8 Mind Blowing Facts About The Human Race

4. Our Brains Have Actually Shrunk (And It Could Be Because We Domesticated Ourselves)

Throughout the vast majority of human evolutionary history, our brains have been getting steadily bigger; it's one of the major markers we use to determine how advanced our species is. Over the past 10,000 to 20,000 years, however, nature has slammed it into reverse, and our noggins have been getting smaller.

So, are we just getting stupider? Perhaps, but there are also other factors that could be at play.

One explanations could be that running a big brain is very energetically costly, so when we began to develop systems to store information outside of the brain (painting, writing, hard drives etc.) we no longer needed to drag all that extra brain around with us.

Another, slightly worrying possibility is that it could be because we have effectively domesticated ourselves in our modern world. We know that when we domesticate animals, their brains and bodies get smaller too, due to a lesser need to fend for themselves in the wild. Since we effectively removed ourselves from the dog-eat-dog world of the animal kingdom, we have also found that we need less brainpower just to stay alive.

Either that or we really are getting stupider.