You might be interested in an anecdote that conveys a probably major mental difference.
In the early 1970s, a friend of mine was sent to Niger to run an assay lab for a mining company. From time to time he would have telephone conferences with head office. He took notes on a clipboard: details of staff vacation decisions, supplies back orders, budget approvals, contact numbers, instrument calibrations, etc. On one occasion, a week went by before he needed these notes, at which point he discovered that they were lost!
He moaned to his assistant that this was a career disaster. But, the assistant was very surprised, “Why don’t you write it down again?” When he came to understand that his boss really couldn’t remember the details, he picked up a pencil and wrote it all out again, this from a phone conversation a week earlier, at a desk across the room, overheard while continuing with his own work. Shortly afterwards my friend thought to check the pockets of a rarely used jacket, found the missing sheets and was amazed to see the accuracy of his assistant’s ordinary memory.
My friend indicated that, with more time in the country, he came to see that this was far from unusual.
I think it is the case that “modern man” has many remarkable capabilities, technologically amplified, but gained at the price of other skills we do not know we have lost.
How does the present human compare to, let’s say, a human 1000 years ago?
https://www.quora.com/How-does-the-present-human-compare-to-lets-say-a-human-1000-years-ago