The human brain has experienced tremendous growth from the earliest ancestors of humans to what they are today. However, this growth was not always the same. Tens of thousands of years ago, our brains slowly began to shrink. So far, many hypotheses have been put forward as to the reason for this. Recently, perhaps the most interesting hypothesis was presented by 3 researchers.
The hypothesis put forward by a biological anthropologist, an evolutionary neurobiologist, and a behavioral ecologist was based on the evolution of the brain of a different species. However, this species was not genetically close to us, like chimpanzees, orangutans or any other primate species. The researchers compared the human brain with the ant brain.
Social life reduces mental load:
Our brains are almost 4 times larger than they were 6 million years ago. However, about 100,000 years ago, our brains began to shrink in size. The reason for this was thought to be a change in diet or the shrinking of our entire body. A new idea was that sociability reduces the workload of the brain.
You might say, “What’s wrong with ants, we’re not genetically close” because we’re not. However, these creatures also lead a very social life. Ants that establish large, complex and homogeneous communities; They lead a communal life by acquiring different assignments.
When the researchers examined the ant brain in terms of structure, size, and energy use, they realized that their social lives saved them a great deal of energy. Mentioning that people’s collective intelligence has gradually improved after they have adapted to living together, like ants, which work much more efficiently in groups, scientists think that the size of the brain may have shrunk due to this lowering the energy need in the brain.
Living in large groups in constant interaction eliminates the need to collect all the information necessary for survival in a single member. A community with knowledge distribution reduces the mental burden by communicating this information to each other like a network. The authors of the study explain the situation as follows: “If group decision-making ability creates coherent group responses that will increase cognitive accuracy and speed in making individual decisions, considering that the decisions taken and the energy expended in this way are also related to survival success; The human brain may also have shrunk over time to save metabolic energy. “
51723
