If we are to be generous the “rapid” brain development was achieved in around a million years, is it reasonable to suggest the necessary brain development for survival was rapid enough to prevent extinction?
No, it's not reasonable to suggest that, unless you have some evidence that an intermediate brain size was likely to have led to extinction. It's an implausible idea on its face, since extinction happens much faster than evolution usually does.
Or that the intermediate physical changes (where the creature is neither adapted to standing straight nor walking on all fours and still with a stunted brain) would have lessened the chances of survival considering the many hunting animals that had already achieved an evolutionary peak?
No, that's not even remotely reasonable. You seem to have a really garbled idea of evolutionary theory. Why would you consider Homo erectus, say, with a much larger brain than any (other) ape to have a stunted brain? You seem to think that there's some specific target that evolution was aiming for.
Quite how all primates with the same starting point and challenges were not driven to walking tall, thinking big and migrating has never being answered. If evolution is a random process where all possibilities are explored (with many failing and the successful attempts carrying on to reproduce) how where all other primates left to happily carry on as before unaffected by the non-sentient evolutionary process?
Which other primates were in the same environment as hominids? And why would anyone expect all primates to take the same evolutionary trajectory?
Other hypothesis include a need for better social communication, yet the chimp (along with the vast majority of primates and mammals) appears to have enjoyed a complicated social structure along with the use of tools and a changing environment over millennia with the evolutionary processes “deciding” a bigger brain is not required.
Other hypotheses for
what? The previous hypothesis you mentioned was about the timing of human brain evolution, not the selective pressure.
Interesting to note the chimpanzee is now officially classed as endangered due to environmental stresses, evolutionary logic would suggest the chimps should start rapidly evolving to counter this natural threat.
No, evolutionary logic suggests that chimps are likely to go extinct, at least in the wild. You seem to be making up lots of things about evolution, i.e. constructing strawmen.
Academic wisdom tells us it took the natural evolutionary process 500 million years to develop the anthropoid maximum of 1 million neurons inside the brain, yet it also tells us that (again being generous) over the next 2 million years man acquired an additional 11 billion neurons. At the original evolutionary rate man’s brain would have needed an additional 5 billion years to naturally evolve not 2 million years.
I assume you meant 1 billion for the "anthropoid maximum". Regardless, the number is wrong. Just in the cerebral cortex, chimpanzees are reported to have 6 billion neurons, compared to ~20 million for humans. More importantly, why on earth would you think that brain size would evolve at a constant rate?
Furthermore this rapid enlargement stopped back in ancient history yet the modern brain packed full of knowledge and experience today is no different from that of early man, would evolution really evolve a human brain millions of years in advance that would never need an upgrade regardless of the massively different environmental challenges from then to now.
Your evidence that there has been no change in human intelligence for millions of years?
It is accepted that Neanderthals had a bigger brain capacity than today’s modern man, thicker bones to handle more torque from stronger muscles and had also mastered fire, complex societal structures, utilised pitch for weapons and boats plus used a refined common language (language is commonly thought to correlate with the larger brain).
Nothing is known about Neanderthal language, and little is known about their intelligence compared to modern humans (either in degree or kind). There's no reason to think their larger brains implied greater intelligence.
How could a bipedal evolutionary peak for the time be replaced by a smaller brained weaker unestablished species? Survival of the fittest in reverse?
Modern humans employed more sophisticated tools, suggesting either greater intelligence or a more useful cultural inheritance. Physical strength is not why humans succeeded as a species.
["Living fossils" skipped. This is such an old and pointless argument it's not worth responding to.]
Physical perfection (if such a thing exists) would surely lead to improved brain function and an unending improvement program, considering the shark achieved this physical peak 38 million years before the earliest human, evolutionary logic would suggest the shark is a victim of the randomly occurring chemically inspired evolutionary cold shoulder.
In terms of evolutionary biology, that paragraph means just about nothing. Natural selection will not "surely" lead to improved brain function. On the contrary, brains are enormously expensive in terms of energy, and human brains are so large that they cause major problems, including high mortality, in childbirth. Again, you seem to be just making stuff up and attributing it to evolutionary theory.
Taking Darwinian evolution at face value we should expect to find all manner of recognisable failed organic designs, if many minute mutations over a long time leads to an improved species and the failed species dies out then it stands to reason the failed inferior animals would be found in abundance.
The amazing balance of function within species needs (no wait….demands) many failed evolutionary attempts FOR EVERY SPECIES otherwise the whole evolutionary model is debunked.
Every single fossil, every single living organism, is an "evolutionary attempt". Most of them differ very little from other members of their species. I really have no idea what you expect 'inferior animal' to look like, but for real inferior animals, look around. You're surrounded by them.
Phew…. So hopefully there is some food for thought there, I have skimmed over the subjects of interest to me and am willing to flesh them out if it is desired,
Honestly, no. You don't seem to know much about evolutionary biology; instead, you're engaging in largely fact-free speculation.
