Control of Fire by Early Humans

[rousseau]

Was reading the Wikipedia page on the control of fire last night:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_humans

Among other things I found this comment interesting:

As early hominids began to understand how to use fire, such a useful skill may have differentiated societal roles through the separation of cooking tasks groups from hunting task groups.

 

[rousseau]

S'all new to me so stop me if you've heard this before:

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/1696/20150164

A striking increase in human brain size is also one of the major developments in Homo. It has risen from an average ca 600 to 1300 cc in the course of the Pleistocene [70,71]. As a larger brain is costly in energy, it needs explanation. The social brain hypothesis aims to explain the phenomenon in terms of increases in group size and pressures towards social cognition [72–74]. High-quality diets are a necessity of fuelling the larger brain, from early times and especially from half a million years ago [68,72,75]. Social brain calculations suggest rapid change at this stage, and a link with language origins [71,76].

 

[rousseau]

 Evolution_of_human_intelligence

This model, which invokes sexual selection, is proposed by Geoffrey Miller who argues that human intelligence is unnecessarily sophisticated for the needs of hunter-gatherers to survive. He argues that the manifestations of intelligence such as language, music and art did not evolve because of their utilitarian value to the survival of ancient hominids. Rather, intelligence may have been a fitness indicator. Hominids would have been chosen for greater intelligence as an indicator of healthy genes and a Fisherian runaway positive feedback loop of sexual selection would have led to the evolution of human intelligence in a relatively short period.[20]

Sexual selection for intelligence and judging ability can act on indicators of success, such as highly visible displays of wealth. Growing human brains require more nutrition than brains of related species of ape. It is possible that for females to successfully judge male intelligence, they must be intelligent themselves. This could explain why despite the absence of clear differences in intelligence between males and females on average, there are clear differences between male and female propensities to display their intelligence in ostentatious forms.