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It's a minor cause from a statistical standpoint.
This is a non-answer. You don't have statistics for people living 1.5 mya. Secondly, heat related illness SHOULD be less today than for our distant relatives because we have been through a period wherein we adapted to high heat environments. In other words, any modern observations of heat related disease should be increased when applied to those people just moving out of the forest and onto the savannah.
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Long before a forager would die from heat stroke, he'd probably be dead from another heat related illness.
Death isn't the problem. The problem is functioning under harsh conditions while not dying. Its the ones that survive which matter.
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The least of your worries is losing brain cells because you will die from heart failure first.
And if I don't die?
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If this were true, then the equatorial countries would be depopulated in no time at all.
Slippery slope fallacy. The problem should be obvious.
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Suggestion, stop using alcoholic beverages when it's hot out and hydrate adequately. I regularly spend a great deal of time outside in hot weather, I have no problem with it at all as long as I drink water and ingest an adequate amount of salt. In other words, what may make you faint won't have that big of an effect on me.
What you can or cannot do is not relevant. For one, you are already better adapted than they would have been. Your recent evolutionary history includes a million plus years of adaptation to hot environments. This is true whether you believe that the brain is part of that adaptation or not. Secondly, our ancestors would not be running around chasing game while chugging Pedialyte. What source of 'adequate salt' is it to which you refer? Again, what you can do isn't relevant. Our ancestors would have had to walk to a water supply, not stop and take a drink from a sports bottle. Of course, diverting to a water supply would allow the prey to escape. Third, our ancestors would not have been ingesting a lot of alcohol either, so this too is irrelevant.
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and...
And ten cells working at 75% is better than 7 cells working at 75%. Its interesting that I explained this in my previous post to you, but you ignored that response.
Exactly... which is why redundancy is a good thing. Having a partially functioning brain while your cells heal would be very bad.
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But there is no evidence that brain damage or cell death has anything to do with the evolutionary chain of events that led to modern humans.
Well that's the question isn't it? I think there is such evidence. Simple denial isn't adequate, and you've presented no substantial objections.
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All else being equal, overly large brains should be selected against.
How in the hell is that a response to this:
And none of them outside our line have developed a big brain, as would be expected if it were as critical to hunting and foraging as you pretend.
We share most of our physical characteristics with the other primates. None of them have developed a brain like ours, yet they get along just fine without it. This suggests that it isn't needed for hunting and gathering. There has to be something else.
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Hominids are thought to have been able to access resources not available to other primates or carnivores.
Precisely.
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We moved into an available niche that required a capacity for remembering resource location and also that there was a selective pressure for the social environment.
But memory isn't it, nor is social structure. Many animals have phenomenal memories for resources, and many animals live in groups. There is nothing about these conditions which would push an animal with a more average brain/body ratio toward developing a large brain. These two conditions are so common that if they were the key we'd see similar results/consequences in other animals. There is nothing in these two condition adequate to shifting brain size from being detrimental to beneficial.
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Australos have about the same brain size as chimps and they used Oldowan tools while chimps do not.
Yes, australopithicenes had just larger brains than chimps. The connection of A. robustus with oldowan tool kits is weak. The general consensus is that oldowan tools were first used by H. habilis.
No webpage found at provided URL: http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/article?eu=399289
The Oldowan Stone Tool Industry
Oldowan tools show up with the first appearance of H. habilis, though the australopithecines were still around. These later could have been using the oldowan tools as well, but it would be later australopithecines, at any rate, and not the earlier, so it doesn't make much difference.
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It makes sense from the standpoint of social hunting.
Yet you presented tool use as a reason for the growth of the brain.
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The tools were adequate for what they were used for.
It appears, then, that you agree that tool use isn't the key.
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Tools became very complex while the brain did not increase in size.
Wait... what? We actually see just the opposite. Tool complexity increased marginally, while brain size increased rapidly.
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We can see cooperative behavior from eusocial insects and they don't have much in the way of brains at all.
I'm glad you get the point.
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Hint #1: The structure of the brain is supected to have changed though, early erectus had a cerebellum of about 66 cc while modern humans have one twice that size.
Hint #2: Huntingtons Disease damages the cerebellum and victims first have difficulty walking and then eventually lose their memory. (See "Trinuclueotide repeat expansion disorders" for more.)
What are you getting on about now?
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Australos were probably not persistance hunters, the case against that would be the flat feet they had.
The early australopithicenes-- about 4.4 mya-- had
more ape like feet than we have. They were more curved than our own, being still somewhat adapted to climbing. The case
against persistence hunting would not be that the feet were too flat but too grasping and not well adapted to bipedalism. By about 3.6 mya at least
one group had very human feet, though many question whether
A. afarensis was fully bipedal. Of course, this is exactly what one would expect for an animal moving into the grasslands and starting to exploit a niche in that environment by taking advantage of its abilities to walk upright.
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Habilus is also probably an australo since the morphology is more australo-like than homo-like.
What does it matter? Its just a name. Calling it something different doesn't change its morphology or where it appears in the fossil record.
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What you are talking about is exaption and it does occur.
Gee, thanks! Anyone whose taken High School biology knows that. Trying to score points by introducing a flashy bit of jargon, perhaps?
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However, if Falk is correct, robustus didn't need a cooling system since it stayed in the forest (highly debatable) and early "gracile" types developed the cooling system rather than an energetically inefficient replacement system.
What is the point? I am not arguing for Falk's theory. I mentioned it as an alternate theory, and it has some components I like. That is all.
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Female kits would involve things that don't preserve well. like sticks to dig with.
Ah... so in other words, you have no evidence for the claim that women had a seperate tool kit.
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