What Natural Forces could Make Intelligence/Technology a Disadvantage or at Least Inferior to Something Else?
Premise
I'm creating a pre-history world to attempt to demonstrate an alternative sequence of events. I would like natural forces to somehow make natural selection view intelligence/technology as inferior. At current, it all seems too predictable; the most technologically advanced tribe always wins.
If the earth gets hot, burrow underground. If the earth gets cold, weave some fur. If you can't fend off scavengers, drag the kill up a tree. Intelligence has an answer for almost everything and it gets to the point where it is almost boring. It seems the only thing that can challenge intelligence is being more intelligent. However, I would like to challenge this notion.
Time after time in natural history, the primitive species yield to the more cognitively developed competitor species. Additionally, the few primitive species that remain in strong numbers today tend to be rather smart for their genus. There are a few exceptions to this generalization, but let me list some examples to land my point:
- Thylacosmilus (marsupial sabertooth, late Pliocene) presumed to have gone extinct from conflict with sabertooths (who had more developed brains)
- Neanderthals, though their brains were bigger in terms of sheer volume, their technology was thought to be inferior and went extinct.
- One of the oldest species on earth, crocodiles, have primitive reptilian brains, but in general terms are some of the smartest lizards on the planet.
In my pre-history world, I would like to see what it would take to undo this trend. It seems to be a bit of a tall order, at times I can't think of anything other than smiting Prometheus down with a strike of lightning before he gets a chance to share his discovery. Hopefully the community here will be able to help in this regard...
Question: What could nature throw into the mix to make intelligence or technology an evolutionary disadvantage? Such that brute strength, brute endurance, brute whatever would be more effective than thinking through natures challenges.
Further Clarification
- Era: About 2 million years ago (Pleistocene)
- Natural Forces: By this I mean geologic things like climate, weather and tectonics, but also species/ecosystem forces like competition, reproduction rate, ect
- Intelligence Threshold: Presumably a dominant species would have to be at least intelligent enough to perceive its surroundings. The species that results from your natural forces answer doesn't have to be brain-dead, but intelligence would not be its defining characteristic.
- Realistic Threshold: I want to keep it fairly realistic, but freak occurrences in nature to a moderate degree will be acceptable.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/83430. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
What could nature throw into the mix to make intelligence or technology an evolutionary disadvantage?
Starvation, and/or an easy life. Brains are extremely expensive; they consume 20% of your calories for about 2% of your weight. [1] [2]
They are no good if they consume calories and do not pull their weight (or ten times their weight!) in added opportunity, that is exactly what happens if there are very few threats. If calories are also very precious, wasting them on idle contemplation will be selected against.
Our brains are necessary to navigate our world, mostly of our own making, but of course we don't choose to be born into it, we arrive and have to cope, and those of us that cannot, due to brain deficits, typically have a very low reproductive rate. In short our big brains are the result of a feedback loop.
Other species don't have that: you don't see Elephants and Dolphins making 100 year plans, and chimpanzee / gorilla society is based largely on brute force. (Bonobo culture uses sex as a medium of exchange; also not high intelligence or planning).
We are the oddity: For 99.9999% of species, brawn IS more important than brains. To select against brains, make them not worth the biological expense.
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