Consider the following. Chimpanzees make tools. The first hominid tools were simple chipped stone from 2.5 million years ago. Nothing changed for a million years. Then homo erectus came along with Acheulian tech, nothing happened for a million years. Then two thousand years ago H. Sapiens appeared and tool use really diversified. The brains had been swelling from 3 million years ago.
If brains had been getting more generally intelligent at that time as they were increasing in size, it is not shown. They may have been getting better at wooing women and looking attractive to men.
This info has been cribbed from the Red Queen page 313 hardback edition.
I would say this shows a discontinous improvement in intelligence, where intelligence is defined as the ability to generally hit a small target in search space about the world. Rather than the ability to get into another hominids pants.
Consider the following. Chimpanzees make tools. The first hominid tools were simple chipped stone from 2.5 million years ago. Nothing changed for a million years. Then homo erectus came along with Acheulian tech, nothing happened for a million years. Then two thousand years ago H. Sapiens appeared and tool use really diversified. The brains had been swelling from 3 million years ago.
If brains had been getting more generally intelligent at that time as they were increasing in size, it is not shown. They may have been getting better at wooing women and looking attractive to men.
This info has been cribbed from the Red Queen page 313 hardback edition.
I would say this shows a discontinous improvement in intelligence, where intelligence is defined as the ability to generally hit a small target in search space about the world. Rather than the ability to get into another hominids pants.