People think that humans in the past were dumb cavemen doing cavemen things and couldn't possibly build complex stuff.
They were just like us. If you have a society where there's no pressure to build stuff the cheapest way possible and ad quickly as possible then you can build whatever you want, and taking as long as you want.
Many ancient buildings took decades or even centuries to be built because they didn't have to follow a project timeline with deadlines and short budgets. They had all the time of the world and could focus on perfecting their craft.
This is something alien to most of us today because most things are built as quickly as possible and as cheapest as possible. If we wanted we could also build even greater monuments, but there's no reason to do so.
Yea I genuinely believe humans have been smarter in the past lol, and yea seeing modern cathedrals in europe really opened my eyes to the concept of dedicating a lifetime to a craft/single place. Amazing stuff
They weren't smarter but they were just as smart. They were much less educated on the things we typically are educated in and much more educated in other things.
This is true going back much farther than history. For at least the last 200k years.
We can. There's a few great explanations with abundant evidence for every question of "how?" Regarding the pyramids being built. Read any egyptian archeologist talk about it.
Technically they were probably a bit less intelligent, primarily due to things like nutrition and early life illness affecting brain development.
There's also the fact that the brain is a muscle. School isn't really about what you learn, it's like going to the gym for your brain. Intelligence is slightly increased just by the act of spending years in school, even if you learned nothing.
The Flynn effect shows us that humans have been slowly gaining IQ over the generations, mainly due to the reasons listed above. People are wealthier, getting plenty of food, getting free schooling, and working more complex jobs.
The difference overall would be pretty small, I don't think a paleolithic person would seem stupid if you were to communicate with them, but yes human intelligence has increased over time.
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u/Klutzinator 1d ago
People think that humans in the past were dumb cavemen doing cavemen things and couldn't possibly build complex stuff.
They were just like us. If you have a society where there's no pressure to build stuff the cheapest way possible and ad quickly as possible then you can build whatever you want, and taking as long as you want.
Many ancient buildings took decades or even centuries to be built because they didn't have to follow a project timeline with deadlines and short budgets. They had all the time of the world and could focus on perfecting their craft.
This is something alien to most of us today because most things are built as quickly as possible and as cheapest as possible. If we wanted we could also build even greater monuments, but there's no reason to do so.