Adam Smith famously commented on how specialization elevated productiveness in a pin manufacturing facility, the place completely different people specialised in every subtask concerned in manufacturing even a easy object.
I considered that anecdote when studying Razib Khan’s account of the distinction between Neanderthals and early trendy people in Europe:
Although Neanderthals made efficient instruments, they have been by no means standardized, skillfully and cunningly long-established, sure, however all the time seeming to replicate inventive selections by their particular person makers. Instruments created by our anatomically trendy ancestors have a monotonous however environment friendly uniformity that distinguishes them from Neanderthal blades. In Slimak’s studying, the indigenous Neanderthals have been individualistic artisans, whereas the intrusive trendy people have been collective creatures, vulnerable to producing traces of standardized instruments as in the event that they have been Paleolithic manufacturing facility staff.
You would possibly assume that trendy people have been extra productive as a result of they have been extra clever. In truth, there are rising hints that the decisive issue was their larger sociability, which allowed them to work collectively in bigger cooperative teams:
Neanderthals famously had brains about 10% bigger, on common than our personal species, so it’s unlikely that they have been unintelligent. Nonetheless, it’s fairly believable that that they had completely different cognitive strengths and have been comparatively delinquent. And this antisociality is probably going the reason for their larger socio-cultural stasis vis-à-vis the human populations popping out of Africa, who proved rather more protean and changeable. . . .
Anatomically trendy people spreading throughout Eurasia and into Australia clearly organized their societies in a different way from Neanderthals. Genetic outcomes from websites in Higher Paleolithic Europe ~35,000 years in the past present the naked minimal of within-band inbreeding, with mates constantly being wholly unrelated to one another, which requires entry to widespread social networks. . . .
And but proof is now accumulating that Neanderthal social teams have been each smaller and extra remoted 50,000 years in the past than our ancestors’ have been. They merely appear to have been much less social than their African cousins.
In a earlier publish, I argued that America’s financial success was partly attributable to its skill to assimilate extremely gifted folks from everywhere in the world. Maybe the identical was true of early trendy people. Certainly, trendy descendants of early Eurasians are roughly 2% Neanderthal, and the genetic share was most likely no less than 10% across the time Neanderthals went extinct. (In fact these occasions occurred in a really completely different world, and we can not assume that this instance has necessary implications for contemporary political points like immigration.)
The remark concerning the intelligence of Neanderthal artisans vs. trendy human cooperators jogs my memory a bit of comparable comparisons within the trendy world. Evaluate an English employee in a Smithian pin manufacturing facility circa 1770 to a Native American residing in what’s now Montana. Which was extra clever, within the sense of able to doing a variety of advanced duties?
Khan ends with some attention-grabbing feedback on how the intelligence of the fashionable world is embedded within the establishments of society:
Due to data expertise, the fashionable world is to an awesome extent a collective mind, with synergies of innovation throughout many societies driving combination positive factors in productiveness. Perhaps this type of transition, or cultural part change, was additionally what marked the rise of our species as lone survivors, a collective borg-brain in distinction to our quirkier Neanderthal cousins with their remoted geniuses and bespoke creations. Fairly than particular person intelligence, a cultural shift to a collective mind might have occurred. Maybe IUP people pioneered mass-production, forgoing particular person social standing for the extra lasting victories of the tribe.
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