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Is the human race getting dumber? geneticist Gerald Crabtree thinks that human intelligence peaked several thousand years ago and from then on, has been on a slow decline.

His argument is based on the fact that for more than 99% of human evolutionary history, we lived as hunter-gatherer communities surviving on our wits, which led to the big brains we have today. Since the invention of agriculture and cities, however, natural selection on our intellect has stopped and mutations have accumulated in our critical "intelligence" genes. A comparison of the genomes of parents and children reveals that there are between 25 and 65 new mutations in the DNA of each new generation.
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Social factors can have a powerful effect on our intelligence. Most of us feel intelligent and amusing when talking to a particular person and feel dumb and inarticulate when talking to someone else.

In the October 7th edition of the New York Times, Annie Murphy Paul quotes psychologist Joshua Aronson as saying that we shouldn’t think of our intelligence as just a "lump of something that’s in our heads," but as "a transaction among people."
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New research has found that small-group dynamics–such as jury deliberations, collective bargaining sessions, and cocktail parties –can alter the intelligence of some people, LOWERING their IQs. Could this be part of the reason for Congressional gridlock?
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