CityCaveman

Caves make you smarter…

…or at least cities don’t. The UK’s Independent newspaper cites a Californian academic who thinks living in cities has accumulated genetic mutations that have harmed our intellects over thousands of years.

“I would wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions, with a good memory, a broad range of ideas and a clear-sighted view of important issues,” Professor Crabtree says in a provocative paper published in the journal Trends in Genetics.

“Furthermore, I would guess that he or she would be among the most emotionally stable of our friends and colleagues. I would also make this wager for the ancient inhabitants of Africa, Asia, India or the Americas, of perhaps 2,000 to 6,000 years ago,” Professor Crabtree says

The full paper, in two parts looks like it will set you back $80

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168952512001588

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016895251200159X

But it’s a bit snide about City workers:

Life as a hunter-gatherer was probably more intellectually demanding than widely supposed, he says. “A hunter-gatherer who did not correctly conceive a solution to providing food or shelter probably died, along with his or her progeny, whereas a modern Wall Street executive that made a similar conceptual mistake would receive a substantial bonus and be a more attractive mate,” Professor Crabtree says.