A way to answer this question would be to see if our Stone Age ancestors would be classified as AGIs under a reasonable definition
How do you propose this should be done? Put sequenced Stone Age genomes in human ova until a statistically significant number survives long enough for cognitive testing? To get the approximate impact of genes we share with Stone Agers or chimps but not both?
I'm convinced the builders of Stonehenge or the Pyramids were so much less "intelligent" than us that if we met them, we'd think of them as intellectually disabled. But I don't think the knowledge whether that's due to genes or culture is worth that kind of experiment.
For your question about the impact of the cultural environment on "intelligence", twin studies make a lot more sense than what I think you're suggesting.
I'm convinced the builders of Stonehenge or the Pyramids were so much less "intelligent" than us that if we met them, we'd think of them as intellectually disabled. But I don't think the knowledge whether that's due to genes or culture is worth that kind of experiment.
Really? I don't think the average or the moderately above average modern person could design a pyramid, never having heard of one. They might think a big pointy monument would be cool, but that's not the same thing as getting the angles right, building stable interior tunnels, or organizing the work.
I don't think the vast majority of modern people could invent writing, either.
Folks here should be familiar with most of these arguments. Putting some interesting quotes below:
http://aeon.co/magazine/being-human/david-deutsch-artificial-intelligence/
"Creative blocks: The very laws of physics imply that artificial intelligence must be possible. What's holding us up?"
He also says confusing things about induction being inadequate for creativity which I'm guessing he couldn't support well in this short essay (perhaps he explains better in his books). Not quoting here. His attack on Bayesianism as an explanation for intelligence is valid and interesting, but could be wrong. Given what we know about neural networks, something like this does happen in the brain, and possibly even at a concept level.
His final conclusions are disagreeable. He somehow concludes that the principal bottleneck in AGI research is a philosophical one.
In his last paragraph, he makes the following controversial statement:
This would be false if, for example, the mother controls gene expression while a foetus develops and helps shape the brain. We should be able to answer this question definitively once we can grow human babies completely in vitro. Another problem would be the impact of the cultural environment. A way to answer this question would be to see if our Stone Age ancestors would be classified as AGIs under a reasonable definition