meLothedestroyerofworlds

So what? Just because they lack the genetic profile doesn't mean it's from mixed breeding. It could be from random evolution, allele frequencies fluctuate regardless of mixed breeding. Like I said I still agree with you, but it is still speculation. Yes we do http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth/smith/TimeMach1984.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2668913/ Technological revolution is not evidence of neural change, technology is behavior not biology(which are not always intertwined). If you provide an assertion of genetic nature you need to back it up with genetic evidence. No, you are misunderstanding completely, the article DID NOT validate any claim you made, it is irrelevant to this discussion I have already explained this to you and the researchers themselves even spell it out. This is correlation without causation the spike in mutation rate could have been representative of many different factors, and as the article said these new mutations were racial, and could not have been exclusive to cro magnon, Population bottlenecks caused higher levels of intelligence, but these rapid mutations contribute dthe decline of brain size and by extension intelligence.

No, these patterns persist even when socio economic status is controlled. The gap is both genetic and environmental. IQ means a lot. It is the best measure of g.

Right here: https://pumpkinperson.com/2016/09/19/is-the-black-white-iq-gap-shrinking-updated-and-revised/ How are you so sure racism is the cause of the gap? It's a little bit of both, Cold weather will select for higher g because of bergman's principle and spatial demands while the heat will select for it through circuit redundancy, high mutation, and species turnover rates. IQ is the best measure of g, which is general ability and it is useful in all environments, people who score well on one subtest tend to score well on all of them. How can one disregard fst as evidence and then use it when it is convenient? Unless I misunderstood something. Blacks have more neutral DNA because they are the oldest race, so of course they have higher genetic diversity, but that doesn't mean they have higher phenotypic diversity too(though they may).

Of course they do. This has been validated by numerous studies. Race is a semantics game, it doesn't matter how you define it, the pattern still exists between populations. North east asians are not the same as southeast asians. South east asians are a mix between mongoloid and australoid while north east asians are almost purely mongoloid. The only just so story here is the cold winter theory, it's not so much the cold weather that selects for higher levels of g its that climate change in general does. No, the theory is not motivated by political agenda, it's proponents are. You assume that because me and the other fellow believe in intrinsic mental differences between "races" that that means we have some kind of sense of superiority, or that we are using this data to back right wing extremism. I am NOT a white nationalist, I am even mixed race myself, and trust me I am appalled at some of my peers who use this scientifically sound data to back their racist conclusions. Some of these theories are completely bullshit like r/k selection theory or cold winter theory. But the fact that there are cognitive discrepancies between differing ethnic groups(that is at least somewhat genetic) is not bullshit and is empirically verifiable. HBD is the new anthropology. If hitler said 2+ 2= 4 is he wrong because he's hitler? Of course not! And that's all bullshit I could give a shit less what the scientific consensus is, if it's wrong it's wrong, The gap between black and white IQ scores has remained constant over the century and in some areas has even increased. Evolution is real, our brain has been evolving for millions of years so that implies there is a genetic component. Hell genes for myopia is concentrated more in east asian populations and is shown to effect IQ levels. It's not taught because people on both sides are too stupid to set aside their emotional/illogical reasoning. White nationalists are just as bad as blank slatists. EDIT: funny how I am getting downvoted but no one will actually provide a rebuttal for my claims.

-facepalm- You didn't even understand my rebuttal, and I'm tired of explaining the same shit to you. Oh, but you can focus on on the bigger variations? I'm going to explain this to you the best way I can. You said yourself that cranial varitation among humans is large BUT the average human brain size is 1350, this isn't a focus on smaller variation this is an average from a normalized distribution. You cannot use the fact that Idaltu is within human variation as proof they did not have bigger brains, That is incredibly stupid reasoning. We have 1 Idaltu skull measured at 1450, and have maybe a dozen skulls of cro magnon which some are even in the range of modern day homo sapiens(according to your study of anatomic similarity). A sample size of 1 and a few dozen is not comparable to a sample size in the tens of thousands but even if we throw out averages as credible data, You're still wrong because cro magnon is within the variation of human brain size. You cannot use full variation as an argument and then resort to averages when it is convenient. I don't just focus on sheer brain size, that's just another strawman you keep propagating. It doesn't mean they disappeared as a group, their genes may have reshuffled from just....evolution itself and not necessarily because groups admixed, and the change occurred 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. But your point is still somewhat valid. It wasn't the initial cause but mixed breeding did happen and probably did contribute to brain decrease. It's not even the end cause. Of course the brain isn't incrementally decreasing each year that's lamarkian not darwinian but no this is in fact a global phenomena, and we have thousands of skulls showing this. Again what is the cranial size of the left picture? Interestingly it's less archaic than cro magnon but has a smaller head......hmmmm. Finally, no I did not mean the haplogroup, I meant where is the Genetic evidence of neural change in cro magnons 40,000 years ago. You're just speculating.

no, Idaltu was 160-140 thousand years ago. I said HSS No it's not? Stop ignoring evidence, you're so pretentious. Quite changing definitions. One second the Aurignacian culture is behavior modernity now it's precivilization. You are implying two species who coexist have differing "levels of evolution" which is pseudoscience. Stop being so defensive it was merely a conjecture, I do not remember where I heard it from but it kind of makes sense. Cro magnon have rectangular orbital sockets and big elongated heads like neanderthals(possibly a large visual cortex), so maybe when HSS came up from africa they interbred with neanderthals in the middle east which are what we call cro magnon: "A nearly complete skull of a young male Oase 2 and fragments of another cranium (Oase 3) were found in 2005, again with mosaic features; some of these are paralleled in the Oase 1 mandible. Later, during 2005, the Oase 3 fragments were assigned as being part of the same individual as Oase 2. In concurrence with the mixed physical traits, DNA sequances from the mandible shows 6-9 % Neanderthal ancestry in fairly long continuous portions, indicating Oase 1 had a Neanderthal ancestor as recent as 4-6 generations back" Sorry I mean the left. It's not contradictory the brain has been decreasing, the overall size has gotten smaller but the frontal lobe is proportionately still bigger. I don't care if you think it's illogical its empirically verifiable. Cro magnon was the peak of our average brain size so yes they are comparing us to them but HSS 100,000 years ago had larger brains than us so did Idaltu and so did neanderthals. Neanderthals make up for the primitive structure, from sheer size alone. You're being fallacious again, you cant use full scope variation as an argument and then switch to averages. Too many assumptions and speculations, What specific gene do you mean? Again the shrinkage happened all over the world and for multiple reasons, also the people admixed with the cro magnons 7,000 years ago when the shrinking already began 20,000 years ago.

I don't think those are necessarily correlated, the researchers even say a lot of the changes are racial ones, and they imply that there have been dysgenic trends towards life history and by extension cognitive performance. 120,000 years ago with African HSS** Wouldn't it make sense for This rapid increase in mutation rate to happen before Cro magnon arrive on the scene? Or are you just trying to convey that their technological innovations in Europe were caused by the increase? Also I think the term "more evolved" is a little subjective here. You are implying that their evolution had a predesignated direction. Interesting, The more recent specimen seems to have higher levels of neoteny than the cro magnon, although this could be from the positioning of the skulls. It also has smaller eyes and teeth which are much more progressive features and could give more room in the cranial space for actual brain matter. Some have argued that Cro magnon are simply hybridized neanderthal/ homo sapiens. Do you know the brain size of the specimen on the left? Also, brain size has been decreasing since 20,000 years ago(supposedly the frontal lobe has continued to grow), all around the world so it can't be due to admixture, even other hominids besides cro magnon had bigger brains than us. Interestingly, EQ has been increasing through out our evolution but is now stagnant, but I'm not sure how accurate that is because the article even says that if our bodies were shrinking as fast as our brains we would be 4'6" on average. So doesn't that imply we are less encephalized now? http://www.evoanth.net/2013/08/02/4023/ http://www.evoanth.net/2014/03/13/our-brain-is-shrinking-but-our-frontal-lobe-is-growing/ It's kind of major. Our brain decreased by at least 300ccs and we become more neotenous. I think you're extrapolating the wrong information from the DNA article. The article never makes claims on neural function change, I am not denying it's possible existence but it was not on the scale you're thinking it was. It's much more concerned with the variation of regionally adapted traits. The article just doesn't prove what you're trying to. http://news.wisc.edu/genome-study-places-modern-humans-in-the-evolutionary-fast-lane/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_10,000_Year_Explosion EDIT: Sorry in my reply to the second quote I said neanderthals instead of cro magnon. It is fixed now.

We haven't the OP is just full of shit.

I'm wiling to look past it simply because you readdressed it when I brought it to your attention. You claimed I have not been providing evidence when I have been this entire time not only this but you completely ignored some of links to neanderthal tools. Because it was, at least when it came to hafting techniques. But this isn't indicative of higher intelligence, the materials needed for the glue are almost exclusively in neanderthal territory. Neanderthals did have all the things listed on the behavioral modernity list, I proved it. Again, what is your point? This does not mean they were not modern. Utilitarian also means pragmatic, or efficient. were neanderthals more practical than cro magnon? Isn't that a sign of genius? If it aint broke don't fix it. No, I was assuming the opposite, if neanderthals had lower population density this means their innovation rate would be lower as well. Well let's explore this for a minute. This model is not completely wrong, but is arbitrarily bent on making useless divisions, something I have noticed you've been doing this entire discussion. We know that people were anatomically modern in africa(Idaltu) but not technologically, so by this logic it would make sense that humans are not modern until cro magnon appears. BUT, there is increasing evidence of symbolic and artistic complexity beginning in africa that gradually accumulated to Europe. So yes, cro magnon is the most recent and modern of our ancestors but not the earliest one, the earliest is in fact Idaltu or whatever African hominid appears first after the 200,000 year mark. "Howiesons Poort, Blombos, and other South African archaeological sites, for example, show evidence of marine resource acquisition, trade, and abstract ornamentation at least by 80,000 years ago. Given evidence from Africa and the Middle East, a variety of hypotheses have been put forth to describe an earlier, gradual transition from simple to more complex human behavior. Some authors have pushed back the appearance of fully modern behavior to around 80,000 years ago in order to incorporate the South African data. Others focus on the slow accumulation of different technologies and behaviors across time. These researchers describe how anatomically modern humans could have been cognitively the same and what we define as behavioral modernity is just the result of thousands of years of cultural adaptation and learning. D'Errico and others have looked at Neanderthal culture rather than early human behavior for clues into behavioral modernity. Noting that Neanderthal assemblages often portray similar traits as those listed for modern human behavior, researchers stress that the foundations for behavioral modernity may in fact lie deeper in our hominin ancestors" No, did you miss it when I had deconstructed it as an argument? It only measure cranial/facial features not the whole skeleton, not only this but if your argument is "they look the same" then I can't take you seriously, there are plenty of modern humans with brow ridges and other non neotenous features. For the final time neoteny is not equivalent to any kind of modernity, and practically irrelevant when trying to assess actual similarity. In short, the main issue with your argument is that it is subjectively positioned. You are trying to argue certain divisions when the divisions themselves are not clearly drawn. You basically just want to be right.

Don't pretend like this didn't start with you purposely lying about evidence and ignoring data. It was a question, so why don't you answer it. What is it that I am denying? What is cro magnon art supposed to prove? I wasn't stating neanderthals were superior so I don't understand why you would even post that in defense of an argument. So they either walked 12 kilometers across frozen ocean or they built boats. Which do you think is more plausible? I never said cro magnon didn't use manganese, again how is this proving anything? How is "utilitarian" the opposite of "diverse"? How do you know this isn't a side effect of denser populations? How can you claim tool complexity is not indicative of relative intelligence between populations and then use it to propagate the concept of superior mental facilities over another when it is convenient for current argument? It's so hypocritical. You are not understanding the subjectivity of the conjectures you have. I think it would be a good idea if I reaccessed your ideas a little better. Let me get this straight, You just think cro magnon's were the earliest human ancestors and your basic logic is that because they are the most intelligent hominids and have facial structures the most similar to us, then that means they are the first example of our species? Even though we know without a doubt the first homo sapiens was from africa? That would have to mean cro magnon is from africa, but we do not have any fossils(as far as I'm aware) of cro magnons in africa. So Idaltu and cro magnon must be regional variations of the same macro species.Which modernity hypothesis do you think fits your idea the best?: "-The Late Upper Paleolithic Model, or Upper Paleolithic Revolution, refers to the idea that, though anatomically modern humans first appear around 150,000 years ago, they were not cognitively or behaviorally "modern" until around 50,000 years ago, leading to their expansion into Europe and Asia. These authors note that traits used as a metric for behavioral modernity do not appear as a package until around 40–50,000 years ago. Klein (1995) specifically describes evidence of fishing, bone shaped as a tool, hearths, significant artifact diversity, and elaborate graves are all absent before this point. Although assemblages before 50,000 years ago show some diversity the only distinctly modern tool assemblages appear in Europe at 48,000. According to these authors, art only becomes common beyond this switching point, signifying a change from archaic to modern humans. Most researchers argue that a neurological or genetic change, perhaps one enabling complex language such as FOXP2, caused this revolutionary change in our species. -Contrasted with this view of a spontaneous leap in cognition among ancient humans, some authors, primarily working in African archaeology, point to the gradual accumulation of "modern" behaviors, starting well before the 50,000 year benchmark of the Upper Paleolithic Revolution models. Howiesons Poort, Blombos, and other South African archaeological sites, for example, show evidence of marine resource acquisition, trade, and abstract ornamentation at least by 80,000 years ago. Given evidence from Africa and the Middle East, a variety of hypotheses have been put forth to describe an earlier, gradual transition from simple to more complex human behavior. Some authors have pushed back the appearance of fully modern behavior to around 80,000 years ago in order to incorporate the South African data. Others focus on the slow accumulation of different technologies and behaviors across time. These researchers describe how anatomically modern humans could have been cognitively the same and what we define as behavioral modernity is just the result of thousands of years of cultural adaptation and learning. D'Errico and others have looked at Neanderthal culture rather than early human behavior for clues into behavioral modernity. Noting that Neanderthal assemblages often portray similar traits as those listed for modern human behavior, researchers stress that the foundations for behavioral modernity may in fact lie deeper in our hominin ancestors. If both modern humans and Neanderthals express abstract art and complex tools then "modern human behavior" cannot be a derived trait for our species. They argue that the original 'human revolution' theory reflects a profound Eurocentric bias. Recent archaeological evidence, they argue, proves that humans evolving in Africa some 300,000 or even 400,000 years ago were already becoming cognitively and behaviourally 'modern'. 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. These items do not occur suddenly together as predicted by the ‘‘human revolution’’ model, but at sites that are widely separated in space and time. This suggests a gradual assembling of the package of modern human behaviours in Africa, and its later export to other regions of the Old World. Between these extremes is the view – currently supported by archaeologists Chris Henshilwood, Curtis Marean, Ian Watts and others – that there was indeed some kind of 'human revolution' but that it occurred in Africa and spanned tens of thousands of years. The term 'revolution' in this context would mean not a sudden mutation but a historical development along the lines of 'the industrial revolution' or 'the Neolithic revolution'. In other words, it was a relatively accelerated process, too rapid for ordinary Darwinian 'descent with modification' yet too gradual to be attributed to a single genetic or other sudden event. These archaeologists point in particular to the relatively explosive emergence of ochre crayons and shell necklaces apparently used for cosmetic purposes. These archaeologists see symbolic organisation of human social life as the key transition in modern human evolution. Recently discovered at sites such as Blombos Cave and Pinnacle Point, South Africa, pierced shells, pigments and other striking signs of personal ornamentation have been dated within a time-window of 70,000 – 160,000 years ago in the African Middle Stone Age, suggesting that the emergence of Homo sapiens coincided, after all, with the transition to modern cognition and behaviour. While viewing the emergence of language as a 'revolutionary' development, this school of thought generally attributes it to cumulative social, cognitive and cultural evolutionary processes as opposed to a single genetic mutation -A further view, taken by archaeologists such as Francesco D'Errico and João Zilhão, is a multi-species perspective arguing that evidence for symbolic culture in the form of utilised pigments and pierced shells are also found in Neanderthal sites, independently of any 'modern' human influence. Cultural evolutionary models may also shed light on why although evidence of behavioral modernity exists before 50,000 years ago it is not expressed consistently until that point. With small population sizes, human groups would have been affected by demographic and cultural evolutionary forces that may not have allowed for complex cultural traits. According to some authors until population density became significantly high, complex traits could not have been maintained effectively. It is worth noting that some genetic evidence supports a dramatic increase in population size before human migration out of Africa. High local extinction rates within a population also can significantly decrease the amount of diversity in neutral cultural traits, regardless of cognitive ability." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity#Theories_and_Models Here is some more speculative discussion on it if you are truly interested http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/95319-neanderthals-built-a-water-reservoir/ By fit in I mean pay taxes, find a job, live a relatively normal life etc. If I go by brain size alone they would be far more intelligent than modern day humans, but like you said they have slightly different cranial morphologies, which would probably lower their score quite a bit. However they are 300cc above us on the scale so maybe the fact that their brain has such a sheer size difference relative to ours might tip it in their favor. Well they are the same species as us and virtually identical in an anatomical sense, so it isn't really speculative at all. Just because you keep saying it isn't evidence doesn't mean you're right. Like I said it is the closest thing to an IQ test you can get, and the math is pretty sound, with a high confidence rating. I don't really know what else you want me to say to you, take it or leave it.

You are pathetic. I just did define it. Yes it is. No shit, I told you a dozen posts back. You are one the worst hypocrites They don't have to be, there isn't a contradiction you're obviously grasping at straws by this point What the hell is your point? all of that is irrelevant I provided evidence that neanderthals were behaviorally modern and you failed to debunk them as I showed below. - It's not silly, are you really suggesting they swam in freezing water possibly carrying stone tools 12 kilometers off the mainland? Did they get a ride from extra terrestrials? Maybe you should use that "common sense" you were talking about. - Manipulation of Manganese dioxide is far more telling of complex social cognition than pine sap. "The selection and use of manganese dioxide for fire making is unknown from the ethnographic record of recent hunter gatherers. This unusual behaviour holds potential significance for our understanding of Neanderthal cognitive capabilities through the extent of their knowledge and insights. The actions involved in the preferential selection of a specific, non-combustible material and its use to make fire are not obvious, not intuitive and unlikely to be discovered by repetitive simple trials as might be expected for lithic fracturing, tool forming and tool use."Here is a link,Tell me if it doesn't work https://www.researchgate.net/publication/296475941_Selection_and_Use_of_Manganese_Dioxide_by_Neanderthals -The point flies over your head again. Not surprising. - It doesn't mater what people are speculating it's obvious it had some kind of complex use. Here is the link for the caves tell me if the link doesn't work again. http://www.nature.com/news/neanderthals-built-cave-structures-and-no-one-knows-why-1.19975 - Yes it is a definition, You're right they didn't make anthropomorphic art like Cro magnons, what's your point? They were still behaviorally modern as I demonstrated multiple posts ago and had to reiterate for you just now. They did have jewelry, they used eagle talons, and feathers for necklaces I literally just showed you. They also used red ochre for body paint. Why are you deliberately lying about evidence and ignoring mine? You are exaggerating, they added bladelets and started retouching there isn't a whole lot they stole, because the tool kits were not that completely different. "However, things began to change amongst the Neanderthals. They began swapping out their Levallois tools for the blades and bladelets the humans made. Before modern humans arrived >50% of tools at a Neanderthal blade site were still Levallois. Afterwards the blades were in the majority. The Neanderthals also adopted a human technique called “retouching”, which was rare in the Mousterian. As the name suggest, this involved “touching up” tools. This kept them sharp so they could keep being used." http://www.evoanth.net/2016/04/19/neanderthals-stole-human-technology/ Again this brings me back to the strawman argument. I have never said neanderthals were smarter than us or even the same intelligence. But it's a fact that they would do perfectly fine in a human society. Get that through your thick skull. I understand it completely. It's obvious you don't hahahahaha. I tried explaining this to you but you're a sore loser. They are not the most close anatomically, and your correlation is completely useless to the conversation and non- causal, a lot of shit was happening 40,000 years ago, but you're so dumb you pick a random thing and claim they coalesce into a bigger picture when it's obvious to people like me who're actually educated enough to understand the literature that they don't. I have provided solid evidence of behavioral modernity in Idaltu, and neanderthals, showed they were closer to our intelligence than cro magnon, and have demonstrated the position of your argued concept to be subjective, oversimplified, and completely lacking in the necessary evidence to back it up. It's not my fault you have chosen to lie about evidence, misinterpreted my clearly coherent points and ignore my evidence. Anyone who reads this discussion will immediately see the voices of reason within it. Unfortunately, yours isn't one of them. Exactly his criteria is subjective.

Dreams are incredibly interesting to me. Do you think you could dumb down those sentences I quoted form you a little bit? I'm having trouble understanding what you mean. Do other animals have dreams? EDIT: Sorry for the late response*

No you are misunderstanding, You have not drawn a line where behavioral modernity begins or ends you simply assert that it is "truly expressed" 50,000 years ago but only provide one kind of technology as evidence. Yes I did, it's not my fault you ignored them. Neanderthals arguably made the first instruments. Neanderthals also had "endless evidence of sophistication and self awareness". The fact you simply keep ignoring the data I'm presenting you makes your argument laughable. Neanderthals made the boats 50,000 years before homo sapiens http://phys.org/news/2012-03-evidence-neanderthals-boats-modern-humans.html Neanderthals use eagle talons(130,000 years ago) and feathers for necklaces http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0045927 http://www.nature.com/news/neanderthals-wore-eagle-talons-as-jewellery-1.17095 Neanderthals made glue from birch tar wax and the method is more sophisticated than anything cro magnon produced. http://www.evoanth.net/2016/05/20/neanderthals-make-spear/ "It’s a good thing that it is easy to transport because it’s ruddy hard to come by. When “boiling” the birch bark to make it the tar itself evaporates. As such, if there’s any hole in your ‘kiln’ all of that precious work will just disappear. It has to be air tight. Given such simple mistakes can lead to the loss of the whole batch, it can take an awfully long time to produce a useable amount. It also means nobody has quite figured out how to make it in an authentic Neanderthal way. Most people – including James – boil the birch in sealed tin cans. Hardly prehistoric." Neanderthals were possibly the first "chemists http://www.nature.com/articles/srep22159 "They may have used manganese dioxide to accelerate the combustion of wood. Although manganese oxide at Neanderthal sites has been considered to be for decorative use, recent research points out that substances easier to acquire could have been used and that "With archaeological evidence for fire places and the conversion of the manganese dioxide to powder, we argue that Neanderthals at Pech-de-l’Azé I used manganese dioxide in fire-making and produced fire on demand." MnO2 lowers the combustion temperature of wood from 350 degrees Celsius to 250 degrees Celsius. Manganese dioxide powder is common in Neanderthal archaeological sites" Neanderthal ancestors also made spears, which shows neanderthals simply lacked the proper anatomy to throw spears, but were intelligent enough to make them http://archive.archaeology.org/9705/newsbriefs/spears.html Neanderthal created very complex and large structures miles underground that some even speculate is a water reservoir. There is evidence to suggest that some stalagmites were heated before being placed. http://www.nature.com/news/neanderthals-built-cave-structures-and-no-one-knows-why-1.19975 http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/95319-neanderthals-built-a-water-reservoir/ neanderthals hunted big game like mammoths, deer, and bison. This requires language, forethought and complex social units. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/31506545/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/neanderthals-made-mammoth-jerky/ Behavioral modernity is defined as: burial fishing figurative art (cave paintings, petroglyphs, figurines) systematic use of pigment (such as ochre) and jewelry for decoration or self-ornamentation Using bone material for tools Transport of resources over long distances Blade technology Diversity, standardization, and regionally distinct artifacts Hearths Composite tools Neanderthals had ALL of this and it is more than enough evidence of behavioral modernity in neanderthals. Tools for chimps and birds tend to always be sticks, what a fallacious comparison. Neanderthals had language, even if slightly less complex, they had the proper anatomy and the genes for it. Language would have been necessary for big game hunting and the complex social structures neanderthals were obviously demonstrating. It's irrelevant because it doesn't prove anything. The date doesn't coincide with the beginning's of modern behavior, and the genes affected had more to do with racial differences and population growth than any specfic technological increase. I seriously don't understand the point of this useless correlation you brought up. Again you have no understanding of neoteny or how I am using it in this context. Netoeny has little do with actual brain size, and more to do with skull and skeleton shape. For example Blacks have wider nose bridges, bigger lips, and rounder faces which are all neotenous features, Whites have spherical craniums, small ears, and a shorter leg arm length in proportion to their torso, these are all neotenous features. If i remember correctly, homo sapiens have bigger olfactory bulbs than neanderthals which gave them a better sense of smell, If I knew the correlation I could figure IQ from it.

Facial measurement, as in they're measuring the front of the skull and not the entire skeleton or even the entire head. I already provided you evidence, you're hand waving again, it's a bad habit. By cough cough* I had meant that during this entire conversation you have been trying to make definitive statements and conclusions on limited or subjective evidence. You are a pot calling the kettle black. Edit: You still dont understand my calculations, which does not invalidate them. I am tired of arguing with a brick wall. This shows your problems with reading comprehension. My second link even corrected for the possibility of stolen technology and showed that african homo sapiens and neanderthals had virtually identical tool kits. African homo sapiens are considered behaviorally modern so therefore neanderthals were too. They did have similar levels of intelligence to us. Here is your problem, You're defining "behavioral modernity" as cro magnon behavior (not intentionally) then using cro magnon behavior as evidence of behavioral modernity. This is circular logic, Neanderthals and african HSS hunted big game, fish, other small creatures, had complex symbolism, art, buried their dead, spoke a language, had the ability to plan ahead, and innovated their technology. How the hell are they not behaviorally modern? My point was that the genetic change was irrelevant to cro magnon placement as our ancestor. My god, you don't even know what neoteny is. Cro magnon doesn't have to be a baby for it to be neotenous. I posted my sources and data on page 7, it is my very first comment. The basic Idea is that we know the average Bain size 1350 for the world and since cro magnons are virtually identical to humans today they are analogous to big brained europeans therefore I just have to convert the differential in brain size into a Z score which is basically how many standard deviations someone is away from the mean on a certain measurement. Z scores are universal measurements, 15 is the SD for IQ and the SD for brain size in whites is 35. So a brain size of 1385 is equivalent to a Z score of 1 just like a IQ of 115 is equal to a Z score of 1. So I just multiplied the Z score by 15 which tells me how many points in IQ the Z score is equivalent to. But as you and other's pointed out, brain size is not the only influence of intelligence, that's why I multiply how ever many IQ points the Z score was equal to by the correlation between brain size and IQ and this gives me a much more realistic measure.

90% Facially similar* We are not talking about extremes but averages, and any person with a head that small probably has the intelligence to reflect it. The average brain size for humans is 1350cc the average for homo erectus was much smaller and their brain structure more primitive. Yes I can, g is the best measure of intelligence we have. Why wouldn't they be on the same level? They came after our common ancestor, they were behaviorally modern and had bigger brains than us. cough cough* Are you mentally challenged? It's a blog that reviews anthropological studies, he almost always sources it too. His opinions are not points of the blogs and in fact he critically analyzes most research he reviews. Don't act like a bitter ass, it's a discussion. The first link was simply to show you that neanderthals had bone tools, I was pertaining to when you had said earlier in the discussion that all they had were rocks. When did I ever at any point, say we were not smarter than them? Of course we were. You're arguing a straw man. It says right in the text "This period is good for this sort of comparison because humans hadn’t reached Europe yet. As such they probably wouldn’t be regularly encountering Neanderthals. So any advanced Neanderthal technology couldn’t be explained away as simply them copying the local humans." I was simply showing you that Neanderthals were BEHAVIORALLY MODERN. Talk about emotional. Oh, so you didn't even read it. Well here is the actual study itself: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0096424#s3 Cro magnon behavior does not equal modern human behavior, that is circular logic. You think I'm trying to downplay cro magnon intelligence relative to neanderthals but I am not. Yes but your article even showed that these genetic changes were affecting a lot of different populations and not just european cro magnons. The evidence does support this idea. When you aren't busy hand waving my ideas you tend to just completely misunderstand them instead. Neoteny is the tendency for a species to retain it's juvenile features. While connected with maturation rates being neotenous is not always associated with being intelligent as is evidence with the khoisan tribe. You pointed to cro magnon's neotenous features (spherical head, lack of prognathism) as proof of anatomical modernity but that's complete bullshit.

Thank you for the link. It confirmed my fears though, It didn't specify a weighted importance on any particular features. Some of these physical variations could be benign in their overall benefit to our mental facilities. For example it seems most of these differences between Idaltu and HSS are mostly facial and not cranial. Still, it does confirm what you are trying to say, however according to this research cro magnon is still not an anatomically modern human. If your goal isn't showing who the first Human is then what are you trying to prove? I don't expect many fossil's to perfectly resemble us so are you just trying to assert that cro magnon is the latest ancestor we currently have? No they aren't. Do you even read all of what I write? The fact that brain size does not have a perfect correlation with IQ means there are obviously other factors, but this is why I simply multiply the differential by the correlation it corrects any overestimate I make. It has a 95% confidence rating and since Cro magnon is the same species as us and virtually genetically identical, they are analogous to big headed white people. Homo erectus did not have similar brain sizes to us, their variation was 750 to 1250cc and the 1250 ones are actually just homo Heidelbergensis which is arguably a completely different species. Not only this but their inner anatomic brain structure was no where near as modern as ours. Plus my Calculations would be irrelevant to them because they are a different species. Both neanderthals and african HSS were behaviorally modern, not saying you think they are dumb but you obviously underestimate them. I have a plethora of research showing this: http://www.evoanth.net/2012/08/21/human-technology-superior-neanderthal/ http://www.evoanth.net/2015/12/10/are-humans-smarter-than-neanderthals/ http://www.evoanth.net/2014/05/13/neanderthal-technology-on-par-with-humans/ Thank you, I am aware of this research already, I just wanted to make sure you knew that if you're going to make claims in relation to genetics you should provide evidence pertaining to that subject. It helps your case much more. Unfortunately though this data does not support your conclusions. First the article claims that these mutation rates increased around 40,000 years ago, Didn't cro magnon show up 50,000 years ago? Not only this but you even said that cro magnon probably originated in africa, and I would agree I seriously doubt the french fossil is the very first cro magnon and these specific mutations the researchers are discussing is in pertinence to racial differences in IQ, impulsitivity, fertility, disease etc. It never specifies that major facial changes were happening. Also we left africa 100,000 years ago and while no bodies have been found in certain areas, tools have been and they are modern. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_human_migrations You mean like the Israeli skulls? I seriously believe cranial capacity trumps neoteny. These creatures were obviously modern in their behavior they just looked different. This is dumb because i had a really good link that explained why we are so neotenized but I cant freaking find it so here is a different link, that talks about our weird chins: https://now.uiowa.edu/2015/04/why-we-have-chins heres another thing: https://www.fas.harvard.edu/~skeleton/pdfs/2008c.pdf

1)- Phenotype is not genotype and again neoteny is not equivalent to modernity. Two skulls do not tell the whole story, and it's possible that idaltus and cro mag's physical variation overlapped. I would like the link to that study about the 80% thing, Idaltu had a more similar brain size and intelligence to humans and there are plenty of modern humans with brow ridges and other prognathic features. Truthfully, You may need to knock this off your list of evidence because it is far too subjective and uncertain. 2)- The whole point of those IQ/brain size calculations was to show you that intelligence and innovation do not always coalesce. Are you deliberately hand waving away the data I have presented you? Screw it I'll humor you anyway: "A variety of evidence of abstract imagery, widened subsistence strategies, and other "modern" behaviors have been discovered in Africa, especially South Africa. The Blombos Cave site in South Africa, for example, is famous for rectangular slabs of ochre engraved with geometric designs. Using multiple dating techniques, the site was confirmed to be around 77,000 years old. Beads and other personal ornamentation have been found from Morocco which might be as old as 130,000 years old; as well, the Cave of Hearths in South Africa has yielded a number of beads significantly before 50,000 years ago. Expanding subsistence strategies beyond big-game hunting and the consequential diversity in tool types has been noted as signs of behavioral modernity. A number of South African sites have shown an early reliance on aquatic resources from fish to shellfish. Pinnacle Point, in particular, shows exploitation of marine resources as early as 120,000 years ago, perhaps in response to more arid conditions inland.Establishing a reliance on predictable shellfish deposits, for example, could reduce mobility and facilitate complex social systems and symbolic behavior. Blombos Cave and Site 440 in Sudan both show evidence of fishing as well. Taphonomic change in fish skeletons from Blombos Cave have been interpreted as capture of live fish, clearly an intentional human behavior" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity#Archaeological_Evidence 3)- You should provide Dna evidence not archaeological evidence to substantiate your claims of faster mutation rates. There were bottle necks and founder effects going on around 50,000 years ago so that data doesn't really surprise me. Again your anatomical evidence is your weakest point. In this study did they compare complete skeletons or skulls, and did it give equal weight to each characteristic or were some traits considered more important to our overall evolution therefore given more weight in relation to their value?? If it gave equal distribution to each variable trait then it may actually be very inaccurate. Again and for the last time neoteny does not equal genomic relation! Honestly, I gotta go with Idaltu being the first human, he is just far too similar to us in appearance, intelligence, skull size and behavior for me to ignore.

Exactly, so this further proves my calculations are accurate. True, brain size variance is enormous but so is intelligence. A quote from wikipedia about Idaltu: "in that their morphology has features, that show resemblances to more primitive African fossils, such as huge and robust skulls, yet a globular shape of the brain-case and the facial features typical of H. sapiens." Maybe Idaltu is simply an earlier form of cro magnon? Well either way no matter how I spin my calculations Idaltu seems to always be closer to modern day humans in intelligence than cro magnon. In my earlier calculations Idaltu was even closer to european's intelligence than cro magnon. If it helps your case at all the new figure of 100 for cro magnon is spot on for european intelligence. I'm aware, but again that just helps my case more than anything. but speaking of dna, Mitochondrial dna tells us our most recent ancestor is from africa, about 200,000 years ago and not 40,000 years ago. You haven't? I mean I don't expect you to suddenly change your mind out of nowhere but I do expect you take my criticisms seriously especially if you cannot empirically argue against them. You should be changing your theory to fit the data that i have presented you. I don't necessarily disagree with cro magnons being a direct ancestor but they are not the first AMH. EDIT: I think you may be underestimating neanderthal's intelligence take a look at this: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/04/140430-neanderthals-cook-food-evolution-science/ and this: http://www.livescience.com/54906-neanderthals-built-bizarre-underground-ring-structures.html They boiled food, built water reservoirs and even made primitive glue out of birch tar wax. I believe someone showed you evidence of sophisticated neanderthal behavior earlier but you simply hand waived it away.

Not really, our fossil evidence is just splotchy. Some species' fossils we have an abundance of(Australopithecus) and some we only have a few skulls of(cro magnon and Idaltu). The fossils are only one type of evidence and honestly, your anatomic argument is the weakest one. I figured my first post showed this but I'll try to further demonstrate these inconsistencies. Forgive me I swore you had argued something to that nature, I guess I'll go back and look through the previous posts. I speculate that neanderthals were more intelligent than modern day humans but the method I calculated Cro magnon's IQ would not work for neanderthals because they are a different species and have a different neural morphology. The good thing about this .35 correlation is that it takes other factors into account for me. If brain size was the only determinant of intelligence then there would be a perfect correlation between the two but there isn't so that's why I multiply the differential by the correlation because it corrects any overestimate I make. Yes but my calculations showed that Cro magnon was much more intelligent than modern humans even though modern humans have an exponentially greater tool complexity than any known hominid species. Two hominid populations could have the same level of g and still have differing tool set complexity because if there is no need for innovation then none will happen. Human brain size has been decreasing while relative body size has practically remained constant, as a collective we are more intelligent than we were, but on an individual level we are less intelligent. The mere fact that some scientists claim that our decreasing EQ isn't relevant to our intelligence is simply more evidence of dysgenic intellectual trends. If we cloned a full grown Cro magnon today it would probably have a lower IQ because it simply does not have the crystallized knowledge that we do, but if you cloned a baby cro magnon and raised in from birth I suspect it would grow up to be far more intelligent than the average human. http://www.evoanth.net/2014/03/13/our-brain-is-shrinking-but-our-frontal-lobe-is-growing/ http://www.evoanth.net/2013/08/02/4023/ http://www.evoanth.net/2016/04/26/technology-evolve-not-population-size/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4843435/ Yes, it would be but cro magnon is not a different species than us(at least not according to you) so Cro magnons are basically analogous to big brained europeans. The calculations I performed are the closest estimation to an individual's IQ besides actually taking a test itself(95% confidence rating). Again if you are talking about the differences in neotenization between hominids this has less do do with mental modernity and more to do with sexual selection. The fact that Cro magnon's facial features are so unique compared to other ancestors further demonstrates this factoid. If facial features were completely equivalent to our encephalization, you would see a much more gradual transition. Idaltu actually had bigger brains than modern day humans. If cro magnon didn't in fact originate in europe then I may need to do some tweaks to my calculations. Assuming that cro magnon is originally an Africa hominid I recalculated their respective IQ's. Cro magnon is around 100 while Idaltu is around 90. The average African IQ is 80 While the world average is 87 so even then Idaltu is still closer to Modern day humans than cro magnon is regarding intelligence. I think the reason you get downvoted so much is because of your initially arrogant approach to this discussion and it didn't help that most of the people responding to you were simply not informed enough to give you meaningful responses. It simply fueled your fire.

I'm going to give you the least obfuscated answer I can: Combination of environment, genes, luck, and culture. EDIT: here are some useful links http://people.hss.caltech.edu/~jlr/conquest1nocode1.pdf http://economics.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Workshops-Seminars/Economic-History/hoffman-120409.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence

Sorry, I'm pretty ignorant of these things. So these glymphatic systems will basically induce dreams and when these dreams occur it makes the visual system in your brain fire connections like crazy which in turn creates visual stimuli that probably correlate with your everyday back of the head thoughts, in this sense is the term subconsciousness accurate from where the content of your dreams originate?? You're incredibly smart and have pointed me to some very interesting discussions, I will explore them soon. Thank you for taking the time to humor my anthro debate and provide me with more materials to further my intellectual endeavors. Truth be told I don't get much of this kind of stimulation in my normal social life so I've enjoyed this quite a bit. On a completely unrelated and maybe even weird note I like your avatar, it looks "trippy".

You're welcome (I'm assuming you're talking to me)

Okay, sorry if this conversation is dead but I feel as though I need to make some conjectures. I am a know-it-all so please forgive me. Evan, if I am correctly accessing your argument's position you are claiming the first anatomically/behaviorally modern Humans were european "cro magnons"? Maybe I could give you a realistic response, I am an amateur anthropologist, and have been lurking around this discussion for a few days. First, as you said earlier, there is only 1 complete cro magnon skull. Well the same goes for Idaltu: “Three well preserved crania are accounted for, the best preserved being from an adult male (BOU-VP-16/1) having a brain capacity of 1,450 cm3 (88 cu in). The other crania include another partial adult male and a six-year-old child.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens_idaltu I believe it would be extremely fallacious to try and base any concrete assertions on only two skulls. Lets put this aside for a minute and lets just assume that the few skulls we have are indeed representative of a whole species. The main issue with your claims is that they are incredibly oversimplified and possibly subjective: You sighted tool complexity as evidence of Cro magnon's cognitive superiority over neanderthals, however intelligence is not entirely the cause of tool use and complexity, it only supplies it with necessary power when tool use becomes a necessity. Correct if I'm wrong but you sighted Cro magnon's bigger brains as evidence of higher intelligence over other archaic hominids but then chose Neural structure as a case for mental prowess when another poster showed you that Modern humans had smaller brains compared to their ancestors. Both neural/cranial structure and absolute size are inherent determinants of a creature's intelligence. So is neuron density, amount of blood flow to the brain(​which homo sapiens have 6 times the amount compared to their relative brain size) and maturation rate. In relation to brain size I have a formula that I believe can give you an accurate(as accurate as it this kind of shit can get) measure of cognitive ability between Idaltu, cro magnon and AMH. lets do some math try to follow along I'm not the best teacher: Cro magnon's Skull Size is 1600cc Idaltus is 1450cc, the correlation between IQ and brain size is .35. There are about 2(or 3 but I am lazy) different ways we could do this but I am confident that both will show that Idaltu is actually more close to intelligence with "AMH" than Cro magnon were. The Mean brain size for Africans is 1276cc all we do is subtract Idaltu's Size of 1450cc from the African mean which gives us 174 now we just divide that by the standard deviation of african brain size which is 84 that gives us a Z- score of about 2.071 we then multiply this by the SD of african IQ which is about 12 that gives us 24.8571 Finally, all we do now is multiply 24.8571 by the correlation which is .35 and then add the racial mean IQ for Africans(85). So 8.7 plus 85 is 93.7 meaning Idaltu were slightly above the current world average of intelligence. Europeans average brain size is 1362cc with a standard deviation of 35 and an IQ standard deviation of about 15 Using the same formula above, Cro magnon's IQ should come out to about 135.7 which is ENORMOUS! That means Cro magnons were borderline genius compared to most humans today. Now this may be inaccurate because I am using the racial mean and SD of IQ for blacks and whites when I should probably be using the world average and world SD instead. The World average IQ is 87 with a SD of 17.3, using the same figures for cranial capacity for africans and europeans and plugging them in the formula: Cro magnon's IQ becomes 128 while Idaltus becomes 99(todays average europeans IQ) This shows that Idaltus are more closer to us than Cro magnon on an intellectual level My final criticism albeit a short one, is simply your preference of neotenous features in regards to how it translates to evolutionary "superiority" on our family branch. One of the most neotenous groups, the Khoisan have IQs that are borderline mentally retarded. I argue that our gracility is mostly due to self domestication, genetic drift and sexual selection which may have less to do with intelligence than you would like to think. The fact that the neanderthals did not have these features but were still overlapping us in intelligence shows that appearance isn't everything. Hell, I have some prognathous features but my IQ is above average. I'm sorry you feel that this site is not stimulating you enough but I have tried my best to argue your claims as much as I could, I just feel your argument has too much subjectivity and I tend to lean towards the genetic evidence which shows that we come from africa. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2668913/ http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth/smith/TimeMach1984.pdf https://pumpkinperson.com/2016/09/03/the-iq-distribution-of-the-entire-world/ https://pumpkinperson.com/2015/12/23/what-exactly-is-the-correlation-between-iq-and-brain-size-in-adults/ http://phys.org/news/2016-08-smarter-brains-blood-thirsty.html http://www.evoanth.net/2015/11/26/neanderthals-humans-evolved-by-accident-via-genetic-drift/

That's what I basically meant. I've never gotten much sleep, that has probably caused plenty of side effects on my mental performance. Do you think the shrinkage of our brain cells has any effect or influence on our subconsciousness and to maybe a lesser extent our dreams? This talk of sleeping has me probing ground I haven't in a while. I heard our brains are actually more active when we are asleep, or at least certain parts.

So in a very simplified sense the glymphatic system basically is the reset button on your brain? Does this have anything to do with neural plasticity?