“I often think about how smart and resourceful our ancestors must have been. These people figured out how to survive the Ice Age with only stone tools. I wonder how many people living today could figure out how do that?”
The dumb and unresourceful ones perished or were supported by the smart and resourceful. It obviously isn’t as if the entire tribe of man was smart and resourceful at the time....
Same events are happening today; how many people do you know that are almost incapable of surviving in today’s society unless they have someone around them almost literally holding their hand?
I suspect during the centuries of the last Ice Age the human population level became very low, maybe only 5000 people at the end. I’m not sure the smart and resourceful people would have tolerated supporting too many dumb and unresourceful people. We may never know.