Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution => Topic started by: Europan Ocean on 14/11/2017 19:17:15
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Looking at the brain of our ancestor the Cro-Magnon, being it 1600 cc bigger than our brains today, what could they do with it? We make better tools by far... but what could Cro-Magnon do better if anything? Dream, tell stories, visualize, pain endurance, better memory, hand eye co-ordination? Or maybe nothing better, just more emotional, habitual or instinctive?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cro-Magnon
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Brain size does increase with body size.
There is a commonly-used relationship that relates brain volume to body size in a way that seems to roughly relate to intelligence. It takes more brain to control more muscle.
The parameters may have been tuned to give humans the highest score.
The robust size of the Cro-Magnons would reduce their score a bit, since the brain volume is divided by the square of body mass.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encephalization_quotient
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Size isn't everything though. Lee Berger gave us a "sneak-peek" on this week's Naked Scientists programme on palaeoanthropology into the brain of Homo naledi (due to be published soon) and how it's small but complicated (https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/interviews/exclusive-what-did-homo-naledis-brain-look).
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A very large part of the brain is involved in walking upright. I suspect that our most recent hunter-gatherer ancestors may have been rather better than us at traversing rough ground, and may also have had greater olfactory and auditory capacity. The advent of agriculture, long-range weapons and dogs has made such capabilities less important.
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Looking at that skull in my link, is it not amazing to realize that he was, he was conceived, was born, breast fed, named, taught to hunt and may even be our common ancestor?
Thinking of dualism, he is still conscious.