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> why wouldn't we just be bigger and carry longer? The consensus in the evolutionary-anthropology community is that our hips (pelvic bones) have to be the size they are, in proportion to the rest of us, to make us able to walk upright. "Building bigger" doesn't really work, for the same reason that you can't make a giant robot—if you scale humans up, the pelvis would need to be made out of something stronger than bone to support the additional load. The same is not as true, though, if you just make the person wider—because then you spread the same load over "more pelvis." (This is just a personal unfounded hunch of mine, but I think some human subgroups—e.g. midwestern Americans—who are at the genetic limits of baby head size, and who avoid C-sections, are currently selecting toward bigger-boned-ness.) > I would almost say that longer pre-natal development was suboptimal, because we'd either become bored, or supersmart, but anyhow superegoistic for lack of nurture. Keep in mind that we wouldn't be conscious for any of it. The development stage that "wakes you up" to the outside world would just occur later on, as occurs in animals with longer gestation periods (e.g. elephants, with a gestation period of 18-22 months.) This would give things like your ocular layers longer to finish developing, without really having an impact on the parts of your brain that learn stuff or think stuff. |