Notes on Chapter 1: Big Brains, Bigger Brains

The book starts and ends with discussions about a race or subgroup of humanity that died out 10,000 to 50,000 years ago and that had a brain that was 20% to 60% larger than modern humans.  This is a controversial claim.

 John Hawks has a number of postings that criticize the book. He states that

• The notion of a Boskop race has not been a topic for 50 years.
• The size of the Boskop skull is a fluke, not a race.

He quotes a paper by Ronald Singer from 1958:

It is not obvious that what was justifiable speculation (because of paucity of data) in 1923, and was apparent as speculation in 1947, is inexcusable to maintain in 1958.

He goes on to state that by 1963, D.R. Brothwell could claim that Boskop itself was nothing more than a large skull of Khoisan type, leaving the concept of a "Boskop race" far behind.

He basically states that the Boskop skull is large, but compared with the upper end of the average size of Homo Sapiens brain (1600ml), the Boskop's additional 2000ml is not that large.