Does Eating Brains Make You Brainier?

What studies are those? They are roughly equal, with Neanderthals having a larger occipital bun.

 

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Like nietzschefan, I question all this.
Throwing stick (also called atlati) may even predate homo sapiens:

"... An atlatl and seven spears were found in the Schöningen 13 II-4 layer, dating from about 400,000 years ago and thought to represent activities of Homo heidelbergensis.[4] The atlatl is believed to have been in use by Homo sapiens since the Upper Paleolithic (c. 30,000 BC). ..."

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlatl

What is your evidence that the Nieanderthal brain was smaller? I believe it is true that the first found was larger than average (as more were found later) but on average the Neanderthal brain was larger but not greatly. In any case the brain size is less im portant than how organized if they are comparable. For example, Anatol France had only ~1000 cm^3 brain yet was considered to be very intellignet.

 

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That's got a distinct whiff of BS about it. Shame you can't provide a simple link to an article about it.

 

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Here's the article; Humans and Neanderthals interbred.

 

OP: ..and eating brains would make you fatter and able to withstand winters without moving south. Like a bear which just eats the fatty brains of salmon and discards the rest. So, in a sense, if you had a tool to smash open brain cases of carcasses, then this would make you much smarter than your non-brain eating cousins imo.

 

Not significantly, but perhaps a tiny bit if one can extrapolate all the way up to humans from small flat worm, called a planarium or planarian (or something like that - by memory from article I read perhaps 30 years ago)

These worms can learn to pass thur simple maze, not perfectly but well above chance when taking one of two possible "fork choices." After a well trained worm was doing well in the maze, his brain was feed to another, which had never been exposed to the maze. That second worm, from the start of trials performed better than chance and learned to preform better more quickly than those not feed brains of a "knowledgeable worm."

Most believe that these results tell something about how memories are stored. If that is true, then rather than making you smarter, perhaps you could get memories, not your own.

 

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actually, smaller brained species are smarter, i mean, who have smaller brain according to the size i mean, can make more complexe things than who have large brains,

 

Do you have an article link for that statement by any chance?

 

Eating brains can give you a prion disease.

Try the keyword "kuru" in a search -- Wikipedia is a good start.

Spongiform encephalopathy, anyone?

 

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you can trust me, i readed once about ancient human species, found on an island, this specie were small, cause they adapted on the small resources on the island since they didnt leave it, also they had small brains, and they had actually kinda complicated objects, esspecially for there time, it's not complicated for our days, but, they had actually tools, also other small tools, with many details, and hard to make, anywa, i don't remeber well the rest, but they had small brains wich it allows them to make more complex objects, also, my brother, also my sister, once studied about it in science, people who have smaller brains, usually there brains will have more, like, those lines, (sorry, don't know what they called, but you understood what i mean) anywya, the more the brain goes smaller, the more those lines appear more, and people with smaller minds, have a better intilligence, inless they had small brains because of a deseise, sorry for not being exact,

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The idea that eating brains makes big brains is simplistic. In my opinion it is a bit silly. Like the idea we once had that eating eggs caused high cholesterol, because eggs had more cholesterol than most foods. It is not true. Reason : what we eat is not what we end up with inside our bodies. A lot of biochemical changes happen to food before it becomes part of us.

Anyway, brain growth took millions of years, which would not be the case if it was the result of a diet change.

Our ancient ancestor, Australopithecus, from over 3 million years ago, had a brain of 400 cc, hardly bigger than a chimp brain.

By 2 million years ago, Homo habilis was the main hominid, with a brain of 700 cc. It's successor was Homo erectus from 1.8 million to 300,000 years ago, with a brain size of 900 cc., but this increased to 1100 cc by 500,000 years ago.

Both Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens have a brain size of about 1200 cc., though some neanderthals had a brain size of 1450 cc - larger than even Albert Einstein!

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/species.html

As shown above, the change was over 3 million years, which suggests slow evolution rather than a rapid change due to a change in diet.

 

The Neanderthals lost Out to us because of the ice age and they were not as social as us, so they didn't have the vast resources we had,
And there tailoring skills were sub par to ours.(could not make warm enough cloths), so they died.

So while the Neanderthal was in Modern day Europe they died out and while we were in Modern day Russia we won. Because we were smarter and more capable of adapting.

 

Ate more fat in diet due to shoulder adaptation for throwing weapons able to claim end-carcass after vultures during the day and crack the remaining skull with a hefty club wielded in above the head in both hands.