IQ of people in Biblical times?
 

Obviously people back in biblical times had limited knowledge compared to us but were they natively as intelligent as we are today or has the human brain/mind evolved in the 3 or 4,000 years?

Cannot remember their names now but one group had math and time down to the 1/1000 of a second. My guess would be close to us

ask Catie Minx

obviously it has

Knowledge has increased and decreased over time, but the mental capacity has not changed.

say what captain ?

in 3000 years the human brain hasn't improved/increased? find that hard to believe, we are bigger, stronger, faster than even 50 years ago - i would think our brains have also improved.

IQ testing has only been around since the last century, and has been widely criticized.

A graph plotting IQ with the degree that followers interpret the bible literally:

http://wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.c...eralismiq1.jpg

From the graph one could deduce that the more literally a person interprets the bible (believes everything in it), the more likely that they will have a lower average IQ.

Perhaps it was just the Christians (who were a small minority) that were of below average intelligence... :upsidedow

ADG

I blame the Christians for wiping out all the free thinking Cathers.
Assholes

MTV and 'the tubes' have destroyed any advances :(

I read an article a while back that said that Neanderthals had a bigger brain capacity than we do today! This would explain why certain parts of the planet where interbreeding between Neanderthals and homo-sapiens occurred produced 99% of the world’s technological advances.

thank you sir

:1orglaugh

? ever hear about a group called "Denisova"? or more accurately, Denisova Hominins?

i don't understand - somebody my age now versus somebody from 1960 at the same age?

the best athletes of today are far faster and stronger than the best athletes of 1960 and even moreso of athletes from 1900.

so why couldn't the brain also improve through thousands of years of evolution?

So you think faster track times are down to evolution? Clearly people in Biblical times couldn't possibly be as dumb as some people are in this day and age.

go look up the influence of nutrition on IQ.

Go look up the word "evolution", which is what you were talking about.

If they were so smart how come they didn't have television?

.

Id guess people a hundred years ago were on the average much stronger than people now. More manual labor, less txting.

The size of that group is yet to be determined. AFAIK they only found a finger bone.

You should read some of the crazy theories of this eugenics guy named Seymour W. Itzkoff.

I'm sure if you could timetravel 30 babies from 2000 years ago to now then send them through the current education system they would average the same as any other class in the school.

enough of them to show up in our dna..

People were far less intelligent on average due to poor diets and poor educational systems. There were some geniuses but those came from wealthy families. The average IQ in africa is about 70. You can figure that it was similar to that or maybe even lower back then.

And you know this because...? How do you extrapolate that fact from a simple finger bone? I might not be up-to-date on this one, got any link to share?

that's what I'm thinking - doesn't seem like others in this thread think the same - they are thinking of Hollywood movies set in Biblical times and the Bible itself which was written and translated over the years by the most educated people of their time.

Possibly a point or two difference in IQ...would be my guess.

The scores themselves would be the same because IQ is a relative measure of intelligence with 100 as the defined mean but I reckon they'd have to dumb down the test.

Religious people have a lower IQ than non-religious people, that's been proved a number of times.

That would certainly explain people like baddog. :)

Oh and here's an absolute must read for those who haven't read it.

http://www.amazon.com/Christian-Essa.../dp/0671203231

Why I Am Not a Christian is a 1927 essay by the British philosopher Bertrand Russell hailed by The Independent as "devastating in its use of cold logic" and listed in the New York Public Library's list of the most influential books of the 20th century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_I_Am_Not_a_Christian

some egyptians must have been pretty smart - also some of the greek

unless you believe aliens built the pyramids

I suggest that those living in ancient times had a better ability to problem solve and to think critically because if they didn't their ass was dead. Their idea of a convenience was the wheel. I am not saying they are more intelligent then those of us living today but, on the whole I think we have become lazy with how we use our grey matter because modern society is so much easier to live in.

There, I corrected that for you :winkwink:

No, what people are thinking is that when you said, "obviously people back in biblical times had limited knowledge compared to us", you were asking whether brain complexity/potential was the same in Biblical times, and not asking if people have more books and sources of information and teaching now, compared to 3000 years ago.

The answer to the latter is so bleedin' obvious why would you even bother asking?

IQ isn't based on education. low IQ's in Africa is not down to their education system.

No, it's due to their stupidity.

Colonialism is and will always be the primary cause of every single problem faced by Mother Africa.
Even the problems that Africa faced before colonialism can be blamed on colonialism.

OK, I'll bite. Please explain how Africa's problems BEFORE colonialism can be blamed on colonialism. :)

Make love not pi.

It's interesting, but who knows? Probably within the same general range.

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh

Many, many years before a Dutchman had ever even set foot on the continent, a bottle of Coca Cola fell from the Heavens.
In the bottle was a scroll which read "Hello! I am RONALD FROM HOLLAND!!! We are coming. PAIRIOD!!!"
They became depressed and that was that. Africa has never recovered.

http://i.imgur.com/5bqL9.jpg

In other words, you have no fucking clue. Thought so.

In fact we call them the Mayans.

The calendar that they made is still to this day more accurate than any computer generated one. Until Dec 21st that is.

On the contrary, my initial statement was alluding to the quite well known fact that many Africans for many years have had a tendency to blame colonialism for all their woes while at the same time failng to hold their leaders accountable for little things such as poor governance and/or corruption. They basically use it as a crutch at the expense of learning how to walk.

Sarcasm entered the building at the part where I wrote "Even the problems that Africa faced before colonialism can be blamed on colonialism." It's sarcastic because it's simply not possible. I just figured that most people would understand that to be the case. When I saw your response in which you said you would 'take the bait', my first thought was "What bait?". So then I just had some fun with it.

Anyway, here are two articles from two major newspapers from two different continents written eleven years apart both of which were easy to find and both of which discuss Africa's tendency to blame everything on colonialism. In case you didn't believe me.

Daily Telegraph 2009

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...-problems.html

New York Times 1998

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/17/wo...ls-africa.html

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Alright, I need to re-calibrate my sarcasm detector to distinguish between utterly retarded posts and actual sarcasm. As you know, on GFY that can be tricky. :)