On Ben Balzer's email: I read the core point that competing intelligence of a species is a factor in selection for gain in intelligence. I must add: I've read that some sociologists claim actual fertility of our highest mental level functioning citizens is lower than average. We note that professional workers tend to have smaller numbers of children than average. Dick [log in to unmask] web: use either (same server): http://top.syr.edu/~ddawson http://unixweb.syr.edu/~ddawson [..] 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. [..] Perhaps competitive is the point, 'homicidal' might be 1 avenue of competition. Modern wild carnivore studies show considerable homicidal behavior: lions kill cheetah cubs, new lion males kill young cubs of previous pride lions, lions & hyena kill each others' cubs etc. Carnivores rarely or never eat cubs they kill: the behavior is competition, not feeding. Also new family boss male gorilla often kill young offspring of replaced males. All this perhaps selects for the genetic material of the new males; keeps the probably genetically transmitted instinct alive in the gene pool. Napoleon Chagnon's studies among the Yanomamo pretty much fit this model. Some modern deconstructionists have discredited Chagnon; I suspect he's right. _L_A_Times_ had an article on Chagnon recently. Dick