Assume that one can time travel a healthy baby from a caveman (Not a Neanderthal) and bring the baby to 2010 and raise it like a normal kid. Would this baby grow up with a normal IQ and do well in school if he/she studied or would their intelligence level be below average because their brain was not as advanced as our 2010 brains. Please note, I’d like to incorporate some answers into a Blog I write if you don’t mind. Thank you
A caveman from how long ago?
Define “cave man.”
The Cro-Magnons were fully modern Homo saps, just at a different cultural stage. The child should assimilate with no problems.
H. erectus, not so much. H. habilis or earlier definitely not.
Unless you are looking for anthropological neurologists to pipe up with analysis of (what I assume you are referring to) Cro-Magnon / early Homo Sapiens brain cavities and discussing neurological differences, at best you will get an opinion.
Fundamentally, you are asking a Nature vs. Nurture question. If the fundamental Nature of the early-human brain is the same as ours - which I believe is one of the major criteria that establishes Homo Sapiens as a species - then it would imply that if they were brought to a modern Nurture environment, they would be capable of functioning.
I suspect it is a bit more complicated than that.
(Not sure how I feel about your blog - risk of my comments being edited out of context…)
which countries schools? public or private schools?
The most advanced Caveman species- I believe the one that came after Neanderthals. They would be a few months old and then raised by 2 parents and go through the normal progression in school: Kindergarden, First to 6th grade, 7-12 th grade and study like an average kid in an average high school with an average curriculum. There would be no extraneous factors- assume no one else knew they were born from cavemen. I’m guessing there would be some physical differences but lets assume that they don’t effect their ability to do school work even if they physically looked different then their classmates even with 2010 clothes and haircuts, etc.
I think part of the problem is that at a large scale, many experts suspect that human brains from a pretty long time ago are just like ours, so the first inclination is to say no problem.
Butttt, there is much about the human brain we do not know, there could be some very minor evolutionary changes that the fossil record does not record that could make the difference between they would be just like us if raised like us and they would stuggle to just get along and keep up.
And of course, there would always be the lurking threat of them being used and abused and finally tossed aside like yesterdays garbage by the insurance and advertising industries 
The term “cave man” is not very precise. Even some modern humans in historic times have lived in caves.
Anyway, modern humans have existed for at least 200,000 years. There is some evidence that a genetic mutation may have arisen as recently as 50,000 years ago that led to the development of language. This gene variant gave such an advantage to humans possessing it that it rapidly spread through the gene pool. So you would want your ancestral human to have this gene. (One study tracked a family that was lacking this gene due to a subsequent mutation, and the family members with this gene had great difficulty learning to speak in childhood, difficulty reading, etc.)
More controversially, some researchers have postulated an additional gene that may have led to increased intelligence in humans with this particular gene variant. This gene has been dated back about 4,000 to 6,000 years ago, IIRC. Not everybody alive today has this gene variant–hence the controversy, since you get into race-based Bell Curve discussions.
What you should keep in mind, though, is that there is a tremendous individual variation as well. You might get a very intelligent ancestral human baby or a not-so-intelligent one. It’s hard to guarantee that any child, even a modern one, would necessarily do well in school.
In addition, one of your questions was “would their intelligence level be below average”? Keep in mind that among modern humans, approximately half of all people have an “intelligence level” below average, by definition.*
*If you substitute the word median for average, then exactly half of all people are below the median.
You MUST be more specific than that. Define “advanced.” Please use Wikipedia to find correct taxonomy and terminology, otherwise we wil be answering on our opinions and agendas instead of yours.
(Besides, Homo sapiens sapiens is probably older than the Neandertalers.)
Modern humans did not descend from Neanderthals. The Neanderthals were another species of the genus Homo that was alive at the same time as Homo Sapiens, and which died out about 25-30,000 years ago. (Though there is some recent evidence that there may have been some genetic mixing with this “cousin” species of ours.)
The “most advanced Caveman species” is our own: Homo Sapiens. There would not likely be any noticeable physical differences between any member of H. Sapiens beyond the normal individual variation we are already familiar with.
Wow you guys are a tough and interesting audience. I apologize for my lack of Anthropological language. I’m talking about the Cavemen in the Dinosaur times. If there were several different types then, let’s chose the smartest type. We would then transport a 2 month old baby by time travel to 2010 and then raise it like a normal child by 2 average college educated parents. They would do their studies like average kids, no one would know they were born in the age of Dinosaurs, and they wouldn’t be treated psychologically any different then anyone else their age.
Would they still possess an average IQ and be able to pass high school and maybe get into College?
Okay, watch some Flintstones and get back to us.
Dinosaurs were dead for 63 and a half million years before the first “caveman” was born.
You know that there were no Humans in the age of the Dinosaurs, right?
Anthropology was never my strong point. I always assumed there were cavemen living in the age of Dinosaurs as I saw plenty of movies with both existing together! To get more specific again, let’s say the baby was taken when Man discovered Fire.
I think Homo Erectus would get teased pretty mercilessly.
I’m guessing from this that you’re approaching this question with actual negative levels of knowledge about the subject. Dinosaurs and humans never coexisted. Dinosaurs were extinct 60M years before humans evolved. There were no cavemen in the “Dinosaur Age”, no matter what Ringo Starr or Fred Flintstone told you.
The cavemen in popular culture are almost always either Cro-Magnon (i.e., modern humans) or Neanderthals. If the baby is Cro-Magnon, he or she is basically modern human and probably would do about as well as any kid born in 2010.
That would be around H. habilis time I believe. When we were plains apes, not living in caves yet.
So no, unless your school is set up for bright chimps.
There was a pretty famous documentary series in the early 60’s that followed the lives of a stoneage family and their cultural, social and economic trials and tribulations. From what I can recall, their society functioned very much like our own, with some subtle differences in the levels of technology available and in use (though they were actually pretty sophisticated, nonetheless). So, I would say they would do just fine in the modern world.
OK so if we took a baby from the earliest Cro-magnons and raised him in 2010 by 2 College Educated parents, with average study habits in an average school, they would in all liklihood still have an average IQ and graduate from High School, is that correct?
Yes. The only gross anatomical difference in skull structure (and by inferrence brain structure)between Cro-mags and us is that the Cro-mags seem to have had slightly larger brains than we do (on average). But that could be sample bias, if we happened to find larger individuals.