[Aurornis]

> There's a saying that the intelligence of an average prehistoric cave man should be, in general, higher than a modern day human simply because the lack of technology required stone age humans to be far more intelligent then we are today. Now you can survive by working as a clerk in McDs, but in the stone age you needed to be on your toes and smart af.

This is a funny twist on the glorification of the past.

Modern humans have been getting smarter even over the relatively short time periods that we’ve been measuring.

It’s called the Flynn effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

Modern day humans still can and do survive in the wild if they so desire. It’s not some lost intelligence that was only achievable by past ancient humans.

[threethirtytwo]

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2023/03/americans-iq-s...

[threethirtytwo]

1. No IQ tests for prehistoric humans. 2. IQ is going down in the US.

[Aurornis]

> 2. IQ is going down in the US.

Flynn effect research says otherwise.

If you think prehistoric humans were geniuses because They could survive in the wild, by that measure monkeys and gorillas must be geniuses too.

[threethirtytwo]

>Flynn effect research says otherwise.

Flynn effect is just a trend for the past century or so and it's an international measure. For the past decade there's been a trend for the US exclusively that is not aligned with the flynn effect.

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2023/03/americans-iq-s...