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SanguineEmpiricist comments on Open Thread, May 4 - May 10, 2015 - Less Wrong
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It's often important to appreciate that the ancients may not have been actively stupider than us, but in fact just had much less information and much less computing power to work things out with. Huge portions of human history, including much the present day, have to get filed under, "Well, they were doing their best!"
On the other hand we know a lot about mineral and vitamin deficiencies and their effects on IQ nowadays so in many cases whole cultures were on average actively stupider than us. Perhaps an explanation of the Great Man theory of history is that for a long time history was dominated by the few who happened to be lucky enough to avoid any severe nutritional deficits.