IUBio

brain sizes: Einstein's and women's

Bob LeChevalier lojbab at lojban.org
Tue Sep 3 22:11:04 EST 2002


"John Knight" <jwknight at polbox.com> wrote:
>If there were two people on the planet 5,000 years ago, there could have
>been no less than 6 billion by 3,500 years ago.

False.  Only using your nincompoop arithmetic, which assumes things we
know to be false, leads to such silly conclusions.

>If all but 2 people were
>wiped out by 3,500 years ago, then there would have been 6 billion by 2,000
>years ago. If all but 2 people were wiped out again 2,000 years ago, there
>would have been another 6 billion 500 years ago.

We have 4000+ years of recorded history proving otherwise.

>There are only 6 billion now.
>
>How do you explain this?

Simple.  People died.  LOTS of people died.  Most kids did not make it
through childhood.  Women regularly died in childbirth (which of
course rather limits the number of kids that they could have).
Disease left men and women infertile.  And starvation kept down
reproductive rates (if you don't feed the fetus adequately, the baby
never makes it to term), and also killed off anyone who no longer
could support themselves.

>This is using the lowest population growth estimates possible,

No it doesn't.  The lowest population growth rates possible are
population LOSSES, which have occurred multiple times in recorded
history.  Even today, most of the countries of the former Soviet Union
are experiencing negative population growth, and it isn't just from
outmigration.

>Without birth control and abortion, but WITH murdering each other by the
>tens of millions, African populations grow 3 to 10 times faster than that.

There is no "murdering by the tens of millions".

Africa has many times the amount of food productivity that they had
even 50 years ago.  In 1960 people predicted mass famine in Africa
within 20 years even without the burgeoning population growth we see
today.  Now most of those people are eating better than they would
have eaten in 1960.

>How could Stonehenge have been built by *people* 5,000 years ago?

Easily.



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