Is pampered humanity getting steadily less intelligent? Humans reached a peak of intelligence more than 2,000 years ago and it's been downhill ever since, a scientist speculates, by Ian Sample, science correspondent at The Guardian
Since modern humans emerged from the evolutionary brambles of our ancient ancestry, our bodies and minds have been transforming under the pressures of natural and sexual selection. But what of human intelligence? Has our cognitive ability risen steadily since our forebears knapped the first stone tools? Or are our smartest days behind us?
Gerald Crabtree, a geneticist at Stanford University in California, bets on the latter. He believes that if an average Greek from 1,000 BC were transported to modern times, he or she would be one of the brightest among us. Our intellectual prowess has probably been sliding south since the invention of farming and the rise of high-density living that it allowed, he claims.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
2 - More bad news for New Albany's troglodytes: You're not getting any brighter.
Mitt Romney's 14 percentage point margin of victory in Floyd County indicates that the southward slide (how's THAT for appropriate imagery) is devolving more quickly here. Note that our neighbors to the west, Perry County, went for Barack Obama by 12 points. Note also the conclusion: Education makes the inexorable plunge more tolerable. Someone best send a memo to Tony Bennett, who is about to leave his heart in Indianapolis.
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Perhaps it's not as bad today as it seems. When you Google "ancient Greek farming", you get a lot of entries like this:
...Workforce for farms included many slaves in Athens, Corinth, Chios and other major city-states.
In Sparta, subject Greeks, the helots, formed major labour force for farming.
In Athens, seems most farmland was controlled by the propertied rich, managed in separate units.
Sometimes leased land to tenants but all made use of slaves.
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