Byzantine warrior with gold-threaded jaw unearthed in Greece
Let's not be completely shocked by capable, ingenious ancestors. Even in the ~190K years before we settled down, those people had brains identical to yours and mine.<p>And on the other hand, if you read some pre-Enlightenment things, it's apparent just how powerful (actual, accurate) knowledge and reason are. Imagine that nobody figured out the truth about gravity until Newton. Imagine that the very basics of what we know and how we think today were out there, and we had the brains, but the knowledge was mostly undeveloped for ~199,000 of the 200,000 years of humanity's existence.<p>So it takes more than brains. (Yes, I'm simplifying a very great deal.)