Table 15: Some extreme 

 brain weights /capacities in 

 well-known modern men 



ca. 2200 Oliver Cromwell 



George Gordon, Lord Byron 



We have reached a stage in human evolution— and I am convinced we 

 reached it thousands of years ago— where too people with smaller brains 

 stand just as good a chance of surviving to child-bearing age as too with 

 larger brains, and are likely to leave no fewer children than the others. 

 Brain size is no longer a yardstick to survival as it may once have been. We 

 have used these very brains to create conditions in which mere brain size is 

 of negligible importance; we have used them to develop new mechanisms 

 of adaptation, tools, shelters, clothing, fire, social institutions— and central 

 heating, air-conditioning, refrigeration, disinfection, mink coats, and sun- 

 shades. You can have these things with a size 5% hat or with a size 8%, 

 just as it makes no difference what size shoe you take. 



Within very wide tolerance limits, brain size seems to make no differ- 

 ence as to your ability to avail yourself of the joys and benefits of modern 

 living. So, too, it seems that brain size does not limit your ability to con- 

 tribute to society, culture, science. Some gifted people, such as Leon Gam- 

 betta and Franz Joseph Gall, have had very small brains. Others, also gifted, 

 have had very large brains. Doctor Samuel Johnson had about 2000 gm., 

 while Lord Byron and Oliver Cromwell had about 2350 gm. (Table 15). 

 And some very ordinary persons have had equally large brains. 



Small wonder that in 1963 Gerhardt von Bonin could say: "Certainly, 

 the weight of the brain is a very poor indicator of its functional value" (von 

 Bonin 1963, p. 42), and, again, "brain size as such is a very poor indicator of 

 mental ability" (ibid., p. 76). A century earlier, James Hunt had stood before 

 the Anthropological Society of London and declared, ". . . we now know 

 that it is necessary to be most cautious in accepting the capacity of the 

 cranium as any absolute test of the intellectual power of any race" (Hunt 

 1863, p. 13). 



In the parlance of the evolutionary biologist, the selective pressures that 



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