[freshhawk]

I find learning this lesson often enough made me realize that it's difficult to remember that people in the past were every bit as intelligent as people are now. They simply had fewer, older tools.

There's another related lesson there that progress, like evolution, is progress in a certain direction. No one said that direction is whatever you call "good" at the moment.

[inanutshellus]

> people in the past were every bit as intelligent as people are now.

... and some evidence supports they were smarter...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/22/people-getting-dumb...

[freshhawk]

Good point.This argument that domestication lowers intelligence (among other powerful abilities) and that we are unquestionably domesticating ourselves is pretty damn solid. The only argument against it seems to be "... but my ego!".

Obviously there is some interplay with the fact that we develop new mental models and thinking tools to augment intelligence.

Also immersion as children in highly abstract ways of thinking further augments/multiplies raw intelligence (most convincing explanation to the Flynn effect imo).

I've lost the link, but there was an excellent article I read related to the amazing Otzi discovery (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96tzi) describing how adults of that era (modern humans, primitive societies) would likely have been terrifying to us now in just how much they outclassed us in raw strength, intelligence and stamina. We would be relying a lot on the benefits of childhood nutrition and education to feel superior. This isn't completely convincing, there are a lot of factors in play, but those levels of brutal competition and danger would have a profound effect, especially epigenetically.