XPost: talk.politics.misc, alt.science, soc.culture
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12266103/Watch-horrifying-moment-monkey-EATS-babys-corpse.html
. . .
Monkeys are smart, but most aren't quite "there"
in terms of introspection/abstraction.
Now consider the recently-discovered S.African
species homo naledi. These were rather small
things, and their brains were barely bigger than
most monkeys - nearest well-known development
model might be "Lucy", or maybe not quite
even that. They were just one of the pre-human
species co-existing in Africa at the time,
indeed they kind of overlapped with our kind,
though humans were more a north & east thing.
A cave found filled with HN remains was discovered
about 10 years ago. At first it was assumed that
either predatory animals had dragged the bodies
in there, or maybe HN just tossed dead bodies
into the pit.
However the condition of the skeletons - and how
far they were located into the cave - suggests
they were deliberately transported there by
HN itself. Of late, close examination of the
cave reveals glyphs/drawings near the bodies
created by HN - some crude testimonials or
religious stuff maybe. Those "monkeys"
appear to have been VERY smart for the size
of their brains - more bang for the neural buck
than ourselves perhaps ?
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/10/world/homo-naledi-science-newsletter-wt-scn/index.html
If even HN had this level of abstraction, then
what of "Lucy" and H.hablis ? We long LIKED to
think of them as dirt-stupid ... but maybe they
were pretty damned much like us, up to the
'dull human' level at least. Our large brains
likely allow certain subtle refinements, but
that much brain also creates a lot of processing
overhead. Maybe we don't get nearly as much
"bang for our neural buck" - three times the
brain tissue for just a handful more IQ points ?
So - don't feel TOO damned proud. Those Old Guys
had maybe 90% of our stuff down already.
- - -
"The secret is to bang the rocks together guys"
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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