Brain Size and Domestication
Recently a study was published by Linkoping University regarding domesticated chickens. The researchers selected subjects that were less afraid of environmental disruptors, such as loud noises, lights, and etc., for breeding. These chickens were more suitable for domestication due to the reduced disruption of their behaviour.
They found that the size of the brains of the selected breeders was reduced over time, particularly in the brainstem IIRC.
Phys.org published an article regarding these results, which I read with interest. I have done some reading regarding human evolution this research sheds light on.
Our Cro Magnon ancestors had brains ~25% larger than our own back during the early dispersal of H. sapiens across Europe prior to the last ice age, while H. neanderthalensis also lived in Europe, and H. denisova in Asia as well. While I am unaware of cranial remains being found of Denisovans, Neanderthal brains were far larger than modern peoples, in fact larger even than Cro Magnons, and evidence indicates that both Denisovans and Neanderthals were incorporated into the human population that eventually led to us today. Basically everyone outside Africa today carries Neanderthal or Denisovan genes, or both, in their DNA.
All of these ancestral humans (just an assumption regarding Denisovans, that seems most likely to me) had larger brains than modern humans.
The research regarding chickens seems instructive regarding how human brains shrank: we have been domesticated.
In considering how human society self-domesticated I reflected on the fossil record of prehistoric peoples, as well as trends and events supported by such historical records as exist. Prehistoric cranial remains indicate that ~25% of deaths were caused by being bludgeoned in the head. This is the conclusion of archeologists and anthropologists from the fact that the left side of the front of the heads of ~25% of the cranial remains of humans in the fossil record show fatal blunt force trauma, such as would be caused by a right-handed assailant hitting them with a club.
War and intraspecific conflict seems to have been a feature of human society long into prehistory. After the use of written records began (the historical period), war has certainly been a dominant evolutionary force on humanity. It is easy to see that where one village or empire sends a force of armed thugs to kill the men of a neighboring village or empire and take their stuff, land, and women the primary selective pressure on breeding males would be their successful victory over such raids.
Those individuals that disagreed regarding taxation or other societal devices that best promoted military power, such as the draft, would be far less useful in military conflicts. Overlords commanding armies would happily kill anyone that reduced the power of their armies to defend the village or empire, and the people of that jurisdiction would need every sword arm to defend them.
Dissent was therefore amongst the most potent evolutionary forces selected against during prehistory, and even up to modern times.
Too smart for their own good. I reckon we've all heard that saying, and in this sense it would be very true. However, those very individuals would have been more likely to survive the aftermath of military defeat, less dependent on society and therefore more competent in circumstances where that support from society is gone to survive and successfully breed, making them strongly selected for in those circumstances.
These evolutionary influences seem to well predict the current societal situation, where there are large numbers of 'sheeple' that just toe the line when told to by overlords, and fewer numbers of dissenters that refuse to just obey, but point out the benefits of independence and freedom.
2020 seems to be intended to separate the sheep from the goats, as it were. From the looks of the vaccines, duplicity of government and enemedia, and plandemic fear-mongering, sheep are being corralled for slaughter, which will leave goats competent to survive alone able to successfully breed the next generation.
It may seem rather implausible to compare humanity to chickens, but when considering the needs of societies faced by war, by overlords faced with intraspecific competition their wealth and power depends on winning, and the historical facts of events like the Salem Witch Trials, the Inquisition, and slavery, the evolutionary forces seem obvious and parallel the needs of those husbanding livestock like chickens.
It's the squeaky wheel that gets greased, the obstreporous chickens that get served up in the pot, and those that go along get along - until everything breaks and only those able to get along on their own get along at all.
Everything is breaking in 2020.
Live free or die.
Interesting hypothesis 🤔
Support your local blacbloc!
If they're burning local businesses to the ground, I will not. If they're tackling corrupt government, national banks, and killer cops, they're on my side.
Just because they're unhappy and acting up doesn't mean they're protecting society. Look at Kenosha. Those rioters were harming the local community, not helping. It's pretty easy to pay some mercenaries to dress up and ride buses to towns globalists want to destroy, and that's what is happening with BLM.
I'm agin' it.
Yes, that is why the an-coms, and those that know what that means, need your support.
The idiots just out there to riot should be brought back into line by the bloc, if you actually have one.
The peckerwood in kenosha, and his three compatriots, got what they asked for.
Running towards a man's back, trying to get his weapon, and failing, gets you what those dudes got.
That poor kid will be lucky to get a lawyer that can show it was all self defense, initiated by the knucklehead attacking that young, armed man.
Where these riots are allowed to occur is on the mayors, iyam.
Why aren't they down there taking care of the town's business?
https://www.bitchute.com/video/pe8h8ewCLVxA/
I agree with you on all that. Problem is that actual protesters are either seduced by riches and promises of power, or too stupid to rein in the mercs.
PDX Mayor Ted Wheeler was too busy proving he was one of the regular Joe's by sticking around for the tear gas his boys in blue were doling out to bother trying to regulate anything.
Suckers get what they vote for IMHO.
While that kid in Kenosha did only fire in self defense AFAIK, he came across state lines to get in harms way, both admirable and rash. Not sure exactly how I feel about that TBQH, but hope a jury of good folks sorts it right. He ain't no murderer.
This might be a dumb set of questions, I am just unfamiliar with this topic.
Does brain size always correlate to intelligence? Might a person with a big head simply have bigger bone, or fatty brain? Are there animals with bigger brains than humans? Do scientists ever measure the brain size of people with high IQ, and compare it to that of the average person?
Which people on earth generally have the largest brain sizes? Are they considered more intelligent, or is it uncertain due to their primitive culture they live in?
It's not actually an unexpected question. Primates are different regarding how their brains are organized than any other animal. Whales have much larger brains than humans, but they don't have that many more neurons, because in most animals the neurons are larger the larger their brains are. Also, the acoustic portions of their brains are massively larger than the part of human brains devoted to sound. Different parts of the brain serve different functions, and the part(s) of the brain dedicated to rational thought aren't necessarily more complex in whales.
It's hard to tell though, because we can't ask them.
In primates the larger the brain of the animal is the more neurons it has. This is unique amongst animals, and is most evident in our genus Homo. However, it's impossible to be sure what parts of the brains of our ancestors were larger, because we don't actually have fossil brains. We have fossil braincases, which only show their brains were larger than our own.
The most significant reduction in brain size in the chickens in the study was in the brain stem, which the researchers reckon not associated with reason and logic. Of course, I don't associate chickens with reason and logic whatsoever, so that's sort of ... wait for it... a no brainer.
Edit: LOL I forgot to answer some of your questions because I was too busy giggling. The intelligence of primate species, particularly hominids, is generally linked to brain size, however across individual specimens of the species there are a great many factors that affect intelligence, in addition to having a brain capable of mental acuity. I recall Einstein had a rather moderately sized brain, although he was clearly highly intelligent.
I'm unaware of data in which I have any confidence that indicates folks in one region or another, or of particular heritages, are hyperintelligent.
I do know folks, though, that aren't.
Thanks for the great response.
All this talk about having chicken brains...
I might even beg to add that the ability to make people laugh with the quip of words is a mark of high intelligence.
@valued-customer, It is interesting to note that the brains of Cro-Magnon and Neanderthals were larger than those of modern people. The Bible said that the first humans had powers close to God. Adam lived about 1000 years old.
While evolutionary theory often claims that humans evolved from apes, the fossil record says the opposite.
Humans have not evolved over time, have they degenerated?
Currently, the Korean government claims that it can cure Koreans by getting Bill Gates' vaccine. Koreans are now chickens trapped in chicken coops.
However, they don't know they are trapped in a chicken coop.
Koreans sadly don't know your wisdom. They are the domestic animals of country.
Well, we view evolution as directional, resulting in our exalted state today. However, evolution is not directional at all. Intelligence and larger brains is not a goal of evolution. It's just that our earliest ancestors with larger brains than their contemporaries survived and bred more than lesser brained folks. The trend in brain size at that time was larger, likely due to more intelligence having utility in a world without centralized society and organized war.
However that world didn't last, and society became pretty centralized and controlled by overlords. The rise of war made societies that didn't centralize behind a unified military decline and the most powerfully armed societies survived preferentially. This created different evolutionary forces on the individuals in societies faced with serial war. Folks that were competent to discern the blatant criminality of overlords and decried it were attacked by overlords and their minions, reducing their tendency to survive and pass on their big brains.
In 'The Beak of the Finch' Stephen Jay Gould details how the size of the beaks of Galapagos Finches grow and shrink over generations as climate fluctuates, and the kinds of food available change. During good weather a variety of seeds are available for food, and beaks of smaller size cost less resources to grow, and suffer no drawbacks in eating seeds. During droughts the many different seeds diminish as various species suffer and fail to produce seeds, and as the birds clean out the stocks of easily eaten seeds, only large hard seeds that are difficult to eat remain available.
Only the birds with the biggest strongest beaks live through the droughts, and their offspring tend to have the larger beaks of their parents. When the weather gets better, the cycle repeats.
Evolution doesn't have a goal. It's just a response to conditions that favor offspring of one kind or another. Early in our evolution, larger brains were preferential when less need to fit in to totalitarian society was necessary to be protected against armies. When dumb followers were what was necessary to face armies and enable children to grow up to breed, smaller brains were the result.
We may prefer being smarter, but evolution doesn't care. It's just the differential survival of one type or another and changing conditions. If we want bigger brains, we need to rein in tyranny and reduce the threat and harm of war.
That's my plan.
However, the plan of overlords is to dramatically increase the evolutionary pressure on folks intolerant of close confinement, surveillance, and enslavement. Like chickens in industrial farms grown eight to a cage long enough to slaughter and sell.
That seems likely to result in decreased brain size over generations.
I'm agin' it.
We'll see which evolution favors.
Your superior wisdom is difficult for me. To me, you seem to see evolution as an adaptation of the environment, not as a religion and science.
Do you think of evolution as a temporary body change to adapt to the natural environment?
Evolution is based on generations, and the preferential survival of individuals because of traits that enable them to survive in the conditions they experience. In a clutch of baby birds one of them has the largest beak, and one of them has the smallest beak. During a drought the bird with the largest beak is best able to eat the large hard seeds available, and survives to breed. The offspring of that large beaked bird will inherit the genes for a large beak the parent bird has. The other birds in that clutch with smaller beaks are unable to eat the large hard seeds and starve to death. They do not breed, and no offspring inherit the small beak genes.
The species changes as a result of which individuals survive to breed.
During good weather when many different kinds of seeds are available, smaller beaked birds are just as able to survive, and have more physical resources available to them because they use less of them making their beak. This gives them a survival advantage which they pass on to their offspring.
The beaks of birds do not change during their lifetimes. Whatever kind of beak they are born with is the kind of beak they die with, and pass on to their offspring. Evolution does not work on individuals, but on species. The size of beaks in the species varies over time, as the conditions vary over time, and birds with different sized beaks breed more or less successfully depending on conditions, passing on their beak size genes to their offspring.
That's all evolution is. It's not a faith nor a science. Science is disproving false ideas, and faith is believing ideas regardless of proof. Science revealed that evolution occurs, and 'The Beak of the Finch' by Gould is science. I believe that evolution is the mechanism by which God has created us. That's faith, based on science and religion.
Catholicism in Korea teaches that God gives living beings the ability to evolve. The creatures chosen by God evolve and survive, but the creatures not chosen by God become extinct.
However, most Koreans confront each other, believing in the theory of creation and evolution in terms of religion and science.
It seems that I am not good at English, so I understand the appearance of your words but not the inside.
People are highly adaptable. We can meet changing circumstances by changing our behaviour. We have so far been unable to physically change to adapt. That may be changing.
I have confidence you will adapt as necessary to meet your standards if you stand on principles you are certain are true. I expect you will do as well as is possible in the desperate circumstances you are in.
Dear my american senior @valued-customer!
I deleted some of the conversations with you. Perhaps you think I'm cowardly, but I also felt it was safe for me to delete it. In the United States, citizens are guaranteed freedom of speech, but this place is different.
It is dangerous for a lower class like me to criticize the ruling class and state power.
Currently, this place is punished for spreading false information.
Your criticism of the sacred and dignified warlords is dangerous here.
You will probably be arrested here for spreading false facts, defamation, and insults.
It is dangerous here for a low-ranking person like me to discuss politics and economy with Americans like you.
Only the upper classes have the freedom to chat with Americans like you.
It was not the Romans who killed Jesus, but the Jews.
It was not the Jews that deified Jesus, but the Romans.
Also, you did not delete any conversations between us. All our interactions remain as blockchain data.
It is important to know how Hive works so that you do not assume a false sense of security that can prevent you from taking actions to provide actual security.
I hope you remain safe.
Thank you! By the way, you will be arrested here for spreading fake news. It was his brothers who killed Jesus.
WoW, Can't the posts I write on the blockchain be deleted forever?
I didn't know that. In the future, I should be more careful to write.
Congratulations @valued-customer! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPDo not miss the last post from @hivebuzz: