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Notes -
They haven't been genetically selected for whatever genes contributed to literacy based on the results of that contribution to literacy, but if the beneficial alleles weren't heavily pleiotropic and selected for based on other effects then none of the rest of us would have them either. You can get something like "hang on to lactose digestion longer" from a single mutation, but "easily figure out how to turn abstract squiggles into concepts and vice versa" has got to be a side-effect of genes with other effects on the brain. It doesn't surprise us too much that an illiterate descended from ancestors with spotty "ideograms on birch bark" at best could eventually encounter "talking leaves" in other languages, then invent a syllabary for his own language, then spread literacy to half his contemporaries within a few years afterward.
It's possible that those genes then underwent greater selection later in societies with writing systems, but a priori it could be that they instead underwent less selection later. The worry that reading acts as a crutch and weakens our reliance on and our practice of memory and true understanding dates back as far as Plato, and its modern version is as near as that "students using AI do better on homework and worse on tests" study The Economist reported a few days ago.
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