- Modern life making us dumb
- Instincts and emotional stability out of whack
- Over processed diets and pesticides affecting brain development
IF a person from Athens 1000 BC came back to earth today, chances are they'd be smarter than all of us.
So says Dr Gerald Crabtree, a leading geneticist from Stanford University in the United States, whose new research suggests we humans are just getting stupider.
In the paper published in the journal Trends in Genetics, Dr Crabtree says unavoidable changes in our genetic makeup, combined with advances in technology have caused us to become a mutation of our former human selves and a lot less bright than our ancestors.
Dr Crabtree told the online journal Natural Society that humans were at their peak when exposed to nature's "fight or flight mechanism".
Under those conditions humans were forced to rely on memory, clear thinking and emotional stability that allowed us to trust our instincts and adapt to situations quickly.