But the strangest, most staggering thing in all of this is the instinctual reaction we so-called modern humans have to the dangerous delusions of our ancestors, as though they are fossils in the intellectual evolution of our species. This is strange and staggering because human cognitive capacity has not measurably evolved for many thousands of years, which means that the obtuse ideas of our ancestors sprang from the same brains as our indignant indictment of them. It also means that the egregious delusion with which these eminent "men of science" apprehended and classified the world sprang not from their intellectual capacity but from their cultural conditioning, which in turn means that a great many of the belief — confirmations we take for science today might render us the subject of posterity's indignant indictments.

Maria Popova
underscored
@underscored·June 1, 2026