On Sat, 5 Feb 2000, Automatic digest processor wrote:

> Was the stress other carnivores? No. No other animal was a real threat to a
> band of humans (and dogs). It certainly wasn't a hole in the ozone layer.
>
> The stress was, quite simply, OTHER HUMANS.
>
> The fact that we are homicidal is the underlying stress that caused our
> intelligence to keep on evolving- there is a survival advantage in being
> smarter than the next human. The evolutionary force was not being better
> able to survive the environment, it was in being better able to survive
> attack from other humans.

It's an interesting theory, Ben, but I think it's
question-begging.  We are certainly not the first, nor the last,
species to be successful enough to have to compete amongst
ourselves for resources.  What you are overlooking is that what
made the next human so fearsome was precisely his intelligence.
So we end up with the circular explanation that we are
intelligent because we are homicidal and homicidal because we are
intelligent (and need to defend ourselves against our own kind).
This points to a kind of cognitive "arms race" that has pushed
human intelligence beyond the envelope that is normal on this
planet.  But the fact that this has occurred only once should
make us skeptical.  Since, we are told, convergent evolution is
supposed to be the rule, why aren't there other species that have
achieved full sapience?  The explanation, to be convincing, will
have to point to circumstances that humans (or proto-humans) and
only humans have had to contend with in their evolutionary
struggle.

Todd Moody
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