In my last post I cited evidence showing South African Coloureds are 19% Bantu, 20% White, 8% East Asian, 22% South Asian, 28% Bushmen and 3% Southeast Asian. From this data I estimated Bushmen have a genetic IQ of 67 (UK norms), which if true, would be the lowest racial mean ever discovered.

However commenter “Some guy” provided alternative ancestry estimates which made me want to replicate my results using a different dataset.

One major study states:

nearly 75,000 autosomal SNPs that could be compared with populations represented in the International HapMap Project and the Human Genome Diversity Project. Analysis by means of both the admixture and linkage models in STRUCTURE revealed that the major ancestral components of this population are predominantly Khoesan (32-43%), Bantu-speaking Africans (20-36%), European (21-28%) and a smaller Asian contribution (9-11%), depending on the model used. This is consistent with historical data.

Using the midpoint of each of these ranges, Coloureds genetic IQ = 0.375(Bushmen genetic IQ) + 0.28 (Bantu genetic IQ) + 0.245(White genetic IQ) +01(Indian genetic IQ)

Substituting my estimates for the genetic IQ of each of these South African ethnic groups (except for Bushmen which is least known):

85 = 0.375(Bushmen genetic IQ) + 0.28(80) + 0.245(98) + 0.1(92)

85 = 0.375(Bushmen genetic IQ) + 22.4 + 24.01 + 9.2

85 = 0.375(Bushmen genetic IQ) + 55.61

85 – 55.61 = 0.375(Bushmen genetic IQ)

29.39 = 0.375(Bushmen genetic IQ)

78.37 = Bushmen genetic IQ

This is much higher than the IQ 67 I reported based on somewhat different admixture levels. Of course in this study the data was directly reported while in the other one, I had to estimate it from a chart, though I did so very carefully.

More research is needed to determine whether Bushmen are a uniquely challenged population (genetic IQ 67) or whether they are just typical sub-Saharans (IQ of roughly 80) or somewhere in between. Answering this question is the closest we have come to knowing how smart the very first members of our species were.