Despite being Negroid in skin color, even the blackest Indians are often 100% Caucasoid in facial structure and hair texture

Popular stereoypes, as well as psychometric and historical data, had left me with the impression that South Asians were more intelligent than sub-Saharans. For starters, South Asians had left Africa. had created an arguably independent civilization and were part of the Caucasoid race. In addition, immigrants from India are overachievers in North America.

So imagine my surprise when I started noticing that Indians appear to have smaller brains than sub-Saharans. At first I didn’t notice this because HBDers like Rushton and Lynn would lump South Asians in with Caucasoids or Middle Easterners respectively, or just ignore them completely.

However an excellent data-set analyzed by Rushton showed that North Indian and South Indian men averaged 1305 cm3 and 1237 cm3 respectively. Splitting the difference, this suggests an Indian man mean of 1271 cm3. By contrast, West African men averaged 1339 cm3!

Of course given the extreme levels of malnutrition in 20th century India, the brain sizes are likely well below their genetic potential, however the same might be said for sub-Saharans.

Invoking notions of evolutionary progress, Rushton argued that sub-Saharans were the least advanced race because humans evolved in Africa, with non-African Sapiens emerging later in evolution. If so we’d expect Indians, who are arguably Caucasoid, to have bigger brains than sub-Saharans, but the opposite is the case. Was this another flaw in Rushton’s theory or could the paradox be solved?

Body Size

When I was in high school, an extremely muscular Indian classmate was dismayed that everyone thought he was black. I explained to him that it was because his physique fit the stereotype of black explosive strength and not the nerdy Indian stereotype the school had come to embrace.

Indeed, despite living in the developed World, a New Zealand study found Indian men were a colossal 1.94 standard deviations (SDs) smaller than White men as measured by fat-free body weight. To put that in perspective, the height gap was 1.16 SD and the overall weight gap was only 0.48 SD.

Source: Rush, E. C., Freitas, I., & Plank, L. D. (2009). Body size, body composition and fat distribution: comparative analysis of European, Maori, Pacific Island and Asian Indian adults. British Journal of Nutrition, 102(04), 632. doi:10.1017/s0007114508207221

Meanwhile, another study found black American men are 0.13 standard deviations heavier on lean mass than are white American men, but because black Americans are only about 75% sub-Saharan genetically, we should probably correct this figure for white admixture (0.13 SD/0.75) which increases it to 0.17 SD.

Source: Lean mass, muscle strength, and physical function in a diverse population of men: a population-based cross-sectional study by Andre Araujo et al .

Although fat-free mass (FFM) and lean mass (LM) are not quite the same thing and were not measured the same way in both studies, and although neither study directly compared blacks to Indians, by adding the Indian-white gap in FFM (1.94 SD) to the black-white gap in LM (0.17 SD), we should get at least a rough proxy of the Indian-black gap on measures of intrinsic size and that gap is 2.11 SD.

Now at least among soldiers of the same rank, the correlation (within race and sex) between cranial capacity and weight is 0.41 (Rushton 1992). Assuming the same within race correlation between cranial capacity and intrinsic weight (solders have low fat) among men in the civilian population, then a 2.11 SD gap in intrinsic weight predicts a 0.41(2.11 SD) = 0.87 SD gap in brain size. Since the within race SD for men’s cranial capacity is about 91 cm3, at least among enlisted soldiers (Rushton, 1992; inferred from standard error) then this predicts a brain size gap of 0.87(91 cm3) = 79 cm3.

In other words, if the average man in India (brain size = 1271 cm3 ) had as much intrinsic mass as the average West African man (brain size = 1339 cm3) his brain would increase by 79 cm3, making it 1350 cm3.

Paradox resolved!