Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Why Does That Seem Odd?

Okay, so I'm at work and I am reading this article about how there was this offshoot of human beings about, oh, 10,000 BC called the Boskops man, I believe they termed it. I've already lost the link for the article and I am too lazy to look it up again, so don't quote me on this, but what they said was, there was this offshoot of humanity that had a brain capacity about 35% larger than the average human being of today. That's right, the skulls weren't smaller than modern humans, they were LARGER. Now I know we probably aren't all up on the latest research in neuro-archaeology (I have no idea if that's a real term or not, I just made it up), but what the article suggested was that this meant the average Boskops fellow had an IQ of about 150, with the smartest individuals having an IQ well beyond what was measurable by today's standards.

Now the interesting part about this article was that it was wondering WHY the Boskops offshoot (and it was an actual offshoot, they found many specimens) died out instead of taking over with their obviously superior intelligence. Apparently, according to the article, the much larger Boskops guys would have been more able to process clues from their environment, better able to establish the correct connections with those clues, and planned much farther ahead than their less intelligent counterparts. The article writer seemed confused why they didn't make it, this superior race of dreamers, thinkers and planners.

DOH! I don't know who wrote this article, but even a look at today's culture should make the answer obvious. INTELLIGENCE IS NOT SELECTED FOR SURVIVAL. Oh sure, you have the occasional genius as well as the occasional moron, and certainly there's a lot of varieties in between, as well as multiple varieties of genius and moron respectively, but come on now. Who has the most kids in today's society? Sports stars. Actors. Bubba Jimmy Joebob from east bohunk, tennessee. The Octomom. Jon and Kate Gosselin. No offense to Bubba Jimmy Joebob, because he is an awesome guy, and I want to do those muddy drunken doughnuts in the kid's go karts with you again soon, but these people are not known for their awesome intellect. Sure, Bill Gates might have a wife, but he has no kids that I know of. There's no little Stephen Hawking Jr running around solving quadratic equations while he's waiting for the bottle to heat up for his afternoon feed. For every baby a smart person has, there's about 20 of those Duggins kids, was that their names? The mom pops out a new one every year or so. I'm not saying they aren't bright kids, mind you, but how many geniuses do you know of who claim to have fathered a dozen brats? Let's face it here, smart people just don't breed as much.

Sure, smart people will keep popping up along the evolutionary chain every so often, I mean, when you have 20 kids per couple, there's bound to be a brainy one in the bunch somewhere. Not that he's going to seem very smart. When you're brainy and you're outnumbered 19 to 1, you try to blend in just to survive, right? So the smart guys won't even try to do anything smart, they'll just act stupid so they can fit in with the other idiots.

Now I don't know whether it's just that smart people are pickier, or have the brains not to want to deal with 20 screaming kids at one time, or it's just an entirely genetic thing, but less intelligent people are always going to outnumber and outbreed the smarter ones, which means, any offshoots with brains are going to have a hell of a time making it in the long term.

I should think that would be obvious to anyone with intelligence. Not saying which side of the fence I'm on, mind you. That should also be obvious.

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