Which human is smarter?

Which human is smarter?

Dear Dr K

It’s pretty well established that Homo sapiens, are substantially smarter than our hominid ancestors. However, what we would like to know is, since we branched off from our ancestors some 2,00,000 years ago, have we grown any smarter?

Knee & Err Thall

Dear Knee & Err,

You’re right in that the Homo erectus, had a brain that was only around 74 per cent the size of ours, which meant that anatomically, we had a much greater capacity for intelligence than our evolutionary forebears did when we appeared on the scene about 2,00,000 years ago.

 However, at that time, humans would have probably just complained about having to lug around all this extra brain weight since, according to some anthropologists, our true brilliance began to shine only 50,000 years ago, during what they call the Great Leap Forward or the Upper Paleolithic Revolution. This is the time when we began to develop language, and with language, of course, came culture and society.

As we became gregarious, social animals, capable of communicating complex ideas to one another, we developed sedentary agriculture, which allowed us to settle in large groups, and thus began civilisation. And as soon as that happened, we stopped growing smarter.

But Dr K, I hear you protest, surely we are smarter today than we were 50,000 years ago! Today we have satellites, quantum physics, LOLcats, world literature and the deepest appreciation for bananas we ever had! All that our ancestors could do 50,000 years ago was stay in one place and grow their food from the ground, and that’s their greatest accomplishment! How can you say that we haven’t grown any smarter?

Well, not only have we not grown smarter since then, but we might have grown dumber, according to a new scientific study. It’s important not to confuse the knowledge we have accumulated with intelligence.

Before the advent of agriculture, humans, being small, naked, clawless, non-venomous, ground-dwelling, smelly apes, had to make the most use they could of the one advantage they had to survive on a day-to-day basis: their brains. Their spatial and conceptual intelligence had to be continually honed for them to hunt and gather to the best of their abilities, and find efficient solutions for their survival. Agriculture became the most efficient means for us to survive, and since then, we have been so successful that it has been a downhill ride for us all the way from that epoch to the present day.

Sure, we invented mathematics and poetry and discovered the laws of physics and the motions of the planets, but our survival never really depended on any of those things. On the contrary, they’ve just made it less vital for us to use the full scope of our intelligence on a daily basis. You might think that doing algebra requires more intelligence than foraging for berries, but while the former uses only a limited intelligence, early humans had to think of everything to make it to the next day.

In short, we’re getting stupider, but at least our computers are getting smarter. And soon we’ll be able to replace our brains with them.

Yours questionably,

Dr K

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