WHY did our primate ancestors get so smart so fast? The most popular idea is that social living was the key to shaping our larger brains. Now this is being challenged by a study which suggests that solving the day-to-day problems of finding food had just as big an effect.
“We should perhaps reconsider the view that a single selection pressure favoured enhanced brain size,” says evolutionary biologist Simon Reader at Cambridge University. His study, conducted with Kevin Laland, suggests that a range of factors, not just the demands of group living, favoured bigger brains.
There are two main theories…
