This article owes a great debt to commenter Melo/Ericthonius for doing preliminary research on these brain size trends.
The above chart shows seven points in time.
Point one: The ancestors of modern humans split off from the apes about eight million years ago (the late Miocene epoch) in Sub-Saharan Africa and probably had brains around 400 cc, similar to those of the chimpanzees today with whom we share 99.8% of our matching DNA.
Point two: By the mid Paleolitihic, the first indisputable Homo Sapiens had evolved around 195,000 years ago in Sub-Saharan Africa. and during the Middle Paleolithic, these averaged brains of around 1452 cc. What caused the explosion in brain size since the late Miocene is unclear but scientists have proposed many ideas:
Leaving the trees played a major role, as any time an animal must adapt to a new environment, brain size tends to increase, especially in an environment as dangerous as the African Savannah. Further, the adoption of bipedalism freed the hands to create tools which made intelligence more useful and perhaps thus selected for. In addition, the earth was cooling so even in the tropics, brains needed to be bigger, either because of thermoregulation, or to be smart enough to survive the cold. Finally, a constantly changing climate may have selected for adaptability according to Rick Potts. None of these ideas are mutually exclusive and I highly suspect all were involved, in addition to other selection factors I have not mentioned.
Point three: By the early Upper Paleolithic the brain appears to have increased to 1494 cc. This corresponds to the great Out of Africa migration. But was this great migration the product or the cause of this brain size increase. My guess is it was the product, because expanding to new environments, requires novel problem solving and thus more brain mass. In addition, colder climates may select for bigger brains independently of intelligence because a big brain is more spherical (Allen’s rule) and as commenter Mug of Pee has noted, cold climates select for large bodies in general. Consistent with an increase in intelligence, this was also the time when behavioral modernity is thought to have emerged, as evidenced by more advanced tools and the first true art:
Point four: By the late Upper Paleolithic, the average brain size of our species mysteriously collapses to 1441 cc. Of course one shouldn’t over-interpret this as the DeSilva brain size database is not huge so sampling error is always possible. But taking the data at face value, one possibility is selection pressures relaxed after the Neanderthals went extinct 40,000 years ago, leaving our species with less competition.
A more provocative explanation suggested by sites like Göbekli Tepe and scholars like Graham Hancock is that civilization may have started much earlier than thought, perhaps even as early as the late Paleolithic. If so this might explain the declining brain size because civilization selects for smaller bodies (and thus smaller brains) since civilized people are less physically violent, and also may domesticate people which shrinks the brain by decreasing the part of the brain that feels fear. It’s unclear if this affects intelligence since part of fear is also caused by being smart enough to recognize danger. It’s also possible civilization decreases intelligence by creating a welfare state for the least intelligent to reproduce. Not only that, but civilization brings many humans and domesticated animals in close contact, thus causing pandemics which shrink the brain below its genetic potential.
Point Five: By the early Holocene brain size bounces back, bigger than ever at 1506 cc. It seems that if there was an early civilization, it was washed away by the rising sea levels caused by the ending ice age melting the polar ice caps (giving rise to fairy tales like Noah’s Ark). Only the smartest would have been able to survive and make the transition from civilized back to hunter-gatherer. In addition, shortly before the ice age ended, humans experienced the last glacial maximum and these freakishly cold temperatures would have selected for more brain size, either directly, via Allen’s/Bergmann’s rule, or indirectly, via intelligence required.
Point Six: By classical antiquity, the first indisputable civilizations have emerged causing brain size to crash again to 1372 cc for all the reasons stated above.
Point Seven: By modern times the process of brain size decline continues, hitting a species low of 1297 cc, however the developed World sees an exception to this trend where better nutrition, sanitation and pandemic mitigating vaccines causes brain size to bounce back up to 1418 cc in America. The recovery of our Paleolithic potential combined with the accumulation of culture causes the greatest renaissance in human history: the space age, the computer revolution, the genetic revolution, and soon artificial intelligence. IQ scores rise by at least 1 point a decade from before WWII to the early 21st century.
Pumpkin Person 
This article owes a great debt to commenter Melo/Ericthonius, aka peepee. sad.
So doesn’t this chart prove brain size isn’t related to IQ in recent years? Poor Puppy. His head just exploded.
how does it prove that? Why the hell are you an HBDer if you reject the brain size_IQ correlation?
Look at the chart brain size declines from the early holocene period.
I have never argued brain size = IQ. I have a more complex argument that the ‘wiring’ and the chemical mixture inside the brain is more important but you are totally obsessed with measuring skull sizes like people 150 years ago.
You’re assuming we’re smarter than cavemen. Obviously we seem smarter but we’ve had the advantage of tens of thousands of years of cultural accumulation. We stand on their shoulders. The correlation is also lowered by domestication which shrinks the brain without necessarily shrinking intelligence and by failing to adjust brain size for body size. Since muscles don’t preserve in the fossil record, scientists can only make crude guesses about how big early humans were:
We’re 100% smarter than cavemen. I guarantee it. You just seem obsessed with this skull size theory, like at an emotional level or something.
Why are you so sure? No matter how smart we are biologically, we had to start somewhere culturally. If we cloned George Sors and had him raised by healthy Bushmen, he’d be a hunter-gatherer his whole life and you’d assume he was stupid even though his IQ (on culture reduced tests) might be the same.
George Soros or other jews are definitely much much smarter than cavemen. You would literally have to not believe in evolution to believe that.
I agree Jews are because the are unique in having cognitive evolution in modern times. We don’t know exactly when cognitive evolution ended for the rest of humanity though other than it was likely sometime after we began dividing into major races since races clearly differ.
Just face it Puppy you have a crude metric. You would rather believe a caveman can do theoretical physics instead of a smaller brained jew just because you’re obsessed with Oprah.
It is a crude metric but it’s the best we have. Brain wiring and neurotransmitters don’t fossilize. We’ll know more as we learn about ancient DNA.
Wheres all my comments?
In the trash. To quote the big brained Dr. Phil “you can call me a son of a bitch but you gona do it long distance”
Peeps, can you do a brief history of pumpkins brain size article?
It hasn’t changed since I first measured it.
Peeps in one my earlier comments which I don’t remember which article I posted under, I said jews are at the forefront of a.i research and development. To which you replied that most work is done by east asians.
There are more jews than east asians in the development of neural networks and cognitive architectures. Some independent ideas about building a.i written in the form of books also have more Jewish writers rather than east asians. The recent seminal paper ‘Attention is all you need’ responsible for generative a.i responsible for gpt, google’s lamda, palm etc involves one jewish person and no east asians.
You can only write seminal papers if you attend elite schools and East Asians are almost banned from attending those
Lot of east asians in elite schools peeps. You can’t just ban an entire ethnicity from something in this day and age.
I agree with pill.
Brain size matters but wiring matters more.
In control theory perception is detection and cognition is reflective. So if impulses bounce around in the head the mirrors (wiring) direct them. Diversity is so great that brain size is black and white on a color wheel.
exactly!
https://www.google.com/finance/quote/BMWYY:OTCMKTS?window=1Y&comparison=NYSE%3ARACE%2CNASDAQ%3ATSLA
mugabe proven RIGHT once again.
sad!
repitition.
Pingback: A brief history of human brain size – Glyn Hnutu-healh: History, Alchemy, and Me
What do people think of the post-modern jewish critique of history which is that its impossible to tell history without expressing an opinion on it?
I think it would be fucking hilarious if someone straight up published an alt right history book.
Arthur Kemp’s “March of the Titans” exists already. It’s basically the European version of Afrocentrism.
March of the Titans added to my reading list. Thanks.
Genuinely interested in what you think of it if you read it. I think the description of “European version of Afrocentrism” is genuinely apt.
“If it can’t be measured it should be ignored” – this is your epistemology Puppy. Acknowledge it and own it.
I explain as much as I can from KNOWN facts before invoking hypothetical ones. You do the opposite.
“The map is the data” ^^
“By modern times the process of brain size decline continues, hitting a species low of 1297 cc”
However, Grabowski makes a good point that trying to average as a species and then extrapolate trends from that is fallacious.
Getting rid of the American and Southeast Asian skulls in the past 100 years brought the species average back to 1436cc.
We need more data, and doing this exercise has made me realize how futile it really is to do these measures. Hominin fossils are rare, to begin with, and no doubt what we have in the fossil record is arguably less than 10% of the actual amount of biomass that has ever existed.
I don’t understand. I’m just averaging all the Sapiens skulls in the DeSilva database during each period. Who got rid of American/South East Asian skulls?
The data set is way less than 10% of all Sapiens but that’s surprisingly irrelevant. For example when Gallup does a poll of the hundreds of millions of American adults, the sample size is only 1000 and the margin of error is low. Surprisingly, the reliable size of a sample is not all related to the size of the population it represents.
Of course Gallup takes certain precautions to make sure the sample size is representative of all Americans and we can’t make sure the desilva data base is representative of all Sapiens.
Nonetheless, unless one suspects systemic bias, then whatever skulls they happened to have found might be good enough because random bias in different directions tends to cancel out.
“Who got rid of American/South East Asian skulls?”
I did. I have an Excel file with all Homo sapiens skulls from the Desilva dataset, and I’ve categorized them by geographic region.
The Morton data set is the largest subset within Desilva’s, and it is entirely Native American skulls, which average around 1303cc. Because they have a considerably smaller brain size and don’t appear in the data set until the last 1000 years, it gives the illusion that Homo Sapiens’ brain size has been shrinking over time. Same with Australian Aborigines (which I categorized as SE Asian).
This is why Grabowski et al. had to consolidate the data in 100-year bins to normalize it and remove the heteroscedasticity. I went a step further and only performed segmented regression on the European data set because it’s a large sample size and it’s placed evenly across all time periods.
“we can’t make sure the desilva data base is representative of all Sapiens.”
I mean, you’re definitely not wrong. I’m just pessimistic. It’s happened before where the Anthropological community held some opinion on some species, and then it turns out that’s bullshit because more specimens were discovered.
Even when I was going through Desilva’s sources for his Neanderthal data set, one guy had the average Neanderthal brain as larger than Homo sapiens, but as soon as Desilva combined that guy’s dataset with another, it dropped to like 1380cc
The Morton data set is the largest subset within Desilva’s, and it is entirely Native American skulls, which average around 1303cc. Because they have a considerably smaller brain size and don’t appear in the data set until the last 1000 years, it gives the illusion that Homo Sapiens’ brain size has been shrinking over time. Same with Australian Aborigines (which I categorized as SE Asian)
Why would the Morton data be all Native American? He famously compared skulls from many different races. And strange that Native Americans should be so small, They were very similar to Europeans in the Smith and Beals data-set. Anyway, it’s well known that cranial capacity correlates with latitude or distance from the equator. One way to control for race would be to assign each skull not only an age (time period but a distance from the equator (a proxy for race). So South American Indians and Australoids would be close to the equator and thus expected to be small relative to their time period.
Then using multiple regression we could see the effect of time period independent of the effect of race.
I also wonder if all the skulls were measured the same way. I was told they were all directly measured but you get different results depending on what substance you fill the brain case with and hopefully DeSilva knows this from reading Smith and Beals.
“Why would the Morton data be all Native American? He famously compared skulls from many different races.”
It seems I’ve made quite a mistake. So in the original file that you download from Desilva, he lists the source and specimen. “Morton” is what is put down as the specimen for these skulls, and “Lewis et al.” is put down as the original source. Since most of the specimens are named after the archeological site they’re from, I thought it was referring to the Morton Village, an archeological site of Native American bones.
http://mortonvillage.anthropology.msu.edu/
I didn’t realize that “Morton” was referring to THAT Morton. I may have to throw out the data anyway, then, since I don’t think I’d have any way to separate it by region. I’d have to find Morton’s original analysis and dataset.
That said, perhaps I am right anyway because, in 1839, Morton published a book called Crania Americana; or, a comparative view of the skulls of various aboriginal nations of North and South America: to which is prefixed an essay on the varieties of the human species. Maybe that’s the data Desilva is referring to? In this case, I wouldn’t have to change anything.
But I think I’ll get rid of it anyway because Villamoare and Graboski seem to think he’s referring to the entire Philadelphia collection: https://www.penn.museum/sites/morton/
“And strange that Native Americans should be so small, They were very similar to Europeans in the Smith and Beals data-set.”
Right, you’d expect them to be similar. Still, Desilva made some other mistakes in his methodology, so perhaps his data isn’t as polished or representative as it should be. I think I’m going to reread Beals’ study. It’s been a long time.
brain size among US wypipo and south koreans has increased by more than 100 cc in the last 100 years, 200 cc in the last 175 years for wypipo americans.
this plot is gay and tarded. neoliberalism.
The plot is meant to reflect the average for entire species at a given time. I explain in the article that modern brain size is much bigger in the developed world but most of the world is not developed.
yes. but!
it’s not because bigger headed wypipo and koreans are having more chirren.
it’s all down to diet i expect. neoliberalism.
maybe treatment of childhood infectious diseases like hookworm. neoliberalism.
an excerpt from wikipedia:
Large education efforts funded by John D. Rockefeller helped reduce the rates of infection among children in the American South during the 1910s.
The commission found that an average of 40% of school-aged children were infected with hookworm. Areas with higher levels of hookworm infection prior to the eradication program experienced greater increases in school enrollment, attendance, and literacy after the intervention. Econometric studies have shown that this effect cannot be explained by a variety of alternative factors, including differential trends across areas, changing crop prices, shifts in certain educational and health policies and the effect of malaria eradication.[46] No significant contemporaneous results were found for adults who should have benefited less from the intervention owing to their substantially lower (prior) infection rates. The program nearly eradicated hookworm and would flourish afterward with new funding as the Rockefeller Foundation International Health Division.
john d was from upstate ny. neoliberalism.
pipo used to think southerners were just lazy and stupid.
pipo still think that.
but the south shall rise again…has already happened.
economically speaking.
Why do you let him say neoliberalism but ban me for saying it?
I lifted the ban.
Pretty sure this paper debunks your view.
“Because the earliest modern human fossils Homo sapiens sensu stricto, are found in African and the adjacent region of the Levant at > 100 ka, the “human revolution” model creates a time lag between the appearance of anatomical modernity and perceived behavioral modernity, and creates the impression that the earliest modern Africans were behaviorally primitive. This view of events stems from a produnf Eurocentric bias and a failure to appreciate the depth and breadth of the African archeological record. In fact, many of the components of the “human revolution” claimed to appear at 40-50 ka are found in the African Middle Stone Age tens of thousands of years earlier. These features include blade and microlithic technology, bone tools, increased geographic range, specialized hunting, the use of aquatic resources, long distance trade, systematic processing and use of pigment, and art and decoration.””
Click to access McBrearty-Brooks-2000-JHE-modern-hum-beh.pdf
But no representative art that actually looks like anything.
And you think this arose 50kya in Europe, right? Can you give me an example of what you mean from the time period in Europe (or whatever the claim is, correct me if I’m wrong)?
No I think it arose when humans left the tropics. The oldest art is probably in Southeast Asia not Europe but folks had to leave the tropics to get there
OK so do you have any examples that you have in mind from 50kya?
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jan/13/worlds-oldest-known-cave-painting-found-in-indonesia
So you were aware of the paper I cited to you, since you brought it up on 08/18/18. Do you still hold to the Kleinian view of the “leap” hypothesis around 40-50kya? Is your claim that this representative rock art that “looks like something” is representative of this “shift” in cognition or whatever word you would use to describe what happened? Do you think that there is any meaning that this occurred AFTER the exodus OoA? Of course you would, right? And you claim that there is “no representative art that actually looks like anything” from what age range? After 45kya or before? There is another Guardian article about that discovery, and the lead author was quoted as saying:
“Archaeologists have not ruled out that the different groups of colonising humans developed their artistic skills independently of one another, but an enticing alternative is that the modern human ancestors of both were artists before they left the African continent.
“Our discovery on Sulawesi shows that cave art was made at opposite ends of the Pleistocene Eurasian world at about the same time, suggesting these practices have deeper origins, perhaps in Africa before our species left this continent and spread across the globe,” said Dr Maxime Aubert, an archaeologist at the University of Wollongong.”
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/oct/08/cave-art-indonesia-sulawesi
The Blombos cave art is from around 73kya, but it doesn’t “look like anything”, but it shows the development of the skills.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0514-3
Is what you’re saying resting merely on art? Seems arbitrary, and in any case art of course arose in Africa. I’m not contesting the ages of any of these pieces of art, I’m only contesting your interpretation of how and why they arose when they did.
yes.
the lasceaux cave paintings are the favorite example of the behavioral modernity pipo. neoliberalism.
Can you estimate IQ just from lyrics?
The first one is jewish vs all the other african americans. The first part is the only part that I like.
Post Malone is also Jewish, but all mention of him being Jewish was removed from his wiki. He superceded almost all other rap artists without much funding or collabs.
Max Martin is another Jew behind almost all of the most famous pop songs written in the past two decades. most of these pop artists don’t write their own stuff unsurprisingly.
Julian Casablancas is another Jew that easily eclipsed all other rock/alternative music artists at the time.
I remember reading a long time ago that Jews brain cells are different than all other ethnicities. They tend to have less dendrites per brain cell but the dendrites are twice as long. This is probably why they’re more creative.
Julian Casablancas is a jew???? Anyway I dont think he wrote the strokes songs. The strokes are a great band though but I wouldn’t call them the very best alt rock band. Maybe of the early 2000s perhaps.
Puppy doesn’t believe brain wiring makes a difference so stop talking about dendrites or he’ll ban your comments.
Brain size explains 16% of the variation in IQ which means 84% is explained by other factors. Wiring is certainly one of them
also Jack Harlow the first guy is not Jewish he is white from Kentucky he just happens to look Jewish
the only Jewish rapper out there is Mac Miller who died of an overdose back in 2018
Post Malone is not Jewish either he might be a white guy with some black admixture
Jews definitely get special nepotistic favors in business and media, but I would guess that the most successful jews are still probably better at what they do than most other jews in their field.
the south will rise agin also because:
1. it never went to sleep. it’s as woke as it was in 1861.
2. so many blacks are on board.
a. southern whites like blacks irl. DIS-like blacks in theory.
b. yankee whites DIS-like blacks irl. like blacks in theory.
c. when you live around blacks, blacks everywhere…you find…they’re just like you.
“Brain size explains 16% of the variation in IQ”
What’s the reference for this claim?
Bates
LOADED: Just look at the physiognomy of Harlow. He is, but they try to disassociate because they’re already over-represented.
Post Malone has the star of david tattooed on himself. He also believes in the dybbuk which is jewish mythology. It used to say on his wiki that he was jewish.
Also Doja Cat and Drake are also half jewish.
Drake is Half Jewish. And Harlow was definitely not the best rapper on that song, lol.
“talking about dendrites”
both white matter and grey matter are important.
one is structure the other is density.
–
I talked to my doctor today and she said I was detached not disassociated.
detached means you have no connection to your emotions and soundings.
disassociation is when you do not exist and have memory blackouts of what you did.
“Bates”
What justifies the use of “explains 16% of the variation in IQ”? Specifically “explains”?
It’s just a figure of speech. It doesn’t literally mean explain though it might explain. What it literally means is that if everyone had the same brain size, 16% of the variation in IQ would vanish.
I don’t see any reason to accept that claim. In any case, how much would test prep, familiarity with items and test construction figure into your percentage breakdown?
ive posted this song on this blog in the past surprised you didnt notice
you know i’ve been sick for the past 4 days. and it’s not covid. supposedly.
covid was discriminating against other viruses. what a racist virus! neoliberalism.
Is This It was a fucking great record.
Anyways I looked up Casablancas and hes not a jew thank god. Half Spanish Half Danish (real danish).
I remember my dad listened to the Strokes album out of boredom when I first bought it.
Puppy whats your theory on why Oprah is allegedly so smart and yet shes obese. Whats going wrong there? KFC discounts?
Weight watchers wasn’t around when she was young & now that she’s on it she’s thin as fuck. The ww app is to obesity as vaccines were to disease. It’s unreal
ive been to a Jack Harlow concert in (self redacted)
this song is a good song for partying written by the late great Mac Miller that came out last decade:
i KNOW what it was like to be black in the 70s, BECAUSE my mom…
she was white, but she told me her FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE.
my mom’s experience in so-cal specifically.
TRUTH!
neoliberalism DIVIDES!
Where did you get the early Holocene values from? Is it the Henneberg 1988 paper which conflates Iberomaurusians with the Mesolithic period as a whole?
The skull list I have doesn’t show an increase in neurocranium size the Holocene.
Also, within a geographic region, I know of instances where immediate pre-holocene skulls were larger than early holocene skulls. The oldest Natufians have larger skulls than later Natufians. Older Natufians of Eynan and Erq el Ahmar are among the largest Natufians cranially and possibly physically as well.
rr say brain not = mind
but then why do people have autism then?
96% of autism genes are additive.
rr is not a scientist, he is a phony.
a stupid person with a high memorization capacity who memorizes logic that reinforces his woke biases.
pill is also wrong: hundreds of types of autism exist.
something is wrong with pill, not the same as rr but still WRONG
Translating ASD Genetic Findings into Therapy: Searching for Convergence – Daniel Geschwind, MD PhD
I think a mind is the software in the brain, maybe it links to something else like a soul. But the primary functionality of the mind would be dependent on the hardware of the brain. Shitty hardware = shitty performance.
rr is not that nuanced.
there actually is no distinction between hardware and software in the brain. hardware would be the underlying metaphysical reality of the physical. the brain is not the background reality, the brain is like a software agent that programs itself. (code that rewrites its own code) and has other code read and writes to it.
the brain is not physical, it is embedded in the reality of the physical but the background is the source. anything you see in physical reality is just software in space and time. the representation behind the will. the will being what sustains which is the actual hardware(reality behind the interactions of fizz-effects(physics)).
physical = software
the reality behind the physical = hardware
Idealism = all is in mind
not
mind is in physical
I’m not a monistic idealist.
mind material dualist?
Closest thing right now is metaphysical pluralist.
Pingback: Neanderthal intelligence hat back on | Aeoli Pera
“By the early Upper Paleolithic the brain appears to have increased to 1494 cc. This corresponds to the great Out of Africa migration. But was this great migration the product or the cause of this brain size increase. My guess is it was the product, because expanding to new environments, requires novel problem solving and thus more brain mass.”
This seems like a very ridiculous claim as early hominids like Homo erectus left Africa shortly after they first appeared 2 million years ago and rapidly dispersed across Europe and Asia, reaching Java by 1.8 million years ago and Britain and Northern China by 800,000 years ago. Their brains did increase over time from around 900 cc (1.8 million year old Java skulls) to over 1000 and 1150 cc (skulls from Spain and China around a million years ago) and finally to nearly 1300 cc a few hundred thousand years ago shortly before being replaced by Neanderthals/Denisovans and modern humans, but this brain increase from 900 cc seems to have happened gradually and independently from Homo erectus populations living in Africa, while those African erectus cousins simultaneously increased in brain size as well to over 1300 cc and finally became modern humans, all while remaining in Africa before emerging from Africa to replace the Homo erectus and Neanderthals/Denisovans who evolved independently in Europe and Asia over the previous 1.5 or so million years.
Ever since our genus left Africa, the average brain size of our genus outside Africa was probably larger than within it