Darwin Knocking

Living in South Florida I get to meet a lot of interesting people. Some of the most interesting are those who have attained a long and eventful life. Through the years I have been lucky to meet several people over one hundred years old. I wish I could share every story that they have told me but suffice it to say that it is always a treat to hear about a life that has spanned the most amazing century in the history of mankind. It is a little humbling to sit with someone who lived through World War 1, the Roaring 20’s, the Great Depression, and along the way witnessed little changes like electricity, flight, and everything else right up to the age of the internet. It is also humbling to realize that all the pride that we have in our “modern” lifestyle will, in another generation, seem as old fashioned as being proud of a princess telephone. It puts the idea of progress in perspective- these last hundred years have produced things undreamed of a century ago and the next hundred will surpass them. When I think of progress, however, I often think of the human side of the story. Are people better than they were a century ago? Yes, we are healthier, we live longer, we are able to protect ourselves better in the face of nature. But are we better? Are we smarter? To my surprise I found a recent study of evolution done by the National Academy of Science. One result shocked me. This study focused on human evolution in recent times (not hundreds of millions but of mere thousands of years) and reports that over the past five thousand years the human brain has grown smaller. How could that be? After all, isn’t modern man the peak of evolution? How could it be that our most vital organ, the one that makes us “human,” has actually grown smaller over the course of human history? I think we would all agree that we are “smarter” than our ancestors. We may not have to know how to hunt an animal or grow crops but there are plenty of things that we need to master to get along in our world. With all that, how could it be that the human brain is growing smaller by the process of natural selection? I can’t explain it but I can make an observation. For all our wisdom we should not be too proud- we may represent the evolution of millions of years but we are still evolving, we are still locked in the same struggles that our more “primitive” ancestors faced. We still need to eat, to sleep, to find security in numbers. We still need to love and be loved. We still need to find meaning of some kind in each day and satisfaction in that meaning at the end of the day. The “amazing shrinking brain” should remind us that we are still very much like our ancestors. Take away our computers, our cell phones, our TVs, and all the other things that fill our lives and you will find that we are only one step ahead of our ancestors (and a small step at that.) I hope that if science is right and our brains are getting smaller than someone will discover that our hearts are getting bigger. This post appeared in the South Florida Jewish Journal and the Atlanta Jewish Times