On first glance, I was inclined to dismiss this Prof. Crabtree…but consider this: Americans do join the Church of Scientology, homeopathic “medicine” is making a big comeback, and people actually pay money to read about the Kardashians.
Ya can’t fix stupid!
Yes, but we’ve lost similar skills that were equally necessary years ago. How many of us can saddle a horse, navigate by the stars, or tell time from the position of the sun in the sky? All of those were once considered normal skills of any educated person.
Yes, but I didn’t have anything to do with any of those things (except for my taxes helping to pay for them). Nor did most of the people on this board. Those were achievements of some of the smartest people on the planet. So I’m not sure this works as an argument against the idea that the average intelligence of the species is declining.
My hobby is building all wood primitive bows and arrows. In the past 80 or so years man has got back into building these bows and studying the performance of them and how to maximise it. Performance has continued to improve and finaly now is nearing as good as it will get. Scientists, physiscists and craftsman have all been involved in this passing down whatever they have learned for someone else to expand on. Looking at what is left of some of the 10,000 year old samples it appears ancient man had it figured out.