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Scientists Postulate Extinct Hominid With 150 IQ
Hugh Pickens writes "Neuroscientists Gary Lynch and Richard Granger have an interesting article in Discover Magazine about the Boskops, an extinct hominid that had big eyes, child-like faces, and forebrains roughly 50% larger than modern man indicating they may have had an average intelligence of around 150, making them geniuses among Homo sapiens. The combination of a large cranium and immature face would look decidedly unusual to modern eyes, but not entirely unfamiliar. Such faces peer out from the covers of countless science fiction books and are often attached to 'alien abductors' in movies. Naturalist Loren Eiseley wrote: 'Back there in the past, ten thousand years ago. The man of the future, with the big brain, the small teeth. He lived in Africa. His brain was bigger than your brain.' The history of evolutionary studies has been dogged by the almost irresistible idea that evolution leads to greater complexity, to animals that are more advanced than their predecessor, yet the existence of the Boskops argues otherwise — that humans with big brains, and perhaps great intelligence, occupied a substantial piece of southern Africa in the not very distant past, and that they eventually gave way to smaller-brained, possibly less advanced Homo sapiens — that is, ourselves. 'With 30 percent larger brains than ours now, we can readily calculate that a population with a mean brain size of 1,750 cc would be expected to have an average IQ of 149,' write Lynch and Granger. But why did they go extinct? 'Maybe all that thoughtfulness was of no particular survival value in 10,000 BC. Lacking the external hard drive of a literate society, the Boskops were unable to exploit the vast potential locked up in their expanded cortex,' write Lynch and Granger. 'They were born just a few millennia too soon.'"
Increased brain size means more intelligence? That's just as silly as that other correlation we always hear about.
Oh, and in before "IT'S... IQ OVER 9000"
Mmmmmmmm Brains
Evolution may favour the most clever and the most adaptable, but this homonid suffered from one utterly fatal genetic flaw: it was delicious.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Does a bigger brain necessarily mean they had a higher IQ? Does it really work like that? I get there could be the _potential_ for a higher IQ, but just because someone has more gray matter doesn't necessarily mean they are smarter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boskop_Man
The Discover article is a bunch of garbage. the idea that this was some sort of homonid species has been debuniked over 50 years ago.
If I recall my Carl Sagan reading, Broca's Region is very important to our intellectual prowess among the animal kingdom. But from reading this summary it would seem that a blue whale would be the most intelligent thing ever. But it's not and that's because things like the proteins that make up our neurons, the spacing of the synapses, the quality of the electric shielding (white matter), etc are also important to defining our brain functions above that of an animal with comparable brain size.
I'm in now way a biologist but it is odd to me that they would suggest this metric for intelligence unless they can also prove that they are recent enough in our history that the above factors I mentioned have to be close or match our own that we know a lot about. I don't think that's a safe speculation though.
I would also like to point out the nature versus nurture paradigm in how a brain develops which will show you that in our idea of what an IQ test is, parental nurturing can sometimes have just as large if not more important result than our genetic make up.
My work here is dung.
The smarter people will invariably be the minority overridden by the less smart masses for a variety of reasons in a variety of ways. One only has to look at the dark ages to see that in action. And every time we see politics manipulate science we see more of the same.
If 10,000 years ago a bunch of rock throwers witnessed the "magic" of these smarter people, they too might have believed they were evil or a threat to be destroyed.
With all that said, the premise of the discussion is completely guess-work. Big brain doesn't mean big mind.
I had read that around the time Man domesticated dogs, the size of their brains changed.
The theory being that since we always had dogs with us, we didn't need large parts of the brain dedicated to smell anymore.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Well, a dollar is a dollar, a pound is a pound and a euro is a euro... until you start measuring one against the other. 100 on the IQ scale for Boskops is 150 on the scale for us.
The skull was found in the early 1900s. There's been speculation about them for years. And NOW Discovery is writing about them? I think the better story to link to is about the giant snake they just found in a mine in South America. 40+ feet long, weighing in at over a ton, lived about 60 Million years ago, indicating that the temperature was significantly higher than it is now in the Equatorial Rain Forest.
humans with big brains... they eventually gave way to smaller-brained, possibly less advanced Homo sapiens
A triumph of wedgies and swirlies paving the way for the modern day high school.
The article refers to the average Boskop IQ as 150 on our own scale as a way of comparison. It's not too useful to answer "100" whenever asked the average IQ of a species.
Homo Sapiens' brains are as large as they can get without being a significant disadvantage. The large cranial size causes problems in birth, reducing the number of individuals that survive the process and reduces the reproduction rate. A hominid with a larger brain size but not major other physiological changes would reproduce even more slowly and would be easy to kill off as a species, even if the adults males were harder to kill individually (the adult females would die in childbirth a lot more frequently than their smaller-skulled equivalents).
If, on the other hand, the rest of his skeleton was proportionally larger, then this would not have been a problem. He would have been stronger, but possibly less able agile, and would have required more food. In times of relative food shortage, the smaller-skeletoned variant would have had an evolutionary advantage. He would be able to keep his muscle mass sufficient to move around quickly on a much more limited diet.
There is quite a bit of evidence that skull sizes have been shrinking over the last few thousand years, but there's no evidence that this correlates with reduced mental ability. Humans are far from having the largest brains of any modern mammals (whales win that one by a long way). You can't jump straight from brain size to IQ, you need to also look at how the brain is divided. Dogs, for example, have a huge amount of their brain devoted to controlling their noses. Dolphins have about as much brain tissue just devoted to turning sonar returns into a coherent picture of their environment as humans have in total. It's possible that a hominid with a 50% larger brain had an average IQ of 150, but it's also possible that it had an average IQ of 200 or of 50. It's impossible to tell just from the skull.
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is that those who adapt quickest to a changing environment survive (not the biggest, quickest or strongest). maybe thats what happened the Boskops couldn't adapt.
While you are correct that it's a relative scale, they are comparing it to the current population (i.e. 100% homo sapiens sapiens) to arrive at the above average IQ figure. It may be disingenuous since we know so little about the rest of their physiology, but it's a fair guess that compared to us they were a lot smarter (since intelligence is almost entirely derived from the upper region of the brain)
What I want to know is, can we clone them (vis-a-vis the de-extinction process discussed a few days ago) and create a clone army of super-brainiacs to do our bidding? This could be the just the solution to outsourcing that the US has been hoping for.
Yo momma's so smart...
C-x C-s C-x k
So there you have it. There wasn't an extinct hominid with an IQ of 150, it was just the fallacy of selection bias exhibited by some anthropologists more than 70 years ago.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
http://www.scientificblogging.com/mark_changizi/why_doesn%E2%80%99t_size_matter%E2%80%A6_brain This has been proven over and over that size doesn't relate to smarts. An elephant's brain is just over 3 times larger than ours and yet I didn't see any elephants walk on the moon or develop great civilizations.
Assume the hypothesis is true.
Those big brains would not have evolved without an evolutionary advantage of some sort, lack of literary hard drives or no. Now, their relative fitness against homo sapiens is another matter - that could depend on things like population size, climate change, and the accidents of history. ("The race is not always to the swift" and all that.)
I bet that, if this is true, someone starts looking for these genes in the current human population. They should be able to get some DNA from those 10,000 year old bones to compare against.
It was probably just a Sleestack. They failed because they only used logic and couldn't talk plain.
Can you imagine a civilization with only Sheldon Coopers? Is the kind of things that ends with a big bang.
"My kid beat up your honors student"
dave (who was usually on the receiving side of such efforts...)
Actually, the idea of a "Boskop race" or "Boskop Man" is long discredited. The hypothesis occurred by actively selecting the larger skulls from the available set, and misclassifying them as a distinct population.
It turns out that by examining the whole set of preserved skulls, cranium size distributions are similar in South Africa, Europe, and China for the period in question. Skulls of that era with rather large crania (comparable to the Boskop specimens) can be found in all regions.
Cranium size distributions are similar between those regions today also, but the distributions have shifted to slightly smaller sizes than they were around 10000 BCE (probably due to agriculture & civilization). http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/brain/paleo/lynch-granger-big-brain-boskops-2008.html
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Reading the article and then jumping over and making use of "Google Scholar" it seems that the Boskops are not seen as a separate species or genus, but more of a grouping of larger skulls from the extant population of the time. John Hawks, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison has a fairly in-depth blog on the subject (http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/brain/paleo/lynch-granger-big-brain-boskops-2008.html).
The other part of the picture, is fairly clear, and that is survival. As much as we seem to know of the "Boskops" they may have been an offshoot of the population of the time (but within the the larger envelope of homo sapien sapien). These larger skulled individuals, regardless if they were a population to themselves, faded. One of the points mentioned regarding brain size, is that they are "expensive" in the sense of the food and nutritional requirements. In considering their situation at that point in geologic time, they may have simply been a Formula 1 car showing up at the Baha 1000. Intelligence, like horsepower is but one aspect of survival (or winning) and whether their larger brain simply required too much "fuel" to finish, or that they were simply too specialized to be reflected in modern man, is open to speculation.
At some point in time we may collect enough comparative (fossil) evidence to look at DNA comparisons, between the "Boskops" and their contemporaries and then compare this to "modern" man and be able to fit these individuals into the larger evolutionary picture.
This is a simplistic argument made often by non-city folk. In anarchy, the populations that will win out first are those that are better organized. Better organized in terms of food distribution, against mobs, the weather elements, division of labor - you know, like city folk. And for every animal out there that the "self-sustainable" folk can go and hunt to eat, the city is that much closer to transportation that can handle heavy loads, like tons of grain, or pickled herring, or whatever.
Because make no mistake, after a brief period of panic, an economy will be put into place. There are economies in slums, in primitive societies, in war-torn and disaster-ravaged areas, there are economies upon economies and co-existing underground economies. The ones who have access to the best economic resources can put back their economy the soonest, and are the ones who will be self-sustainable.
I like how you say "diagnosed" with a 150 IQ, like some sort of ironic tip of the hat to the curse of intelligence ;-)
Actually, if his IQ was 149 there are a lot of slashdotters (including me) with brains as large or larger. Sometimes some of these guys here make me feel like an utter moron. In meatspace, with few exceptions only women do that to me.
Free Martian Whores!
Evolution would have done her in, just as evolution would have insured that these creatures had large enough reproductive organs to survive.
Except evolution doesn't work that way. It doesn't work to assure survival. It does what's easiest given the array of choices that arise through mutation - including selecting a dead-end.
It's more likely that a significant jump in infant cranial size would have resulted in a significant jump in failed births unless the mutation for the large brain coincided in the same individuals who have the wider hips and reproductive organs.
That would be like someone winning two lotteries on the same day - it's extremely unlikely. Not impossible, but way less likely than winning only one lottery.
Putting moderation advice in your
Why would you say that?
Because he's seeking validation through the attention he gets by saying it?
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Islam does repress women. Repressed women tend to have less education. Uneducated women tend to have more children than educated ones.
Ergo, muslims outbreed non-muslims. It's why France is the only European country that doesn't have a falling birthrate. Spend some time in the Parisian banlieue and see it with your own eyes.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
But I am not a biologist so what do I know. I do know in the US the Conservatives will kick the crap out of Liberals unless the liberals start breeding better.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
I'm not extinct!
I was just resting!
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Islam does repress women.
People who interpret Islam incorrectly repress women. Just like some Christian fundamentalists insist the women should stay home and look after the children (and not use birth control cause thats killing babies). Same thing.
I agree with the last two statements, but that is independent of religion.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Just so people know, there is skepticism over the existence of some ancient race of geniuses based on this skull.
He's over simplifying. Other things being equal, a population with a higher reproductive rate will out compete a similar population with a lower reproductive rate. The key there is other things being equal differences in organization of a complex population can be sufficient to counterbalance a reproductive rate advantage.
Their work here has already been discredited in academic circles. Stop misinforming the public by giving it traction in the popular press. Had these neuroscientists had the sense to review their hypotheses with current scientists in anthropology and evolutionary biology they would have saved themselves a great deal of embarrassment.
There is no science occurring here. There is no new discovery here. This is simply two scientists in a completely unrelated field (neuroscience), looking at very old, discredited data, and pulling a headline grabbing book and promotional magazine article out of their asses. However well meaning they were, they failed to do their footwork here, and the result is embarrassing. I guess we should ask snopes to start writing an article on this now before this nonsense spreads.
Do we? Do we really? Not that this is the forum for such discussion, but I defy you to demonstrate that our world today truly values intelligence any more than it does luck, perseverance, or aggression. Sure there are some areas where more intelligence would be a great benefit, but I would argue that most of the world competes in struggle that has little to do with basic intelligence.
From what I have seen, and I have lived in several states, the less educated and clever folks are, the more kids they tend to produce.
Conversely, the majority of my well educated and intelligent friends tend to have 1 child at most.
It would seem that a less advanced race of morons (i.e. Humans) could very quickly run these Uber-smarties to extinction just by our numbers alone.
Using Pounds as a unit of measuring mass just proves that you aren't intelligent :)
I would think it is more accurate to say that religion influences culture, then culture in turn reinterprets religion.
Not all Christians share an identical (or even similar) culture.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
I think your sense of ridiculousness stems from the idea that islam taking over the earth is undesirable.
No, I would have said the same thing if you said Christianity, or Buddhism or Atheism will take over the world. It's a silly statement to make.
It would be the same as if someone said 'Murder rates are up 4% this year. If trends continue, the entire city will be dead in 12 years'
Christianity swept most of Europe at one point looking to be the dominant world religion. Of course that also plunged us into several hundred years of what we now call the 'dark ages' where science was deemed to be against god and those practicing it were killed in the name of the church. Of course we know how that turned out.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Yes, but you have to remember that Christianity was used to stop slavery and persecution of gays as well. Christianity is a two edged sword, and the edge of Christ the redeemer usually wins out in the long run.
Basically no matter what religion you believe in, it can be twisted to support any point of view. Thats the problem with trying to interpret and do what God wants when God isn't actually telling anyone to do anything.
The world will be a lot better place to live when everyone realizes that different religions are just various interpretations of the SAME THING, and the only thing people are fighting about are their own human-based ideals.
So yeah, the muslims are pissed off about the Crusades, but what about the part that the Levant was actually CHRISTIAN LAND FIRST
How could the lands possibly be Christian when the land and its people PREDATE Christianity? That whole area was under Egyptian Pharaoh rile 1500 years before Christ. And the Egyptian people were in that area as far back as 3000BC. Wouldn't it then rightfully belong to them?
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
If dating the water erosion on the Sphinx holds any water, then it would date back to 10,000 B.C. when that area was grasslands and experience significant water fall. If the Sphinx was built back then, it would align with the era of the last of the "Boskop Man" placing them in the area of the Nile.
Incidentally, the Egyptian pharaohs were usually depicted having large skulls, and married siblings (to preserve the bloodlines?). Maybe there's some correlation between the knowledge to build the Pyramids and these Boskop Men.
If they'd also evolved kitty-ears and a characteristic love of french-maid outfits, they would be the master race.