Humans have been measuring each other's intelligence for a long time. In China during the Xi Zhou dynasty (1046 to 771BC), candidates for official positions were formally tested on a range of criteria including the “six skills”: arithmetic, archery, horsemanship, music, writing and the performance of rituals and ceremonies. The notion of a universal, objective scale of intelligence, however, did not take shape until the 19th century and the arrival of Darwinism. If Charles Darwin is the father of modern biology, then the father of modern intelligence testing is his cousin, Francis Galton – statistician, polymath and founder of eugenics. In 1884, he set up an “anthropometric laboratory” at the International Health Exhibition in London, and measured, among other things, the reaction times, eyesight, colour sensitivity and steadiness of hand of more than 9,000 men and women as he looked for links between their physical and mental characteristics.
人類從很早以前就開始相互測試智力。在中國的西周時代（公元前1046到公元前771年），擔任官職的候選人需要接受正式的測試，標準包括「六藝」：禮、樂、射、御、書、數。而普遍、客觀的智力等級的概念，直到19世紀達爾文主義的產生才成型。如果說查爾斯·達爾文(Charles Darwin)是現代生物學之父，那麼現代智力測試之父就是他的外甥弗朗西斯·高爾頓(Francis Galton)——統計學家、博學家和優生學的奠基人。1884年，他在倫敦的國際健康展會上建立了一個「人類測量實驗室」，爲探索人類的身體和智力特徵之間的聯繫，他對9000多名男性和女性測量反應時間、視力、色感和手的穩定性，以及其它項目。