Using genetic data from Lee et al (2018), Davide Piffer has calculated polygenic scores for education/cognition for various populations around the World. Although these scores have very modest predictive power at the individual level, at the group level they correlate extremely well with IQ.
Below is a chart that reports these scores for 12 different “races” using two different polygenic scores (MTAG & PGS GWAS sig). In some cases the scores had to be inferred. For example the datasets did not have direct measures for Arctic people but because there was MTAG data on Mongolians and East Asians and because Mongolians are a hybrid of Arctic people and East Asians, their scores could be deduced.
The polygenic scores were converted to IQ equivalents by assigning the average European polygenic score an IQ of 99 (consistent with their psychometric scores) and assigning the average Bantu polygenic score an IQ of 80 (based on Richard Lynn’s 2006 estimate of how African Americans would average if they had no white admixture). From these two races, the IQs of all other races could be derived through linear extrapolation.
The most striking thing about the data is the clear correlation between genetic IQ and climate. All five of the top ranked races have light skin or lived in a cold climate during the ice age. Meanwhile the bottom four all have “Negroid” morphology, with the bottom three having never left sub-Saharan Africa. It is interesting that the bottom three never independently invented agriculture and the bottom two never made the neolithic transition at all, consistent with Richard Lynn’s theory that it was not until the last wurm glaciation about 20,000 years ago (which sub-Saharans did not endure) that humans became intelligent enough to take advantage of the wild grasses. By sadly killing everyone who was too dull to make fire, shelter and warm clothing, the last wurm glaciation probably raised North Eurasian IQ to near 90, and then only those with IQs of 93+ would make the leap to civilization. The exceptions are the Finns and the Arctic people who more or less reached triple digit IQ despite remaining essentially cavemen.
| Population | Average polygenic MTAG Raw score calculated by Davide Piffer derived from Lee et al. (2018) | PGS (GWAS sig) | Genetic IQ derived from polygenic MTAG | Genetic IQ derived from PGS (GWAS sig) | Average of the one or two genetic IQs |
Ashkenazi ![]() | 50.038 | 106 | 106 | ||
East Asians![]() | 0.505 | 49.75 | 99 | 104 | 102 |
Finnish![]() | 49.456 | 101 | 101 | ||
Europeans![]() | 0.505 | 49.167 | 99 | 99 | 99 |
Arctic people![]() | 0.505 (estimated from the scores of Mongolians & East Asians) | 99 | 99 | ||
Southeast Asians![]() | 0.501 | 93 | 93 | ||
South Asians & North Africans![]() | 0.501 | 93 | 93 | ||
Native Americans![]() | 0.494 | 48.6 (I subtracted 55% white & 15% black admixture since sample was Hispanic) | 83 | 94 | 89 |
Papuans![]() | 0.498 | 89 | 89 | ||
Bantu![]() | 0.492 | 46.83(I subtracted 25% white admixture since sample was Black Americans) | 80 | 80 | 80 |
pygmies![]() | 0.484 | 68 | 68 | ||
Bushmen![]() | 0.482 | 65 | 65 |
Note the PGS(Gwas sig) data is from Table 5 from the paper Evidence for Recent Polygenic Selection on Educational Attainment and Intelligence Inferred from Gwas Hits: A Replication of Previous Findings Using Recent Data. The MTAG raw data Piffer used is here:












