My recollection is that they were dense enough to have roughly the same mass as a human, which is what determines the potential quantity of micro-structures (and therefore the amount of complexity).
So if the news could spread so quickly, why aren’t They already here? Like, right on top of us? The size of the Galaxy is tiny.
@Al128 , I’m a physicist, not an anthropologist, but childbirth has been difficult for all of human history. We have technology that helps now, but the anatomy has not, to my knowledge, changed.
Maybe I misunderstand.
Presence of animals, running around some far away planet, would not be of overwhelming interest if it is fairly common in the galaxy, as would seem likely. Yes, the first couple times an industrial civilization finds that, it would be front-page news, but soon no big deal. What would be rarer, and thus of much more interest, would be watching earthling video. And you would have to be pretty close to earth, relatively speaking, to do that right now.
I’m implying that aliens are a lot like us, and I know that’s an unpopular guess. But the evident rarity of industrial civilization, in this galaxy, suggests to me the pathway is narrow.
We don’t know anywhere near as much about them as we’d like but the very small statured Homo floresiensis, from Flores in the Indonesian archipelago appear to have had the makings of a function hominid evolutionary trajectory.
They made and used tools, they may have exploited fire, they survived in an environment with Komodo dragons, giant rodents and small elephants. They were about 1.1 metres tall as adults.
[Off topic]
I have been lucky enough to have actually visited Flores. It is incredibly beautiful, though with little setup for tourism. And sadly (at least when I was there) no museum, all the specimens were taken to Jakarta.
Metallurgy, at least the kind that develops civilizations, isn’t done with open fires and with wood. It’s done with kilns & forges, and with charcoal. And you can scale those down pretty small:
Recent vid I watched:
why go back 50-100.000 years if you can find pretty much the same today:
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def. different size of heads / brains … but def. “fully functional” people … I am sure there are pygmy-people driving cars and posting on the internet.
I am taking a guess here - but it seems that their “civilization” was not much different from any other tribes in central Africa that were less-small (before the white men came, that is).
I know an Episcopalian Bishop who visited a group of pygmies to celebrate their becoming Christian. (I forget whether he baptized them or confirmed them, but they’d made the decision before he showed up. He was the foreign muckyedymuck bright in for the celebration.) He certainly thought they were pretty ordinary people except for being very small.
I think pretty much all our primary technology scales down to a person maybe half a meter tall, maybe a bit less. Think the large anthropocentric animals in cartoons. But when you get down to the size of a rat or a mouse i think a lot of things stop working. Common fibers become too large to fashion into good clothes or ropes, for instance. (Apparently, this was a problem for Barbie’s wardrobe. Some fine fabrics are okay, but quite a lot of work went into developing some of her items.) It’s harder to keep a fire burning. The surface tension of water matters more. Heck, a mouse can fall down a well and not be damaged. Life is just different on that scale.
Size is relative.
If the predators in the area are T-Rex scale, only a larger Sophont could survive.
If the primary predator of Humans is Leopard-sized (and the fossil record says the were) they are the size we are.
If the predator is fox-sized, smaller Sophonts are possible.
We adapt to the needs of survival.
The effects of tools & weapons come later.
For intelligence the Brain-BodyMass Ratio and Encephalization Quotient indicate brain sizes can get much smaller along with the rest of body size while retaining the same level of intelligence. There’s obviously going to be a lower limit but with ravens showing comparative EQ to chimpanzees this could allow very tiny humans. Other factors make it unlikely that humans would evolve very far toward dimunition.
There is no reason to think our heads would not shrink as well. Otherwise we would have trouble walking!
We have no evidence that moderately smaller brains are dumber.
Ecosystems that have tiger-sized predators also have mouse-sized animals. I don’t see why the existence of large predators means there can’t be small intelligent animals with a culture.
I find this OP very interesting because I’ve never really thought about it and because the points you make are valid. Also, mining would be a real challenge. It would be much harder for a one foot tall human to drill or dig for anything under the ground. They would be prey for many more animals. They would have a hard time sailing the ocean in boats made for people that small.
I think the Law of Natural Selection already made its judgment because there is no record of any human civilization smaller than 4 feet tall outside of Homo Floresiensis, also known as Flores Man, that inhabited the island of Flores, Indonesia. I’m thinking that they only survived as long as they did because they were in such an isolated environment.
Arrow of causation was likely the other way. They likely became small as a result of being isolated on an island.
https://www.science.org/content/article/island-living-can-shrink-humans
To me the critical issue for human culture and civilization is language and cooperation. Our individual brain capacities are much less critical to culture and civilization than the ability of our individual brains to function as part of a greater whole inclusive of its ability to learn from its own past.
At some point, hunting small animals runs into a limit of it costing more energy to catch the small animal than it has in food value. Whales that feed on tiny things like shrimp and plankton have to eat pretty much constantly, and don’t have to run after their food nearly as much. Lions don’t eat mice, but housecats do.
I agree unless the prey is easy to catch. Humans have no fangs, no claws, no hide, no speed, and no night vision whatsoever.
Aren’t there a lot of mammals in every size between the smallest shrew and blue whales, not to mention reptiles, fish, birds, and bugs? Any limit should be far below the size of humans.
… and yet we’re not endangered the way most of our former prey animals are.
Because brains.
Yes, both predators and prey. I see no reason why the size of predators should affect what size people could be and still form a civilization similar to what we have.
I see lots of other issues, but “size of local predators” doesn’t make my list.
If we were smaller, we’d likely be more nimble, and also harder to find in the underbrush. And claws don’t seem to do the mice much good when there’s cats about.
It’s not just the absolute size that’s an issue, it’s the relative size. You don’t see tigers catching mice, because even a big mouse just doesn’t give enough calories for the effort the tiger puts in to just moving to catch the mouse. But you do see foxes eating mice, because the ratio of body sizes makes a mouse meal far more useful to the smaller fox.
Of course, there’s a range of predators as well, so at some point, you stop worrying about tigers, and start worrying about foxes. But the relative predator vs prey issues would probably be about the same. A one-foot tall human would find a normal-sized fox about as scary as we see a tiger.