Why do palaeontologists and scientists always judge the intelligence of hominids by their brain size? ?

Question

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/d27...

I see it all the time.

my real question is, why does brain size among humans not matter in terms of intelligence?

or are they simply stating the brain size just coz they can?

Answer 1

It's a false correlation to use brain size to determine if a person is "human" or a modern human or not....and intelligence is based on a wide variety of factors.

Micro-cephalics such as found in Pakistan, who have abnormally small heads and brains from interbreeding between close family, are considered fully human by science. Neanderthal man had a larger brain than modern man.

Answer 2

What else can you expect from the nuts!

Answer 3

It is about all they can use for extinct hominids.  They also use technology found in the area but all they can say for sure is that some hominid in the area apparently made the technology.  They tend to assign the stone tools to the one with the largest brain or any of them with brains larger than australopithicines.  You make a good point and it is lost on many people when they think there is solid evidence of technology and advanced lifestyle in many ancient hominids.  Some ideas about how advanced certain hominids were are based on rather flimsy evidence because there were multiple species.  How many more stone tools are there compared to the number of fossilized stone tool makers?

Answer 4

It is because they are ingrained with the idea of evolution.

Talk origins is utterly biased in favour of evolution and against creation.

The fact is that we know that in humans, brain size has nothing whatever to do with intelligence.

Interestingly, the brain size (based on cranial capacity) of Neandertal man was actually larger than average for that of modern man, though this is rarely emphasized. Anthropologists have long attempted to correlate brain size with intelligence and some have even biased their measurements of cranial capacity in an apparent effort to down-grade the intelligence of “less favored” races, such as blacks and Indians (see The Mismeasure of Man by evolutionist Steven J. Gould, W.W. Norton & Company, 1981). There is, in fact, a broad range of variation in brain size among normal humans, but there is no known relationship between mere brain size and intelligence.

http://creationontheweb.com/content/view...

Do you know how many alleged 'ape-man' fossils there are? Enough to fit on a small table.

Do you realise that every hominid fossil found is either clearly human or clearly ape.

Have you ever seen the 'reconstructed' model of autralopithecene Lucy in the Natural History Museum in London?

It is rather interesting, showing Lucy with human like hands and feet. The fossil was found with no hands or feet. The human hands and feet and artistic impression based on evolutionary suppositions. In fact other australopithecene fossils have been found with ape-like hands and feet.

One wonders why the NHM continues to deliberately mislead people, when they no full well that their model is quite wrong.

I recommend you check out alternate views of the past, instead of the standard evolutionary tales.

The evidence does not speak for itself - it has to be interpreted. The question is - is evolution a rational explanation for the observed evidence? Or is it just a religious/philosophical view promoted as a scientific one?

http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/...

Answer 5

It's more the ration of brain to body. The formula called Cuvier's fraction "E/S" (where E=brain weight and S= body weight). One site gave these examples

human 1/40

small birds 1/12

lion 1/550

elephant 1/560

mouse 1/40

horse 1/600

cat 1/100

shark 1/2496

dog 1/125

hippopotamus 1/2789

frog 1/172

Clearly, mice aren't as smart as humans. However not that as body mass increases, there isn't a corresponding increase in brain size. Man stands out from the larger animals due to his large brain.

There's also Snell's formula: "E=CS^r, where E is the weight of the brain, S the body weight, C is a constant "cephalization factor", and r an epirically determined exponential constant."

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/kinser/I...

Man 7.44

Cat 1.00

Dolphin 5.31

Horse 0.86

Chimpanzee 2.49

Sheep 0.81

Rhesus Monkey 2.09

Mouse 0.50

Elephant 1.87

Rat 0.40

Whale 1.76

Rabbit 0.40

Dog 1.17 (Macphail, 243)

Note that these numbers appear more in line with our perceptions. Man is at the top, followed by dolphins and so on. Mice are far down the scale.

When considering human evolution, there's been a increase in the brain to body ratio as the species advanced. While Neanderthals had larger brains, they were also physically heavier so the ration wasn't that great