Not sure about other settings but Humans dominated D&D through 3.5e. Not sure about 4e. 5e is the edition where humans got the shaft.
Early editions, only humans had unlimited levels in any class. In 3e, they got a free feat and bonuses to skill points and no restrictions to multiclass.
5e humans are pretty weak. It’s like the developers wanted people to move away from humans. Very odd.
Not really, in this game humans seem especially weak because we don't have variant yet. Plenty of people are drawn to the stat flexibility that Human offers, and all the most outrageous character builds I've ever seen actually played have all been Human or Variant Human. Elves got the most 5e love, because the boys at WoTC love Drizzt and want to suck on his toes.
We don't even have Gnomes yet, and I consider them to have stronger racial abilities than Elves.
