This blog post takes the Scheildt and Shalter study to a different level.
The arguments here fit very nicely with Marshall Sahlins’s theory that hunter-gathers were the original affluent society.
And they probably were even more so when there were plenty of megafauna species to hunt.
Your life as a hunter-gatherer probably wouldn’t be that tough. It’s just the work that you do requires the reflexes and the smooth joint articulation that is associated with people under the age of forty. Once you hit your thirties, you slow down too much and become unable to really hunt effectively. Also, the chance of workplace injury (particularly being maimed by a mammoth you are pursuing) is rather high.
I will say that focusing too much on brain size reduction in domestic animals is a major error that leads many people astray. Keep in mind that we have selected dogs to have certain cognitive abilities that wolves generally don’t have. A wolf may have a big brain, especially those big game hunting wolves from the boreal forests and the Arctic, but that does not automatically mean that wolves are more intelligent than dogs are.
Gosh, I’m being interdisciplinary today.
Even scientists that should know better get hung up on brain size. My husband is a dinosaur geek and even paleontologists get going on it. Excuse me, how many hundreds of thousands of years did that particular animal exist for? It’s brain was as big as it needed to be!
I don’t know if you saw this, but I found it really interesting: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091009-dinosaur-species-never-existed.html
Jack Horner is very interesting, almost maverick, paleontologist.
ah yes, Jack Horner. His book on the Maiasaurs is very interesting. His knowledge of extant animals is crap. He is the biggest proponent of the ‘T. rex as scavenger” theory, and he insists that spotted hyenas are scavengers only. No hunting for them! I watched Dinosaurs Decoded, and yes, it was interesting (no doubt everyone wants to name a new species when a fascinating new toe bone is found) BUT I had to tune it out when he stated that a Triceratops wouldn’t gore a rex in self-defense because “the rex would just fall down dead on top of it.” Thus, it would be too dangerous. Because of course, one gore from a Tric horn would immediately kill any rex. Evidently he’s never seen footage of animals running around on broken legs or with their guts hanging out. Maybe they didn’t have the decency to realize they were going to die and just drop on the spot.
Yes, that’s the same fellow.