Interpopulational variation in human brain size: implications for hominin cognitive phylogeny
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.2478/anre-2021-0029Keywords:
Brain size, variation, cognition, archeology, embodied cognition, life history, H. erectusAbstract
Throughout the hominin lineage brain size is believed to have increased threefold – increase which, it is argued by some researchers, results in the enhanced brain power that distinguishes humans from any other living being. However, as we demonstrate in this article this supposed increase is the result of comparing the species mean of contemporary humans with other great apes and fossil hominins. This method obscures both interpopulational variation among modern humans, and the fact that the putative increases in the mean are the result of an increase in the upper limit in some populations, which has the result of obscuring the relative stasis in the lower limit over the last 600k years. For example, populations such as Aboriginal Australians have a range that is more different from Danes than it is from that of Asian H. erectus over the last 600ka. Yet Aboriginal Australians, whose unique anatomy seems to be related to the climatic conditions of Australia, possess all of the socio-cognitive traits characteristic of all other modern-day populations – yet they seemed not to have undergone increase in brain size to the degree that many other populations have. In this instance brain size seems to be unrelated to cognition. In this article we present a statistical analysis of interpopulational variation in contemporary humans and why such an analysis is crucial for our understanding of hominin cognitive, social and technological evolution. We also suggest how such variation may add to our understanding of hominin ontogeny or life history. Additionally, we develop a model based on humanity’s unique form of embodied social cognition that results from our upright bipedal posture and hand morphology. This model is then used to explain the results of our statistical analysis and the possible factors underpinning the human emergence.
Downloads
References
Alba DM, Moya-Sola S, Kohler M. 2003. Morphological affinities of the Australopithecus afarensis hand on the basis of manual proportions and relative thumb length. J Hum Evol 44(2):225–54.
View in Google Scholar
Allen H, Akerman K. 2015. Innovation and change in northern Australian Aboriginal spear technologies: the case for reed spears. Archaeology in Oceania 50(S1):83–93.
View in Google Scholar
Almécija S, Moyà-Solà S, Alba DM. 2010. Early Origin for Human-Like Precision Grasping: A Comparative Study of Pollical Distal Phalanges in Fossil Hominins. PLOS ONE 5(7):e11727.
View in Google Scholar
Antón SC, Taboada HG, Middleton ER, Rainwater CW, Taylor AB, Turner TR et al. 2016. Morphological variation in Homo erectus and the origins of developmental plasticity. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 371(1698):20150236.
View in Google Scholar
Assaf E, Barkai R, Gopher A 2016. Knowledge transmission and apprentice flint-knappers in the Acheulo-Yabrudian: A case study from Qesem Cave, Israel. Quaternary International 398:70–85.
View in Google Scholar
Bamforth DB, Finlay N. 2008. Introduction: Archaeological Approaches to Lithic Production Skill and Craft Learning. J Archaeol Method Theory 15(1):1–27.
View in Google Scholar
Beals KL, Smith CL, Dodd SM, Angel JL, Armstrong E, Blumenberg B, et al. 1984. Brain Size, Cranial Morphology, Climate, and Time Machines [and Comments and Reply]. Curr Anthropol 25(3):301–30.
View in Google Scholar
Bednarik RG. 2015. The First Mariners. Bentham Science Publishers.
View in Google Scholar
Bogin B. 2003. The human pattern of growth and development in paleontological perspective. In: AJ Nelson, GE Krovit, and JL Thompson (editors). Patterns of Growth and Development in the Genus Homo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 15–44.
View in Google Scholar
Bogin B, Smith BH. 1996. Evolution of the human life cycle. Am J Hum Biol 8(6)6:703–16.
View in Google Scholar
Brown P. 1992. Recent Human Evolution in East Asia and Australasia. Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences 337(1280):235–42.
View in Google Scholar
Brumm A. 2010. The Movius Line and The Bamboo Hypothesis: Early Hominin Stone Technology in Southeast Asia. Lithic Technology 35(1):7–24.
View in Google Scholar
Brumm A, van den Bergh GD, Storey M, Kurniawan I, Alloway BV, Setiawan E et al. 2016. Age and context of the oldest known hominin fossils from Flores. Nature, vol. 534:249–56.
View in Google Scholar
Campbell B. 1962. The systematics of man. Nature 194:225–32.
View in Google Scholar
Chemero A. 2011. Radical Embodied Cognitive Science. MIT Press.
View in Google Scholar
Chen S-q, Chen W-j. 2016. A chain of tools: An experimental study on picks of the Qinling region. Quaternary International 400:93–9.
View in Google Scholar
Clark G, Henneberg M. 2015. The life history of Ardipithecus ramidus: A heterochronic model of sexual and social maturation. Anthropol Rev 78(2):109–32.
View in Google Scholar
Clark G, Henneberg M. 2017. Ardipithecus ramidus and the evolution of language and singing: An early origin for hominin vocal capability. HOMO 68(2):101–21.
View in Google Scholar
Coolidge FL, Wynn T. 2009. The rise of Homo sapiens: the evolution of modern thinking. United Kingdom:Wiley-Blackwell.
View in Google Scholar
Corballis MC. 2019. Mental time travel, language, and evolution. Neuropsychologia 134:107202.
View in Google Scholar
de Beaune, SA, Coolidge FL, Wynn T. 2009. Cognitive Archaeology and Human Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
View in Google Scholar
Dean C, Leakey MG, Reid D, Schrenk F, Schwartz GT, Stringer C, Walker A. 2001. Growth processes in teeth distinguish modern humans from Homo erectus and earlier hominins. Nature 414(6864):628–31.
View in Google Scholar
Dean MC, Liversidge HM. 2015. Age estimation in fossil hominins: comparing dental development in early Homo with modern humans. Ann Hum Biol 42(4):415–29.
View in Google Scholar
Dean MC, Smith BH. 2009. Growth and Development of the Nariokotome Youth, KNM-WT 15000. In: FE Grin, JG Fleagle, and RE Leakey (editors). The First Humans – Origin and Early Evolution of the Genus Homo. Springer, Dordrecht.
View in Google Scholar
Dennell R. 2014. East Asia and Human Evolution. In: M Porr, and R Dennell (editors). Southern Asia, Australia, and the Search for Human Origins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 8–20.
View in Google Scholar
Detroit F. 2000. The Period of Transition between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens in East and Southeast Asia: New Perspectives by the Way of Geometric Morphometrics. Acta Anthropologica Sinica 19(Supp):75–81.
View in Google Scholar
Diniz-Filho J, Jardim L, Mondanaro A, Raia P. 2019. Multiple Components of Phylogenetic Non-stationarity in the Evolution of Brain Size in Fossil Hominins. Evol Biol 46(1):47–59.
View in Google Scholar
Gallagher S. 2006. How the Body Shapes the Mind. Clarendon Press.
View in Google Scholar
Gómez-Robles A, Smaers JB, Holloway RL, Polly PD, Wood BA. 2017. Brain enlargement and dental reduction were not linked in hominin evolution. PNAS 114(3):468–73.
View in Google Scholar
González-Forero M, Gardner A. 2018. Inference of ecological and social drivers of human brain-size evolution. Nature 557(7706):554–7.10.
View in Google Scholar
Górny S. 1957. Crania africana: Uganda. Wroclaw: PWN.
View in Google Scholar
Gould SJ. 1996. The Mismeasure of Man. Norton.
View in Google Scholar
Grafton ST. 2009. Embodied cognition and the simulation of action to understand others. Ann N Y Acad Sci 1156:97–117.
View in Google Scholar
Grimm G. 2000. Apprentice knapping: Relating the cognitive and social dimensions of lithic technological behavior.’, in JS Derevensky (editor). Children and Material Culture. London: Routledge.
View in Google Scholar
Harmand S, Lewis JE, Feibel CS, Lepre CJ, Prat S, Lenoble A et al. 2015. 3.3-million-year-old stone tools from Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya. Nature 521(7552):310–5.
View in Google Scholar
Harper C, Mina L. 1981. A comparison of Australian caucasian and aboriginal brain weights’, Clinical and Experimental Neurology 18:44–51.
View in Google Scholar
Haug H. 1987. Brain sizes, surfaces, and neuronal sizes of the cortex cerebri: a stereological investigation of man and his variability and a comparison with some mammals (primates, whales, marsupials, insectivores, and one elephant). Am J Anat 180(2):126–42.
View in Google Scholar
Hawkes K. 2006. Life history theory and human evolution; a chronicle of ideas and findings. In: KHaR Paine (editor). The Evolution of Human Life History. Santa Fe and Oxford: SAR Press.
View in Google Scholar
Hawkes K, Coxworth. JE 2013. Grandmothers and the evolution of human longevity: a review of findings and future directions. Evol Anthropol 22(6):294–302.
View in Google Scholar
Hechst B. 1932. Über einen Fall von Mikroencephalie ohne geistigen Defekt. Archiv für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten 97(1):64–76.
View in Google Scholar
Henneberg M. 1988. Decrease of Human Skull Size in the Holocene. Hum Biol 60(3):395–405.
View in Google Scholar
Henneberg M. 1990. Brain size/body weight variability in Homo sapiens: Consequences for interpreting hominid evolution. HOMO 39:121–30.
View in Google Scholar
Henneberg M, Steyn M. 1993. Trends in cranial capacity and cranial index in Subsaharan Africa during the Holocene. Am J Hum Biol 5(4):473–9.
View in Google Scholar
Henneberg M, Thackeray J. 1995. A single-lineage hypothesis of hominid evolution. Evol Theory 11:31–8.
View in Google Scholar
Henrich J. 2015. The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
View in Google Scholar
Herrmann E, Call J, Hernandez-Lloreda MV, Hare B, Tomasello M. 2007. Humans have evolved specialized skills of social cognition: the cultural intelligence hypothesis. Science 317(5843):1360–6.
View in Google Scholar
Holloway RL. 1973. Endocranial volumes of early African hominids, and the role of the brain in human mosaic evolution. J Hum Evol 2(6):449–59.
View in Google Scholar
Holloway RL. 1980. Within-species brain-body weight variability: A reexamination of the Danish data and other primate species. Am J Phys Anthropol 53(1):109–21.
View in Google Scholar
Hrdy SB. 2009. Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,.
View in Google Scholar
Hublin JJ, Neubauer S, Gunz P. 2015. Brain ontogeny and life history in Pleistocene hominins. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 370(1663):20140062.
View in Google Scholar
Inoue S, Matsuzawa T. 2007. Working memory of numerals in chimpanzees. Curr Biol 17(23):R1004–R1005.
View in Google Scholar
Isler K, van Schaik CP. 2012. Allomaternal care, life history and brain size evolution in mammals. J Hum Evol 63(1):52–63.
View in Google Scholar
Jerison HJ. 1973. Evolution of the Brain and Intelligence. Academic Press.
View in Google Scholar
Kuman K, Li C, Li H. 2014. Large cutting tools in the Danjiangkou Reservoir Region, central China. J Hum Evol (76):129–53.
View in Google Scholar
Lemelin P, Schmitt D. 2016. On Primitiveness, Prehensility, and Opposability of the Primate Hand: The Contributions of Frederic Wood Jones and John Russell Napie. InL TL Kivell, P Lemelin, BG Richmond, and D Schmitt (editors). The Evolution of the Primate Hand: Anatomical, Developmental, Functional, and Paleontological Evidence. New York, NY: Springer New York, pp. 5–13.
View in Google Scholar
Leppard TP. 2015. Passive Dispersal versus Strategic Dispersal in Island Colonization by Hominins. Curr Anthropol 56(4):590–5.
View in Google Scholar
Li H, Li C, Kuman K 2014. Rethinking the “Acheulean” in East Asia: Evidence from recent investigations in the Danjiangkou Reservoir Region, central China. Quaternary International 347: 163–75.
View in Google Scholar
Linacre JM. 1996. Rasch Measurement Transactions, Part 2. Chicago, IL: MESA Press
View in Google Scholar
Lovejoy CO. 2009. Reexamining Human Origins in Light of Ardipithecus ramidus. Science 5949, pp. 74–74, 74e71–74e78.
View in Google Scholar
Lundborg G. 2013. The Hand and the Brain: From Lucy’s Thumb to the Thought-Controlled Robotic Hand. London: Springer London.
View in Google Scholar
Martin RD, Martin AE. 1990. Primate Origins and Evolution: A Phylogenetic Reconstruction. Princeton University Press.
View in Google Scholar
McPherron SP, Alemseged Z, Marean CW, Wynn JG, Reed D, Geraads D, et al. 2010. Evidence for stone-tool-assisted consumption of animal tissues before 3.39 million years ago at Dikika, Ethiopia. Nature 466(7308):857–60.
View in Google Scholar
Milicerowa H. 1955. Crania Australica. Wroclaw: PWN.
View in Google Scholar
Miller DJ, Duka T, Stimpson CD, Schapiro SJ, Baze WB, McArthur, et al. 2012, Prolonged myelination in human neocortical evolution. PNAS 109(41):16480–5.
View in Google Scholar
Mishra S, Gaillard C, Hertler C, Moigne A-M, Simanjuntak T. 2010. India and Java: Contrasting records, intimate connections. Quaternary International 223–224:265–70.
View in Google Scholar
Movius HL. 1948. The Lower Palaeolithic Cultures of Southern and Eastern Asia. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 38(4):329–420.
View in Google Scholar
Napier J. 1993. Hands. Princeton University Press.
View in Google Scholar
Neubauer S, Hublin J-J, Gunz P. 2018. The evolution of modern human brain shape. Science Advances 4(1):eaao5961.
View in Google Scholar
Northoff G. 2018. The Spontaneous Brain: From the Mind–Body to the World–Brain Problem. MIT Press.
View in Google Scholar
O’Connell JF, Hawkes K, Blurton Jones NG. 1999. Grandmothering and the evolution of Homo erectus. J Hum Evol 36(5):461–85.
View in Google Scholar
Pakkenberg H, Voigt J. 1964. Brain Weight of the Danes. Cells Tissues Organs. 56(4):297–307.
View in Google Scholar
Pargeter J, Khreisheh N, Stout D. 2019. Understanding stone tool-making skill acquisition: Experimental methods and evolutionary implications. J Hum Evol 133:146–66.
View in Google Scholar
Pei S, Niu D, Guan Y, Nian X, Yi M, Ma N, Li X, Sahnouni M. 2015, Middle Pleistocene hominin occupation in the Danjiangkou Reservoir Region, Central China: studies of formation processes and stone technology of Maling 2A site. J Archaeol Sci 53:391–407.
View in Google Scholar
Raghanti MA, Edler MK, Stephenson AR, Munger EL, Jacobs B, Hof PR et al. 2018. A neurochemical hypothesis for the origin of hominids. PNAS 115(6):E1108–E1116.
View in Google Scholar
Richmond BG, Roach NT, Ostrofsky KR. 2016. Evolution of the Early Hominin Hand. In: TL Kivell, P Lemelin, BG Richmond, and D Schmitt (editors). The Evolution of the Primate Hand: Anatomical, Developmental, Functional, and Paleontological Evidence. New York, NY: Springer New York, pp. 515–43.
View in Google Scholar
Rightmire GP. 2013. Homo erectus and Middle Pleistocene hominins: brain size, skull form, and species recognition. J Hum Evol 65(3):223–52.
View in Google Scholar
Schoenemann P. 2013. Hominid Brain Evolution. In: DR Begun (editor). A Companion to Paleoanthropology. USA: Wiley Blackwell Companions to Anthropology.
View in Google Scholar
Shen C, Gao X, Wei Q. 2011. The Earliest Hominin Occupations in the Nihewan Basin of Northern China: Recent Progress in Field Investigations. In: CJ Norton, and DR Braun (editors). Asian Paleoanthropology: From Africa to China and Beyond. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 169–80.
View in Google Scholar
Shen C, Zhang X, Gao X. 2016. Zhoukoudian in transition: Research history, lithic technologies, and transformation of Chinese Palaeolithic archaeology. Quaternary International 400:4–13.
View in Google Scholar
Smith BH. 1991. Dental development and the evolution of life history in Hominidae. Am J Phys Anthropol 86(2):157–74.
View in Google Scholar
Smith BH, Tompkins RL. 1995. Toward A Life History of the Hominidae. Ann Rev Anthropol 24(1):257–79.
View in Google Scholar
Smith CL, Beals KL. 1990. Cultural Correlates with Cranial Capacity. Am Anthropologist 92(1):193–200.
View in Google Scholar
Sterelny K. 2012. The Evolved Apprentice. MIT Press.
View in Google Scholar
Stewart J, Gapenne O, Di Paolo EA. 2014. Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science. MIT Press.
View in Google Scholar
Stout D, Chaminade T, Thomik A, Apel J, Faisal A. 2018. Grammars of action in human behavior and evolution. bioRxiv 281543. doi:10.1101/281543.
View in Google Scholar
Stout D, Hecht E, Khreisheh N, Bradley B, Chaminade T. 2015. Cognitive Demands of Lower Paleolithic Toolmaking. PLOS ONE 10(4):e0121804.
View in Google Scholar
Tobias PV. 1971. The brain in hominid evolution. Smithsonian Institution.
View in Google Scholar
Toth T. 1965. The Variability of the Weight of the Brain of Homo. In: Homenaje a Juan Comas en su 65 aniversario, Mexico.
View in Google Scholar
Verendeev A, Sherwood CC. 2017. Human brain evolution. Curr Opin Behav Sci 16:41–5.
View in Google Scholar
Walsh GL, Morwood MJ. 1999. Spear and spearthrower evolution in the Kimberley region, N.W. Australia: evidence from rock art. Archaeology in Oceania 34(2):45–58.
View in Google Scholar
Wang W, Lycett SJ, von Cramon-Taubadel N, Jin JJH, Bae CJ. 2012. Comparison of Handaxes from Bose Basin (China) and the Western Acheulean Indicates Convergence of Form, Not Cognitive Differences. PLOS ONE 7(4):e35804.
View in Google Scholar
Watanabe H. 1985. The chopper-chopping tool complex of eastern asia: An ethnoarchaeological-ecological reexamination. J Anthropol Archaeol 4(1):1–18.
View in Google Scholar
West JA, Louys J. 2007. Differentiating bamboo from stone tool cut marks in the zooarchaeological record, with a discussion on the use of bamboo knives. J Archaeol Sci 34(4):512–8.
View in Google Scholar
Wilson FR. 1999. The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture. Vintage Books.
View in Google Scholar
Wokroj F. 1953. Wczesnos redniowieczne czaszki polskie z Ostrowa Lednickiego. Materialy i Prace Antropologiczne 1.
View in Google Scholar
Wolpoff MH. 1999. The Systematics of Homo. Science 284(5421):1774–5.
View in Google Scholar
Woollard HH. 1929. The Australian Aboriginal Brain. J Anat 63(2):207–23.Search in Google Scholar
View in Google Scholar
Wynn TG. 1989. The Evolution of Spatial Competence. Illinois: University of Illinois Press.
View in Google Scholar
Xing S, Tafforeau P, O’Hara M, Modesto-Mata M, Martín-Francés L, Martinón-Torres M, et al. 2019. First systematic assessment of dental growth and development in an archaic hominin (genus, Homo) from East Asia. Science Advances 5(1):eaau0930.
View in Google Scholar
Yamei H, Potts R, Baoyin Y, Zhengtang G, Deino A, Wei, W et al. 2000. Mid-Pleistocene Acheulean-like Stone Technology of the Bose Basin, South China. Science 287(5458):1622.
View in Google Scholar
Yang S-X, Petraglia MD, Hou Y-M, Yue J-P, Deng C-L, Zhu R-X. 2017. The lithic assemblages of Donggutuo, Nihewan basin: Knapping skills of Early Pleistocene hominins in North China. PLOS ONE 12(9):e0185101.
View in Google Scholar
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
