What Happened To All The Cool Animals?
Why are our babies born dumb?
An animal of No Significance
Before the Cognitive Revolution, we were just like any other animal. We weren’t chimps anymore but we weren’t humans as we know ourselves today.
Why are our babies born dumb? Evolution!
As we transitioned to becoming two-legged animals, instead of four, women’s hips got narrower. This meant that babies who were born earlier and smaller came out easier. Larger babies had more complications in child-birth.
An earlier birth meant both the baby and the mother were more likely to survive childbirth. That means early childbirth was a survival/evolutionary advantage.
Over thousands of years, we evolved to all have early childbirths to babies who are less developed than babies of most other species.
For instance, compare our newborns who can’t hold themselves up for months to horses who can walk within a few hours of entering this world.
What Happened To All The Cool Animals?
Our journey from the middle to the top of the food chain is unheard of anywhere else. Other apex predators like lions, killer whales and crocodiles evolved for millions of years into the predators they are.
The ecosystem in turn evolved with them; gazelles got faster, seals got better at hiding, all animals learned to stay away etc. That process didn’t happen with humans.
We evolved with tools, not with genetic code. For example, when we built boats and crossed waterways, we shortcutted evolution by millions of years. Instead of millions of years slowly developing gills, we suddenly built a boat. The ecosystem couldn’t keep up.
We still have the brains of prey animals even though we have the physical abilities of apex predators. Other predators are calm, majestic and unafraid from millenia of domination. But humans, since we climbed the food chain very quickly, are essentially nervous monkeys with nuclear codes.
The Cognitive Revolution led us to cause the first mass extinction - wiping out hundreds of animal species. More on that later…
How Did We Get So Smart?
It’s still debated, but one theory is that the discovery of fire is what allowed us to become uniquely intelligent. Fire allowed us to cook foods, which eased digestion.
We used to eat all foods raw and spent an enormous amount of calories digesting. By outsourcing the work of breaking down nutrients to the fire, we freed up our own energy to be used by the brain. Now, the brain consumes 25% of the calories we burn when at rest, more than any other animal.
This is the earliest example of humans evolving alongside our tools. Now, with iPhones, we have the best thumb dexterity of any generation in history. I wonder what the next evolution we’ll have alongside our tools is…
What happened to neanderthals and other sapiens?
We kinda merked them... all of them.
Question of The Day
Would you rather live today as you are or as a hunter gatherer 70,000 years ago?
Only 48 Saturdays left this year… make this one a good one!
Your Biggest Fan,
Noah “BigNerd” Sochaczevski