[GloucesterChief]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

Which was just comically arrogant of us.

Exceptionally intelligent people have always existed. And as a fairly firm believer in the 'great man' theory, I do think most moments that shape humanity came about as a result of just a handful of brilliant people who were in the right place at the right time.

I mean agrarian society is one that I point to a lot. You look at certain grasses/wheats and they have drought protection mechanisms that mean only 1 in 5 or so seeds actually germinate in a year. They didn't know that then.

So they have 100 people in their village and they plant enough wheat seeds for 100 of them....20% of those germinate and half the village starves to death.

In most cases that probably ended things. They went back to hunting and gathering.

At some point then there was one guy who said "Nah, we're gonna try this again..." and they powered through and made it work. And suddenly agriculture was born.

There has always been brilliance in the world. Doggedness. Industriousness. And there's always been lazy and/or simply mediocre and forgettable.

Why should we have EVER believed that there weren't people who were absolutely as innately intelligent as anyone we have on the planet today. And as such would have problem-solving skills that rival anything we see in modern times. They use the tools at their disposal but as brilliant people they could make those tools do some pretty remarkable things.

Indeed. I was reading about how Mayan plazas were constructed. They actually built them with a 1 degree tilt to funnel rainwater into canals which lead to irrigation cisterns. Amazing feat of engineering and precision.