From the medical level, before the 1950s, the average life expectancy of China people was 35 years. One of the reasons for the low life expectancy is the lack of food, and the other is the low level of medical care. Take the royal family for example, if it is not others. During the heyday of Kanggan in Qing Dynasty, both emperors gave birth to more than 20 children, but only half of them survived. Most of them died of smallpox when they were young, not to mention ordinary people. At that time, China had no other antibiotics except Chinese medicine, and the people didn't know what it was like to be sick. They prayed to God and worshipped Buddha everywhere and went to temples to get some incense ashes to cure diseases.
Before the founding of the Republic of China, 98% of the people in China were illiterate, almost illiterate. Although China had Nine Chapters of Arithmetic in the Western Han Dynasty, he mainly talked about plane geometry, including rectangle, isosceles triangle, right trapezoid, isosceles trapezoid, circle, bow, four operations, the greatest common divisor of numerator and denominator, and so on. However, these are the levels of our senior primary school and junior high school, which are generally ignored by people who have read books in modern times.
No matter in contemporary economy, culture, science, medical care, finance, housing, food and so on. The difference between ancient and modern is so great that we can't compare with modern people at all. Only uneducated people from rural areas, or Confucian admirers who want to go back to ancient times, will say that the ancients are smarter than modern people!
This question is actually a bit interesting. If we want to discuss it more seriously, I think we must clarify two concepts first.
The first concept is, what is intelligence?
I looked it up on purpose, and I was smart, just like the Modern Chinese Dictionary said: I have developed intelligence and strong understanding and memory.
Another concept is involved here, that is intelligence, so what is intelligence?
Intelligence, as stated in Modern Chinese Dictionary, refers to people's ability to know and understand objective things and solve problems by using knowledge and experience, including memory, observation, imagination, thinking and judgment.
This involves the application of knowledge and experience. From the perspective of knowledge and experience, there is no need to compare, and the ancients will lose! Because now is the era of knowledge explosion and knowledge ocean, modern people have more knowledge than the ancients. Even in terms of experience, modern people's activities and contact with things far exceed those of the ancients.
But it should be noted that what we are talking about here is the application of knowledge and experience, that is, knowledge and experience are not included in the scope of intelligence. In fact, the intelligence here is closer to pure brain biomass.
The ancients and modern people live in different time and space worlds, and there is no way to compare their intelligence together. From the perspective of evolution, it seems more reasonable that the brain intelligence of generation after generation is progressive rather than degenerate.
But the question is, how fast and obvious is the evolution of this brain biomass?
This is about to discuss the second concept.
The second concept, the ancients, is how old?
The scope of the ancients was too wide. Do Beijingers hundreds of thousands of years ago count as ancients?
The mainstream "Eve Theory" holds that modern human beings are descended from the same ancestor in Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago. This ethnic group continues to multiply and expand, gradually spreading to the whole world, completely replacing other human beings before. Other humans were extinct before, mainly because they had a big gap with modern humans intellectually.
According to experts' archaeological analysis, modern humans tens of thousands of years ago, the so-called ancients, are not much different from our present people in brain capacity.
We can speculate that since Eve made an amazing leap in biological evolution to modern humans more than 100,000 years ago, the evolution of modern human intelligence in biomass is not particularly obvious.
Early humans could not speculate. But judging from the history recorded in the literature, I often admire the wisdom of the ancients. I think they are no different from us in intelligence, but we have accumulated much more knowledge than them now.
For example, Confucius more than 2000 years ago, his famous words, have not always sounded the alarm for people who came to the world? Have we ever surpassed it?
Another example is Li Bai and Du Fu more than a thousand years ago. Who can write their popular poems now?
Another example is Newton hundreds of years ago. How many people can compare with his genius thoughts now?
Of course, many excellent people today can't do what the ancients couldn't do. I believe this is mainly determined by the environment and knowledge background. From the point of view of intelligence, the ancients, or at least two or three thousand years old, are not much different from our present people.
This is probably because the evolution of brain intelligence in the biological sense is a very, very slow process, which may be on the scale of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and millions of years. In the face of thousands of years of ancients, we don't have much arrogant capital in this respect.
From the perspective of biological evolution, modern people are certainly smarter than the ancients. But being smart doesn't mean being smart.
In real life, we often meet some people who learn everything much faster than the average person. Because of his super learning ability, he often shows his superiority everywhere. However, they are not successful in their careers and are always excluded. They will complain that others are jealous of talents.
You can, but you are not wise. Confucius said, "Speak slowly but act quickly, and act sincerely.". 2500 years ago, Confucius taught his disciples to talk less and do more, and wealth naturally came. Ancient people did not have as much knowledge as modern people, and books were not as rich as today. Compared with knowledge, in ancient times, a pupil had more knowledge than a well-read person. On wisdom, the Book of Changes kills all modern people. No one can understand. A copy of Tao Te Ching, even the correct sentence break is a problem, and the meaning of the word is unknown, let alone explained. Sun Tzu's Art of War has become a research critic of military experts from all over the world. For thousands of years, Confucius' kindness has been the foundation of people.
The knowledge of modern people helps us to be superior to the ancients in all aspects of food, clothing, housing and transportation. Modern means of transportation have replaced livestock and mechanized means of production, greatly improving labor efficiency. In ancient mythology, there was only flight, but now airplanes and rockets have been realized. A mobile phone can contact all your contacts.
Knowledge can improve our life and increase the labor force. But it doesn't improve our behavior. The wisdom possessed by the ancients was not as good as that of us modern people. Our cleverness cannot be compared with that of the ancients.
This can be said to be a controversial issue because it cannot be defined and defined. Like someone who can extrapolate and improvise? Can we talk about the use and improvement of tools and apply the theory in this field to other fields? Such a person is a wise man as opposed to stubbornness.
Of course, this can only be compared If intelligence is obviously inferior to wisdom, then wisdom seems to be metaphysical and can create inventions and forward-looking theories.
In terms of living environment and historical knowledge precipitation, today's people have more references to follow, and the ancient people's production tools, cultural landscapes and knowledge systems are far from being huge and meticulous.
Generally speaking, people who inherit traditional culture may think that the ancients were clever, such as medicine, ideology, social ethics and food science, which are all advocated for inheritance. People who are open-minded, want to make progress and innovate will probably think that today is better than the past.
Personally, I don't think there is any difference from a single person, that is to say, there were many outstanding figures and many works that we admire in ancient times, but on the whole, people today are smarter than the ancients.
Teacher Qian Wenzhong has explained the problem. You should understand intelligence from both knowledge and wisdom.
The scientific knowledge of the ancients may not be as good as that of a middle school student today, but the wisdom of the ancients is by no means worse than that of anyone today, even more than that of modern people.
How can I put it? Science and idealism? Always opposed! For example, Chinese medicine, how meridians work, so far science can not prove? Don't say anything about the avatar Now Kezhi can go to heaven! It's true! Who do you think is smarter? I wish you all the best.