I Envy JTEM wrote:

Naledi's brain size is in line with the
Chimpanzee and smaller than Homo habilis.
It's also larger than Australopithecus.
So, the question is...

They've since changed this. The owners. The people who own Naledi.
They changed the brain size so it's bigger now. Now.

Is Naledi's brain size more likely to have
grown since Australopithecus or is more
likely to have SHRUNK since habilis?

Pan Naledi?

NOTE: I am the first to argue AGAINST
linear evolution where brains/intelligence
only ever "Evolve" from smaller to larger.
However, given Naledi's proposed lifestyle(s)
it seems that it would be highly unlikely
that evolutionary pressures would remain
neutral much less select for a smaller brain.

"It was a Homo, it was so sophisticated it intentionally buried
its dead and so sophisticated that it de-evolved its brain."

Nope. Don't buy it.

...UNLESS the JTEM Chimpanzee model was
at play here.

The JTEM model says that humans (Homo)
invented Chimps. That, the LCA was an upright
walker, probably a tool user, spanning across
a variety of environments, one population of
which evolved into the human line. Slowly the
human line grew in numbers, competing more &
more with the now separate Pan side of the
divide, and by "Compete" I mean they probably
are them.

That's a typo: They ate them.

Why not? Humans eat other humans. They eat Chimps
and gorillas, even today.

Okay, so as the Homo side out competed (or ate)
the Pan side more & more they lost their
diversity. No longer were they spread across
numerous environments. Only the forest population
survived. Once this occurred their evolution was
no longer moderated by a genetic influx from other
environments and they could fully adopt to an
arboreal lifestyle.

Humans invented Chimps: Discuss!

Gorillas probably resulted from an extremely similar
type of pressure, which would explain why they and
Chimps both evolved knuckle walking separately.

(It was in response to/adapting to the same types of
natural selection)

They did evolve their knuckle walking separately, it appears.

So that's it. My "Theory," if you will, is that
naledi's brain is roughly Chimp sized because it
lived firmly on the Pan side of the Homo/Pan
divide and, as it's numbers dwindled in proportion
to the forest population's numbers, a greater and
greater percentage of it's gene pool was coming
from that forest population, where arboreal
adaptations where more important (to survival) than
problem solving & tool use.

Discuss.

::Discuss::

I just said that!




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