“I would wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000 BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues.”
Gerald Crabtree, a developmental scientist at Stanford University, counterintuitively argues that our ancient ancestors were much smarter than we are. According to his theory, advances in technology and medicine have masked an “underlying decline in brain power” that, in the future, will continue to contribute to the “dumbing down” of our species.
Are the comforts of modern life making humans dumber?
Photo: Thinkstock/iStockphoto