Our Brains Are Getting Smaller

People were smarter when we hunter gatherers because we had to be. We had to recognize migratory patterns and how the varying weather each season might affect them, distinguish edible vegetation from poisonous, learn how to hunt, fish, and bait traps, as well as how to find or construct decent shelter and clothing, including shoes, as well as set bones, start fires with flint, and do all sorts of other shit.

The dawn of agriculture and civilization produced the first idiot niche. Farmers still had to be knowledgeable and diligent, and often still failed, but assuming they had a successful harvest, they had some leisure time to get drunk. They could use social credit to exchange grains for fish or clothes, or no longer had to know a little bit of everything.

There’s a lot more data and technology today, and even within fields, we need subdivisions because the world has become so complex, but as a result, we don’t understand over 99.999% of how the world works.

Even compared to people in the 1800s, we’d be comparatively worthless if we had to build a decent shelter, fix a boat, or make a pair of shoes. If a modern person was shipwrecked or stuck in the forest with nothing, over 90% of us would die before winter, and winter would finish off most of the rest of us.

It isn’t just the lack of practical knowledge or appreciation of how difficult it is to find and build the materials and tools necessary to make something as seemingly simple as a nail, but the general lack of empathy and decreasing ability to cooperate directly with strangers for anything other than basic transactions. In a dire life or death situation, our contemporary behavior indicates that we’d be much more likely to bicker than cooperate and would probably die regardless, even if we were stranded with friends.

We’ve taken so much for granted for so long we refuse to acknowledge our problems and responsibilities and have abandoned personal agency. In fairness, most of us work too hard for too little and are locked in a system too complex to know who to redress. If you can’t even get in touch with a customer service representative, how are you going to fix the world?

Regardless, the remains of hunter gatherers suggest they were skilled, intelligent, and compassionate, as several were found with healed broken bones, and their brain cavities are typically larger than ours.

They had a more varied diet, a more robust immune system, were more tightly knit socially, and rested and slept at their leisure. They couldn’t afford to have a stupid or greedy leader, as within any group, even one where all included have a vast array of skills and knowledge, some were still particularly adept at specific tasks. A rapacious leader would ruin them, and the group was smart enough to know it. If the person who was best at tracking told them where to go, they’d listen, and that person would give them their reasoning, or teach the group in the process, and if that reasoning was thought to be flawed, they’d discuss it.

This ability to listen and have dispassionate discourse—or agree on basic facts to inform a discussion—is likely the most important skill that we’ve lost.

We were not meant to live like this, and this is becoming increasingly clear as we work harder, have fewer friends, and feel more depressed than ever.

This doesn’t mean we have to return to the forest, but it’s definitely time to try something else.