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samoan62's avatar

Nice read! Glad someone had looked into this.

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Lily's avatar

So there seems to be a Goldilocks zone for evolution of intelligence in humans? (pun intended).

Emil you are correct in surmising that there are countervailing factors. One fairly obvious one might be a sharp reduction in selection pressure within established agricultural communities - we know that adequate food produces a sharp reduction in mortality.

Then cultural or societal factors must be invoked. For example, the Greek city-states were notoriously combative and only became unified in the face of a greater threat.

And we know that culturally they valued intelligence - I refer to Odysseus.

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