Over the past year or so, I’ve read several articles about urban animals that are more intelligent, more healthy, and better fed than their country cousins. These articles cover: birds, fishing cats in Colombo, monkeys near an Indonesian temple, racoons in Toronto, and – obviously – the notorious seagulls, like in Rome.
These articles made me wonder if urbanization has had a similar impact on humans: more intelligence, better health, more and better food.
Compared to Homo Sapiens, the Neanderthal lived in (very) small though viable populations for some 700,000 years while surviving 8 Ice Ages (eg, my 2017 blog, my 2018 blog). Quanta-2017: “Some gene-based estimates put the Neanderthals’ effective population at a measly 1,000; others claim they hovered at a few thousand at most []”.
It seems logical to assume that the glacial climate prevented the Neanderthal from establishing permanent housing. The start of global warming at about 20,000 years ago, appears to have a close relationship with the start of urbanization, like Jordan site of 14,500 years ago, Göbekli Tepe temple (9,000 BC) and the earliest ancient cities of Jericho (9,600 BC) and Çatalhöyük (7,500 BC).
Since a few years, the scientific opinion on the Neanderthal has been positively adjusted:
- “they would, most likely, have had language, culture and sophisticated behaviours”;
- “they fashioned tools, buried their dead, maybe cared for the sick and even conversed”;
- hence, “their” interbreeding with humans and “our” 1.8% to 2.6% of Neanderthal DNA;
- nevertheless, the Neanderthal use of technology seems limited to controlling fire.
Hence, the Neanderthal case suggests a strong link between urbanisation and intelligence.
A statistical relationship between climate and intelligence is much harder to argue given the presence of several interglacial periods within an Ice Age (see picture from Wikipedia).
Moreover, “urbanization can heat a place as much as climate change“. This phenomenon has even been dubbed the “urban heat island effect”.
The complexities of urbanization have interesting consequences as they require more specialization (eg, builders, cooks, doctors, smiths, soldiers, workers) and more cooperation (eg, city council, mayor).
If you’re not convinced yet, then please take a look at these two 3-minutes videos: the History of Urbanisation from 3700 BC to 2000 AD based on a 2016 Nature study, and the Earth’s history from a Time and a Technology perspective from Business Insider (see my 2018 blog).
Through Intelligent Eyes (2004) by Urban Intelligence
Note: all markings (bold, italic, underlining) by LO unless stated otherwise
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