First, you have to avoid conflating culture with genetics. No one 'evolved' to be a good engineer: there has been an insufficient amount of time and probably selective pressure for an engineering gene to arise, spread, and flourish. Instead, we've developed an engineering culture, which can readily spread independent of the genes of the individuals currently carrying the engineering culture. Indeed, even today after a century or two since the dawn of modern engineering there are many fantastic first-generation engineers.
Second, I don't really believe that modern civilization is deficient as an environment for breeding intelligence. Fundamentally, intelligence isn't excellence at a particular culture or being supremely well suited to a particular niche, intelligence is adaptability. Intelligence lets us survive in a great variety of niches, that our ancestors never had the chance to evolve for, to learn new skills and develop new cultures.
Unlike the static worlds of yesteryear where generations could go by without a change and you could expect to live a life identical to your parents with (maybe) different names for the principals involved, everything changes now constantly. Culture, technology, jobs, food, language, social mediums. Everyone has to deal with it. People may not need to demonstrate their intelligence in a way that pleases a certain subset of the intellectual elite, but they're being required to adapt -- by their peers, their mates, their potential mates -- on a scale that has rarely if ever existed in human history.
First, you have to avoid conflating culture with genetics. No one 'evolved' to be a good engineer: there has been an insufficient amount of time and probably selective pressure for an engineering gene to arise, spread, and flourish. Instead, we've developed an engineering culture, which can readily spread independent of the genes of the individuals currently carrying the engineering culture. Indeed, even today after a century or two since the dawn of modern engineering there are many fantastic first-generation engineers.
Second, I don't really believe that modern civilization is deficient as an environment for breeding intelligence. Fundamentally, intelligence isn't excellence at a particular culture or being supremely well suited to a particular niche, intelligence is adaptability. Intelligence lets us survive in a great variety of niches, that our ancestors never had the chance to evolve for, to learn new skills and develop new cultures.
Unlike the static worlds of yesteryear where generations could go by without a change and you could expect to live a life identical to your parents with (maybe) different names for the principals involved, everything changes now constantly. Culture, technology, jobs, food, language, social mediums. Everyone has to deal with it. People may not need to demonstrate their intelligence in a way that pleases a certain subset of the intellectual elite, but they're being required to adapt -- by their peers, their mates, their potential mates -- on a scale that has rarely if ever existed in human history.