Are Boskops for real?

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feedbackdroid - 11 Jun 2008 18:27 GMT

Gary Lynch, the noted neuroscientist, recently co-authored a book "Big
Brain" (2008), where amongst other things he talks about the "Boskop"
skulls discovered in s.e. africa in the early 1900s. These skulls were
on average about 50% larger than normal H.sapiens, especially in
frontal cortex areas, involved with advanced cognitive functions,
working memory, reason, etc. Lynch thinks they may have been a more
advanced race or species than H.sapiens.

I am wondering what is generally known and thought about Boskop in
evol. circles. Were they an advanced evolutionary dead-end? Were they
just statistical outliers of H.sapiens? ????

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Eric Gisin - 15 Jun 2008 21:18 GMT

The first paragraph of the wikipedia article for Boskop Man links to
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/brain/paleo/lynch-granger-big-brain-boskops-
2008.html .
It appears they picked the largest skulls from south africa and gave them a name.

<< I hate to think that the theme of a 2008 book was pulled straight from a 1958 essay, but I don't
know where else they would have gotten the idea. No anthropologists have written much about the
so-called "Boskopoids" since 1958. There is no such thing as an "IQ estimate" for a fossil human;
that's entirely nonsensical. There's no question that there have been massive cultural changes in
the last 10,000 years. But the idea that our brains' functions have atrophied from some Pleistocene
state has been left long behind in the dust of nineteenth-century race studies. >>

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feedbackdroid - 16 Jun 2008 18:20 GMT

> The first paragraph of the wikipedia article for Boskop Man links tohttp://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/brain/paleo/lynch-granger-big-bra....
> It appears they picked the largest skulls from south africa and gave them a name.

I found the following comment in the article of most interest ...
============
To be sure, there has been a reduction in the average brain size in
South Africa during the last 10,000 years, and there have been
parallel reductions in Europe and China -- pretty much everywhere we
have decent samples of skeletons, it looks like brains have been
shrinking. This is something I've done quite a bit of research on, and
will continue to do so, because it's interesting.
============

> << I hate to think that the theme of a 2008 book was pulled straight from a 1958 essay, but I don't
> know where else they would have gotten the idea. No anthropologists have written much about the
> so-called "Boskopoids" since 1958. There is no such thing as an "IQ estimate" for a fossil human;
> that's entirely nonsensical. There's no question that there have been massive cultural changes in
> the last 10,000 years. But the idea that our brains' functions have atrophied from some Pleistocene
> state has been left long behind in the dust of nineteenth-century race studies. >>

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Virgil - 16 Jun 2008 18:20 GMT

> The first paragraph of the wikipedia article for Boskop Man links to
> http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/brain/paleo/lynch-granger-big-brai
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
> some Pleistocene state has been left long behind in the dust of
> nineteenth-century race studies. >>

If there were improvements in brain efficiency, it could have allowed
smaller brains with better survival traits. I understand that current
head sizes at birth are about maximal in humans, so smaller brain cases
could be advantageous.

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Natural Science Forum / Biology / Evolution / June 2008

Are Boskops for real?