Why have humans become so smart in the last 100 years?

Question

If the planet is billions of years old, why have humans developed or evolved to this extreme point. What has happened in our brains as a species, to get to this technology that we have today ? and are we just the "lucky ones" to have been a part of it ?

are we just the Fred Flintstones of the next million years ?

are we just the Fred Flintstones of the next million years ?

what I'm trying to ask is why in just this last 100 years ? My grandmother lived before electricity. I remember when we got color T.V. ! Sometimes, it's hard for younger people to realize there was a time NOT so long ago, that computers did not exist ! I have to remind my boys that there were no dinosaurs when I was growing up ! I think we are capable of much more, but we don't know how to tap into it.

Answer 1

Humans have always been smart, but the last 100 years saw this smartness exceed due to the emphasis put on respective areas. During the olden times there was more emphasis put in society and people, marriage and the family, thus we find there to be from amongst communities of old to have elaborate forms of social structures, ones that we today will find different.

As the industrial revolution during 1750 brought about the change in family structures and work, people sought to capitalise on this new way of attainment. Becoming rich meant commerialism and business in general, so we find advacements in all technological fields as this is where the real money was and stil is. This drive gave way to todays modernity.

One interesting point; we would have been even smarter today if it weren't for war, civilisations of old were very advanced, but because of wars with other nations these civilisations became extinct, example? The ancient greeks, Rome, Islamic empire in Spain and elsewhere.

There are millions of reasons as to why we have advanced today, but the real question is, has it all been worth it? We are still dying from curable deseases... obiesity, and STDs etc. Society breaking up, the loss of marriage and the conventional family unit, old peoples home, the rich becoming richer and the poor becoming poorer etc.

Answer 2

Michael the Man's answer is pretty close, but so far no one has tracked the beginning of this period of development to it's source, which would be the Italian Renaissance.

This period saw a change in the way people think and act. The most profound was the move to logical, humanist oriented thinking and away from the thinking that had kept humans in the dark ages since the fall of the Roman Empire.

From there it has just been a matter of technology experiencing exponential growth (as someone else noted).

As for the age of the planet, it's a little irrelevant. Primates have only been around for a million years or so and modern "thinking" humans as we know them only 5000. Though, again, someone else above has put modern human's time as 50,000 years. This isn't necessarily incorrect, It just depends on how you want to mark the period where humans began. Western Society generally marks it as 5000 years ago beginning with Mesopotamia. The Chinese, I believe, mark it back to 10,000 years ago...but none of this really has any cause-effect relationship in the period of technological growth we are experiencing.

One other note to the religious individual- I don't understand why you would let zeal for religious truth obscure what is very plainly spelled out scientifically. The earth IS 4.5 billion years (or so) old. This is known, just as it's known that the air we breath is a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen. Just as we know about gravity and space and the sun and what ever else. I point this out because knowing this doesn't necessary disprove the bible. It's well known that "days" in the bible don't necessarily correspond to "days" on earth. 6000 years in terms of planet formation is scarecly a "second" to us, and if the planet were this young it would still be a molten ball of burning gases and melting ores inhospitiable to life as we know it. I have no problem with your religous beliefs, just don't let them cloud the advancement of mankind...please...

Answer 3

We are no smarter now than we were 100 years ago. What HAS changed is that we preserved a scientific methodology.

The ancient greeks had some curious tricks, like Eratosthenes measuring the circumference of the earth, and the Antikythera Mechanism. That knowledge was not well preserved.

Gutenburg came along with moveable type. The chinese had type faces, but the europeans coupled that with improved communications and the scientific method. The rest, as they say, is history.

So no person is really smarter than people of 100 years ago. We just have access to so much more information. And, hopefully, we encourage people to put that information to use in novel ways. That just makes us seem a whole lot smarter.

Of course, we have also measured slight improvements in the standard IQ. But some people suspect this may be due more to environmental factors than to any genetic intelligence increase.

Answer 4

Your premise is wrong. We are not smarter. There are several reasons for the rise of technology. One is the instituting of public schools, which means a lot more people are working on technological changes. Second is the spread of free, secular societies such as in the United States and Western Europe. These societies don't inhibit change, they promote it. Third is the industrial revolution where wealth is created by industrial innovation instead of through political connections as through most of human history. The last major reason is that technological knowledge accumulates exponentially and we have entered a part of the curve that is on its way up. Its like doing a jigsaw puzzle... the closer you get to finished the faster the pieces fall into place. The next 30 to 50 years will see advances so fantastic it will exceed the wildest speculations of science fiction. I seriously doubt that if you could go forward into time to the year 2100 you would even find human beings - we will have moved on to a state you could not recognize as human.

Answer 5

Your question is a good one, however it is so open that it merits a broad range of analysis.
Are we so much smarter than our ancestors, perhaps yes! Perhaps no! In some contexts yes! In some contexts no!
Aristotle posited that two falling objects, one weighing ten pounds, the other weighing one pound, will fall to earth proportional to their weights. It seems absurd to us that Aristotle evaluated this incorrectly. Just drop a ten pound stone and a one pound stone simultaneously and the outcome is obvious. This example comes down to not only perception, but to the contexts in which that perception is exercised. I put forth that if Aristotle were some how able to be time traveled to the present, he would be over-whelmed by the stimuli in our observable environment. In this context we are obviously smarter!
How many people bought into buying duct-tape and plastic when the terrorist scare was bantered about. A gullible medieval response, wouldn't you say?
How long will it take man to deplete the unrenewable fossil-fuel resources that took 100s of millions of years to develop? 200 years perhaps!
Take a close look around at people and notice that on the whole, there are far too many people clinically obese. Particularly, this is becoming a big problem with children.
Actually, you don't have to look to far to see stupidity. If you are observant at all, your days will be filled with stupidity!

Answer 6

We aren't any smarter our technology has increased by leaps and bounds in the last 100 years.
In the days of the cave man,he had superior survival skills than other animals.
Some way this led to him developing the power of speech.
This gave him the ability to be objective,and he just progressed rapidly from there.
Then he became technological,which brings him to the present.
He is now rapidly approaching the point where he will be capable of destroying himself.
Maybe societies like ours do not live more than a few hundred years.

Answer 7

Now isn't that the perfect observation to realize the planet is not billions of years old and 6000 years is about the extent of it. If evolution were a fact we would be morphed into pure energy by now! We are of Divine Intelligent design any other conclusion is being daily destroyed! The Bible in Job told of Oceans beneath the earth and just months ago we discovered under Beijing China an Ocean the size of Antarctica! This being the cause of Earthquake in that region of the world and the Tsunami from the plates under the sea beneath the earth colliding. The more Science reveals the more the truth of Gods word are proven!

Answer 8

They haven't.

There is more insightful material from 3,000 years ago than you often read today.

The real question is why have we made so much progress in the last - lets say - 200 years.

The main answer is that we got rid of religion. For centuries, those with religious power held back progress for their own political and Machiavellian purposes. The pope even imprisoned Galileo for not agreeing with him (the fact that Galileo was telling the truth was somewhat lost on the pope - truth, it appears, is not a christian virtue). In fact, the pope killed lots of others, so Galileo got off light.

This break propelled human thinking hugely.

Almost at the same time, we devleoped mass production technology. This made a huge difference to the world, and broke the stranglehold of the rich on things like learning, creating a middle class. Before this almost all scientists were actually independently hugely wealthy -they had to be.

Answer 9

Humans have always been smart. In fact, I'd say technology is making many people dumber, since they no longer have to think so much to survive. The incredible number of idiotic questions and answers you see around here is proof of that.

Nay, if you want to see REALLY smart humans, go back a few thousand years to see how we raised obelisks weighing hundreds of tons, built the pyramids, and even measured the size of the Earth. Figuring out how to do those amazing things with primitive technology required real brain power.

And while it is an amazing time to be alive, I stand by my conviction that advanced technology is going to cause evolution to take a downslide into stupidity and laziness. In the past, stupid people would not have survived...now they grow up to breed stupid children. This can't be good for our genome.

Answer 10

The simple answer is economic productivity. First, people in general are certainly no more intelligent today than 100 years ago, and we have NOT been evolving in that time -- although more and better food has made us get taller and fatter. (Again that's food, not DNA).

What you are seeing are merely advances in technology, communications, and (as a result) knowledge. Those things all feed upon themselves, so the pace of change has accelerated. But our brains are no different.

As for why things have changed so much in the past 100 years specifically, the developed western world had reached a point of such economic productivity that many, many bright people could devote their careers to science and engineering (rather than subsistence farming or blacksmithing etc) -- more all the time -- further accelerating change through their efforts. This did not happen in earlier times because those people needed to tend fields or else they would starve to death.

The economic productivity allowed a growing population of people to devote their efforts to science, engineering, and technology. And their efforts fed on each other, quickly, once the ball got rolling.

Electricity led to radio which led to TV which led to computer monitors in rapid succession ... but we had to harness electricity first. Telegraphs led to telephones led to data communications led to the Internet. But we had to first learn to send electric signals down wires.