Ancient Hominids That Were Smarter Than We Are?

Nevermind. As it turns out, this article was already posted 2 years ago.
Sorry.



An ancient people called the Boskop in Eastern Africa had 25% larger brains than we do.
They also had childlike faces.

Read about it here on the Discover Website;
http://discovermagazine.com/2009/th...smarter-than-us/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C

Brings to mind a LOT of questions about what happened to them and what were they like?

Neandertal people's brains were also larger than ours.
We don't know whether that means that they were smarter, per se, but general belief is that they would have been just as smart (although more stuck in their ways) than Cro Magnon. And our ancestors were almost extinct at a time when Neandertals still inhabited Ice Age Europe.

The other signifier of possible intelligence is in Brain/Body ratio -- that being, the ratio of brain size compared to that of the whole body. (The only other known animals to match us in brain size and brain/body ratio are dolphins.) I would generally be among the first to jump to the defence of any animal that people are mocking as "stupid". I suspect a lot of this attribution has to do with the old idea of the "Barbarian". (We don't understand these others, and therefore they can't possibly have anything to say.)

Interestingly enough "immature" facial features in adults are also a mark of domestication -- dogs for example have the facial structure of wolf pups (except for pugs who retain the structure of a wolf foetus, ugh poor things!) Not to say that they were farmers too (might be moderately ridiculous to leap to that conclusion) but that point did strike me as rather intriguing.

Just a few meandering points. Thanks in any case for bringing that article to our attention -- it was a good read in any year. :redface: