Commenter Melo (meLon Musk) recently linked to a paper arguing that the brain size of H Sapiens has been stable for hundreds of thousands of years. Already aware of the paper, I had emailed the lead author and he replied “You might download the DeSilava data set from their paper – it is open source. As far as I know, it has the most complete cranial volume data set (directly measured volume).”
Of course analyzing such an enormous data set is overwhelming so I decided to start with Middle Paleolithic brains (300 kya to 50 kya). There were 17 Sapiens skulls in the data set from this time period and these ranged from 1100 cc (Manot Cave specimen) to 1590 (skhul 9 specimen) with a mean of 1441 (SD 127). When I remove the two oldest specimens from the sample (the Jebel Irhoud pair which some argue are proto-Sapiens not fully Sapiens) the mean and SD increase slightly (1452, 129 respectively).
Overall, these brains look pretty damn big, especially since Sapiens hadn’t even lastingly left the tropics yet, but I’ll reserve judgement until analyzing other time periods.
Pumpkin Person 
So you’re telling me Lemuria and Atlantis were real?
PP, here’s a Mega Test analogy I missed at first, but which I bet you can solve.
PAIN : RUE :: BREAD : ?
I would post what I think is the answer but don’t want to compromise the test.
The Mega Test has been compromised since before I was born. No society in their right mind still accepts it. I’m not sure Ron even scores it. I don’t think there’s any harm in posting answers.
I was there the day the Mega Test was originally compromised. The person who did it was upset because Chris Lanagn had judged him to have a low or only average IQ, and described him as the “house ape” and so he started posting answers as a way to prove he was smart and avenge the ultra high IQ community by destroying their sacred test.
After the guy posted the answers, the board was swarmed by anonymous people calling him the most fowl names imaginable and some even threatening him with physical violence. I had never witnessed so much anger in my life and it just went on for days & days forcing the guy into Saldam Rushdie like hiding..
Of course this was at least 20 years ago and maybe things have calmed down, but then Saldam Rushdie thought the same thing.
originally compromised? I figured it must have been compromised piecemeal over years. Did this guy post a bunch of correct answers at once? Were they right?
And yeah I would’ve had some words for him. Words which would make me say, [redacted by pp, 2022-08-22]
Yes iirc he posted dozens of answers in a single afternoon. I don’t know how many of the answers were right, but judging from the backlash, I assume a lot of them.
[redacted by pp, 2022-08-21]
I wrongly thought the answer was [redacted by pp, 2022-08-21] until I stumbled across an article by Hoeflin where he said that finding the answer required what kiwianon just invoked. Note that Hoeflin saying this is another reason why I don’t think it’s wrong to share the answer.
Ganzir did you ever try the unreleased CAIT analogies subtest?
No, what’s that?
https://www.classmarker.com/online-test/start/user-info/?quiz=nd461adfdae6da28
CAIT was originally supposed to have three vci tests and three pri tests, but the third pri test (odd one out) apparently had bad properties so equs changed it to two vci and pri tests. This one doesn’t have an official norm, but roughly 20/28 should be near 14ss and 25/28 should be near 19ss – you can interpolate and extrapolate the rough equivalences of other scores.
Oh, Equs? The reddit guy? I thought you were referring to some ‘official’ mainstream test like the WAIS or RAIT.
Yeah, the reddit guy lol. CAIT is his wais estimator
CAIT : Comprehensive Adult Intelligence Test ?
Yep
I scored 25
Didnt you ban poor Melo? He wasn’t woke enough or something. You said he needed to say CNNs talking points even harder to get your approval.
Puppy: Melo you can’t just come on here and copy and paste CNN. You have to do it with PASSION.
Melo: But I am doing it with passion. Lots of passion. Seriously.
Puppy: Well I can’t see any. Until you figure out a way to copy and paste CNN with passion I’m banning you.
Melo: Trump is a Russian Spy.
Mueller: Trump is not a russian spy.
Melo: So what I don’t care what you say bro. He’s a russian spy. Hes too nationalist. He doesn’t support BLM. Therefore he works for a foreign power.
You should probably read the mueller report and stop watching fake news.
I’d rather electrocute myself than read the Mueller Report.
Hahahaha, what the fuck.
Ok I’m wrong Loaded. You aren’t the dumbest person in the comment section anymore. That title now goes to Melo.
I still think you are a schizophrenic psychopath so no worries on getting your point across even though its entirely pointless!
Pingback: The history of Homo Sapiens brain size part 1: Middle Paleolithic – Glyn Hnutu-healh: History, Alchemy, and Me
“Overall, these brains look pretty damn big, especially since Sapiens hadn’t even lastingly left the tropics yet”
Not really, modern Africans have similar brains sizes. Unfortunately, I can’t find the studies at the moment.
Im also currently going through DeSilva’s dataset and typing out the location for each skull from 50k to 12k (when the last ice age ended). We can check each other’s work I guess.
Cool. I figured it would be too hard to determine the location of all the specimens (in some cases they don’t seem to be reported) so I’m just looking at the aggregate trend, but it would be much more helpful to know the trend in different regions.
So here are the figures for all of the Skulls in the Upper Paleolithic (50k to 12k) from each respective region.
East asian brain size is on average 1381cc with an SD of 158. European mean is 1471cc with an SD of 125. South east Asian (mainly aborigines) mean is 1408cc with a mean of 115. MENA has the largest mean size at 1542cc with an SD of 170.
Now, if you included MENA with European skulls since they are both caucasoids then the average becomes 1490cc with an SD 141.
The only skull from sub-saharan Africa was the Hofmeyr one that went around 1580cc. But, I’m sure you could technically count middle Paleolithic hominins as “honorary negroids” because we hadn’t successfully left africa yet.
Considering the relatively low correlation between brain size and IQ, even East Asians with a low average of 1381 would only lose like 5 points. Not even.
Im curious about what the average brain size of Neanderthals are so I’m going to check that next when I’m off work. May even do erectus and heidelbergensis if I’m bored enough.
Are you suggesting Melo that blacks have the same IQs as non blacks because the skull sizes are similar?
No. But if CWT holds any weight you wouldn’t expect races from different climates to have similar skull sizes.
I debunked CWT years ago. Puppy keeps banging on about it of course.
PP I revised a chart I found on one of your previous blog posts
LOL!
Something peculiar about his list: he underestimates Barma Grande 2’s volume. I have seen various sources list Barma Grande 2 at 1880cc while he has Barma Grande 2 at somewhere in the 1700scc. I have never seen that value as being listed for Barma Grande 2 before. Maybe the source he cited confused a couple of different Barma Grande skulls?
Also he lists Cro Magnon 1 at 1730 cc, while I have seen that value before, I have also seen Cro Magnon 1 being listed at mid-1600s cc as well, and the latter makes more sense given the dimensions of the skull.
I know one source that compared modern skulls to early human skulls in great detail, though it doesn’t have as big of a sample size. It goes into components of the brain size like lobe sizes, and it concluded that the biggest difference between modern and upper paleolithic brains is in the occipital and frontal lobes (upper paleolithic > modern), followed by parietal lobes (this measure probably combined parietal + temporal lobes, UP having slightly larger than moderns), followed by cerebellum lobe (where moderns were actually larger than upper paleolithic values). I think I mentioned this one a while back as well.