From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Tue Sep 24 2002 - 01:01:26 MDT
Spike wrote:
> It is compelling to theorize that for some odd
> reason, a group of early humans decided it was
> cool or attractive to have bulbous heads. It
> is interesting to theorize that they did this
> without even connecting big-headedness to
> intelligence: they just liked big heads. Perhaps
> it was because it appears juvenile, and babies
> are cute. The actual intelligence would be
> then an accidental by-product, which would allow
> the bigger-heads to outcompete the smaller heads
> by virtue of their ability to make tools or to
> foresee the winter and store food.
>
> The next interesting thing is that perhaps the
> big-heads developed intelligence far beyond the
> optimum for survival of the genome. If humans were
> just a little dumber, perhaps they never would have
> developed nukes. (I am going meta here, by referring
> to humans as "they".) Humans may then face the same
> unfortunate fate as the Irish elk, which evidently
> liked their mates with huge antlers; so large they
> could not support the weight of the male as they
> mounted during copulation, thus becoming extinct.
> This would be a sad thing indeed, were I not in meta
> mode currently.
>
> http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/mammal/artio/irishelk.html
>
> spike
>
I think there's a flaw in this reasoning about (selection for big
heads)->(intelligence). The flaw is that it assumes that bigger head = more
intelligent.
If we were selected for big-headedness, but not for intelligence, wouldn't
there be an easier way to make the head big than to have to increase the
size of the brain? Thicker skull, some bio-polyfiller, something like that.
If we were indeed selected for big heads, I'd expect to see relatively small
brains inside big skulls, with wasted or badly used excess space.
Also, the evolution of big heads seems to have screwed up our reproduction
something shocking. This must be a pressure that would push against that of
the big-head regimen.
If you look at our brains, they are mightily squished into our oversized
skulls. Look at that crazy cortex - no space is wasted! It looks to me like
something has pushed us to have the biggest brains possible, and everything
has been done to keep the headsize to the minimum necessary to hold the
brain. What would be pushing our brain size like that, against natural
limitations, if not intelligence? After all, no one can see your brain size.
I think that if you look at the relative success of humans in a reproductive
sense, and recognise that it has everything to do with intelligence, you
must come to the conclusion that we've been selected for intelligence for a
loooong time, and that in this context, our heads are remarkably small, and
our brain is a spectacular feat of miniaturization.
(On a more personal note: I have a big head... it runs in my family.
Somehow, we don't get auto entry into the Beautiful People club based on
that characteristic, which is a pity).
Emlyn
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