From: spike66 (spike66@attbi.com)
Date: Mon Sep 23 2002 - 22:58:04 MDT
Damien Broderick wrote:
> At 04:03 PM 9/23/02 -0400, gts wrote:
>
>
>>>What's all this about humans evolving faster than other apes?
>>>
>>When I first heard this idea it was I think in reference mainly to the
>>dramatic and sudden increase in the ratio of brain size to body size in
>>humans vs. other primates.
>>
Geoffrey Miller's The Mating Mind got me to
thinking about something that has puzzled me
for a long time: why humans have such large
heads, why we are so much more intelligent
than is optimal for the survival of the genome,
and how the apparent transition to large heads
happened so quickly.
Miller got me to thinking that mate selection
could explain it. There is a group in Africa
for instance, which decided for whatever reason
that huge asses were attractive. In a very short
period of time (a few tens of thousand years
perhaps) a tribe had evolved where especially
the women have these huge asses. I don't know
the details. Anyone?
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
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