Quote:
Originally Posted by GH85Carrera
We often to think that the ancients were not as intelligent as we are now. That is simple not true, they were no different than us, just saddled with lack of learning and often a very oppressive church or state religion. The Egyptians and the Greeks and Romans all built some astonishing buildings. No aliens, no supernatural magic, just the brains of home-sapiens and the hands with opposable thumbs, and a lot of hard work.
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This is something that I often think and wonder about. I often see shows or read things that seem to espouse the idea that the ancients were morons or were little more than monkeys, but I think that's VERY naive and short-sited. I think the ancients knew a lot more than most folks give them credit for. They may not have had all of the details surrounding how and why or the advanced math that could show the proof, but that doesn't mean that they weren't able to plan something based on math, physics, chemistry, and then go out and create it and have that process be repeatable.
I remember watching some sort of show on the History channel or the Discovery channel once that was talking about some new little tidbit of info and how a few scientists were theorizing about how that tidbit might have to change the way we think about something in the very distant past. I can't remember if it was cave men, or dinosaurs or what exactly. Then they brought in some other scientist to give the counterpoint to the theory. I'll never forget, the guy came on and said something like "there's absolutely no way that that occurred / was possible / ever happened". I remember being a little stunned and thinking, "wow, what a horrible scientist, speaking in absolutes about something from that long ago, where all we have to go on is stone tools or fossils or whatever it was.
I suspect that many, many civilizations have known or been able to do some things that would really shock many/most modern men.
Think about it, most of us have probably heard of or read about some of the folks from a long time ago that were amazing thinkers, whether it be Aristotle, Newton, Rembrandt, Galileo, Euclid, etc.... Check with any math or science nerd and you'll probably hear about their favorite old smart person. Do you really think that a certain time in the age of men had a particular monopoly on smart folks? No, of course not. I believe that ancient man also did some incredible travelling that most folks would be shocked by. I think most here would probably nod agreement at the thought that Nordic folks or vikings had probably set foot on North America long before Christopher Columbus did.
I think the big difference between the ancients and modern man is technology not raw intelligence. Technology hasn't made us smarter, but it has made certain tasks easier or enabled us to expand our reach farther into certain fields that we could have without the technology. It's not that we are smarter, we've just developed more advanced technology.