In 2006 there was a study that found a near perfect NEGATIVE correlation between national IQ and national skin colour. National skin color is a good proxy for ancestral climate because the colder the climate, the lighter the skin, generally speaking.
Growing up in the freezing cold of Canada, I know how much brains it would have taken archaic humans to colonize cold climates by solving the novel challenges of building warm sturdy well insulated shelter, creating fires, creating stone tools to hunt with, creating warm clothing, learning to sew warm insulated boots etc.
Even still, I’m surprised at just how strong the correlation between national skin colour and IQ is because there are other factors besides just ancestral climate that determines a populations IQ. For example arctic people and native americans have IQs nearly 1 standard deviation lower than most “mongoloids”. According to scholar Richard Lynn, this is probably because they evolved in remote low population density regions of the world where they didn’t have access to novel high IQ mutations that large populations produced through random chance. But there was still enormous selection for high IQ among arctic people but because they probably didn’t have these mutations from which to select, IQ could only be increased via brain size (which is very large in arctic people). By contrast large population East Asian IQ got much higher perhaps because natural selection could increase brain size in combination with novel mutations which enhanced brain efficiency.
Analogously, Australian aboriginals, bushmen, and pygmies, all have lower mean IQs than mainstream “black people”. These groups too had low ancestral population and/or were geographically isolated from the genetic mainstream, and thus also did not have access to novel mutations.
Richard Lynn created an interesting chart comparing the the IQs and brain size of ten human populations with ancestral climate. It should be noted that the group differences he reports are not corrected for nutrition, so people in third world countries will score way below their genetic potential. While correcting for nutrition does greatly diminish the differences, is does not seem to change the rank order:
One anomaly is the chart is that Pacific Islanders/Southeast Asians seem to have relatively high IQ/brain size for such warm ancestral climates, but this is either because they were geographically isolated, had to cross through cold climates to get to their destination, and/or mixed with Northern adapted East Asians.
Hunting and gathering peoples have lower iq than agricultural people in the same latitude. Agriculture increases population iq because society is much more complex. It explains why iq among native Americans were lower than Europeans despite the similar climates and the gap between bushmen and Africans.
I doubt it increases IQ because society is more complex. Agriculturalists are smarter because:
1) It helps to be smart to invent agriculture, particularly in a cold climate
2) Agriculture increases population size; population size increases the number of novel mutations for natural selection to operate on
I agree with jayg. In a primitive society the best hunters and most violent brutes thrive. In an agriculture/industrial society the smartest and hardest workers thrive. The best thing about agricultural/industrial society is that dumb brutes end up killing each other off. I see that as a feature not a bug. Now, I could potentially be a brute. But I’m smart enough not to act on it. Instead, I channel my energies into more productive areas.
you got it the other way around. human beings organized in large groups before agriculture. living in large groups MADE THEM SMART. then they invented agriculture.
it’s great you guys can agree on FALSITIES.
the negative relationship between fertility and intelligence has obtained since industrialization. this was always an obvious falsifying fact for Social Darwinism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence
the increase in population and not the demands of agriculture.
from the beginning to about 1800, agricultural peoples were shorter, scrawnier, sicker, and shorter lived than savages.
Neanderthals lived for how long in the cold…and nothing…nothing at all.
they never developed. 150,000 – 200,000 years and NOTHING!
their culture so far as they had any was the same for as long as they existed.
the following will cut into Garry’s “more productive areas”.
http://www.alternet.org/sex-acts-britain-just-banned-porn
“human beings organized in large groups before agriculture.”
Primitive hunter gatherers lived in small bands and do so even today.
“from the beginning to about 1800, agricultural peoples were shorter, scrawnier, sicker, and shorter lived than savages.”
True. But they still had higher fertility.
“Neanderthals lived for how long in the cold…and nothing…nothing at all.”
It’s hard to grow crops during an ice age.
“they never developed. 150,000 – 200,000 years and NOTHING!”
They were at least as developed as other humans living at the time.
this post is beyond retarded.
where did modern humans come from?
why did Neanderthals NEVER develop despite living in cold places.
so…if anything…
cold RETARDS the development of the species.
cold retards evolutionary development only to the extent that it retards population size which retards mutation frequency. Neanderthals had much smaller populations than contemporaneous Africans.
But once population size hit a critical threshold outside Africa, we saw great non-African evolutionary progress.
Remember, the theory is cold climate + large population = high mean IQ. Cold climate + small population = average mean IQ. Warm climate + large population = low mean IQ. Warm climate + low population = VERY low mean IQ.
but that “theory” is bollocks and is IN FACT NOT your theory…
because it has only been in the last 200 years that NW Europeans have been numerous…
2 millennia are not enough for dummkopf Germans to equal the intelligent and “echypnotic” Romans and Greeks.
i’m writing in Gregorian minuscule, Roman letters, which themselves were adapted from Greek which themselves were adapted from Phoenician script.
should’ve been:
…only been in the last 2000 years…
you really need to switch to a non-shitty blog host.
Still peddling this tired hypothesis, eh?
first and foremost, let’s accept it as true. the kind of smarts it’d take would be environmental/spatial/whatever-stupid-term-psychologists-use-for-it smarts. if so, then the differences we see on tests would be mostly, if not solely, due to that type of smarts. which MEANS then that EVERY OTHER type of smarts gap we see would be the result of bias and which would also strongly imply that strong jewish IQ has strong environmental underpinnings (then again, I just remember hearing that apparently jews don’t have high spatial/etc. smarts).
lol, that leaves HBD-deniers like me still sitting pretty prettily.
NEXT…
I do not accept this hypothesis as true because it really does not make much sense. first, the last great ice age occurred when human beings were relatively young as a species —- so the ‘cold’ selection pressures acted on all of us when we were still in Africa (or wherever you want to say we all were).
second, by the time humans are said to have “gotten to getting,” humans had already come up with many of the innovations (or direct precursors to the intellectual innovations) necessary to survive in the cold.
third, the Neanderthals WERE ALREADY THERE AND HAD BEEN THERE FOR A LONG TIME. If it took so much ‘smarts’ to survive the cold, how were they able to survive there despite never even approaching anything resembling the intellect of modern humanity?
the answer is NOT the cold you dumb-dumbs. it’s that human beings ARE AND WERE ALREADY SMART. human beings were so smart that they could organize themselves INTO LARGE GROUPS.
Still peddling this tired hypothesis, eh?
Yeah, that theory of evolution, so tired.
first and foremost, let’s accept it as true. the kind of smarts it’d take would be environmental/spatial/whatever-stupid-term-psychologists-use-for-it smarts. if so, then the differences we see on tests would be mostly, if not solely, due to that type of smarts. which MEANS then that EVERY OTHER type of smarts gap we see would be the result of bias
And in fact the black-white IQ gap and the Northeast Asian-white IQ gap are in fact strongest on spatial ability. But verbal ability may have also been selected for in terms of organizing hunting strategies and passing useful knowledge to the next generation. And if you believe in g, that was certainly selected for.
Also, I explicitly stated that climate was not the only determinant of genetic IQ differences. Access to new mutations was pivotal too.
and which would also strongly imply that strong jewish IQ has strong environmental underpinnings (then again, I just remember hearing that apparently jews don’t have high spatial/etc. smarts).
Well it certainly implies that Jewish IQ has a unique cause. Whether it’s an environmental cause or just a unique genetic cause (Cochran’s theory) is a question only future research can answer.
I do not accept this hypothesis as true because it really does not make much sense. first, the last great ice age occurred when human beings were relatively young as a species —- so the ‘cold’ selection pressures acted on all of us when we were still in Africa (or wherever you want to say we all were).
Africa was nowhere near as cold as other places
second, by the time humans are said to have “gotten to getting,” humans had already come up with many of the innovations (or direct precursors to the intellectual innovations) necessary to survive in the cold.
They acquired some innovations but not all.
third, the Neanderthals WERE ALREADY THERE AND HAD BEEN THERE FOR A LONG TIME. If it took so much ‘smarts’ to survive the cold, how were they able to survive there despite never even approaching anything resembling the intellect of modern humanity?
We don’t know what their intellect was but their brains were big (at least before adjusting for their robust builds). Some people believe they were smarter than us but lacked language:
http://archive.news.softpedia.com/news/Neanderthals-were-too-smart-to-survive-15264.shtml
the answer is NOT the cold you dumb-dumbs. it’s that human beings ARE AND WERE ALREADY SMART. human beings were so smart that they could organize themselves INTO LARGE GROUPS.
Some say humanity showed limited evidence of advanced culture until 45,000 years ago
you aren’t peddling evolution, though.
‘But verbal ability may have also been selected for in terms of organizing hunting strategies and passing useful knowledge to the next generation.’
Oh please. How would this not be present in warmer environments where the tribes hunted?
‘And if you believe in g, that was certainly selected for.’
Believe in is an apt phrase for it. No, I don’t really believe in g — it’s factor analysis.
‘Also, I explicitly stated that climate was not the only determinant of genetic IQ differences. Access to new mutations was pivotal too.’
Why are these mutations happening in one place as opposed to the other? The populations were just as large.
‘Africa was nowhere near as cold as other places’
as far as i know, humans evolved ~200k years ago in East Africa, around the time of a huge ice age that wiped out most all mammals. Humans survived by migrating southward. this explanation gives a good account of why human beings LACK genetic diversity in comparison to other species. there’s more genetic diversity in ONE group of chimps than there is in the ENTIRE human race.
such an insular population would have placed a premium on rule-following and intricate social dynamics, which is probably where the smarts came from.
‘We don’t know what their intellect was but their brains were big (at least before adjusting for their robust builds). Some people believe they were smarter than us but lacked language:’
That’s great ‘some people’ believe it. The majority view, supported by the evidence is that they lacked the same smarts human beings possessed.
‘Some say humanity showed limited evidence of advanced culture until 45,000 years ago’
Very vague, here. what do you mean by ‘advanced culture.’
no indeed aphallic pp is right on the last point afaik.
humans are only about 50,000 years old in their current form.
though it is again interesting that ALL of the evolution occurred in what is today the WARMEST part of sub-Saharan Africa and which has the DARKEST skinned Africans.
yes there are shades of black and the same folks who dominate long distance running are the world’s darkest…only the Caucasoid Malabar coast natives can compare.
why didn’t this evolution take place in what is today South Africa? upland South Africa, like Joburg can be quite cold in the southern winter.
the Khoisan are as lighter skinned than some Italians, and HBDers claim they’re the dumbest people on earth.
humans aren’t just a homogeneous species. they’re a RECENT species.
Sicilian:
Khoisan:
All of what makes us advanced seemed to be in place indelendent of cold climate
so far as there is actually ANY theory here it would have to be that…
Scandinavians were as dumb as Plains Indians and Inuit and indigenous Siberians UNTIL…
the last 2000 years when Scandinavia and “Germania” developed a “large” population…and as a consequence overran the European part of the Roman empire and then conquered Russia and England.
this is a STOOOPID theory.
China was conquered by a bunch of 6′ tall Mongolians riding really short horses who never developed agriculture. Genghis Khan is still the record holder for territory ahead of Napolean and Hitler unless one counts Victoria who at one time held 1/4 of the earth in thrall.
Until about 50,000 years ago we were dumber than neanderhals. We may still be dumber, but we have something even better than intelligence: language
Language is the capacity for collective intelligence: culture. Language evolved in Africa but language alone was not enough to conquer Neanderthals
We needed language + IQ & we didn’t have both until we experienced tens of thousands of years of cold Eurasian life
so now pp is changing her “theory” once again to cold climates make modern humans smarter whether numerous or not, but didn’t make Neanderthals smarter for 150,000 years, because they had no language.
whatevs.
Except as far as I know language started to develop a lot earlier than that…..
Larger population leads to more division of labor, whole ranks that deal with theoretical stuff, or other stuff than gathering, harvesting, hunting. Society as a whole becomes more productive, and the ones receiving most of the produce are not the ones doing the menial work, which may be unfair, yes. Then along comes a plaige, and so on. Black death probably set Europe on the path to world domination.
there’re nothing but anomalies.
that is, except for racist morons.
Western Europeans rule the world and Western Europe is much warmer than Eastern Europe and much warmer than Middle America. it’s surrounded by water which has a high specific heat.
Scandinavians and Brits don’t have higher IQs than northern Italians.
Chinese from the south don’t score lower than those from the north.
Japanese and Koreans are much darker than the Irish.
but the HBDers have the usual ad hoc bullshit to explain the low IQs of the Sami and the Inuit.
they should wipe their asses.
Mugabe – “Western Europeans rule the world and Western Europe is much warmer than Eastern Europe and much warmer than Middle America. it’s surrounded by water which has a high specific heat.”
Common sense is how you know which facts to assign significance to. Las Vegas is colder than L.A. but somehow that is not what this is about. You have to look at climate, AND other factors. Not JUST climate. Why do you insist on misinterpreting all claims by the blogger, and others. You are not clever with those ironic rants, you are vulgar.
no rants.
and no irony.
and no vulgarity.
apparently English is not your first language.
maybe you’re putting the whole blog through google translate?
the blogger is a racist moron. there’s nothing more vulgar.
average January temp in Copenhagen is 0 C.
in Moscow it’s -9 C.
average January temp in Fargo, ND -13 C.
you must be an immigrant to Denmark. no Dane could be so stupid. right?
but, of course, there’s one famous Dane who proves that Neanderthals still walk the earth.
Stig Tofting:
the blogger is a racist moron.
I didn’t know you had a blog.
I think in this instance my english was quite accurate, maybe it should have been ironical i.st.of ironic, I dunno. Cheap vulgarity is what you stoop to, but I admit you mix it up some stuff that gives you away as an unusually educated person.
Copenhagen -1, Moscow -9 makes both places about as difficult and unpleasant to live in. I’d say on the mediterranean you cross the line to a climate where you could write poetry and philosophise under a tree all year long. Then africa is yet another climate zone.
Hugh,
Macaca is who he is. A boozy troll. You either roll with it or you ignore him.
But pleading with him about his vulgarity will have the same effect as pleading with your dog to stop licking itself.
I’m not pleading, I’m probing. Some commentators are just hopeless, but for some reason I think Mugabe would be capable of understanding where he goes wrong. If caught at just the right moment, he may admit to comprehending things we would not normally admit. It’s an emotional condition that stops him most of the time I think.
Hugh,
You’re certainly right about Macaca’s emotional condition debilitating him, but it’s chronic, not intermittent.
no.
if you have any ancestors without blue eyes then you’re subhuman.
why?
’cause.
that’s exactly where i got the name from.
good on ya.
the “funny” thing is Bob Marley’s father was white and he died from metastatic melanoma, a white man’s cancer almost always.
what European country was such a shithole that it’s emigration in the last two centuries has been greater than any other’s as a % of its population, except Ireland’s?
here’s a hint…one of its most famous novels is titled Hunger….and today it’s the richest (real) country in the world.
Immigration requires funds, which norwegians, Germans. They had the money to start their own farms. The Irish and Italians didn’t which is why they clustered around city factories.
In comparison, indian and chinese immigration to the new world was scant, because they didn’t have the money. Those that did were ruthlessly exploited as indentured servants.
…its emigration…
more ad hoc bullshit from an HBD-tard.
Norwegians emigrated en masse, because they were richer than other Europeans.
HBDer = RETARD.
Well, look at immigration today. In Dubai, the Indians aren’t the worst off of their country. They come from Kerala, which is the best off state in India in living standards. That includes even the construction workers and lowly servants. Immigration takes money and some education. Compared to the idea that immigrants are the worst off in the world is a popular image, but the facts don’t really show that.
With that said, that has nothing to do with IQ.
http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Economy/GDP-per-capita-in-1900
is it true? idk.
but there’s Norway below Chile and Argentina.
wikipedia and “conservapedia” say that poverty was the motivation for Norwegian emigration and that Norway was one of the poorest countries in Europe prior to 1900.
must’ve been genetic right?
Macaca once again strays into economic history:
Argentina and Chile were considered quite wealthy at the beginning of the twentieth century. They were sparsely populated countries with many goods and minerals to export to Europe. Many Europeans from places more dynamic than Norway moved to those South American countries in the late 1800s.
Nor should it be a shock that Norwegians were slightly poorer than many other Europeans in 1900. IQ is a rough indicator. It doesn’t smooth out every permutation of history or geography or culture. If it did, then China would’ve never gone through the Communist Revolution, Russians today would have a higher standard of living and more stability, and Macaca might be able to find a valid point sometime.
Hunger is a great novel…
i suppose those who survived the truly brutal cold of Stalin’s camps…if they had any children…those children were well above average.
on cold peeeepeeee might read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
it is odd that pp should be so offended by a sobriquet(te) referring to the the penis as a penis is the one thing she wants to have most in the world after being white.
besides SMALL populations evolve MORE rapidly than do large ones.
http://anthro.palomar.edu/synthetic/synth_5.htm
rabbits, pigs and rats, how can one quantify their evolution?
Number of population seems not to increase intelilgence, but maybe only physical fitness.
In humans intelligence is probably not results of high population, but high population maybe is the result of intelligence…
and I am very skeptical about Polar people low IQ explanation as low population…
As i implied in the post i wrote right after this one; it could be geographic isolation rather than specifically small population that impeded their IQ since the Americas was cutoff from the mainstream of recent evolution
There are obviously many problems with those skin color numbers… The numbers are too rude…It only clusters northern european countries as 1.00. Russia and Turkey has the same skin color?
I have a better idea how to measure real skin colors…
In internet you can find average faces from many countries. From those average faces, one can quantify the color of the face exactly, with a software. Then correlate with IQ.
I agree there is a correlation between skin color and IQ, but did that correlation exist all the time?
I mean did that correlation exist 1000 years ago? or 5000 years ago, or 500 years ago? Or is that a recent phenomenon?
Well, how many black skinned populations created ancient civilizations? That might be a clue to how far back the correlation goes
Also, the sophistication of very ancient stone tools is correlate with latitude
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Africa#Southern_Africa
you are right with african population… I agree there is correlation…I am only trying to understand…
egyptians, mesopotamia, greeks and romans were probably the northest civilization of their times?
Civilization seems to follow a certain migration path…. The further from original folk, the smarter people get?
better…
http://www.essential-humanities.net/world-history/sub-saharan-africa/
It’s noteworthy that Egypt is in Arab Africa not sub-saharan africa
The Horn of Africa also has considerable caucasoid admixture from west Asia
Swanknasty
You have to consider whether the African civilizations were made by pure sub-saharans or people who were largely caucasoids
Also you have to consider whether your sources are Afrocentric . Some Afrocentric scholars are good; others are considered fringe though that’s partly because of Eurocentric bias
‘You have to consider whether the African civilizations were made by pure sub-saharans or people who were largely caucasoids’
Are nubians caucasoid? They’re sub-saharan and dark, at any rate.
Nubanians are largely caucasoid genetically. The U.S. census classifies them as white
http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/09/07/egyptian-immigrant-wants-to-be-reclassified-as-black/
okay, well take a step back for a second and realize that, when the theory is busted, the “answer” is to simply redefine what “black” really is. Or “white” for that matter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_the_United_States#North_Africans_in_the_United_States
read your own article —- > IRL he is black.
““White” is defined as “a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa””
Ethiopia is not in North Africa. Most of the Sahel is not in North Africa.
Ethiopia is not in North Africa. Most of the Sahel is not in North Africa.
Ethiopia may not be in North Africa, but a lot of their genes originated in the middle east.
that’s just the result of ever-more inclusive category, itself the result of a theory being demolished over and over and over and over again.
Ethiopians, up until recently, were considered predominantly negroid.
And huh? What do you mean originated elsewhere? Ethiopia is a strong candidate for where we originated.
I agree that all modern humans originated in sub-Saharan Africa, however the horn of Africa is very close to the middle east so there’s been a lot of mixing. By some estimates, Ethiopians are nearly half caucasoid at the genetic level.
One very important issue is that although averaga IQ increased with latitude in general, the standard deviation decreases…
Scandinavians have very low SD, looking at PISA… Balkan countries, Turkey, South America, etc, have very high standard deviation for PISA performance, therefore IQ…
Well brazil has several races which would increase the SD
PISA scores might not reflect the indigenous population of these countries only
you are right. however, one also cannot speak of indigenous population in europe , middle east, and asia… There have been always migration, minorities, etc..
Iran scores very well in IMO, international Math Olympiad, with an average IQ of 84…
And romania and bulgaria too, very good at high levels…
In developed countries education is universally good, as is nutrition, which would shrink the SD for non genetic reasons
You were creative in his theory. But must take into account that the intelligence NOT JUST IQ, is a combination of characteristics, ” psychological ”, behavioral and cognitive (in fact, all human mental characteristics can also be understood as cognitive, because you need all of them to interact, survive, breed or produce).
Has not been proven that the ancient humans were less intelligent than today. It should be taken into account that the ancient humans were exposed to objective cognitive tests. It’s that old joke, the modern urban man can not be adaptable to the wild.
I read something in the past, the genes that predispose to ADHD, were very common (prolific) in the human population and this may have helped explain why humans spread to four continents (the multiregional theory is not correct) . ADHD is not just search for sensations or impulsivity, but also comes with some possible advantages in relation to creative thinking.
The human being since its genesis, ” preferred improve ” (was forced to) your mental capacity than the harmony between body and mind. Most animals are bodily adapted to environments in which they live. The human being, devoid of its evolutionary armor, adapted the environment to himself. And this is the main difference of human intelligence in relation to non-human intelligence.
Pumpkin,
I don’t know if you’ve read, or heard of, Michael Hart’s Understanding Human History. If not, check out the tables he provides on pages 124, 164, 165, and 166. You might find them interesting.
I don’t find his ideas completely convincing, but there’s probably a little something to them.
I have that book & i partly wrote this post as a revision of his IQ timeline
He used some outdated data and made the mistake of assuming the African IQ of ca 70 is the genetic IQ when in fact it’s stunted by malnutrition
However he also ignored the fact that the first humans were more like bushmen who really do have genetic IQs around 70, so his errors largely cancelled out
You are missing capitalism which selected for people based on intelligence, dilligence, and some other features, in Europe from around the early middle ages until the industrial revolution. Europeans probably had IQs of around 115 150 years ago, hence the enormous and fundamental nature of discoveries in Europe, despite a low amount of resources dedicated toward research.
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In human societies, what counts most is the personality (well, in all societies and collective phenomena of all species). As a result, less dominant people become dependent on those of strong personality. In the end, there is a strong correlation between ” something close to intelligence ” that cognitive tests measure and achievements, as higher income and fame. But the personality factor, seems to be more decisive and that’s not good. Many of the people who can actually improve the nations have certain aspects of your personality that prevents them from confronting the strong personality that dominate the nations. As a result, there is no a PERFECT relationship between intelligence (in all its qualitative and quantitative levels) and social hierarchy. If all good, intelligent and creative belong to the elite or the elite was composed exclusively of them, poverty would be eliminated in less than a decade worldwide.
And the poorer the country, the more important the dominant personality, the more evolved, more important is the intelligence and creativity.
They (arctic and others geographically isolated populations) have lower IQ performance (or integrated) because they stopped competing and creativity works as a very important tool for dispute between two tribes. Geographic isolation can produce super environmental expertise and reduce the growth of neural complexity (aka, creativity, cognitive diversity).
PP.
I hope you dint me me digging up this old post, i know you are a busy person (juggling a job and multiple debates on this post and writing articles :)). So answer me when you have the time.
It s just that i stumbled upon this post today and just yesterday i saw the following chart which sows cambodians and south vietnames have smaller cranial capacity tha malaysians.
In this article you said : >”One anomaly is the chart is that Pacific Islanders/Southeast Asians seem to have relatively high IQ/brain size for such warm ancestral climates, but this is either because they were geographically isolated, had to cross through cold climates to get to their destination, and/or mixed with Northern adapted East Asians.”<
but looking for the above chart again today, i saw the following chart which shows the opposite.
with camobdian and south vietnamese shown having higher brain capacity than malaysians, but shows all other people having the same CC as shown in the above chart.
Looks the data for camb/SV has been inverted in of the above charts. I wonder which of the charts is true and which chart inverted it?
Wait i am an idiot 🙂 both charts show the same thing, that malaysians having more CC than thai, camb and south vietnam.
So how is it possible?