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Abstract.
The monograph develops an evolutionary-ecological account of how human intelligence and civilization emerged under changing environmental constraints. Its central framework, MESTR—Migration, Energy, Selection, Trade-offs, and Reproduction—proposes that anatomically modern humans dispersing away from equatorial Africa encountered progressively colder, darker, more seasonal, and less biologically productive environments. These conditions increased the energetic and informational demands of survival, favoring improved planning, innovation, cooperation, foresight, and adaptive problem solving.
To quantify this environmental gradient, the monograph introduces the Ecological Hardship Index (EHI), combining climatic, photoperiodic, productivity, and irradiance variables. Across countries located between the equator and northern Europe, EHI is strongly associated with national intelligence estimates and with several biological, demographic, and institutional indicators. The results are interpreted as evidence that persistent ecological pressures shaped genetic and phenotypic population differences through migration, selection, energetic allocation, and life-history trade-offs.
The monograph further argues that intelligence is not an isolated psychological trait but part of a broader adaptive system linking metabolism, information processing, reproduction, social organization, and civilizational complexity. It presents these relationships as probabilistic rather than deterministic and emphasizes that historical, cultural, and institutional factors modify biological and ecological influences. Overall, the work offers an integrated, testable model connecting thermodynamics, human evolution, cognition, and societal development globally.