alt Hacker NewsThere 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)
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Comparing Plato to various current-day companies and governments, this is true. Assuming "primitive" means "clear or unobscured".
probably this is an effect of a much more simple environment and tasks in the past: Sleep, hunt and not been hunted, eat, reproduce. the minds seems simpler, but is apparent.
We live in a more complex world, this produce someting more complex, culture, ideas, knowledge, tasks, technology, craps.. but basic intelligence i think is the same (if not better in the past, less "pollution")
That one is an interesting scifi premise, but deeply unpersuasive when it comes to actual humans.
In much the same way there are 'ideas' that aliens built pyramids.
In the half century that has passed since the publishing of that book, plenty of work has been done to say that ancient human thinking wasn't primitive, especially the ones that made the pyramids 4,600 years ago, such as the Red Sea Scrolls: How Ancient Papyri Reveal the Secrets of the Pyramids by Mark Lehner and Pierre Tallet (2022) which alludes to the minds of competent and intelligent humans