alt Hacker NewsThere's a ton of people that, for some reason, just can't grok that humans have been largely behaviorally and biologically identical for the past 200k years.
The average ancient roman plebeian's life would not look dramatically different from ours today, minus technology of course. They worked a day job, ate at thermopoliums (basically fast food), lived in crowded apartment complexes with various forms of slum lords, deal with high rent prices, and roman graffiti is littered with complaints about politicians, sports teams, and the rising cost of living.
With the pyramids, we have the Wadi al-Jarf papyri, a detailed logistics logbook documenting the teams moving the stones for the great pyramids, along side payroll records much like any other spreadsheet you'll find on someone's corporate computer today.
We are not so different from our ancient ancestors at all.
Replies
A couple years ago I realized that I had somewhat subconsciously made the same assumption. The thing that snapped me out of it was my awe in watching Clickspring (YT) try to recreate the Antikythera Mechanism. That device's complexity and craftsmanship is proof to me that despite the lack of technology, there were some astonishingly smart and resourceful people living thousands of years ago.
There are ideas that ancient human thinking was very different and primitive compared to modern. For example (and others): The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes (1976)
Romans, huh? Many of them were slaves, they believed they could learn the future by looking at the patterns of birds in flight, a Roman's bloodline was very important to the Roman's importance. You can take "behaviorally identical" too far, ideas got better over time, people in the past had bad ideas.
It has always been my understanding that if talking about homo sapiens sapiens: then if you could „snatch“ a newborn from 200k years ago and raise it just like any other human baby today, there is nothing in terms of biology etc. that would stop said baby from becoming an engineer, astronaut, formula one race driver, lawyer, programmer, or CEO (or any other modern profession for that matter).
Never read up if that pet theory of mine has any merit, though.