Capabilities of the First Human

[PsychoticEpisode]

The first person, homo sapiens sapiens, if you were to pluck him/her from their time and bring them into the 21st century would they be able to learn to drive a car or learn as much as any average person living today? Would they be at least capable of doing it even if they couldn't manage to learn for other reasons than lack of intelligence? What I mean is, other factors may make any learning impossible for this person.

Has modern man lost or gained some things that the first person may or may not have possessed that would prevent them from learning to drive a car? Somehow I think if all other factors were removed other than intelligence that there should be nothing preventing ancient man from acquiring 21st century knowledge.

 

[Walter L. Wagner]

Biologically, the first two humans would have had the same brain structure as people around today [who are his/her descendants]. I see no reason to believe that humans today or then are incapable of learning complex information such as modern technology presents.

 

[John Connellan]

If that early homo sapiens was able to speak in a modern language then he/she could easily learn to drive the car through communication with an instructor etc.

However, obviously, just plucking him as an adult from his time probably would not work. If you plucked an early homo sapiens child and put him through school - there should be no obvious difference between him and us.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Has modern man lost or gained some things that the first person may or may not have possessed that would prevent them from learning to drive a car? Somehow I think if all other factors were removed other than intelligence that there should be nothing preventing ancient man from acquiring 21st century knowledge.

I don't think driving a car is a good example. It's hardly a MENSA-level IQ test. Have you seen the people who qualify for licenses in America?

More seriously, even though we define Homo sapiens as having speciated sometime between 130 and 200KYA, we don't have any DNA samples of those early ancestors. But we do know that there have been some genetic bottlenecks along the way, like Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosome Adam. We don't know what was lost at those points, and we don't know what was gained via mutation.

So it's quite possible that there are some important genetic differences between modern man and our distant elders, and it's impossible to guess how those differences might manifest in their aptitude profile. Maybe they'd be much better at music and bookkeeping than we are, but just terrible drivers and historians.

Look at what, first, self-selection and, second, selective breeding have done to Canis lupus familiaris in a mere 15,000 years. Dogs have smaller brains than wolves (adaptation to an omnivorous diet), they are far more gregarious (they readily accept other species in their packs and when feral they form much larger packs than wolves), and they have a much lower incidence of the alpha instinct (with a few exceptions like pitbulls and Lhasa Apsos). All of this affects their behavior and abilities.

Imagine what 130,000 to 200,000 years of genetic drift, genetic bottlenecks, natural selection and unnatural selection might have done to our behaviors and abilities.

 

[PsychoticEpisode]

Frag: But aren't there already DNA differences between the races that don't affect intelligence?

 

[John Connellan]

Have you seen the people who qualify for licenses in America?

Yes, I could imagine a hairy neanderthal driving better than some newly qualified drivers

 

[Dinosaur]

As posted previously, the early H.S. would have to be transported as a child. Preferably a new born. There are some hard wired functions for use in learning a language which are lost early in life. It is possible that linguistic abilites do not develop properly if not started in the first year.

It is possible that modern linguistic ability was a recent development. It was probably present 10,000 to 20,000 years ago, but might have only been partially evolved 20,00 to 50,000 years ago. Of course these are wild guesses on my part.

The immune & digestive systems are known to have evloved recently. A less than modern digestive system is unlikley to be a serious liability, but a po0or immune system could have serious consequences.

 

[Bishadi]

The first person, homo sapiens sapiens, if you were to pluck him/her from their time and bring them into the 21st century would they be able to learn to drive a car or learn as much as any average person living today?

like take a newborn (homo sapien) from back then to now and raise them like your own, absolutely!

Would they be at least capable of doing it even if they couldn't manage to learn for other reasons than lack of intelligence?

same species, will most likely (unproven) have the same IQ range within the same environment.

think of an inuit, aboriginal, indian.. etc...

What I mean is, other factors may make any learning impossible for this person.

NONE!

so far, the cleanest defining view could be; environment governs

Has modern man lost or gained some things that the first person may or may not have possessed that would prevent them from learning to drive a car?

Intellectually? Have to say NO. Physiologically as far as immune system, perhaps.

i Somehow I think if all other factors were removed other than intelligence that there should be nothing preventing ancient man from acquiring 21st century knowledge.

a sound observance

comparing IQ ranges from then and now would be interesting but impossible

Stephen Jay Gould, the late zoology professor at Harvard, wrote a riposte to The Bell Curve in the 1996 edition of his 1981 book The Mismeasure of Man, declaring, 'the theory of unitary, innate, linearly rankable intelligence' to be full of 'fallacies'. The often-heard version of this criticism, much like Shayer's comment, is that psychometric intelligence testing only measures the ability to perform psychometric intelligence tests.

In any case, the steep rise in IQ would seem to lend weight to the idea that IQ does not evaluate some objective totality of intelligence but rather a cultural definition loaded towards the kind of abstract thinking that forms the basis of everyday life in post-industrial societies.

looks like an car driving would be based on the learning environment