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Länk - Varför dubblades våra hjärnstorlek för 2 miljoner år sedan?

There seems to be two key figures of brain expansion, and I think this is where the social intelligence hypothesis becomes very interesting. The first was around two million years ago, and at that time brains expanded perhaps about 50%. So we went from brain size of around 450cc to a brain size of around 1,000cc by 1.8 million years ago. What's interesting during that time is that we don't see dramatic changes in human behaviour as represented by the archaeological remains.... So archaeologists asked; why are brains getting larger and what is it providing? Brains wouldn't get larger just for any reasons because brain tissue is metabolically very expensive, so it's got to be serving a really important purpose. I think the social intelligence hypothesis suggests to us that that expansion of brain size around two million years ago was because people were living in larger groups, more complex groups, having to keep track of different people, a larger number of social relationships which we simply required a larger brain to do.


Läs mer: Mind Hacks: The social intelligence hypothesis
Posted by jorgen on 2007-03-01 18:01

Brain food

Posted by Knute at 2007-03-01 22:40
Robin Dunbar har skrivit en bra bok om det där, The Human Story. Han menar att hjärnan har vuxit i takt med gruppstorleken. Vad som är orsak och verkan ur darwinistisk synpunkt är knepigt. En udda teori rör Homo Sapiens uppkomst för 150 000 år sedan, jag läste i en skrift om omega-3 att när våra förfäder började äta fisk från sjöarna i the Rift Valley tredubblades hjärnans storlek. Orsak och verkan? Vi kanske började äta fisk för att hjärnan behövde det?
http://www.everykindapeople.blogspot.com/


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