Lorax is dumb. You don't start interpreting those lists (the data) till you make them and gather the data in the first place.

And it's not a choice between 1 big science project and 10 small ones. It's a choice between 1 big science project and 0 big science projects. Economies of scale, winner-take-all, etc. apply even more surely in this area.

Has anyone commented on this New Scientist article
'Did an ice age boost human brain size?'? Isn't that Richard Lynn's explanation for group differences?

"Over the years, researchers have come up with three broad reasons why bigger brains might have been advantageous: to give their owners the ability to cope with changing climates by exploiting technologies such as shelter, fire and clothing; to deal with the cognitive demands of hunting and gathering; or to help people outsmart their neighbours.

To help narrow this down, Geary collected data from 175 fossil hominin skulls, from 1.9 million to 10,000 years old. Then he looked to see whether brain size was best correlated with climatic variability - a crude measure of biodiversity which could indicate the complexity of hunting and gathering - or the human population size at the time, which could reflect the complexity of social interactions.

Geary's analysis found that population size was the best predictor of brain size, suggesting that our ancestors' need to outcompete their neighbours in order to survive may have been the strongest driver of brain growth (Human Nature, vol 20, p 67).

The case is far from closed - Geary's study does not demonstrate cause and effect, for one thing - but the picture beginning to emerge suggests that an ice age set the stage for a socially driven brain boom. And from that time on, it was the brainiacs who stole the show."




http://www.newscientist.com/arti...brain- size.html

Cause and effect could easily be conflated in this situation. It goes without saying that larger brains could have lead to higher population. Still, based on how much work the brain does to understand social cues, I think it's a very reasonable hypothesis that social living drove brain growth in human history.