Evolution and humans: recent cave studies (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, June 15, 2017, 13:14 (2716 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: An analysis in a cave shows how simplistic life was:
https://phys.org/news/2017-06-neanderthal-homo-sapiens-transition.html

Comment: Glaciers had come with cold temperature. They lived in caves. Their clothing was animal skins. They had simple language, simple social rules, sndf brains gaht had jumped 200,000 cc ove 150,000 years before and they hardly knew how to use that capacity. They learned in the past 12,000 years and the brain shrunk. Size first, use second, obviously in each staged jump in size.

Yes, their life was simple compared to ours, and that is why the brain did not require further changes. The earliest known clothes go back 170,000 years (they could go back further). Give or take a few thousand, this and other advances may have caused the last expansion. Then humans continued to use that capacity until 12,000 years ago it could not cope with an explosion of new concepts. The fact that densification is CAUSED by new concepts clearly suggests that conceptualization causes changes to the brain – expansion in the early days, densification in later times.