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Jester: the forums hate me, so I had to manually quote you.

"Well they used tools of the era prior. The Upper Paleolithic did span 40,000 years. And they lived until fairly recently, so they were likely thousand of years behind us. When they died out we were crossing the landbridge from Asia and first colonizing the Americas. They were smart, compared to cave men. They were smart, but likely not our equals. "

The tools found in around them ranged as "recent" as 13,000 years ago. Same era as the bones.
Also of note, their the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, which is associated with higher cognition, was about the same size as modern human's, in spite of the smaller overall brain size. Considering the range of tech advancement within modern humans of the same era in different regions, there is no tool based argument against flo hobbits' intelligence.


"Their brain size was a quarter of ours, and would be comparable to the three-quarterlings of 4e. If we're going for the smaller 1e-3e halflings, more akin to Hobbit size, then their brains would be half the size of Homo floresiensis. "

And that fact would still be completely meaningless when talking about an entirely different species.
Also, Homo floresiensis stood about 3 ft 6 in. That's a pretty easy compromise to make halflings the same height on average, instead of 6 inches shorter on average.

most importantly, the question of what makes intelligence is not solved. We have some good theories, and we know some contributing factors, that seem to pan out over a large number of species, but we're proving ourselves wrong on the details all the time.

There is no particular reason to believe that a race much smaller than humans couldn't be as intelligent or more intelligent.



Another important note.  Halflings don't have to either have toddler proportions or normal adult human proportions. It would just as easily be something in between, or different than either.

Jan 29, 2013 -- 5:29AM, Garthanos wrote:

Jan 28, 2013 -- 10:32PM, Molecule wrote:

Jan 28, 2013 -- 7:10AM, The_Jester wrote:

Dolphin brains a larely the same as human brains though. Intelligence is less about size and more about a brain to body ratio. The Encephalization quotient. Large animals with brains bigger than a human's have a very low one.

Sure, and if you scale down a person to halfling size, and scale down their brain to the same degree, the brain to body ratio stays the same.  Of course the reality is that this is a pretty simplistic metric for intelligence (and in fact it's all determined ex post facto by fitting the data for various animals onto a curve, so I'm not sure it can even be used predictively).  Maybe halflings' cerebral cortices are more are wrinkly.

Yup... its complexity not size, and also the science angle is all around nonsense.

What the real issue is the desire for visual cues which differentiate the halfling from human and mark them as small or distinct. 

Very true. The fact it also helps solve the halfling intelligence parodox is a fringe benefit.

Jan 29, 2013 -- 2:02AM, DoctorBadWolf wrote:

Jester: the forums hate me, so I had to manually quote you.

"Well they used tools of the era prior. The Upper Paleolithic did span 40,000 years. And they lived until fairly recently, so they were likely thousand of years behind us. When they died out we were crossing the landbridge from Asia and first colonizing the Americas. They were smart, compared to cave men. They were smart, but likely not our equals. "

The tools found in around them ranged as "recent" as 13,000 years ago. Same era as the bones.
Also of note, their the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, which is associated with higher cognition, was about the same size as modern human's, in spite of the smaller overall brain size. Considering the range of tech advancement within modern humans of the same era in different regions, there is no tool based argument against flo hobbits' intelligence.


"Their brain size was a quarter of ours, and would be comparable to the three-quarterlings of 4e. If we're going for the smaller 1e-3e halflings, more akin to Hobbit size, then their brains would be half the size of Homo floresiensis. "

And that fact would still be completely meaningless when talking about an entirely different species.
Also, Homo floresiensis stood about 3 ft 6 in. That's a pretty easy compromise to make halflings the same height on average, instead of 6 inches shorter on average.

most importantly, the question of what makes intelligence is not solved. We have some good theories, and we know some contributing factors, that seem to pan out over a large number of species, but we're proving ourselves wrong on the details all the time.

There is no particular reason to believe that a race much smaller than humans couldn't be as intelligent or more intelligent.

The tools were as old as the bones, yes. That's how old they were. But the technology level of the tools was a span that lasts fom 50,000 years ago to 10,000, and ended shortly after the race died. If they were holding tools equivalent of humans of the time (with no sign of trade) that would have been impressive but if they had been holding tools from the early part of the era that suggests they'd be behind. The information we're given in the articles is sketchy that way. 
It's like saying you found remains that died 20 years ago accompanied with 20th Century technology. Okay, but that includes tech as diverse as the Model T and a F150.

They may have been intelligent for the time, but that doesn't mean they have the same potential intelligence as a human. We have no way of knowing how intelligent they were. The humans of the era, if plucked out of time as an infant and raised in the modern era have all the chances of being brain surgeons and rocket scientists as any other human born today. 13,000 years ago, humans had vast untappen potential. 
Homo floresiensis... they'd likely cap out somewhere along the line.

Jan 29, 2013 -- 2:02AM, DoctorBadWolf wrote:

Another important note.  Halflings don't have to either have toddler proportions or normal adult human proportions. It would just as easily be something in between, or different than either.

I do agree with this. I think the proportions are more realistic than you'd easily believe, but they're so exagerrated the push credulity. They really emphasise the halflings innocent nature and make them visually distinct from humans (and gnomes). But it might work better if the heads were a dash smaller (less toddler more kindergarten) and feet enlarged slightly.