Our Brains Are Shrinking

The human brain peaked in size 3,000 - 5,000 years ago! We've lost brain volume and the science behind it is pretty amazing! 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Scientists have been aware for some time that the human
brain peaked in size three to five thousand years ago.
They think the you know, the volume of our brains
increased fourfold over the course of like two million years
as humans evolved, but then it peaked several thousand years ago,

(00:24):
And they've never really been sure why. We've lost about
ten percent of a brain volume since, like the old
Old Testament times is about the size of a lime
less brain in our heads. And they've been there have
been all sorts of theories about nutrition or agriculture or whatever,

(00:48):
but now there's a pretty solid agreement among biologists anthropologists.
It's that when you live in a group as opposed
to a hunter gatherer society, the more you live as
a group, the less you have to remember, and in effect,
the less you have to know. You don't need to

(01:10):
know how to build a shelter, start a fire, find
the beasts, repair a wound, sow the clothes you had.
You were a one person or a couple of person,
jack of all trades as a human being for many
many millions of years, or certainly a few million, hundreds
of thousands, whereas now we have so many associations with

(01:32):
other humans and now technology, we don't need that much
brain volume anymore. Isn't that crazy? So our brain's gonna
continue to shrink down to just a little Basically, all
that's left of our brain is let me google that
when you have to figure. I don't know why you're
asking me. My brains today, imn small Now. I can't

(01:53):
think through something like that. I don't remember how to
tie my shoe that I did yesterday, so I'll google it.
Because my brain is so small, I can't hang on
to this information. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Uh So anyway, there
are more details to this. We'll post it at armstrong
and geddy dot com so you can read more if
you liked. But I just thought that was that was crazy?
Makes sense, doesn't it