Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

There is absolutely no difference between a human from 6000 years ago and one today. You could be an Einstein level genius back then, and likely unable to use any of those skills other than for the optimization of your environment. Also, you likely would not be able to use the bulk of it because your education would be non-existent, so your IQ compared to someone today would be much lower even though your raw intelligence would be higher. Essentially you'd be given an exquisitely crafted very blunt knife.

View on HN

Nutrition, disease load, epigenetics.

The Egyptians built the pyramids without computers or modern construction equipment. Building the Great Pyramid of Giza today would be a massive project even with modern technology. Yet someone figured out not only how to build it, but organize the workers, the logistics, and manage a long term project without much more than a reed and papyrus.

>Building the Great Pyramid of Giza today would be a massive project even with modern technology.

Only because we expect a far lesser fraction of societal productivity to be spent on them.

I don't know if anyone's run the numbers for the pyramids but European castles and cathedrals took a massive fraction of their area's productivity to create compared to modern civil engineering products.

Recreating the pyramids would only be "big" because modern society doesn't spend big on vanity projects like that anymore. With modern tech we could build the same pyramids much cheaper or many more pyramids for the same money.

We have built better pyramids with modern technology. Luxor LV has comparable size but provide much more utility. Transamerica Pyramid and The Shard dwarf Egyptian pyramids.

> you likely would not be able to use the bulk of it

Evolution rarely produces something useless, especially something that consumes a lot of precious energy like the brain.

More likely these people were exquisitely knowledgeable about their environment.

Either that, or their brains were the same size as ours, but far less efficient.

The human brain has actually been shrinking since about 40k years ago. There is some correlation between brain size and intelligence, but admittedly it isn't too strong.

How much of a change? Citation?

There is indeed a citation about this higher up in the thread.

Neandertal brains were larger than h. sapiens. (https://www.cobbresearchlab.com/issue-2-1/2015/12/24/average...)

Whether this means Neandertal had greater cognitive capacity, or sapiens brain is more efficient, isn't clear to me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com