I do find it interesting that brain size has decreased. Not surprising, but interesting. People want to come up with all kinds of theories to explain the rise of early civilzation(s). Maybe I’m not looking in the right places, but I don’t see a lot of articles proffering the idea that maybe there were a lot of really smart people running around back then. They were doing studies in an attempt to actually figure sh!+ out. Instead of being pampered papoosed papooses sucking on the government tit..
Hmm, I’m one of those who think that the ancients were absolutely brilliant. And I’m sure you’ll find plenty of people who think the same. Like Newton said, “If I have seen further, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants”.
Brain size has decreased with allegedly increased sofistikadedness. That’s what’s known as an anomaly.
Baalbek has three very large, squared off columns, the largest of which exceeds 1000 tons, the other two are a mere 800 or so tons. I’m not too sure any certain date has ever been determined for that monument, which is prehistoric. Prehistoric could of course mean just about anything from “prior to the invention of writing” to “the dog ate my homework” to “we haven’t dug in the right place yet”. I suspect that it’s in the area of (or in excess of) 5500 years old, iow, prior to the (known) invention of writing in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Also, at least one of the megalithic structures on Malta is 5600 years old — but of course isn’t as massive.
The largest one-piece quarried object moved in Egypt was more or less in the ballpark, 750 tons (if memory serves), but the largest things in Egypt moved somewhat regularly were the obelisks, the surviving examples of which range from over 100 tons to over 500 tons. Kind of a lot, really. The Romans nabbed a bunch of those, carting them off to Rome, where they remain. The Romans moved them by SEA, which means a civil engineering project that remains a little obscure, and apparently very little studied. Anyone who isn’t amazed by that achievement, well, I’m cutting them out of my will, which means, they’ll never inherit the SunkenCiv EMPIRE...
Oh, sorry...