mistermack

The Gorilla is the normal one. It's we humans that have an unusually large one. Nobody knows for sure why. It might be that peeing standing upright is easier to control with an extra inch or two. Or it could be that in hand-to-hand fighting, a bigger penis is more vulnerable. Humans carrying weapons are less likely to bite or get bitten in a fight. Or it could be that Gorillas establish mating rights by being the dominant male of a harem, and females don't get much of a choice, so the big Silverback doesn't need to attract females, he basically acquires them by combat. We humans tend to pair off, and females get more say in the matter. Maybe the human female is built differently, due to having to give birth to babies with enormous heads, so human males need a few more inches. Or it could be something else entirely. Nobody knows.

Not due to the transparency, but to the very effective insulation. This includes control of the blood supply to the skin, as well as hollow fibre fur. I remember years ago installing passive infrared detectors in my burglar alarm system. You could defeat the detectors, by holding up a high tog duvet in front of you, and moving slowly. A polar bear would have hot spots, like the eyes and nose, and breath, so I would think that a PIR detector would pick them up in a cold space.

I don't think there would be the slightest prospect of wind farms affecting hurricanes in any meaningful way. Hurricanes form in deep oceans, whereas you need shallow seas for offshore wind turbines. New types of floating wind turbines are just beginning to be deployed, but you would still have the problem of getting the power to the shore, so it's not likely that they would be stationed very far from land.

Feathering would of course reduce the load on the main bearings, but not to zero, so it would make sense to not have it turning while such a big load is going through it. And of course, with a hurricane blowing, it's not a bad thing to have no power going through the cables till it's blown over. It's still impressive that they could run afterwards. I can't really see a wind farm making much of a dent in a hurricane's power. Even the biggest turbines only reach 700 feet at the top, whereas a hurricane can be the size of France, and reach an altitude of about 45,000 feet...

I'm not arguing for private enterprise, I'm not a fan of it for monopolies. But public ownership has it's problems too. I can't speak for the US, but in the UK, it's the unions that are the problem. (in my opinion). Public ownership gives them huge power to hold the country to ransom, and that's why the UK has historically split the sector up into myriads of private companies. Fragment and rule seems to be the tactic. We've had the UK working a 3 day week in the past, during a miners strike. And power generation unions have had similar power in the past. I can't see why they can't draft laws to control it, but there doesn't seem any appetite over here to go back to increased public ownership. We had a gut full in the sixties and seventies and eighties. And we still have similar problems with firefighter unions and train drivers. Anywhere where people have a monopoly, they like to turn the screw, on both sides of industry. But really, the ownership doesn't affect how the economics of the various technologies stack up against each other.

There are states that don't need to rely on private enterprise though, and they don't have a great record. If any country has a chance of doing what you suggest, it's China, as those in charge can take direct control if they want. They also have the incentive, with mainly dirty fossil fuel reserves, and pollution problems. So it's most likely that the biggest developments will be coming from there.

Yeh, I'm aware of the potential and keen to see progress. Flywheels have a lot of potential, but I don't think the economics is there as yet. Going from memory, they are very good, for projects that need a lot of power in a hurry, like fusion research etc. But it's money that makes the world go round. If they get profitable, people will dive in. It's frustrating that most methods seem to be only just economic, with the right subsidies and grants. But like I said, find one that's CLEARLY economic, and you can order the yacht and start learning to sail.

Once you've harnessed it, what do you do with it? Find a way to STORE wind energy cost-effectively and you can order your yacht.

Could be plate tectonics in miniature. You might have the ground settling in chunks, rather than grains, and underground, you could have one layer sliding on another. (over a very long time span) Pure guesswork of course.

The limiting factor isn't the day-to-day food supply. It's the periods of famine. You only need one period of famine every ten years to wipe out a population. If your hunting and gathering can all be done in a few hours, under normal circumstance, that doesn't mean that your population is not at risk. Storing food was what enabled populations to expand. It gets you (or some of you) through the lean times. Farming can produce grains for storage. Cattle herding removes your reliance on the wild herd. And fish can be dried and smoked for storage. That's what enables populations to expand.

No, we've jumped from fire use to inventions to leisure time. Going back to fire, though, I think it's very relevant to cave dwelling. I am personally convinced that the big attraction of a cave was the ease of keeping a fire going for long periods, which was surely a lifesaver to Neanderthals. If you picture the problems that they faced, in the absence of a cave, in keeping a fire going 24/7 in the very worst winter weather, you can get an idea of what difference a cave would make. It's so easy for us to throw wood in a shed, it's hard to imagine what it would be like for them. Your fuel could be soaking wet for weeks on end, and there can be torrential storms that would blow your fire away, and douse it. A cave makes it all so much easier. No high winds, no downpours, and your stored firewood dries out fairly rapidly. If they had the technology to light fires at will, then caves wouldn't be so vital. But it seems to be highly unlikely that they did. It's more likely that, if they lost their fire, they would have some technique of carrying smouldering embers, so they could maybe send someone to the next settlement, to get fire, and carry it back long distances as a smokey bundle, eventually getting fire restarted at home.

You write like you knew my uncle ??? In reality, what you describe was only true for a few days or weeks a year, on the odd days when there was good dry weather, and they made hay while the sun shone. The rest of the time, if you knew the weather in the West of Ireland, you would know that they had long spells of ENFORCED leisure time, when the weather prevented them from doing useful work. There were routine tasks, but also plenty of time for sitting round the fire, smoking and putting the world to rights and moaning about the weather. And that was in the summer. The winters are long with short days, and the enforced leisure time can last weeks on end. Not that they sat around all the time, they would find things to do, as most people do.

That's true, but it's not the full picture. They have been observed and studied from a distance, and landing parties have had a look around deserted villages, where the residents have melted away into the forest, and concluded that they don't know how to start fires, and wait for lightning strikes, and do their best to keep a fire going following that. Presumably local fishermen can tell when fire is in use, and note periods when there is no signs of it. If you see no sign of smoke for long periods, and then plenty of it following a lightning storm, then that would be pretty strong evidence.

I don't think it's a lack of free time that stifles invention. It's resistance to change, which seems to be an inherited part of the human character. When I was a kid, I used to go to my Uncle's farm in Ireland in the school holidays. I was amazed at how some things were done, and would make suggestions that I knew would be better, but there was no chance of getting my uncle or grandfather to change. They were absolutely determined that that is how we've always done it, and we're not going to change now. That was more than fifty years ago, times have changed now. We're swamped with new inventions, and people see the value in them every day so it's almost a different world now. You might also have the influence of religion and spirits in ancient times. There might be ritual involved in flint knapping, or fire making, and mystic communication with the ancestors. To change it might be the equivalent of religious heresy.

I remember as a kid, we used to pick up rounded cobble stones from the local fields, probably ice age remnants, and smash them together in our hands. You could produce tiny sparks, and they would give off a burning smell that was pleasant to sniff. Probably a bit of iron in the mix. The sparks were so tiny that you could never have started a fire with them, but you could see them sometimes, in the dark. I can imagine ancient hominids doing the same thing. If they ever did come across an iron meteorite, it would be interesting to know if they ever managed to light a fire from it. Probably not, though. There is a tribe alive today, on Sentinel Island, near India, that is so isolated they've never had close contact with modern people. They don't know how to make fire, and just wait till a natural fire starts, and keep it going. If it goes out, they have to wait for another lightning strike. From what I've read, making fire from friction or flint/iron is a very recent development, and before that, all humans did what the Sentinelese do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese

A very rough guide would be a more accurate statement. I've never seen it described as a reliable guide. Maybe you could rely on it to give you a rough idea.

I don't think that there's an essential connection there. Chimpanzees and Baboons kill prey and eat meat whenever they can, without cooking it. And human ancestors were using primitive "choppers" well before any evidence of fire use. That's not to say that a connection didn't develop at some point, but I haven't heard of any major connection. There have been claims of fire being involved in the process of flint knapping, on occasions, but I don't think it's a necessary part of it.

It certainly was, one of them anyway. But the use of fire wasn't one single invention, it was a process of gradual tiny improvements in technique, over a huge time scale. It would have started just as opportunistic use of naturally occurring fires, followed by discovering ways of keeping the fire going longer, and then learning how to move a fire from place to place by carrying burning sticks, and then smouldering embers etc etc. Keeping a fire going might have been part of the attraction of caves. Out in the open, your firewood gets wet, and a downpour could put your fire out, and you might have to wait a long long time for the next naturally occurring fire. In a cave, you can keep a smaller fire going all winter, and your stored firewood will dry out. Actually creating a new fire from non-burning materials was a much more recent development.

I suppose I have to say yes and no to that. Baboons are hunter gatherers, and are very successful at it. While they are highly intelligent compared to most animals, they don't compare to us. On the other hand the males are well armed, and they are much more nimble and fast than humans, so that compensates. With humans, it's inventions that have changed our fortunes over the last 5,000 years. In today's climate, inventions come in a steady stream, and we are used to it. But before 5,000 years ago, people hardly invented at all. They just did what their parents did. Generation after generation. You get whole eras, that are characterised by a particular way of making a flint spear point, as in the Clovis people. Or a particular clay vessel, as in the Beaker people. Nothing changed in the designs for thousands of years. Then all of a sudden, people began inventing, and improving on inventions, and we never looked back. But it's just a question of attitude. Anyone can invent, but you have to have the mindset to try it. Or to be willing to try new methods that others have invented. It's not a change in intelligence, it's attitude.

There is no accepted theory for the level of intelligence of ancestral humans. It has to be entirely guesswork and opinion. A lot of people go by the inferred lifestyle, judging by the quality of tools and building etc but really, that's down to culture. Even today, there are hunter gatherers living who build nothing out of stone etc, who's lives are hardly different at all from people living a million years ago. And yet they have fully modern brains, capable of the highest levels of modern learning and achievement. About 800,000 years ago was the last "burst" of brain size increase in humans, when Homo heidelbergensis appeared with a bigger brain than Homo Erectus. Their brain size was about the same as ours, they stood about 5ft 9 inches on average, and really wouldn't stand out much if you met them today, apart from a robust build and slightly sloping forehead. Their brains were about 1250cc as are ours, and Neanderthals averaged slightly more. Anatole France, a Nobel prizewinning author, was found to have a brain of just 1,000 cc on his death. And it's not inevitable that human intelligence should increase over the years. It can easily go the other way, if the selection pressures are not maintained. Brain size is a killer in childbirth for many humans who don't have modern medical help. According to wikipedia "Some studies suggest that the average brain size has been decreasing over the past 28,000 years.[8][9] Others suggest that the cranial capacity for males is unchanged, but that the cranial capacity of females has increased." Really, 50,000 years isn't a lot of evolution, for a long-live animal like a human.

As much as anything, I think it was a numbers game. Neanderthals had a culture of settling in favoured places, and not moving much. Places like gorges, where migratory game got squeezed, and hunting was easy. Modern man was more mobile, and followed herds instead of waiting for them to show up. When the ice age got really severe, Neanderthals had starved to death and disappeared over much of Europe, so that when it ended, they didn't have the numbers to repopulate, and modern humans just drifted in from the South, following game, and absorbed the remaining Neanderthals by interbreeding. (that's my best guess, based on the various versions and theories I've read).

I'm sure that's right. But a lot of it is related to culture, not inherent intelligence. There's so little evolved difference, it's pretty certain that you could take a baby modern human from 50,000 years ago, before even the bow and arrow was invented, give it a modern education, and it could get a good degree in physics. So there were people walking around 50,000 years ago, with that much potential, who were using flint stones for blades, and unable to even boil water.

I had to look them up. Wikipedia says " These fish are also known for having large brain size and unusually high intelligence." but it also says " the cerebellum (part of the brain) is greatly enlarged, giving them a brain to body size ratio similar to that of humans (though other sources give the brain/body proportion as 'similar to that of birds and marsupials'; Helfman, Collette & Facey 1997, p. 191). This is likely to be related to the interpretation of bio-electrical signals. " They are a bit freakish, and the extra brain matter appears to be related to the electrical systems. The body/brain mass ratio is only a rough guide anyway, there are other factors in human intelligence, including the folding and the frontal lobes of the cerebrum.

The absolute mass of the brain isn't the indicator of intelligence. It's the RATIO of brain mass to body mass that is a guide to the intelligence of the animal. Our ratio is way more than that of elephants. It seems that body mass demands brain mass, just to keep it functioning. The ratio of brain to body mass of a neanderthal was very close to our own. There is a slight difference in layout, modern humans having slightly more frontal lobe, neanderthals having a longer brain case. But the differences are extremely minor. I doubt if you can conclude much from the lack of construction evidence. That's a cultural thing, there are hunter-gatherer societies of modern man who leave no constructions, and if they used wood instead of stone, that would most likely leave no evidence. And the population size of neanderthals were surprisingly small, so that restricts the amount of evidence.

I think a lot of people underestimate the intelligence of Neanderthals. I can't provide a reference, but the impression that I've accumulated over the years is that their intelligence levels would be pretty much on a par with people you meet today. Obviously, they didn't have a culture that involved significant building in stone, otherwise we would have evidence of it. I would love to know what kind of shelter they used. I think they were generally sedentary, with settlements around places that provided favourable hunting opportunities, in contrast to modern man, who were more mobile and tended to follow herds. It shouldn't really come as any surprise that Neanderthals should build a dam though. (if that's what it was). They would have seen beavers doing the same thing on a daily basis, and it wouldn't take much brain power to copy a beaver.