Is there any indication of increased intellegence over time within the Human species?

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"An improvement in tools shows an increase in intelligence. Prior homonids had several million years to improve their tools and did not."Two problems with these statements.First, you don't have to increase intelligence to improve tools. The first person to make a lipped bowl instead of an unlipped bowl may have just set the bowl down upside by accident. I agree that radical changes - fletching an arrow, or the development of a spear thrower are good indicators of thought being applied to the process of tool making, but it's very hard to make those distinctions when looking at simple tools.Second, the suggestion that prior hominids didn't improve their tools is misleading. What you are really saying is that they didn't improve their stone tools. For all we know, they had a wide variety of ever more complex wooden tools. The stone handaxes may have served a specific purpose and been well suited for it.If it ain't broke, don't fix it

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"Yes, I would say Europeans are more intelligent than Aboriginals. Not genetically, but there is good evidence that living in the kind of environments that we do increases our intelligence (as measured by IQ)."Wow! That's pretty racist.It sounds like what you are trying to say is this: "Modern Europeans score better on European standardized testing than peoples who are culturally isolated."I don't think anyone is gonna disagree with that, just like a Frenchman will score better than a Russian on a test given in French.But that certainly doesn't make one group "more intelligent" than the other.The reason at Europeans have enjoyed a great deal of technological success has MUCH MUCH more to do with availablity of resources and consistancy of climate.Much of the technology of early European society would work as well in England as it would in Germany. The livestock is essentially the same, as are the planting and harvesting seasons, the weather conditions, etc. If someone invents something there, it can easily be exported to or imported from one location to the next.However, in "vertically alligned" areas, Africa for example, what works for the people of Egypt is of little use to the people of the Congo or Kenya. They can't trade their technology because a camel saddle doesn't help a jungle dweller just like a fish trap won't help you kill a lion.

You're limiting intelligence to the ability to modify material.If you want to look it through that very narrowly defined window, then sure modern humans are better at making and modifying tools than any of our previous counterparts.But that really discounts other mental abilities - memory for example.I think we need to radically broaden the scope of what is considered "intelligence" before we start saying one group is smarter than another.