Written by Brendan Maloney   

Perhaps I was too damned clairvoyant in writing my earlier article, “Re the Rapidily Shrinking Human Brain: Can We De-Evolve Fast Enough to Save Our Planet?” It pointed to studies that show that over the last 20,000 years men and women all over the world have lost a tennis ball-sized chunk of gray matter. Since many of my writings are based on my 40-years-in-the-making thesis, “Brain Catastrophes by the Numbers: Mental Minefields We Must Traverse to Survive", which posits that our too-big brains are hastening our demise, a very large part of me was rooting for a decline in brain size, a phenomenon shared by every other domesticated mammal on earth. Nature has endowed us with far too much intelligence and far too little wisdom, and that unfortunate combination is clearly killing our beautiful planet, and us with it. In my "Shrinking Brain" article, I wrote:

“Here is the good news re our rapidly shrinking brain: The small-brained Homo erectus mentioned at the beginning here was by far the longest lived and most successful hominid species, in balance with nature rather than in opposition to it BECAUSE he/she was small brained! This illustration shows Homo erectus' longevity, in strong contrast to our own, to date:

http://cdn.phys.org/newman/gfx/news/hires/535px-Humanevolutionchart.jpg

“I humbly propose that the best thing that could happen to our beautiful blue water planet and it's inhabitants would be for the entire human race to step into Mr. Peabody's “Wayback Machine” and set the dial to about 1.6 million years ago. Thus paradoxically, perhaps, the best way forward is the way back, my friends.”

Well, my dear RSN comrades, the scary-as-hell Zika virus that causes microencephaly in babies is transforming many Homo sapiens sapiens back into small-brained Homo erectus in a single generation! Pause a few minutes here and REALLY think about that. Take your time, and maybe a shot or three of liquor while you are at it, pondering the next 3-4 generations of Zika babies, if the virus cannot be stopped or seriously slowed.

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I hope many readers will comment below, in order that a broad discussion of this topic might be fruitful. However, letting my earlier articles carry the big-picture philosophical “ball” for me, I will limit myself here to thoughts about how Zika babies might be educated to become at least minimally functional:

Traditional methods of educating microencephaly children have been pretty ineffectual, to my knowledge, tho I have not recently read up on it. I feel that this is probably because we are using modern H. sapiens methods/tools in trying to deal with what is quite literally a H. erectus brain. We are chock-full of ancient DNA snippets and strands that act as fall back/reset/default positions in case of sudden environmental stressors like viral pandemics. Thus it is VERY important for us to put ourselves in Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine to examine the problem:

In his GREAT 2003 TED Talk, “Dreams from Endangered Cultures”, Harvard ethno-botanist and National Geographic Explorer Wade Davis tells us that for many thousands of years primitive Amazon tribesmen had never seen 2-dimensional images like drawings, photos, or writing; thus they could not comprehend them at all, any more than a monkey can understand that there is no monkey behind a mirror it is given... their brains were simply not wired for 2-D images. Nor could many of them perceive the color blue, since green forest canopies prevented views of the sky. This is NOT idiocy, any more than the inability of blind-from-birth people to see with newly donated or restored eyes because their brains were never wired to receive/interpret visual signals can be considered idiocy.

Any neurologist will tell you that the tasks that our brain does better than anything else are forgetting and ignoring data. If this were not so, the relentless data stream from our modern world would render every one of us drooling, diapered, idiots best kept in a rubber room, I assure you. Now let us consider Zika victims and their Homo erectus brains:

Perhaps their teachers/caregivers should eliminate as many modern elements from their worlds as possible, taking them into wooded, jungle, or pre-industrial farmstead environments in order to prevent sensory overload. What good are photos, books, videos, etc. to children who are not equipped to comprehend them? Also, it is unlikely that H. erectus was a highly verbal creature; so reading stories or a steady stream of talk might very well be detrimental, adding to the sensory overload.

I know that microencephaly patients often have temper tantrums, and I will bet that being exposed to the modern world has a lot to do with that. Imagine being in a room with ten TVs on different channels blaring at you all day long, and perhaps you can see the problem as I do.

Family portrait of the human race ten generations hence, perhaps:

https://anthropologynet.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/atapuerca-family.jpg?w=700

Comments, anyone?