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Thomas comments on Brain shrinkage in humans over past ~20 000 years - what did we lose? - Less Wrong
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This could also partly explain the Fermi paradox. May be difficult not to de-evolve too early, for a technological civilization to bloom.
Well, Homo Floresiensis went through a similar phase, and the cultural toolkits we see among them are no less-sophisticated for it (and no more -- it's hard to say how directly-relevant brain size is to intelligence, and it's much harder to discern the impact of intelligence in potential form on paleolithic or pre-sapiens lifestyle.
I have to say I agree with Gregory Cochran's scepticism of this. Homo Floresiensis had basically Chimp-sized brains. One would need stronger than usual evidence that they did in fact use them, before we can take that as a given. Has it for example been ruled out that the tools found where brought to the cave by say other humans hunting and eating them?
Floresiensis had a total brain volume in the chimp/australopithecus range, yes, but the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (associated with higher cognition in humans) is about the same size as it is in anatomically-modern homo sapiens. Their habitation sites show all the usual hominin features: fire, bones with cut marks, stone tools of comparable sophistication to contemporary h. sapiens with four times the brain volume -- and the prey species associated with the sites, stegodontids, would necessitate cooperative hunts.