humans were smarter, because their brains were bigger.
willow wrote
attributing cognitive ability to brain size leads to some unfortunate conclusions given that, on average, women's brains are smaller than men's brains; if there were a connection, that would mean men were more able to deal with "complexity" than women. as far as i know, there is no actual evidence that this is the case.
i don't know why this article spends so long on the hypothesis that "human brains got smaller because civilisation let stupid people survive". that seems like a pretty fringe idea.
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