Our ‘Ancestor’ – Australopithecus (Australopithecus), the most famous skeleton that Lucy is known for is, as it turns out, was less intelligent than modern apes.
Lucy knew how to walk on two feet and looked far more humanoid than a chimpanzee. Her brain was larger than that of a chimpanzee, but Lucy’s blood was circulating more slowly to her brain.
The rate of blood flow to the brain indicates the speed of its metabolism and the level of intelligence of its owner.
There are special channels for the arteries in the skulls of anthropoid apes and humans. The wider they are, the more blood goes into the brain.
Scientists have examined the size of these channels in 96 skulls of modern chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, as well as in the skulls of 11 Australopithecus, including Lucy.
It turns out that modern gorillas have the same brain size as Lucy, but the blood flow rate in their cranial ducts is twice as high as hers.
When the skulls of Australopithecus are compared to the skulls of chimpanzees and orangutans, it turns out that with all these monkeys, blood flow to the brain is also faster than that of Australopithecus.
Scientists believe these results are incredible. It turns out that Australopithecus is much less “sensible” or, in other words, more stupid than modern anthropoid apes.
In the evolutionary branch, Australopithecuses are between apes and humans, based on a number of traits, including those related to brain size and the development of intelligence. However, such a classification seems to be incorrect.
Prof. Roger Seymour, lead author of the study, says:
“At first glance, the connection between brain size and intelligence seems logical, since size is related to the number of neurons. However, the capacity for knowledge depends not only on the number of neurons, but also on the number of synapses – the connections between them. These connections control the flow of information in the brain, ie. more synaptic activity leads to more information being processed. “
The human brain consumes 70% of its energy for synaptic activity. The amount of energy proportionally depends on the blood supply that supplies the brain with oxygen.
Although our brain represents only 2% of our body weight, it consumes 15-20% of the energy produced by the body and accounts to 15% of the blood used to provide it with oxygen.
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