- #2,171
BillTre
Science Advisor
Gold Member
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Over longer time scales, the human brain has evolved to smaller sizes (by ~10%), since the ice age.Isopod said:I actually think that people might be more stupid and less educated now than they were in the past.
This has been attributed to several things:
- brains use a lot of energy (~25% of body energy use), so smaller brains use less energy, which can be adaptive
- "self-domestication": domesticated animals have smaller brains, presumably due to less requirement for thinking in a human curated environment.
- "off-loading" of memory/thought processes to social structures