Speak for yourself. There's no way I could have come up with this method or contributed anything to it. In fact, if you'd told me to just haul stones to the site all day I would have 100% broken some device that took months to craft.

I would guess that on average we've been getting stupider since the stone age.. We evolved and got super smart due to intense selection pressure at the time to do so. Since civilisation took off, that pressure has lessened and removed entirely in many cases. So it makes sense that we have been undergoing genetic drift and getting overall stupider.

I have no idea if that is actually the case, but it makes sense.

Any changes to the brain since the end of the Stone Age have probably been extremely minor. Remember the Stone Age only gave way to the Bronze Age about 5 thousand years ago in the Fertile Crescent; much later elsewhere. That's like 250 generations, an evolutionary eyeblink; maybe enough for little differences like better lactose and alcohol tolerance and new some disease resistance, but not for brains to change size.

As for the late Middle Ages when this bridge was built, that's 30 generations ago, that's nothing: that's your grandma's grandma's grandma's grandma's grandma's grandma's grandma's grandma's grandma's grandma's grandma's grandma's grandma's grandma's grandma.

Remember that the next time MB tells you everything he hates about "all Muslims" or SolRo about "all Israelis". Biologically we're simply human. There hasn't been enough time or isolation for us to diverge. Of course "we're all human" isn't entirely a compliment; humans are fucked up; but we are all in this together.

tl;dr the Medievals were just as smart as us, and just as dumb as us too — they had different material and sociopolitical circumstances.

My point was referencing a common perception today that people nowadays are smarter than people were in the middle ages, because of the pejorative connotations of the term 'medieval'. While our technological knowledge has improved since then, human beings are pretty smart and have been for a long time. tldr: what Hazelnut said.

Also, bonus stars for POETV intertextuality, Mr Purple Cat.

It's probably worth mentioning that this is more of a Rennaissance bridge (or borderline-Rennaissance) than what we'd strictly call 'medieval'. In prior centuries, the Church had disseminated a belief that all knowledge that was possible originated from God, already existed on Earth, and was the domain of the Church.

With that in mind, I doubt a typical person from, say, the 11th century would be as likely to seek innovative solutions to bridge-building, farming, or musical composition as a typical person of the post-Rennaissance period, seeing as how innovation A) wasn't really valued, B) wasn't a driving force for personal wealth or the broader economy, and C) might even get you in trouble with the dreaded Mr. Mitre.

So, was a medieval person as smart as a person of today? Certainly, the brain itself hasn't changed one iota in the intervening eye-blink, so a medieval newborn is just as smart as today's newborn. But a person who is told from birth that they belong to a shameful garbage species who cannot and must not trust their own senses or problem-solving abilities is, I think, less likely to practice innovation than one who is told they belong to a proud, intelligent super-species and the sky's the limit. Creative problem-solving is only one aspect of intelligence, but it's an important one. And it strengthens with practice.

In conclusion, medieval people were duped and strongarmed by the Church into being stupider than today's people, but I am still the stupidest of all.

"Certainly, the brain itself hasn't changed one iota in the intervening eye-blink"
How are you so certain? I honestly dont know whether thats the case or whether our minds have undergone evolutionary changes since the stone age.

When theres selection pressure evolution can happen relatively quickly, for example a mammal the size of a mouse can go to the size of an elephant in a couple of hundred generations if the selection pressure is there.

Also, there have been plenty of minor but documented evolutionary changes observed in humans in a very short timespan, like a couple thousand years or less. Eg. adults being able to drink milk.
Theres even a section i that wikipedia about changes observed from the Industrial Revolution to present!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_human_evolution

The mind is still somewhat of a mystery to science, and its evolution and how genes affect it even moreso. So, as far as I know theres no evidence either way as to whether humans have gotten stupider or not since the stone age.

Actually just browsing that wikipedia article now (I'd never seen it before)
I've not heard of this before but it is interesting..
"
Early fossils of Homo sapiens suggest that members of this species had vastly different brains 300,000 years ago compared to today. In particular, they were elongated rather than globular in shape. Only fossils from 35,000 years ago or less share the same basic brain shape as that of current humans.[27] Human brains appear to be shrinking over the last twenty thousand years. Modern human brains are about 10% smaller than those of the Cro-Magnons, who lived in Europe twenty to thirty thousand years ago. That is a difference comparable to a tennis ball. Scientists are not so sure about the implications of this finding. On one hand, it could be that humans are becoming less and less intelligent as their societies become ever more complex, which makes it easier for them to survive. On the other hand, shrinking brain sizes could be associated with lower levels of aggression.[28] In any case, evidence for the shrinking human brain can be observed in Africa, China, and Europe.
"

Interesting stuff, Purple Cat.