Hi, Jerry, List, There is no reason to believe that human mental capacities have changed at all in the last, say, 35,000 to 42,000 years. Paris Hilton survives because her existence is subsidized and supported by the efforts of many other, more capable people. A small Neolithic society can only afford a small number of useless people. But my guess is that if you bundled Paris up in a fur bikini like Raquel Welch in "One Million B.C.," stuffed her in a time machine, and send her back to the Neolithic, she'd either be dead in a week or, a year later, she'd be a formidably capable human being. That's what it takes to survive. A small society with Neolithic technology (which is more sophisticated than most people imagine) is the ultimate survival challenge, and likely very satisfying.
As for "small" groups or villages: "Consider genius in the past. Most people considered geniuses have IQs in the vicinity of 150, or 3 1/3 standard deviations above the mean IQ of 100. In a population with a mean IQ of 100, individuals with IQs of 150 occur with a frequency of about one in 2300 people-they're rare, but every small-to-medium town has one or more, and even a small country with a population of only one million has more than 425 such geniuses." http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/IQ/1950-2050/ On the other hand, in very large groups (like the world), there are effects that predict people will just get dumber and dumber (same reference as above). Of course, IQ may well mean... nothing much. Sterling K. Webb ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jerry" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Sterling K. Webb" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Jason Utas" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Meteorite-list" <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, December 17, 2007 6:51 PM Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Mammoth Stew YOU WROTE Neolithic man never hunted game down to extinction. It takes so long, you'd starve first. [They weren't stupid, you know.] They were opportunists, and they lived off the fat of the land, not the lean. Brackets[] Mine Well maybe some were. Consider some of our family members, friends and of course, the 15 seconds of Fame crowd as depicted on TV, now. We on the List, however, do fall into your generalization. right????????? Jerry Flaherty ______________________________________________ http://www.meteoritecentral.com Meteorite-list mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list ______________________________________________ http://www.meteoritecentral.com Meteorite-list mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
