I just watched the documentary Apocalypse Neanderthal which explores the extinction of the Neanderthals. Although Steve Hsu estimated that Neanderthals had an IQ around 70, this documentary argued that they were just as intelligent as modern humans, or just as intelligent as modern humans were at the time we coexisted with Neanderthals.
It’s unclear whether modern humans living 40,000 years ago were smarter or dumber than we are today. Indeed a scientist in the documentary mentions that it took him a year and a half to learn to make the stone tools Neanderthals made all the time. Neanderthals were also praised for inventing the first adhesive, a kind of prehistoric crazy glue used to attach blades to their spears.
From an HBD perspective, it makes sense that they would have been smart because they were exposed to the ice age far longer than modern humans were, and their brain size exceeded that of people today, though that’s partly because of their robust body builds. Their brains were especially larger in the occipital region involving visual processing. This makes sense because even today, cold adapted people such as East Asians do especially better on spatial tasks than whites who do especially better than blacks. Probably because cold climates required the spatial ability to hunt, build tools, shelter and clothing, and this also explains why men have better spatial ability than women.
Scientists in the documentary were puzzled by how the Neanderthals could have gone extinct despite being cognitively and socially equally to moderns, and physically superior. Though I question whether they were physically superior. Neanderthals were incredibly strong and barrel chested, but modern humans were taller and skinnier which appears to be a more evolved body type because it’s more efficient, and allows you to move faster, jump higher, endure longer, and reach further in combat, despite being less metabolically expensive.
Ultimately the documentary concluded that Neanderthals died out not because of genocide, but because they were too specialized to Europe, unlike modern humans who thrived in multiple continents. So when Europe’s biggest volcano of the last 200,000 years erupted 39,000 years ago, it whipped out virtually all Neanderthals.
However the documentary reminded us not to feel superior because although Neanderthals went extinct, they last 300,000 years which is 100,000 years longer than our species has yet lasted, and warned that another apocalyptic volcano is expected to absolutely decimate North America.
Pumpkin Person 
Steve Hsu estimated the average Neanderthal IQ to be 70 based on his genome, did he have done the same for modern humans ? (To see at least if his method is ok)
I personnally think that Sapiens was already a man when he went in Eurasia while the african ancestors of Neanderthal were more ape-like creatures which were dumber that Sapiens. When these prehumans arrived in Europa their IQ was relatively low while Sapiens had the time to develop more his intelligence in Africa. What I mean is that the ancestors of Neanderthal didnt stay enough time to reach the potential of IQ increasing of this environment.
May be Neanderthals lacked the verbal IQ(and some others cognitive abilities) of modern humans which was principally developed in Africa contrary to spatial IQ. I also think that Neanderthals could have an higher pure spatial IQ than modern humans because they were exposed to ice age longer but with a small population and a prehuman brain to begin with. I think the analogy with the Artic people is great concerning this, they have bigger brains than East Asians and an higher pure spatial IQ because of the longer exposure to an ice age-like environment but are generally dumber and this because of their small population.
Steve Hsu estimated the average Neanderthal IQ to be 70 based on his genome, did he have done the same for modern humans ? (To see at least if his method is ok)
I think he estimated based on the fact that modern humans invented way more in our 200,000 years of existence than they did in their 300,000 years of existence, however I’m not sure that makes sense, because at the time we coexisted with them, our achievements were similar.
I think he also based it on the fact that they are genetically twice as different from humans as humans are to each other.
I personnally think that Sapiens was already a man when he went in Eurasia while the african ancestors of Neanderthal were more ape-like creatures which were dumber that Sapiens. When these prehumans arrived in Europa their IQ was relatively low while Sapiens had the time to develop more his intelligence in Africa. What I mean is that the ancestors of Neanderthal didnt stay enough time to reach the potential of IQ increasing of this environment.
This makes sense. It could be that Neanderthals left Africa before they mastered Africa, so Europe was way too cognitively challenging for them. If they were way too dumb to adapt behaviorally, natural selection would have just favored whoever had the right body type to survive the cold, hence they became short and stocky.
By contrast, modern humans were smart enough to adapt behaviorally, so natural selection favored more and more behavioral flexibility, but limited selection for body type, thus Europeans retained the tall scrawny bodies of East Africa.
On the other hand, if we were smarter than them, we didn’t really show it until after they went extinct.
May be Neanderthals lacked the verbal IQ(and some others cognitive abilities) of modern humans which was principally developed in Africa contrary to spatial IQ. I also think that Neanderthals could have an higher pure spatial IQ than modern humans because they were exposed to ice age longer but with a small population and a prehuman brain to begin with. I think the analogy with the Artic people is great concerning this, they have bigger brains than East Asians and an higher pure spatial IQ because of the longer exposure to an ice age-like environment but are generally dumber and this because of their small population.
Cale, you’re brain is like a sponge! Everything I say on this blog you absorb and apply.
Cale, you’re brain is like a sponge! Everything I say on this blog you absorb and apply
Did it imply some reflection process ? And this is the wrong moment to say that because I have already think about that before I discover your blog. More seriously, I am glad that there is this reciprocity between us: your articles makes me express my theories in the comment section while you are writing your article with the help of my comments.
“This makes sense. It could be that Neanderthals left Africa before they mastered Africa, so Europe was way too cognitively challenging for them. If they were way too dumb to adapt behaviorally, natural selection would have just favored whoever had the right body type to survive the cold, hence they became short and stocky.”
So you’re implying that cold climate adaptations did not select for intelligence but only mere physical resistance. And that the most intelligent of subtropical populations are the most African-like, those who didn’t have a physical advantage for their environment and had to use their brains to survive.
So you’re implying that cold climate adaptations did not select for intelligence but only mere physical resistance.
Only in populations that don’t have enough intelligence to select. Evolution finds the best solution for the particular organism. If you put a bunch of dogs in the blizzard, they’re not going to adapt by radically changing their behavior, they’re going to adapt by evolving more fur.
By contrast if you put a bunch of East Asians in a blizzard, they’re not going to adapt by evolving fur, they’re going to adapt by changing their behavior, hence selection for intelligence.
So when Cale says that ancestors of neanderthals left Africa before becoming human, it implies none of them were smart enough to solve the ice age problems, so there was no high intelligence for evolution to select. So instead it selected for physical traits.
When modern humans left Africa, some of them were smart enough to cope with the ice age cognitively, so that that was the survival strategy evolution would favor
Of course Cale is assuming Neanderthals were dumb..the jury is still out on that
So when Cale says that ancestors of neanderthals left Africa before becoming human, it implies none of them were smart enough to solve the ice age problems, so there was no high intelligence for evolution to select. So instead it selected for physical traits.
I didnt say that at all.
I will summarize my explaination so that everybody can understand it:
– African Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal share a common ancestor which is some ape-like human.
– On part of the population of this common ancestor go to Europe, the other stay in Africa (I oversimplify of course).
– The population who stayed in Africa was selected for intelligence because, at this actual average level of intelligence, intelligence was still a huge advantage in tropical environments.
– This population became smart enough to relatively mastered their environment and to let their population grow a lot. This population growth produce a lot of mutation for higher intelligence.
– On the other hand, the Neanderthals who evolved from the ape-like human in a colder environment didnt know the population growth of the Sapiens because they were in a cold environment and they couldnt afford to have a lot of kids.
– The Neanderthals were in a more cognitively demanding environment but they werent enough to produce some high IQ mutation (Even if they could still have higher spatial IQ than H.Sapiens as I previously explain).
Of course Cale is assuming Neanderthals were dumb..the jury is still out on that
The purpose of my theory is to explain why Neanderthals might have been dumber than European Homo Sapiens despite having bigger brains and being more exposed to ice age.
Cale, that makes sense.
If there is lots of natural selection for intelligence, but a population too small to have mutations, evolution would probably respond by making the brain as big as possible, because in the absence of new ways to make them smarter (mutations), brain size is the only variation evolution has to work with.
But since brain size is only determinant of intelligence out of many, even a huge increase in brain size would not allow them to be as smart as a population with more individuals, and thus more mutations for brain efficiency,
This is very similar to Richard Lynn’s explanation for why arctic people have an average IQ of only 90 despite being the biggest brained and most cold adapted race on Earth. Their population (and thus mutation rate) was just too low.
Your theory is pure speculation and I don’t have time to comment on it, I just have an additional question: what Africans were selected for when their continent suffered the desertification that paralleled the Eurasian ice age ?
Pumpkin, I forgot to ask you:
How old are you ?
What’s your academic background ?
What’s your occupation ?
Do you live in the State of New York or in New England ?
Africans were also selected for intelligence but this selection was less intense than for Eurasians.
Your theory is pure speculation and I don’t have time to comment on it
The goal of a theory is to be coherent and not in contradiction with the facts which is it the case. You have lost time writing this useless comment.
“The goal of a theory is to be coherent and not in contradiction with the facts”
To begin with, the goal of a theory is to be consistent with the reality and not with your pre-made conclusions.
What is the evidence that Africans were selected for less intelligence when facing desertification which is a huge challenge.
Is it a coincidence that this in Africa that the first signs of human behavioral modernity appeared in Africa when contemporary Eurasian humanoids still left primitive archeological traces ?
Is it also a coincidence that humans (homo sapiens) spread out of Africa only after they became similar to us (behviorally modern humans) whereas Neanderthals, who have a common ancestor with Sapiens (hence common genetic starting points) did not develop this superior intelligence even though they were exposed to the ice age much longer ? Is it the desertification of Africa that caused the most dramatic selection for intelligence ?
And why doesn’t archeology shows that once the ice age had finished its selective process, populations that were exposed to it started to distance others significantly in terms of manifestations of intellectual performance ?
Some other questions:
Are you aware that Europeans and especially East Asians came from the south and gradually moved northwards as temperatures got cooler and thus were likely not that much affected by polar/boreal environments but rather dry and cold subtropical conditions.
To begin with, the goal of a theory is to be consistent with the reality and not with your pre-made conclusions.
My theory is consistent with reality in the sense that it is coherent and doesnt contradict known facts, you just dont like it.
What is the evidence that Africans were selected for less intelligence when facing desertification which is a huge challenge.
Africans werent selected for “less intelligence” but they were less selected for intelligence than Eurasians were. Why ? Because in the savannah clothes and shelters didnt need to be as complex as in a cold environment. And you can survive more than one night without clothes and shelter in the savannah while while in a polar environment you die immediately (as in a temperate climates during winter).
Is it a coincidence that this in Africa that the first signs of human behavioral modernity appeared in Africa when contemporary Eurasian humanoids still left primitive archeological traces ?
You have to develop this affirmation which worth nothing the moment.
Is it also a coincidence that humans (homo sapiens) spread out of Africa only after they became similar to us (behviorally modern humans) whereas Neanderthals, who have a common ancestor with Sapiens (hence common genetic starting points) did not develop this superior intelligence even though they were exposed to the ice age much longer ? Is it the desertification of Africa that caused the most dramatic selection for intelligence ?
Thats what my theory try to explain by saying it could be linked to population sizes.
And why doesn’t archeology shows that once the ice age had finished its selective process, populations that were exposed to it started to distance others significantly in terms of manifestations of intellectual performance ?
Civilisation appear first in Middle east, did this make Middle easterners the smartest population in the world ? I think your way to treat the problem is not pertinent.
Are you aware that Europeans and especially East Asians came from the south and gradually moved northwards as temperatures got cooler and thus were likely not that much affected by polar/boreal environments but rather dry and cold subtropical conditions.
I also need evidences here. But even if they evolved in a temperate climate they would have to face winter.
“My theory is consistent with reality in the sense that it is coherent and doesnt contradict known facts, you just dont like it.”
It does contradict many known facts, in the sense that it is based on a racial outlook when no genes of race have been found. It does when no specialist in neuroscience, genetics and human biology has ever found intellelectual and behavioral phenotypes that fit racial categories and are written in population genetics. It still does when it claims cold climates selected for intelligence when it is proven that any significant step in the evolution of human intellect took place in tropical Africa and that this fact is backed by archeology, contrary to the ice age theory that is only trusted by HBD, a discipline led by psychologists, people who are not even specialist of the topics they deal with.
What I describe about behavioral modernity and the fact that most of humanity’s cognitive development happened in Africa is consensus among archeologists and specialists of human evolution. On the opposite, Rushton’s ice age theory is marginal, stupid and completely dismissed by the reality and the most trusted theories. Just make a couple research on google scholar and you’ll see how non-existent his theory is among specialists.
“Civilisation appear first in Middle east, did this make Middle easterners the smartest population in the world ? I think your way to treat the problem is not pertinent.”
What you just don’t get is that I simply don’t believe that any hierarchy exists among populations in terms of genetically driven cognitive abilities. So no, I don’t believe that middle easterners are smarter than others because they were the first to develop monumental civilizations. However, when you claim that the ice age selected some populations for more intelligence, this should have been reflected in archeology as soon as the selective process was completed and it seems just abnormal that the Celts and the Germans had to wait until 500AD to surpass the level of sophistication of West Africa or that they lagged behind populations that had very limited exposure to the ice age for thousands of years.
“I also need evidences here. But even if they evolved in a temperate climate they would have to face winter.”
Y DNA haplogroups reflect pre-historic migrations.
HBD has an obsession with winter and no understanding whatsoever of what the tropical wet season/dry season cycle is like. For your information, winter is not so big a challenge, making fire is a discovery of Homo Erectus, it is not even considered as a sign of behavioral modernity or “superior intelligence”. Clothing before the neolithic revolution was limited to animal skin, today’s inuits don’t sew, they just wear the fur of the game they hunt. Finding food in temperate or subarctic winter is still easy, there are many edible wild plants and mushrooms, animals are still around, some even sleep all winter long so hunting them is effortless. But the most beneficial aspect of winter is that it kills pests, microbes and makes the air saner. The 6 month long tropical dry season is something of another kind, the disappearance of water, the disappearance of life. Living is the tropics is living half of the year in a completely different environment than that of the other half, exaggerating a little bit, it’s like 6 months in Amazonia and then 6 months in the Sahara, it requires much more ability and forethought than a maximum 3 months long temperate cool winter.
The signs of behavioral modernity are:
burial
fishing
figurative art (cave paintings, petroglyphs, figurines)
systematic use of pigment (such as ochre) and jewelry for decoration or self-ornamentation
Using bone material for tools
Transport of resources long distances
Blade technology
Diversity, standardization, and regionally distinct artifacts
Hearths
Composite tools
From Henshilwood, Christopher; Marean, Curtis (2003). “The Origin of Modern Human Behavior: Critique of the Models and Their Test Implications”. Current Anthropology 44 (5): 627–651.
And Klein, Richard (1995). “Anatomy, behavior, and modern human origins”. Journal of World Prehistory 9: 167–198.
I also forgot to mention the fact that human intelligence evolved in Africa not only because of the challenges of the tropical environment but also because Africans were in intensive competition with archaic hominids and other ferocious animals whereas the Eurasian fauna is much more human-friendly and intellectually more basic.
I want you to explain point by point why my theory is wrong and then to explain what might truly have happened instead of using arguments of authority.
Living is the tropics is living half of the year in a completely different environment than that of the other half, exaggerating a little bit, it’s like 6 months in Amazonia and then 6 months in the Sahara, it requires much more ability and forethought than a maximum 3 months long temperate cool winter
So you are implying that people who live in the tropics are more selected for intelligence that those who live in temperate and arctic areas ? Of course you are implying that. But I thought that they werent cogitive differences between people as you said:
What you just don’t get is that I simply don’t believe that any hierarchy exists among populations in terms of genetically driven cognitive abilities.
I think you are using all the existing arguments leading to the non cognitive superiority of Eurasians under Africans, even if they contradict themselves.
“So you are implying that people who live in the tropics are more selected for intelligence that those who live in temperate and arctic areas ?”
I’m not implying any selection, I’m talking about environmental challenges that must be taken into consideration by those who claim that some environments select populations for more intelligence than others.
“I think you are using all the existing arguments leading to the non cognitive superiority of Eurasians under Africans, even if they contradict themselves.”
These arguments are not mine, they are the mainstream consensus among the specialists of human intelligence: anatomically and behaviorally modern humans emerged in tropical Africa and nothing shows that they evolved into cognitively superior subspecies by exposure to colder climates. The reason why your theory is wrong is that it reflects no reality whatsoever, colder climates are not cognitively more demanding and imply no particular selection for intelligence.
And how is your claim that small population favors less selection for intelligence supported ? That’s another HBD fantasy to avoid the truth that the Inuits who lived in a perpetual ice age had lower achievements than Africans and other tropical or even equatorial populations.
Cale, are you a child too ? just like the 12 year old whose theories were found amazing and serious by pumpkin person a couple days ago…
I’m not implying any selection, I’m talking about environmental challenges that must be taken into consideration by those who claim that some environments select populations for more intelligence than others.
You were implying that but I am not your dad, I cant force you to admit something you actually did.
These arguments are not mine, they are the mainstream consensus among the specialists of human intelligence: anatomically and behaviorally modern humans emerged in tropical Africa and nothing shows that they evolved into cognitively superior subspecies by exposure to colder climates. The reason why your theory is wrong is that it reflects no reality whatsoever, colder climates are not cognitively more demanding and imply no particular selection for intelligence
So you are here to mindlessly repeat without bringing new arguments what HBD is trying to discredit ? This worse than what I was thinking.
And how is your claim that small population favors less selection for intelligence supported ?
It seem logical that when you have a larger population the number of mutations increase. If there is a rate of 1 mutation per induvidual, you would have 10 times more mutations in a 20 individuals population than in a 2 individuals population. Of course that is just an example. Any average person with a basic understanding of genetics could easily got this.
Cale, are you a child too ? just like the 12 year old whose theories were found amazing and serious by pumpkin person a couple days ago…
Ad hominem attacks to discredit your “opponent” now ?
Afrosapiens, I didnt disrespect you during this debate and I think your main problem isnt that you arent capable of understanding what I say but that you are taking HBD purely emotionnally. Its very important for you to convince others that Africans arent intellectually inferior to Eurasians. And this for the same reasons which leads White Supremacists to say that Asians, despite having bigger brains, shorter reaction times and higher IQs, are intellectually inferior to Europeans. This is something close to ethnic genetic interests or ethnic tribalism which is purely instinctive and emotionnal.
I can tell by reading your last comments that you have an animal rage against me because you didnt expected me to point out the dishonesty of your argumentation.
I hope that one day you will liberate yourself of this primitive behaviour which is above all destructive for yourself.
And, btw, you didnt discredit my theory point by point and suggest another explanation….may be you cant ? But can you admit that you cant ? I doubt it.
“So you are here to mindlessly repeat without bringing new arguments what HBD is trying to discredit ? This worse than what I was thinking.”
I have no scientific authority in this topic and I can’t allow myself to make up unsupported arguments like you do. That’s why I simply tell you what specialists say about human evolution. That’s called humility and seriousness.
“It seem logical that when you have a larger population the number of mutations increase.”
Except that the universally accepted rule in population genetics is that genetic diversity increases with the age of a population. This is why Africa has the highest and it decreases gradually with distance from Africa to reach its lowest point in native Americans. the genetically most diverse population in the world is the Bushmen who are much less numerous than the Chinese or the Inuits.
“I can tell by reading your last comments that you have an animal rage against me because you didnt expected me to point out the dishonesty of your argumentation.”
Laughable. Man, I don’t care about you, the dominant feeling you inspire me is scorn. How could I rage against you when I just think you’re a poor child that should have spent a little more time at school ? My issue with HBD is not what it says, my issue is its dishonest pseudo-scientific make up. You can feel free to call me or any black person a nigger, but just don’t hide yourself behind pseudo-scientific theories that give you the feeling of being objective.
”It seem logical that when you have a larger population the number of mutations increase”
Is not otherwise***
I’m trying to understand it. Cockran said that ”highly smart neurotypical people tend to have LOWER mutational load”. Greater populations accumulates less mutations than little populations because the probability to have endogamy will be less by obvious numerical reasons. Even in nations where endogamy had been relatively common such as China, their greater (historical) population had worked to reduce mutation accumulation.
Greater or little demography WITHOUT any intense selective process won’t produce any favorable change for any ”trait”.
Little populations are more likely to accumulate mutations but also seems better to share advantageous mutations quickly than greater populations (itself, tend to be a bunch of little populations with different selective processes, specially in the past, because geographical stuff, because today, the “modernity“ is creating similar selective processes around the world).
Except that the universally accepted rule in population genetics is that genetic diversity increases with the age of a population. This is why Africa has the highest and it decreases gradually with distance from Africa to reach its lowest point in native Americans. the genetically most diverse population in the world is the Bushmen who are much less numerous than the Chinese or the Inuits
My point is Sapiens became smarter than Neanderthal because of is population size, it doesnt contradict what you are saying because Sapiens and Neanderthal were as old at the time. You are here trying to discredit the main HBD theory not my little theory on a particular phenomenon.
That’s called humility and seriousness
My theory has no pretentions, the problem is that you cant explain point by point why she is wrong. And its pretty ironic the person talking about humility and seriousness is constantly trying to discredit the person who is debating with him with personnal attacks .
Laughable. Man, I don’t care about you, the dominant feeling you inspire me is scorn. How could I rage against you when I just think you’re a poor child that should have spent a little more time at school ? My issue with HBD is not what it says, my issue is its dishonest pseudo-scientific make up. You can feel free to call me or any black person a nigger, but just don’t hide yourself behind pseudo-scientific theories that give you the feeling of being objective
So explain me why you cant just break my theory point by point and go back to your hobbies ? If you are feeling scorn about someone you dont put so much effort trying to make him looks stupid .
You are just a raging animal with high verbal and social abilities, scientific debate is not supposed to be a fight, we are not in a court.
I hope you will not break your screen by hiting it because of the intense rage you will feel during the reading of this full of truth comment.
“My point is Sapiens became smarter than Neanderthal because of is population size”
The opposite is more likely: Sapiens’ higher intelligence allowed him to sustain a higher population in the same environment as Neanderthal.
“My theory has no pretentions, the problem is that you cant explain point by point why she is wrong.”
Your theory has the pretension of being closer to the reality than the contradicting findings of specialists.
Here’s your theory:
“– African Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal share a common ancestor which is some ape-like human.
– On part of the population of this common ancestor go to Europe, the other stay in Africa (I oversimplify of course).”
True, he’s called Homo Heidelbergensis, Homo sapiens evolved from it in Africa some 130,000 years ago, Neanderthal in Europe some 200,000 – 250,000.
“– The population who stayed in Africa was selected for intelligence because, at this actual average level of intelligence, intelligence was still a huge advantage in tropical environments.
– This population became smart enough to relatively mastered their environment and to let their population grow a lot. This population growth produce a lot of mutation for higher intelligence.”
This is quite close to the mainstream consensus except for your assumption that larger populations produce more mutations for intelligence, especially when the genetics of intelligence are largely unknown.
“– On the other hand, the Neanderthals who evolved from the ape-like human in a colder environment didnt know the population growth of the Sapiens because they were in a cold environment and they couldnt afford to have a lot of kids.
– The Neanderthals were in a more cognitively demanding environment but they werent enough to produce some high IQ mutation (Even if they could still have higher spatial IQ than H.Sapiens as I previously explain).”
Here is where you begin pseudo-scientific self-contradicting speculations. First, Neanderthals got their phenotype in order to survive in their environment just as well as Sapiens did in their own. Neanderthals are mostly cold-adapted Heidelbergensis who are dumber than the tropical-adapted Sapiens who appear to have emerged in a cognitively more demanding environment: the tropics that pushed for a superior intelligence.
There are only two points in your theory:
-cold climates select for more intelligence
-large populations develop more mutations for intelligence
Conclusion: neanderthals are dumber because they could not develop a large population in spite of being adapted to a cognitively more demanding environment.
This is stupid because these adaptations should have led neanderthals to sustain a population as large as Sapiens, but it just appears that this adaptation was not focused on intellect.
I debunked both the points and the conclusion and my arguments are supported by specialists. What else need I say ?
“I hope you will not break your screen by hiting it because of the intense rage you will feel during the reading of this full of truth comment.”
I’m OK son.
I debunked both the points and the conclusion and my arguments are supported by specialists. What else need I say ?
No.
You misunderstood my points.
I will simplify to the maximum for you:
– The 2 populations of ape-like humans were both not smart enough to mastered significantly increase their population.
– They both faced selection pressures for higher intelligence.
– The only difference is that you need less intelligence to see your population growing in a tropical environment. When Sapiens was smart enough to figure out how to master his environment his population explode. While Neanderthal who may at least have the same level of intelligence than Sapiens didnt see is population explode. Why ? Because he couldnt afford to make a lot of kid in this cold environment which need to be more mastered to let Neanderthal have the same access to natural ressources than Sapiens.
– And then Sapiens became smarter because of the lot of mutations that his huge population have allowed.
I’m OK son.
So you only broke your computer mouse ? You are making progress.
“The only difference is that you need less intelligence to see your population growing in a tropical environment.”
There you go again. Tropical environment are at least as cognitively demanding (and stimulating) if not more than semi-polar ones, let’s not even talk about temperate climates. Keep in mind that the last populations to have remained un-reached still live in the rainforests of Amazonia, Borneo and New Guinea at a time when we went on the moon, so they’re still kind of extraterestrial to us.
And as anyone who never went to Africa, the picture you have of it is that of East African Savannah (which is actually steppe) where people make safaris. This environment is actually marginal in Africa which is covered my more or less cleared tropical forests depending on how much agriculturalists have deforested one area. The original vegetation cover that dominates Subsaharan Africa is rainforest, savannah is only a small transitional phase before semi-desert and desert. All are pretty hostile environment though.
In addition to the challenges of the tropics (difficulty to cool down, adapting to the wet/dry seasonality, relatively short days, parasites and bacterial life, higher difficulty of cooling down than heating up, struggling against constant humidity in the wet season, finding water in the dry season, protecting the community against aggressive fauna). Populations of Africa have been even more pressured by the desertification that was caused by the ice age.
If environment causes selection for intelligence, Sapiens simply got more intelligence because his environment was more demanding. Don’t make excuses for Neanderthal who would have been just as intelligent as Sapiens if he had spent more time in Africa.
“So you only broke your computer mouse ? You are making progress.”
I’m on an Ipad, too bad…
And as anyone who never went to Africa, the picture you have of it is that of East African Savannah (which is actually steppe) where people make safaris
I was trying to explain my theory as simply as possible. And I already went to Africa, several times.
Your whole explication on tropical climates being more complex strengthen the theory of cold environment being more predictables at a human scale. There is more unpreductable elements in tropical environments like parasites and bacterias which mutate relatively very quickly and make this environment much more unstable than cooler ones, and then, less predictable as I said.
I’m on an Ipad, too bad…
My observation was metaphorical off course.
“And I already went to Africa, several times.”
Tunisia and Morocco do not count as Africa. If you were an habitual traveler to Africa, you would not produce all of this nonsense about the climate, environment and behavior in Africa. But if you did come there, tell me where and tell me what you saw so I can explain it to you in rational terms.
“Your whole explication on tropical climates being more complex strengthen the theory of cold environment being more predictables at a human scale.”
Cale, you theory was not about predictability but complexity. If you acknowledge that one climate is more predictable than another, then it’s easier for humans to adapt to it and it requires less cognitive ability for forethought and innovation. And a species that can’t multiply or at least survive in a more predictable environment is somewhat less evolved that one that does equally or better in a more hostile and unpredictable one.
“My observation was metaphorical off course.”
Observation métaphorique ? Ca sort d’où ça ?
Tunisia and Morocco do not count as Africa.
I went to Sub-Saharan Africa.
Cale, you theory was not about predictability but complexity. If you acknowledge that one climate is more predictable than another, then it’s easier for humans to adapt to it and it requires less cognitive ability for forethought and innovation. And a species that can’t multiply or at least survive in a more predictable environment is somewhat less evolved that one that does equally or better in a more hostile and unpredictable one.
What I was meaning is that the survival in a less predictable environment is more based on luck than on real skills. Thats why Africans have always made more children and invest less parental care in each one than Eurasians.
Observation métaphorique ? Ca sort d’où ça ?
T’es con ou tu le fais exprès ?
“I went to Sub-Saharan Africa.”
You did not. If you did, you wouldn’t be that ignorant about this region. But if you came there, just tell us what you’ve seen and how it must be interpreted in a HBD perspective.
“What I was meaning is that the survival in a less predictable environment is more based on luck than on real skills.”
Subsaharan Africa is not that unpredictable, it’s environment is highly variable and hostile but survival does not rely on luck but risk management.
“Thats why Africans have always made more children and invest less parental care in each one than Eurasians.”
Totally false, in the 1960s, all of Asia out of Japan had fertility rates equal to subsaharan African countries, now some countries like Afghanistan and Timor Leste are still in the same range as many African countries while some African nations and some in the Caribbean, like Haiti have fertility rates that are comparable to South and South-East Asia.
One more proof you never came to Africa is that the way children there are disciplined and docile with very strong bonds to their mothers and absolute respect for their fathers and other elders is one of the most marking difference with European king-children. African parenting is harsh and over controlling, and marying an African person is synonymous to marying your parents in law. Man, you’re ridiculing yourself, you’d rather stop for your own good.
“T’es con ou tu le fais exprès ?”
Observation métaphorique n’a aucun sens. Tu peux décrire métaphoriquement le fruit de tes observations, mais l’observation (à moins qu’elle soit hallucinatoire) ne peut être métaphorique. Tu verras ça à la rentrée en 5ème.
You did not. If you did, you wouldn’t be that ignorant about this region. But if you came there, just tell us what you’ve seen and how it must be interpreted in a HBD perspective.
You cant generilize from some travelling you have made.
Subsaharan Africa is not that unpredictable, it’s environment is highly variable and hostile but survival does not rely on luck but risk management
I didnt say it isnt predictable, I said it is less predictable than Eurasian climates.
Totally false, in the 1960s, all of Asia out of Japan had fertility rates equal to subsaharan African countries, now some countries like Afghanistan and Timor Leste are still in the same range as many African countries while some African nations and some in the Caribbean, like Haiti have fertility rates that are comparable to South and South-East Asia
Evidences ? And even if you have evidences it doesnt represent all the history of humanity. It seems that you are constantly violating Occams razor. Eurasians mature slower, have smaller genitals and lower testosterone than Sub-Saharan African, all these biological evidences seems to indicate that Eurasians are more K-selected than Sub-Saharan Africans.
Observation métaphorique n’a aucun sens. Tu peux décrire métaphoriquement le fruit de tes observations, mais l’observation (à moins qu’elle soit hallucinatoire) ne peut être métaphorique. Tu verras ça à la rentrée en 5ème.
Observation est le terme anglais pour remarque. J’essayais juste de te dire que ma remarque était en réalité une image. Tu comprends que je sois surpris par tant de débilité, même venant de l’animal sauvage que tu es .
En tout cas j’espère que tu nessaieras pas de me retrouver pour me faire du mal après avoir lu ce commentaire criant de vérité.
Pour finir, étant donné que tu fais constamment preuve de beaucoup de mauvaise foi en refusant d’entendre mon argumentation, que dirais-tu d’arrêter cette discussion stérile ?
Tu déclares forfait ? Marre de te ridiculiser ? T’as éclaté tous tes boutons d’adoléscent mal-aimé ?
Tu sais, je m’en fiche de la discussion en soi, ce qui m’intéresse en commentant c’est d’offrir un point de vue plus éclairé aux visiteurs du site qui seraient tentés de croire que vos théories sont sérieuses et supportées par la réalité.
Historical fertility rates
Current fertility rates
About testosterone rates by race, be careful, firstly because different studies have given conflicting results and were performed in a US context, secondly because replicated studies have found testosterone and prenatal exposure to testosterone to be correlated with higher intelligence.
As far as maturation rates go, the mainstream position is that maturation age decreases as calorie intake increases. That’s the reason why maturation ages are decreasing in the developed world and that populations that are more affected by obesity are also found to mature earlier, this is why Subsaharan Africans actually mature later than Westerners and American Blacks.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22570951
Back to the environment of Africa, as you told us you knew this continent and even traveled there, may you tell me how often are Africans surprised by events they could not predict or risks they could not take into consideration ? And what is the role played by novelty brought by unstable environments in the selective process for intelligence ?
For the reader: Cale just wrote in French he was giving up on the conversation.
Unrelated question, but Afro, have you read The Blank Slate?
Also, if colonization is what screwed up sub saharan Africa, then how come Ireland is perfectly fine despite centuries of colonialism?
I did not read your book and colonialism is clearly off topic here. My opinion about it is that it has had ambivalent effects on Subsaharan Africa, many positive, some negative like creating countries that are not respective of the cultural geography and imposing models of organization that have little respect for local cultural practices. For many reasons however, colonialism in Ireland is not comparable to colonialism in Africa which instead was similar to India and Subsaharan Africa is indeed comparable to South Asia with respect to many social issues.
And contrary to what you think, Subsaharan Africa is in better shape now than during colonialism, the demographic boom and rural exodus has created many challenges that did not exist during colonialism but post-colonial Africa managed not to make it an absolute human catastrophe: litteracy is at it lowest point, life expectancy without AIDS is at its highest, starvation is something of the past in many countries, the middle class is booming and optimism is widespread and dominant.
Illiteracy is at its lowest point*
Are you sure? Do you think Zimbabwe now with AIDS and highest crime rate yet, and South Africa with tons of murders, with most dangerous cities in terms of crime, and constant hate crimes against whites, is something to be optimistic about? Do you deny that Rhodesia was better under Ian Smith and South Africa under apartheid? How can you explain this?
I forgot I was commenting on a white nationalist blog. To begin with, Zimbabwe and South Africa is not the sum of Africa, though I essentially had West Africa when I said things were better now than at the end of colonization, Austral Africa has Zimbabwe and South Africa have a neighboring country that is their perfect negative: Botswana. And the crumbling of South Africa is a huge exaggeration, crime rates have been declining since the end of appartheid (homicide rate was 66.9/100K, in 1994, it is now 31/100k), Economy has remained stable though kind of lowered by increases in wages and flight of some professionals but it’s still alright and encouraging whereas AIDS just appeared in the 80s, and it’s kind of hard to seperate the pandemic to the massive incarceration rate of late appartheid era.
But as I told you, Southern Africa is not the sum of Africa, in other parts of the continent, many countries have been unstable, some have litterally collapsed but the big picture rather shows sensible improvements in living standards with some countries now considered middle income economies like Ghana and Nigeria (now a top 20 economic power with oil currently accounting for only 1/10 of the output, which makes Nigeria’s non oil economy still well ahead of South Africa). And it’s only the beginning, as many countries of Western and Eastern Africa are making appreciable gains in terms of development and economic diversification and are in that way no different to India or other South Asian countries, except that there is no billion inhabitants mega-nation in Africa.
Back to Zimbabwe and Southern Africa, don’t expect me or any reasonable person to feel any sympathy for White Africans nor any nostalgia for minority rule. The idea that one population can create its state on other people’s lands is insane, stupid, disgusting and bound to fail, especially when the indigenous are subsistence farmer who depend on farmlands for their survival. In addition to being nearly condemned to starvation because people came from elsewhere to seize their land, they had to live the humiliation of being made sub-humans foreigners on their own ancestral lands and there is nothing more natural for them than rejecting minority rule which was never considering discussing the inequalities and injustices of this disgusting model of society that no human rights minded individual can find acceptable in anyway. The Afrikaners and British settlers could have simply cohabited and mingled with the natives just like the Portuguese did in Mozambique and Angola and it would just have been fine, but they wanted to live in their fantasy of racial purity and superiority.
Now whatever becomes of Zimbabwe, which is currently catching up to its pre-crisis state, it’s independent and under majority rule than subjugated by quasi-Nazis servants of globalized lawless capitalism. They will have challenges like finding a way to manage ethnic diversity, giving up with the culture of institutionalized corruption and managing the terrific effects of AIDS but they will find their way one day or another and it will become part of their own civic culture which will be lived naturally and not as following the instruction of an universal Western model that is bound to fail in a society that is so different in every aspect. And the whites of Southern Africa who just can’t accept this reality just have to leave, they were never wanted nor fundamentally needed.
Cale asked me to post the following comment from him, in response to Afrosapiens:
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
Tu déclares forfait ? Marre de te ridiculiser ? T’as éclaté tous tes boutons d’adoléscent mal-aimé ?
Donc maintenant je ne suis plus un gamin de 12 ans mais un adolescent boutonneux ? On dirait que tous les moyens sont bons pour essayer de ridiculiser son interlocuteur quand on se ridiculise déjà soi-même par son manque de logique et d’honnêteté.
About testosterone rates by race, be careful, firstly because different studies have given conflicting results and were performed in a US context, secondly because replicated studies have found testosterone and prenatal exposure to testosterone to be correlated with higher intelligence.
This is off topic, I was only talking about testosterone levels after puberty which are higher in black populations than in white ones. And the positive effect on intelligence bring by higher prenatal exposure to testosterone is only one factor among a lot of others. Btw, Blacks appear to have lower testosterone than Whites after 30-40 years, this phenomenon seems to be another evidence of the r-K theory applied to humans.
As far as maturation rates go, the mainstream position is that maturation age decreases as calorie intake increases. That’s the reason why maturation ages are decreasing in the developed world and that populations that are more affected by obesity are also found to mature earlier, this is why Subsaharan Africans actually mature later than Westerners and American Blacks
Yes, I not that. And I have already noticed it a long time when I went to Africa and there were 17 years old teens looking like 12 years old children. But thats off topic, again. I was talking about differences between Blacks and Whites raised in a First World environment.
Back to the environment of Africa, as you told us you knew this continent and even traveled there, may you tell me how often are Africans surprised by events they could not predict or risks they could not take into consideration ? And what is the role played by novelty brought by unstable environments in the selective process for intelligence ?
I didnt stay enough time to see such events to happen. But a lot of people have already lost one or two family members because of various diseases.
For the reader: Cale just wrote in French he was giving up on the conversation
As usual, you are lying. Or may be you are simply lacking the cognitive ability to understand what I write. I suggested you to end this discussion because every time you are bringing “new” silly arguments (when they arent off topic) I always broke them in a few lines. I could continue to humiliate you on this thread until the end of my life but this is not my purpose. My purpose here, is to have real scientifical debate with people, not trying to adapt myself to a raging animal which would never admit to be wrong, no matter the logic of my argumentation .
couldn’t he respond by himself ?
“There are only two points in your theory:
-cold climates select for more intelligence
-large populations develop more mutations for intelligence
Conclusion: neanderthals are dumber because they could not develop a large population in spite of being adapted to a cognitively more demanding environment.
This is stupid because these adaptations should have led neanderthals to sustain a population as large as Sapiens, but it just appears that this adaptation was not focused on intellect.”
I agree, Afrosapiens. Very well said.
“There are only two points in your theory:
-cold climates select for more intelligence
-large populations develop more mutations for intelligence
Conclusion: neanderthals are dumber because they could not develop a large population in spite of being adapted to a cognitively more demanding environment.
Afro’s conclusion doesn’t follow from his premise. Selection for high IQ != evolution of high IQ. Natural selection needs VARIETY to operate on & that was lacking in neanderthal’s small population.
This is stupid because these adaptations should have led neanderthals to sustain a population as large as Sapiens
What adaptations? Selection pressures without genetic variety to select from = limited evolutionary change
“Afro’s conclusion doesn’t follow from his premise. Selection for high IQ != evolution of high IQ. Natural selection needs VARIETY to operate on & that was lacking in neanderthal’s small population.”
I believe this was Cale’s argument that Afrosapiens typed out, correct me if I’m wrong.
“What adaptations? Selection pressures without genetic variety to select from = limited evolutionary change”
Afrosapiens said this.
The point is there are at least two major factors that influenced the evolution of high IQ:
1) cold climates that require lots of problem solving
2) big populations where high IQ mutations can occur
Populations that had both (east Asians, Europeans ) evolved to be smart
Populations that had neither (bushmen, pygmies, australoids) evolved to be dumb
Populations that have only one or the other (arctic people, arabs) evolved to be mediocre
This even explains why modern humans were smarter than neanderthals. Neanderthals were smarter before 70,000 years ago because of their cold climate, but after 70,000 years ago, the huge population in Africa increased the odds that the behavioral modernity mutation would occur there, & modern humans leaped ahead of Neanderthals in brain power
So cold climate not enough, you also need big population
Got it?
I’m kinda ‘meh’ on the climate theory of intelligence to be honest. I believe sexual selection has a much more profound effect.
“Got it?”
Please don’t be condescending towards me.
Dude why do you discount so many other theories for the cold winter hypothesis? It’s like you have tunnel vision for whatever Lynn/Rushton/Kanazawa say. I’m beginning to believe that sexual selection played far more of a role in the evolution of human intelligence than just climate. Afrosapiens brings up very good points about Africa and the harshness in regards to selection for intelligence.
And I don’t need the explanation. I just said that I liked Afrosapiens’s comment.
Speaking of Rushton, check out this study showing that white male-Asian female couples need to get more C-sections due to the bigger body of the babe.
In the study, Asian female-white male couples had babies that had a median weight of 8 pounds, while Asian-Asian couples had babies that had a median weight of 7.1 pounds and finally Asian male-white female couples’ babies had a median weight of 7.3 pounds. However, Asian female-white male couples had an increased rate of C-section deliveries, proving that a significant differences exist between sex of the parent (whether the father or mother is Asian or white influences birth weight) which leads to increased C-section rates due to the white father passing clearly influencing the birth weight more, thusly making it difficult for his Asian partner to birth the baby. There are 100 deaths per 100,000 live births per year in the U.S., a rate of .1 percent. Clearly, though the death rate is low, C-sections lead to maternal mortality and since Asian females are more likely to have a C-section when the father is white due to the baby being bigger, the mortality rate is slightly increased when this interracial pairing occurs.
http://www.ajog.org/article/S0002-9378(08)00697-2/abstract
Seems like it contradicts Rushton, correct me if I’m wrong. If Asian women did have wider hips, why the need for so many C-sections when the father of the Asian babe is white and not Asian? As you can see, the sex and race of the parent influences birth weight.
This even explains why modern humans were smarter than neanderthals. Neanderthals were smarter before 70,000 years ago because of their cold climate, but after 70,000 years ago, the huge population in Africa increased the odds that the behavioral modernity mutation would occur there, & modern humans leaped ahead of Neanderthals in brain power”
did you forget the link the other fellow gave you?
“the average “corrected” Neanderthal brain volume was just 1133.98 cubic centimeters, compared to 1332.41 for the humans.”
Humans still had a bigger brain and by extension intelligence than neanderthals during the first middle eastern migration. Even if they didn’t show behavior modernity, anatomically they were modern.
Neanderthals had less genetic variation and were very inbred, meaning the mutation rate would’ve been high(the same effect appears on larger more diverse population, but in a more healthy way.)
This article reviewed human technology before and after the migration
http://www.evoanth.net/2015/12/10/are-humans-smarter-than-neanderthals/
” These researchers refuted this by pointing out that both humans and Neanderthals produced different toolkits for a specific time and place. They interpreted this as evidence both were flexibly changing their technology to changing environments. Except they didn’t break it down and see how much was changing within those toolkits. The fact they had different names was enough to confirm they were different and the Neanderthals had flexibly innovated something new. But when you do break it down and see how much Neanderthal technology actually changed; the results aren’t that impressive. The number of different tools produced by the Neanderthals didn’t really change over time; even when the climate they lived in change[d].”
“Populations that had both (east Asians, Europeans ) evolved to be smart
Populations that had neither (bushmen, pygmies, australoids) evolved to be dumb
Populations that have only one or the other (arctic people, arabs) evolved to be mediocre
This is a just so story surrounded by baseless assumptions
Literally it’s just lazy thinking. Bushmen are considered the first humans, they were at one point the most populous, meaning it’s not chance of genetic mutation that made them dumber it was more positive selection for intelligence on OTHER groups that allowed them to be left behind, their environment’s climatic variability has probably remained mostly stagnant int he last few thousand years.
all population size does is increase chance and it takes much more than chance to explain away the major discrepancies we see today.
“the huge population in Africa increased the odds that the behavioral modernity mutation would occur there”
Bipedalism was needed for behavioral modernity, and that got selected for since bipedal walking conserves 75 percent more energy than walking on all fours.
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/30/12265.abstract
The LCA was in Africa, and without this change, those things you bring up never would have occurred.
And good points melo.
So Pumpkin, the tall scrawny look of Euros seem to be an attractive trait, which is also found in black american men, perhaps because of White admixture.
Asian men in America have hard time attracting women, because of their shorter, stockier stature, let alone, lower testosterone levels.
That’s because they’re peasant stock.
There’s no reason for East Asian aristocrats to emigrate.
Also, farming cultures eventually produce humans who look and act like east asians–low testosterone and neotenous. It’s the same path that all domesticated animals follow.
Rushton thought that turning a wolf into a dog was progress. I suppose it is if you’re the dog owner rather than the wolf.
Neotenous phenotype == slave
Humans are more neotenous than chimps. You can perceive neotenous people as slaves or you can just perceive them as more civilised people.
JS, East Asians are short but I don’t know if they’re stocky. Many are quite gracile as you would expect if Rushton was correct about them being the superior race.
Most East Asians aren’t stocky at all. I’ve seen some stocky Eskimos but I’m not sure if they’re “East Asian”.
This tall scrawny look is a typical west African (especially Sahelian) type.
Many Asians look quite robust and heavy in spite of their short stature in my opinion. They tend to be paler-skinned and probably more often from Mongolia, Manchuria, Northern China, Korea, Japan and Siberia.
It’s very interesting when one observes Iceland and Greenland, 2 places with very similar topography and cold climate. One has a Caucasoid population (Iceland) and the other has a Mongoloid-phenotype majority (Greenland). Iceland is prettier, more interesting, with nicer architecture and layout, where as Greenland is boring, uninspiring, very cold in appearance, and not just the climate. So yes, Mongoloids are less remarkable in civilization attainment. HBD saying East Asians as being less creative, and not having the time to become creative, because they evolved in extremely cold climate, seems about right!
Iceland is no way as polar as Greenland and Icelanders are Scandinavians who arrived in Iceland during the middle age with European medieval technology.
I did not see the documentary – what did they mean by saying Neanderthals were “specialized to Europe”? As intelligence involves a general capacity to adapt, perhaps the fact that Neanderthals could not thrive on different continents and climes, as modern humans could, means that the former had less adaptive capacity, i.e. less intelligence, than the latter.
I did not see the documentary – what did they mean by saying Neanderthals were “specialized to Europe”?
They didn’t use those exact words, but they did imply Neanderthals were so well suited to Europe that they hardly lived anywhere else, so when Europe was hit with a massive eruption, they virtually all died out.
As intelligence involves a general capacity to adapt, perhaps the fact that Neanderthals could not thrive on different continents and climes, as modern humans could, means that the former had less adaptive capacity, i.e. less intelligence, than the latter.
Yes I was thinking that too, but it could just mean their bodies were less adaptable, rather than their minds.
Seems had neanderthal variants in Europe, Central Asia, Middle East and East Asia.
Specialized in Europe**** What***
Neanderthals may have lower autoimmune resistance like amerindians OR sapiens have more ”autoimmune resistance” like europeans or They were fewer and less socially cohesive, i.e. separated into living community without having a strong social network that could compete with the sapiens.
“Although Steve Hsu estimated that Neanderthals had an IQ around 70, this documentary argued that they were just as intelligent as modern humans,”
Stive Hsu’s estimate is nonsense, no Neanderthal ever took an IQ test and there is no way to predict how they would have done if they did. However, a 70 IQ equals to the intellectual performance of the Victorians, that’s pretty high and I think both Sapiens and Neanderthals were well under that when they met, like between 40 and 50.
“Indeed a scientist in the documentary mentions that it took him a year and a half to learn to make the stone tools Neanderthals made all the time.”
It says nothing on the complexity of these tools, if you’re not trained at doing something it can obviously take you very long to do it even if you’re the smartest person on earth. Just try to build an igloo, an African drum or a Teepee without a model and the peoples who build these items traditionally will just laugh at you although you have some theory about their intellectual inferiority.
” Probably because cold climates required the spatial ability to hunt, build tools, shelter and clothing, and this also explains why men have better spatial ability than women.”
And you believe that living in the tropics does not require all of that ? Tropical peoples don’t hunt, animals come on their plates on their own, they don’t build tools because their hands are like swiss knives, they don’t wear clothes because they have no shyness and build no shelter because they like to sleep under the stars.
Actually, non tropical eras are better for humans to thrive even as hunter-gatherers. They have clear forests and open grasslands that allow more efficient hunting, northern animals have fur that can be used as clothes, tropical deseases and venomous animals are rarer, many regions have caves that serve as natural shelter while men can access solid wood to build huts.
Tropical environments are the most complex and tropical Africa is where all the intellectual evolution of hominids took place and Eurasia never had an indigenous primate or other mammal that rivaled the intelligence of the originally African apes and men.
From the fact that Sapiens replaced cold-adapted Neanderthal as a newcomer in what has been Neanderthal’s environment for thousands of year before clearly indicates that smaller-brained Sapiens was superior to his Rushtonian Ubermenschen cousin in one way or another. He was able to take more food, to take the best shelters and probably to kill directly Neanderthal until final extinction. The volcano theory is meaningless, Sapiens survived the erruption in Europe whereas Neanderthal just didn’t have the ability to survive the catastrophe in the environment for which he was specialized (as you claim) although neanderthals were not limited to Europe.
Even today, we see no signs that cold climate adaptation is any beneficial intellectually speaking. Just see how the Inuit and Siberian societies are doing and Subsahara Africa will appear ultra-advanced in comparison.
“Although Steve Hsu estimated that Neanderthals had an IQ around 70, this documentary argued that they were just as intelligent as modern humans, or just as intelligent as modern humans were at the time we coexisted with Neanderthals.”
It seems unlikely that Neanderthals were as intelligent as H. sapiens. Brain size alone does not tell the whole story; the size of the brain’s various lobes must also be taken into account. While it’s true that Neanderthals had larger brains, their frontal lobes weren’t as developed, I’ve read. (The most sophisticated part of their brain was the part devoted to visual processing.) Since the frontal lobe is responsible for “higher thinking”, we can guess that Neanderthals, while very good at picking up on visual cues, weren’t very capable “higher thought”–relatively.
Maybe this formula would be useful. Here “I” stands for intelligence, “F” stands for the size of the frontal lobe, “B” stands for overall brain size, and “S” stands for body size:
I = F * B/S
According to this formula, the brain/body size ratio is important, but the size of the frontal lobe is also taken into account.
Note when I say “intelligence”, I mean “capability to think abstractly”. I know that there are other definitions, but this is the one I like to use.
“Note when I say “intelligence”, I mean “capability to think abstractly”. I know that there are other definitions, but this is the one I like to use.”
Thoughts are always abstract realities. The best definition of intelligence is the ability to adapt to challenging situations.
Afrosapiens:
Thank you for your comment. I should have been more specific. True, all thought is abstract, but some thoughts are more abstract than others. An example would be the difference between literature and classical music. The writer draws, more or less, from an immediately observable reality, while the composer works in a realm of almost pure abstraction.
(Btw, I’m not trying to put down writing. I like to read & write a lot.)
When you have absolute pitch or if you train to have the same level of musical mastery, musical notes are as obvious and palpable as consonants and vowels. And you know, tonal language speakers (almost all Africans, the Chinese and a few other mostly non-Indo Europeans peoples) have this kind of tri-dimensional understanding of sounds tone+consonants+vowels whereas non tonal speakers only hear consonants and vowels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_pitch#Linguistics
But I will concede to you that some concepts are more difficult to link to personal empirical experience and require more ability for abstraction. This is obvious.
fallingsnow, according to the documentary, neanderthal frontal lobes were just as big as ours. They deduced this by looking inside the cranium of a skull.
Nothing that you’ve positively stated is false. The things you’ve omitted, however, are crucial.
“When you have absolute pitch or if you train to have the same level of musical mastery, musical notes are as obvious and palpable as consonants and vowels.”
100% correct–but composing is more than having perfect pitch. Composing is forming a spatial relationship between many tiny marks on a piece of paper & holding many different ideas in one’s head at the same time. This requires huge amounts of abstract thought.
“And you know, tonal language speakers (almost all Africans, the Chinese and a few other mostly non-Indo Europeans peoples) have this kind of tri-dimensional understanding of sounds tone+consonants+vowels whereas non tonal speakers only hear consonants and vowels.”
Also correct (I’ll trust your authority, as I don’t know much about the languages you’ve specified)–but how many of those individuals are talented composers? Having a sense for rhythm & tonality is very, very rarely enough.
“But I will concede to you that some concepts are more difficult to link to personal empirical experience and require more ability for abstraction. This is obvious.”
This brings us back to my def. of intelligence.
Thank you for yr. feedback. This discussion is very interesting!
Composing with absolute pitch is just like writing a poem with consonants and vowels for someone who doesn’t have this skill. But I’m not denying that this skill is extremely cognitively demanding and rare in every populations even though some cultures are very musical like the culture of subsaharan Africa where rythm and tonality is like part of everyday life.
“Thank you for yr. feedback. This discussion is very interesting!”
You’re welcome, I wish there could be more commenters like you on this blog.
http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/01/06/genes-have-a-time-clock-new-obesity-study-reveals/
Pumpkin, O/T, but this study is indeed HBD related, and it relates to East Asians, and their lack of drive to do great things. Your theory would be that East Asians had no time for fun, because they were evolved in extremely cold weather, where survival was the utmost importance.
http://akinokure.blogspot.com/2011/11/why-east-asians-are-so-unconscientious.html
In this study, the cognitive profile of East Asians is a result of their agricultural tradition.
I look at a city like San Francisco in California, where East Asians dominate in large numbers, almost controlling that city as if it was theirs, yet it appears that Whites have been in the forefront of creativity and ingenuity in San Francisco.
Thanks. I’ll check it out.
So why do East Asians also lack charisma, and blacks generally have a lot of it?
I think that blog posting explains everything.
blacks have lower IQs, so their charisma seems unimportant, in the grander scheme of things.
Also, note that East Asians exhibit less pro-social behavior, like agreebleness and hospitality, and are high in anti-social-autistic behavior, like addiction to video games, internet, and not very fond of socializing, especially with women.
I’m sure you heard of the Tiger Mom, who is this East Asian lady, espousing values of hard work and studious behavior for Americans. Apparently, Americans don’t need that kind of work ethic, because Whites in general are self initiative, and like to take on adventurous lifestyles, unlike the boring routine and hard discipline of East Asians.
And remember what Rushton was saying about East Asians having high IQs, but with a cautious temperament.
And Santo Occulto thinks East Asian, personality profile is domesticated, which is another similar viewpoint.
”Also, note that East Asians exhibit less pro-social behavior, like agreebleness and hospitality”
Js,
it is not true at all. Eastern asian cultures are more agreeable than western in some perspectives.
When you go visit a friend’s house Japanese, it is likely that he will have already thought about what might please you more in terms of taste, as the preferred food.
On the other hand, it is the western customary to leave the visitor free to choose the food he want (and have in the house, of course).
East Asians have not produced or achieve anything of greatness of late.
Japanese are the most talented of the East Asians. They get my respect. Chinese and the other groups, are pretty much useless and dysfunctional.
huuummm, i don’t know if is true. Chineses in the past. People ”may” change without selection. Greater population of chineses may can reduced speed of novel and advantageous genes, compare them with ashkenazi. Even europeans, in the past, wasn’t very demographically large like chineses.
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