Here’s another reason why knitting may have taken so long to invent.
IQ scores in most Western countries have been rising by about 0.3 points per year over the course of the 20th century. If we assume that average IQ was stable until about 1750 when the industrial revolution began and increased by 0.3 points per year after that then the average IQ of people living before 1750 would have been about 28 by the standards of someone living in the year 1990 (I use 1990 as the benchmark because IQ scores have actually been decreasing over the past few decades).
The Flynn effect isn’t really meaningful outside of IQ tests. Most medieval and early modern peasants were uneducated and didn’t know much about the world far from their home, but they definitely weren’t dumb. If you look at the actual techniques they used to run their farms, they’re very impressive and require a good deal of knowledge and fairly abstract thinking to do optimally, which they often did.
Also, many of the weaving patterns that they’ve been doing for thousands of years are very complex, much more complex than a basic knitting stitch.
OK, 25 is a bit ridiculous. But I still think it’s not unreasonable to believe that medieval peasants were less intelligent than, say, modern day sub-saharan Africans. Infectious diseases and malnutrition were rife, lead acetate was used to sweeten wines and foods and mercury was prescribed as a cure-all for everything from syphilus to teething.
Here’s another reason why knitting may have taken so long to invent.
IQ scores in most Western countries have been rising by about 0.3 points per year over the course of the 20th century. If we assume that average IQ was stable until about 1750 when the industrial revolution began and increased by 0.3 points per year after that then the average IQ of people living before 1750 would have been about 28 by the standards of someone living in the year 1990 (I use 1990 as the benchmark because IQ scores have actually been decreasing over the past few decades).
The Flynn effect isn’t really meaningful outside of IQ tests. Most medieval and early modern peasants were uneducated and didn’t know much about the world far from their home, but they definitely weren’t dumb. If you look at the actual techniques they used to run their farms, they’re very impressive and require a good deal of knowledge and fairly abstract thinking to do optimally, which they often did.
Also, many of the weaving patterns that they’ve been doing for thousands of years are very complex, much more complex than a basic knitting stitch.
OK, 25 is a bit ridiculous. But I still think it’s not unreasonable to believe that medieval peasants were less intelligent than, say, modern day sub-saharan Africans. Infectious diseases and malnutrition were rife, lead acetate was used to sweeten wines and foods and mercury was prescribed as a cure-all for everything from syphilus to teething.