Have Human Brains SHRUNK Over Past Few Millennia ???

https://greekreporter.com/2024/06/20/human-brain-shrink-past-3000-years/

. . .

There are MANY skulls to be had from over the past
50,000 years or so. They can be MEASURED.

One take is that the average brain size has
DECREASED slightly over the period.

This may be true, or a random statistical artifact.

However it IS known that brains "prune the tree"
during development .... ie they START overly-large
but useless cells/connections are disappeared as
gestation/childhood continues.

This loss of size MAY be this process In Action
over time.

The article thinks that "collective intelligence",
as opposed to having to try and figure it ALL out
for yourself, may have made us more stupid.

I don't believe this is the case.

IMHO we ARE getting smarter - by becoming MORE
EFFICIENT. This involves dropping CRAP brain
cells and connections which do not contribute.

DO note the impressive IQ of things like parrots
and covids ... TINY brains, but SO efficient !
Makes you wonder if their dino ancestors were
a lot smarter than we'd like to believe. Hey,
lack of "tech" doesn't mean much - took OUR
ancestral line a LONG time to develop any kind
of identifiable 'tech'.

I am going to posit that our current "pruned"
brains are "better", more efficient, less BS.
It IS noted that the 'autistic' segment seems
to have a "pruning deficit" - their brains are
generally a bit larger, but if not "less
efficient" at least "not optimal". The 'autistic'
MAY be a model of what humans WERE like 100+
thousand years ago - smart, but a still kind of
a bit "out there".

As for JUST the past 3000 years - that's not enough
time for biology/Darwin to do much of anything.
Besides, complex, totally "human", society goes
back a LOT further - the Sumerians, there MAY be
even older civs that informed THEM. We HAVE
seen some markers like in Gobekli Tepe (though
for Sumerians I'd suspect older civs from what's
now Iran or maybe even India). The "god" that
brought the nuts and bolts of larger civ to
the pre-Sumerians in Eridu (current Kuwait)
arrived across the water from "the east".