> As it did for us; humans were once less intelligent.
Do we know what drove the increases in intelligence? Was it some level of intelligence bootstrapping the next level of intelligence? OR was it other biophysical and environmental effects that shaped increasing intelligence?
BTW, it appears that the Flynn effect might have reversed recently.
US: "A reverse Flynn effect was found for composite ability scores with large US adult sample from 2006 to 2018 and 2011 to 2018. Domain scores of matrix reasoning, letter and number series, verbal reasoning showed evidence of declining scores."
Denmark: "The results showed that the estimated mean IQ score increased from a baseline set to 100 (SD: 15) among individuals born in 1940 to 108.9 (SD: 12.2) among individuals born in 1980, since when it has decreased."
A lot of people correlate it with humans moving from a vegetarian diet to a omnivorous diet.
1. Higher nutrition levels allowed the brain to grow.
2. Hunting required higher levels of strategy and tactics than picking fruit off trees.
3. Not needing to eat continuously (as we did on vegetation) to get what we needed allowed us time to put our efforts into other things.
Now did the diet cause the change, or the change necessitate the change in diet... I don't think we know.
Do we know what drove the increases in intelligence? Was it some level of intelligence bootstrapping the next level of intelligence? OR was it other biophysical and environmental effects that shaped increasing intelligence?