Are Shrinking Brains Making Us Smarter? (otak tlh berkurang volnya sebesar bolatenis dlm wkt 30k thn

[kullatiro]

THE GIST
- The human brain has decreased by about the size of a tennis ball over
the past 30,000 years.

- Evolution may be making our brains leaner and more efficient.

- The same phenomenon can be observed in domestic animals compared to their wild counterparts.

Human brains have shrunk over the past 30,000 years, puzzling scientists who argue it is not a sign we are growing dumber but that evolution is making the key motor leaner and more efficient.

The average size of modern humans

-- Homo sapiens -- has decreased
about 10 percent during that period-- from 1,500 to 1,359 cubic centimeters (91 to 83 cubic inches), the size of a tennis ball.

Women's brains, which are smaller on average than those of men, have experienced an equivalent drop in
size.

These measurements were taken using skulls found in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
"I'd called that a major downsizing in an evolutionary eye blink," John Hawks of the University of Michigan told Discover magazine.
But other anthropologists note that brain shrinkage is not very surprising since the stronger and larger we are, the more gray matter we need to control this larger mass.
The Neanderthal, a cousin of the modern human who disappeared about 30 millennia ago for still unknown reasons, was far more massive and had a larger brain.

The Cro-Magnons who left cave paintings of large animals in the monumental Lascaux cave over 17,000 years ago were the Homo sapiens with the biggest brain. They were also stronger than their
modern descendants.

Psychology professor David Geary of the University of Missouri said these traits were necessary to survive in a hostile environment.
He has studied the evolution of skull sizes 1.9 million to 10,000 years old as our ancestors and cousins lived in an increasingly complex social environment.
Geary and his colleagues used population density as a measure of social complexity, with the hypothesis that the more humans are living closer together, the greater the exchanges between group, the division of labor and the rich and varied interactions between people.

They found that brain size decreased as population density increased.


"As complex societies emerged, the brain became smaller because people did not have to be as smart to stay alive," Geary told AFP.
But the downsizing does not mean modern humans are dumber than their ancestors -- rather, they simply developed different, more sophisticated forms of intelligence, said Brian Hare, an assistant professor of anthropology at Duke University.

He noted that the same phenomenon can be observed in domestic animals compared to their wild counterparts.

http://news.discovery.com/human/psychology/shrinking-brains-intelligence-110207.htm

[morpheus]

mungkin kayak processor intel, mangkin kecil ukuran transistornya mangkin cepet

[kullatiro]

mungkin kayak processor intel, mangkin kecil ukuran transistornya mangkin cepet

wa pikir karena kita telah bersosialisasi maka fungsi tertentu dari otak menghilang seperti indera penciuman yang di gunakan untuk berburu dll menjadi tumpul hingga tidak terlalu sensitif lagi dalam hal penciuman untuk mengenali ada nya binatang buruan atau binatang buas yang berbahaya di hutan atau wilayah perburuan.

karena kita sudah tinggal dalam wilayah yang sudah aman  (atau lebih aman) dari binatang buas tersebut

[Sumedho]

dulu pake teknologi 0.13 micron kek pentium 3, sekarang pake 0.045 micron kek i7