Human Evolution

[Draconi]

I heard that the human brain has evoloved to a point where it cannot get any bigger- Thus humans will never be able to get any smarter. Is this true?

[Mister Jon]

I disagree, there are many mutations and things like that - a major reason of evolution. I believe over a long period of time (thousands of years) people will become more intelligent but this hard to determine because technology is increasing in power as well all the time.

[Xombi]

No I agree with Draconi, he's right, he's always right

[Mister Jon]

FINE!

[James]

Depends if the less 'intelligent' people are less likely to live and reproduce than the more 'intelligent'. Considering that we do not use intelligence to hunt or survive I think it's unlikely. However, I guess less intelligent people might be more prone to accidents, leading to a slow removal from the gene pool.

[mith]

The darwin awards comes to mind.

Also as James said the crucial factor is reproduction. If one looks at the statistics a very bad trend seems to be developing. The smart people(nerds) and the well educated(rich mostly) do not have many offspring. In America, we call them yuppies, they like to enjoy their adult lives without the burden of children. Whereas the uneducated(the delinquents with 6+ children) are increasing. In terms of reproductive success, the dumb and irresponsible are reproducing at a much higher rate than the intelligents.

[MrMistery]

Lool... It seems mithril is right... Glad i am not smart:) So, i have a chance to reproduce!

[Draconi]

From what I remember at the moment human brains are at just the right size for processing infomation. If they get any bigger, it will take longer for messages to travle across the brain and so people will have slower reactions and wont be able to think as fast. Also it would probbly be harder to remeber things.

[Poison]

Lool... It seems mithril is right... Glad i am not smart:) So, i have a chance to reproduce!

Should we call this intelligence? or protection?

[thank.darwin]

From what I remember at the moment human brains are at just the right size for processing infomation. If they get any bigger, it will take longer for messages to travle across the brain and so people will have slower reactions and wont be able to think as fast. Also it would probbly be harder to remeber things.

This reminded me of chickadees...
During the spring and fall the chickadee’s cerebrum part of the brain increases in size... That way they remember where they stored their food

[charles brough]

I disagree, there are many mutations and things like that - a major reason of evolution. I believe over a long period of time (thousands of years) people will become more intelligent but this hard to determine because technology is increasing in power as well all the time.

It is the concensus that we as a species have been around now almost 200,000 years. That means that the millions of years of primate evolution that resulted in us ended then. We have no evidence at all the people had any less intelligence then. We have no evidence of any significant biological evolution since then. Anyone who is informed about the history of feral children can more easily grasp this. People should not confuse hominid evoution with what has happened to us in the last 200,000 years. It is a very different picture and one that is abismally neglected in science. It is called social evolution.

charles
http://humanpurpose.simplenet.com

[mith]

What is 200k years in the 4 billion years of evolution that has been happening since the beginning of life? I wouldn't state that we're an evolutionary dead end....not just yet.