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If you have a decent stats background and actually care to learn about the topic, read this book, I'd highly recommend it. The Flynn effect does not imply that people 1000 years ago or even 100 years ago were all retarded. It is certainly complicated and is far from fully understood. However we do know that some of the shift in the IQ mean comes from the far left tail being brought up more towards the mean as a result of improved environmental conditions. That is, they were at a lower IQ level because of a change in legitimate detrimental environment conditions (malnutrition, chronic deficiencies of vitamins/minerals, in children and prenatal, lead poisoning, etc.). And there is certainly something to say about what portion of the change is actually an improvement in g, versus an increase in simply a score.
