"Race" - A good overview of the debate

Once more Razib Khan has a very good post about "race" (Gene Expression) concerning a discussion at the middle-left journal "The New Republic".

Abb. 1: Translaters of Francis Galton's "Hereditary Genius" into German 1910 (1): Anna Schapire-Neurath and Otto Neurath

A commenter, P.G. Hiqman, at "Gene Expression" has made this posting there, that I think is worth reading, because it gives a good overview of the debate:

I am not currently a subscriber to TNR, nevertheless this the message that I would post there if I were a subscriber.---


In his primary article Mr. Chowkwanyun made a couple of fleeting references to Francis Galton and Franz Boas, this is appropriate since they are the most influential developers of the opposing Galtonian (Hereditarian/Essentialist) and Boasian (Environmentalist/Cultural-causation) theories pertaining to inter-ethnoracial group differences in mental ability. 


The Galtonian theory was promulgated first at the University of London (sometimes it is referred to as the “London school of differential psychology” to contrast it with the Environmentalist American behaviorist school founded by John Watson and B.F. Skinner).

The Galtonian movement included figures such as Karl Pearson, Charles Spearman, Cyril Burt (yes I am aware that years after his death he was accused of faking some of his research--but more recent research has possibly absolved him of this charge and in fact numerous more recent twin studies have shown that the heritability of intelligence as measured in adults is about 70 to 80 % due to genes--which is what Burt originally claimed--thus even if some of Burt’s data were faked subsequent research has now validated his major claim), Philip Vernon, Raymond Cattell and Hans Eysenck. More recent champions of the Galtonian view have included Arthur Jensen, Thomas Bouchard, J.P. Rushton, Richard Herrnstein, Charles Murray, Richard Lynn, and Linda Gottfredson.

Many pro-Galtonian articles including a recent 2005 review article “THIRTY YEARS OF RESEARCH ON RACE DIFFERENCES IN COGNITIVE ABILITY” by Jensen and Rushton can be found at Gottfredson’s (http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/ index.html
) and Rushton’s (http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/ rushton_pubs.htm
) websites.

In the field of anthropology, prominent Galtonians have included Carleton Coon, Vincent Sarich, and Henry Harpending. Also many people associated with sociobiology such as William Hamilton, Edward O. Wilson, and Steven Pinker been rather receptive toward the considering the Galtonian viewpoint and this perhaps explains why Boasians such as Lewontin and Gould were so critical of Sociobiology. 


Anti-Galtonian Environmentalist views had been espoused by earlier figures such as Léonce Pierre Manouvrier in France and Rudolf Virchow and Adolf Bastian in Germany (actually they were both mentors of Boas), but the man who really turned the world’s intellectual tide against the Galtonian view was the German Jew Franz Boaz. After earning a PhD in Physics at Kiel, Boas soon became interested in primitive peoples (he studied the Eskimos on Baffin Island). Influenced by Virchow and Bastian, Boas convinced himself that cultural differences--but not innate essential differences--were the cause for the vast differences observed between primitive savage peoples and advanced civilized peoples. Boas eventually moved to America and became the most influential anthropologist of the 20th Century. In the post war era, Boasians rapidly came to dominate anthropology and all of the other social sciences. Prominent Boasians include figures such as Melville Herskovits, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Otto Klineberg, Horace Mann Bond, Ashley Montagu, Sherwood Washburn, Gunnar Myrdal, Gordon Allport, Ned Block, Richard Lewontin, Stephen Jay Gould, Leon Kamin, Claude Steele, Jonathan Marks, Jared Diamond, Richard Nisbett, James Flynn, Abigail Thernstrom, Howard Gardner, and Robert Sternberg.


Mr. Chowkwanyun implied that The Bell Curve was universally denounced by the academic establishment, but actually this is not true. Herrnstein’s and Murray’s views were roundly denounced by the Boasian academic establishment but about fifty of the most prominent professors in the academic disciplines that are actually most closely concerned with the subject (i.e. differential psychology/psychometrics) actually published a statement largely agreeing with the viewpoints of The Bell Curve (a letter published in 1994 Wall Street Journal now available at Gottfredson’s website). Thus it appears that many of the academics who truly are experts on the topic of IQ actually find the Galtonian perspective to be more plausible than the Boasian view.


Ethnic and racial group differences in IQ and socioeconomic status are not limited just to the American white/black issue. Some groups such as East Asians (Han Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese) and Jews when compared to Gentile whites have significantly higher average IQs and SES. Conversely some groups such as Native Americans, Hispanics, and African Americans have significantly lower average IQs and SES compared to Gentile whites. These empirical facts greatly distress the Boasians who fervently hope for a fantasy utopian world in which all ethnic and racial groups will manage to exhibit the same average IQs and SES. Boasians often extol the virtue of appreciating ethnic diversity but they are inconsistent in that they require people to steadfastly ignore the immense ethnic diversity that exists with regard to IQ. All true Boasians long for the day when all ethnic groups will be represented equally in prestigious positions of business ownership and at elite universities. They of course gloss over the inconvenient fact that this would greatly impinge on the interests of members of high-IQ minority groups (e.g. Jews and East Asians) who often are represented at elite universities and in elite professions at levels 5 to 10 fold higher than their demographic proportion would justify under a true Boasian model of fair equity. Are these Boasian proponents of affirmative action really ready to inform more than 80% of Jews and East Asians that they should curtail their career goals in order to avoid garnering an “unfairly” large proportion of elite job positions? Because in order to be consistent, strict Boasians such as Mr. Chowkwanyun must insist that these elite jobs be evenly distributed amongst all ethnic/racial groups! Is Mr. Chowkwanyun satisfied with the ethnic/racial make-up of his own history department at Penn? Or does his department resemble most departments at elite universities wherein certain high IQ-ethnoracial groups such as Jews and Asians occupy about 30 to 60% of the positions even though their “fair” demographic proportion (according to a truly Boasian sense of fairness) is a fraction about 5 to 10 fold lower. In contrast modern Galtonians do not believe in unfairly discriminating against individuals, instead Galtonians have the attitude that if some ethnic groups are more talented or more intelligent and thus are better suited for certain jobs then it is no problem if they gain a huge proportion of the jobs for which they are well suited.


Several prominent experts on IQ and genetics (John Defries, Robert Plomin, Ian Deary and others) have shown that the same genes that influence variation in IQ also influence variation in academic achievement--particularly on mathematics tests Plomin calls these genes that influence both intelligence and academic prowess the “generalist genes for g” (the scientific notation for the general intelligence factor is “g”). Thus to Galtonians it is no surprise that black American students invariably perform about one standard deviation lower than whites on math exams because of course all social scientists realize that black Americans have IQs that are about one standard deviation lower than white Americans. This of course engenders immense consternation in the Boasian-dominated education and social science establishments which continually demand that the black/white academic achievement gap be closed because according to the Boasian establishment everyone knows the academic achievement gap is entirely due to racism and certainly not due to ethnic genetic diversity.


Thomas Sowell of Stanford’s Hoover Institute and Amy Chua of Yale Law (she is one of Justin Shubow’s professors?) found that conflict and resentment associated with inter-ethnic disparities in wealth and academic achievement are not just limited to the USA but instead are found world wide where ever talented minority groups dominate the elite positions in business and academia (e.g. high castes in India, Jews in Russia, Caucasians in Latin America, Arabs and Indians in Africa, and Indians and in particular ethnic-Han Chinese in Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Southeast Asia). As Gottfredson pointed out in her 2005 paper “What if the Hereditarian hypothesis is true”, many victims of genocide and mob violence are actually members of the higher achieving minority group. These higher achieving minority groups probably possess higher innate IQs and are often victimized by the lower IQ majority indigenous group members who resent them because in accordance with popular modern Boasian principles they can not let themselves believe that the higher achieving minority group members (due to their higher innate intelligence) are deserving of their higher proportion of elite positions in business, academia and government; thus the lower-IQ majority group lashes out at the higher achieving group. The higher achieving minority groups then become victims of violence (e.g. white Zimbabwean farmers and Han Chinese business owners in Malaysia and Indonesia) and sometimes even genocide (e.g. Armenians in Turkey, Jews in Axis Europe, Ibo in Nigeria, educated Cambodians during Pol Pot, and recently Tutsis in Rwanda).

(...) 

Given that Caltech Southern California is one of the most elite Math/Tech schools in the world, I would thus estimate that Caltech math majors have IQs in the range of 145 and above (i.e. over three standard deviations higher than the white mean of IQ 100). (...) 31 Californians who earned perfect scores on the 1999 statewide Mathematics competition (http://www.mathleague.com/reports/1999_00/ CA5.HTM). Examination of the California state academic achievement math test scores shows that every year ethnically-Chinese students on average perform at a level about 0.8 standard deviation higher than white students (http://star.cde.ca.gov/star2006/index.asp
); thus indicating an average IQ of 112 for the Californian Chinese population (15 points on the IQ scale correspond to a one standard deviation difference on cognitive test results). Of note, regarding the math test (...), one can conclude from examining the names of those thirty other ultra-high IQ youths with perfect test scores that about 75% appear to be of Asian or Jewish ethnicity. Of course this is exactly as would be predicted by Galtonian theory. In contrast, Boasian theory ludicrously predicts that if gentile white, black or Hispanic children were raised in Jewish or Asian home environments then they would be just as intelligent as the Jewish and Asian youth because Boasians believe that ethnic and racial differences in IQ are transmitted via cultural differences and not via genetic differences. How many of you people really believe that? In fact during the past couple of decades numerous studies from around the world in the fields of social psychology and psychometrics have found that the home environment (called the shared environment by psychologists) actually has no influence whatsoever on variation in adult IQ when the family genetic transmission effects are accounted for. In addition, and highly damning to the Boasian theory, Weinberg and Scarr actually performed a study in Minnesota in which white, black and half black-half white infants were adopted into upper middle class white homes. When the adoptees were young children there was some evidence that the higher IQ white home environment was possibly raising their IQs; however as the adopted children grew into adulthood the black adoptees’ IQs decreased down to the same low levels as the IQs of other Minnesotan blacks and the black/white mixed race children showed IQs intermediate between the black and white norms; again exactly as would be predicted by Galtonian theory and exactly the opposite of what Boasian theory would predict.


Mr. Chowkwanyun should probably continue to remain ignorant of ethnoracial genetic science and psychometrics because if he ever became at all knowledgeable about human genomics, cognitive neuroscience, and psychometric research then doubtless someone with his high intelligence would very quickly grasp the fact that Jensen and the other modern Galtonians are really on the correct scientific course in their brave efforts to gain a true understanding of our world’s ethnoracial diversity as pertains to differences in mental ability and in socioeconomic status. So please Mr. Chowkwanyun, for your sake, so that you do not have to execute an embarrassing turnaround in your view point, please continue to prevent yourself from ever studying the books and articles of Galtonians such as Arthur Jensen, Richard Herrnstein, Charles Murray, Robert Plomin, Ian Deary, and Linda Gottfredson. Far safer and more comforting for you to remain a puerile ignoramus and continue to mindlessly spout tired old Boasian cliches that are politically correct but scientifically nonsensical.

___________________________________________

1. Francis Galton: Genie und Vererbung. Leipzig 1910, translation into German by Otto Neurath and Anna Schapire-Neurath, https://archive.org/details/genieundvererbun00galt

"Race, Religion and Inheritance" - A discussion at Durham University

In the last post, we had an article about The Institute of Advanced Study at Durham University discussing "Race, Religion and Inheritance". Here is now the official report on their website:

On 26th April 2007 Durham University publically launched its Institute of Advanced Study by hosting a debate on Race, Religion and Inheritance at Durham Castle.

One topic that has emerged from the Institute's inaugural theme, 'The Legacy of Charles Darwin' concerns the relationship between classification and responsible knowing. Is it possible to develop means of classifying that are not divisive, harmful, or exclusionary, and especially among the human races and faith systems?

In the April 26 round-table debate, the Institute's interest in classification turned to the question of whether classes are pre-given, whether human taxonomy is hard-wired. This was a question of fundamental public interest, in the context of current controversies relating to the origins of racial and religious beliefs. We are seeing the resurgence of biological readings of race and racial difference, the rise and rise of religious fundamentalism, and growing bi-centennial public interest in the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. These controversies – and possible solutions relating to religious and racial tolerance and understanding – hinge around the unresolved problem of whether differences of behaviour, disposition, and affect are inherited, and if they are, through what kind of evolutionary mechanism.

The panel of distinguished speakers included:

John Hedley Brooke (IAS Fellow, Professor of History of Science at the Ian Ramsey Centre, Oxford University, and author of the prize-winning book Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives); Madeleine Bunting (Author, Guardian columnist, and recipient of the Race in Media award by the Commission for Racial Equality in 2005); Robin Dunbar (Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Liverpool, Fellow of the British Academy and author of The Human Story);John Dupré (IAS Fellow, Philosopher of Science at Exeter University, Director of the ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society, and author of the celebrated book The Disorder of Things); Anthony P Monaco (Professor of Human Genetics and Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, Oxford University)

The debate was chaired by Durham University's new Vice-Chancellor, Professor Christopher Higgins.A full transcript and video recording of this event will be available in due course.Last modified: 17th May 2007

It would be of special interest to have more information about this discussion.

The population genetics of inborn religious traits

At Gene Expression I cannot find anything about this (Medicalnewstoday). Are they sleeping?

What Makes A Racist? And Other Provocative Questions
At The Institute Of Advanced Study Debate, Durham University, April 26, 2007

Some of the world's finest scientists, writers and evolutionary thinkers are converging on Durham for a major event which will examine provocative questions relating to fundamental human beliefs and spirituality.

The debate, to be hosted by the University's pioneering think tank, the Institute of Advanced Study, will debate two key issues: 'Are we born racist or do we become racist?', and 'Is religion inherited or acquired?'.

The event will be chaired by Durham University's new Vice Chancellor, world-renowned scientist and evolutionary geneticist, Professor Chris Higgins, and discussions will be stimulated by a round table of leading experts in their field.

Professor Ash Amin, Director of the Institute of Advanced Study, outlined the inspiration for the event:

"9/11, the wider war on terror, and the intensifying clash of world civilizations are reinforcing essentialist understandings of human difference and recognition. We are seeing the resurgence of biological readings of race and racial difference, the rise and rise of religious fundamentalism, and growing skepticism towards secularist and socially negotiated principles of living with difference.

"These shifts, as well as possible solutions relating to religious and racial tolerance and understanding, hinge around the unresolved problem of whether differences of behaviour, disposition, and affect are inherited, and, if they are, through what evolutionary mechanism?"

Prof Amin added: "The panel aims to confront thinking in genetics and evolutionary psychology on the carriers and nature of inherited traits and on the speed with which beliefs become part of the inherited human hardwiring."

The April 26 event is part of a programme organised by the Institute of Advanced Study, whose theme for 2007 is the Legacy of Charles Darwin. On the same day, the eminent Darwin scholar Professor Michael Ruse from Florida State University will give a public lecture that will take on the various critics of evolutionary theory and will argue that 'Darwinism' remains the jewel in the crown of science.

The IAS, which opened last October, is becoming one of the major global centres of interdisciplinary study. It gathers together world-class scholars, intellectuals and public figures from around the globe and across all disciplines, to address topics of major intellectual, scientific or public and policy interest. Future annual topics will include Modelling, and Being Human.

One of the panel members at the April 26 event, Professor John Brooke, a science historian at Oxford University and an IAS fellow, will be contending the notion that our religious beliefs are 'hard-wired'. He said: "We should not seek to isolate some peculiar religious susceptibility and try to account for it in terms of the latest voguish science.

"Rather I would see the capacity for a religious response to the world as simply an extension of the perfectly normal capacities that make us human. I am thinking of our capacity for fellowship with others, of our ability to express a sense of gratitude for the fact that we exist at all, and a capacity to empathise with those who suffer."

Other panellists are the Guardian columnist, Madeline Bunting; Professor Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist at Liverpool University; John Dupre, Professor of the Philosophy of Science at Exeter University; Professor Anthony Monaco, Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at Oxford University.

The Sogdians in China II

The comments on "Gene Expression" give some more information. My own:

The Sogdians were part of the Persian Empire. We know Persian art and from that we know, what sort of people the elite of the Persian Empire was. We know Scythian art and from that we know, what sort of people the Scythians were. The Sogdians were a part of this "spectrum" between these peoples.

In this book

Haussig, Hans Wilhelm: Archäologie und Kunst der Seidenstraße. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1992

you can find at least 12 pieces of old chinese (or japanese) art of the Tang area showing "Westerners". Mostly No. 438 (p. 255) is very convincingly for me ("five musicians on a camel"). But several others too.

In this book

Etienne de La Vaissiere: Sogdian Traders. A history. Leiden 2005

you can find also some pieces of art. Plate IV: "Chinese statuettes representing Sogdians: 1 Caravaneer, 2 Merchant on foot, 3 Groom."

(It is very interesting also, that the Huns, who made history in Europe after 375, had made a lot of "experiences" before and after that with the Sogdians in Central Asia. Mostly the Sogdians were allies of the Huns like like the Goths and other germanic tribes in the West.) (Yu Hong was an ambessedor between China and the Huns.)

The Sogdians had long traditions of political experiences with several great cultures (Chinese, India, Persia, Byzanz, the Huns, the Tocharian kingdoms in the Tarim ...) and they were proud of that. They were embassadors between the huns and Byzanz also (in favor of "free market and trade"). On their wall pictures of Old-Samarkand and Pentshikent they had historical scences of several empires, their regents and their religions.

I'm not fully clear yet about the relationships between Tocharians and Sogdians. It seems that Tocharians flet from the invasion of the Huns to the Sogdians (and to Ferghana?) and founded new kingdoms there. Another part of the Tocharians stayed in the Tarim and in Kansu. But the Sogdians clearly were different from them, probably were more "specialists" in far distance trade.

And the very informed comment by John J. Emerson, a specialist in Chinese history:

The Sogdians were sometimes part of the Persian Emperor and sometimes not. They spoke what might be called a dialect of Persian, though it could also be called a related language. As time went on they became increasingly Turkified, with long periods of bilingualism and intermarriage. There remain Tajiks speaking Turkish in that area today, though I don't believe that they're specifically descendants of Sogdians; Sogdian specifically is probably extinct, or perhaps linguistically represented by a small mountain people long separated from the Sogdian past. As far as I know they were Middle Eastern in type.

The geographical perspective on these peoples is the most interesting. Central Asia East of Persia, north of India, south and east of the steppe, and west of China (i.e. Uzbekistan, Xinjiang, and neighboring areas) was a mix of deserts, mountains and oases. This area has been the farthest reach of China, Persia, Russia, Alexander the Great, and the Arab Muslims, but the area was often independent and was the home base of Tamerlane, Genghis Khan (in a sense), and the Mughals. It also served as a refuge for survivor peoples such as the Manichaeans, the Tokharians, and the Nestorians.

The small but very productive oases were urbanized very early, and their main world significance was as a trade link between China, the Persian Middle East, and India.

Anyway, the Sogdians ere dominant here from 300 BC or earlier but gradually became Persianized and/or Turkified. (However, Sogdians were a force in China as late as 900 AD). The process seems to have been mostly peaceful rather than by conquest or extermination -- the Sogdians were middlemen who had to be multilingual, and they were always cutting deals with the more powerful peoples of Persia, Mongolia, and China.

The Tokharians were a whole different story, and seem to have come from the NW. Their dialect and race are thought to have been W. European rather than Middle Eastern. They survived (as Buddhists) in Xinjiang up until 1000 AD or later, and around the period 100 BC -- 200 AD they may have been (it's not certain) the rulers of the Kushan kingdom in approximately Afghanistan. The Kushans are very poorly known. One interesting thing about them is that they were in some ways heirs of the Bactrian Greeks (using Greek script on some coins), and the Kushans played a major role in the development of Mahayana Buddhism and its transmission to China.

Most empires privilege specialized minority peoples or sects, either as middlemen to the outside world, as mercenaries, or as agents dependent on and loyal to the ruler. This is much different than multiculturalism and multinationalism; it's more a divide and conquer strategy. Historically favored minorities (and trading minorities) I can think of immediately include Jews, Armenians, Albanians, Sogdians, Uighurs, Baha'is, Lombards, Norse (in Constantinople), Lebanese, Greeks, Italians, Gurkhas, Irish, Quakers, Chinese (in SE Asia), and some of the peoples of India. (I've mixed up mercenaries, technical experts, and trading peoples, but the dynamic is about the same).

My point, anyway, is that cultural uniformity is really not often found, and that a degree of cultural pluralism is characteristic of empires and large trading networks.

I have problems with his assumption, that the Sogdians were "Middle Eastern in Type". The Persians and the Scythians weren't Middle Eastern in type in their art and the Chinese art shows no Middle Eastern type for Sogdians also. And Chinese art was very aware of all the slightly physical differences of all the diverse ethnies in the West (Tibetians, Huns, Sogdians, Indians ...) But John Emerson is right, that the Sogdians "became Persianized and/or Turkified". - May be partly "Tocharianized" too?

The point of all this for me is: Afghanistan, Tadjikistan, Usbekistan and Xiangjang are very poor countries today, but this wasn't always so. Highly urbanized cultures sunken in the sands comparable to Egypt, Meso-America, Irak, Greece ... New examples of the collapse of complex societies.

Another new comment from me over there:

Here is some usefull information about Sogdians and their graves in China today.

And this is interesting too:

"According to Chinese monk-pilgrim of the 7th century Xuan Zang, half of Sogdian population was engaged in farming, whereas the other half carried on trade. (...) At the age of five, the boys studied books, and after getting their teens they were sent to learn trading. Having reached their 20th year, young men went to neighboring lands to engage in profitable trade."

And La Vaissier ("Sogdian Traders", 2005) says about the Sogdian communities in every larger Chinese city and their leaders, the "Sabaos" (p. 152): "But it is quite exceptional that every hu" (that means Sogdian) "community of at least 200 households - the equivalent of a large village - should have been provided with a representive of mandarin rank. The smallest Chinese area having at its head a representative of the central power was normally the district (xian). The leaders of the township, and a fortiori those of the village and quarter, were chosen among the local notables and did not have mandarin rank. The sabao, therefore, should not have had such a position. Only the fact, that they were in charge of foreign communities explains this special treatment, which attests to the economic importance of the communities, incommensurable with the number of their members."

The Sogdians in China

National Geographic has a new article about the genetical studies concerning the Sogdian leader Yu Hong in a Tang-chinese grave. (Studium generale)

Yu Hong was a "Sogdian". Dienekes had some links to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, which had more information about this people and about this grave.

I have made some studies about the Sogdians in the last weeks. (Studium generale) The Sogdians came mostly from Samarkand and the rich and economically whealthy "Sogdiana". Roxana, the first wife of Alexander the Great was a sogdian princess. The Sogdians were mostly rich traders (caravaniers) between Korea and Byzanz. And they made a lot of politics in this area. They had communities in the Tarim-area and far beyond.

In the chinese art of the Tang area often you can find pieces that shows "Foreigners", "Westerners". Mostly they were Sogdians. Often they are shown as comedians, dancers, musicians. They made several religions spread in East Asia (Buddhism, Manichaeism and others).

In China they have now found several graves of Sogdian leaders. Often they were mandarin's and had high positions in the chinese administration.

Over on my german blog I have more information (and some pictures and english links) about them. (Studium generale) And "Gene Expression" has something.

"PZ Myers doesn't know anything ..."

Gene expression has a very good article about eugenics and IQ-(population-)genetics - a theme treated by "famous" PZ Myers.

Some things become trivial scientifically if you repeat them too often. And so Utah's geneticist Gregory Cochran is right in his short commentary: "Probably PZ Myers doesn't know anything about quantitative or population genetics. I hear they're old hat."

- But these are themes that not only have to be discussed by scientists, they have to be discussed by the whole society. And this in no way trivial any longer.

American Conservatism and - - - Evolution

The conservatives in the US begin to think more seriously about evolutionary theory and evolutionary psychology. (New York Times, [whole page]), one of the proponents is Larry Arnhart (photo on the left). The titel of his book is "Darwinian Conservatism". (Amazon)

... Some of these thinkers have gone one step further, arguing that Darwin’s scientific theories about the evolution of species can be applied to today’s patterns of human behavior, and that natural selection can provide support for many bedrock conservative ideas, like traditional social roles for men and women, free-market capitalism and governmental checks and balances.

“I do indeed believe conservatives need Charles Darwin,” said Larry Arnhart, a professor of political science at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, who has spearheaded the cause. “The intellectual vitality of conservatism in the 21st century will depend on the success of conservatives in appealing to advances in the biology of human nature as confirming conservative thought.”

(...)

The fledgling field of evolutionary psychology also spurred some conservatives to invoke Darwinism in the 1990s. In “The Moral Sense” (1993), followed by “The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families” (2002), James Q. Wilson used evolution to explain the genesis of morality and to support traditional family and sex roles. Conservative thinkers from Francis Fukuyama to Richard Pipes have drawn on evolutionary psychology to support ideas like a natural human desire for private property and a biological basis for morality.

(...)

Mr. Arnhart, in his 2005 book, “Darwinian Conservatism,” tackled the issue of conservatism’s compatibility with evolutionary theory head on, saying Darwinists and conservatives share a similar view of human beings: they are imperfect; they have organized in male-dominated hierarchies; they have a natural instinct for accumulation and power; and their moral thought has evolved over time.

The institutions that successfully evolved to deal with this natural order were conservative ones, founded in sentiment, tradition and judgment, like limited government and a system of balances to curb unchecked power, he explains. Unlike leftists, who assume “a utopian vision of human nature” liberated from the constraints of biology, Mr. Arnhart says, conservatives assume that evolved social traditions have more wisdom than rationally planned reforms.

While Darwinism does not resolve specific policy debates, Mr. Arnhart said in an interview on Thursday, it can provide overarching guidelines. Policies that are in tune with human nature, for example, like a male military or traditional social and sex roles, he said, are more likely to succeed. He added that “moral sympathy for the suffering of fellow human beings” allows for aid to the poor, weak and ill.

(...)

As for Mr. Derbyshire, he would not say whether he thought evolutionary theory was good or bad for conservatism; the only thing that mattered was whether it was true. And, he said, if that turns out to be “bad for conservatives, then so much the worse for conservatism.”

Positive selection in chimps and humans

I have made a longer post on my german blog. (Studium generale) For more information look here. (Gene Expression) Nature, Science, New Scientists have articles now. But the best commentary, I have read until now comes from an australian physics departement exploring complex and nonlinear systems (!) (Nature, Comments):

It's a big jump from observing the number of genes which have a high proportion of non-synonymous mutations, to taking this to be a measure of how much the species has changed, how 'highly evolved' they are, or who is winning the evolutionary race - to use three phrases from the article in question. As many writers have beautifully and eloquently described (eg Gary Marcus' wonderful book The Birth of the Mind - How a Tiny Number of Genes Creates the Complexities of Human Thought) there are generally no simple correspondences between genes and phenotype properties. The genotype-phenotype map is complex, highly-structured and poorly understood. A more perceptive and thoughtful discussion of the possible interpretations of the reported data would be more welcome than the cheap pseudo-controversial headlines.
Also interesting: what is the possible impact of cultural evolution as a selective force?

Anne-Marie Grisogono

Adventurer and geneticist: Spencer Wells

A very good interview with geneticist Spencer Wells about his Genographic Project at PlosGenetics. He says about Hungary:

We've gotten some fascinating results and a lot of e-mails. For example, a Hungarian woman wrote in and said, “You've got to redo my test. You told me I'm native American or Siberian, and I know my ancestors came from Hungary—I can tell you the village they were living in in the sixteenth century.” The Hungarian language, Magyar, is actually related to languages spoken in Siberia, and this is one of the first cases where we've actually seen Siberian lineages showing up in the Hungarian population. They are there at very low frequency. We now through this project have over 350 people who are of Hungarian descent and we see these [Siberian] lineages at four to five percent on both male and female sides.

And he says about the traditional tribal genealogical thinking (here in southern Tajikistan):

... Most people are interested in their history, and indigenous people, who are the ones who give us the clearest glimpse of their genetic history, are particularly interested, because in many cases it is all they have—what they cling on to—their sense of identity.

I was just in Tajikistan a week and a half ago, and we were sampling all over the southern part of the country and asking people to name their grandparents and great-grandparents and so on. I could do that back to maybe to my great-grandparents. These people can do it back six, seven, eight generations. They've always lived in the same place and beyond that they know even more about their history, but not necessarily their names.

So they have a sense, a clear idea of where they came from, that something is passed from generation that ties them to their ancestors. You explain to them that that thing is DNA and that it will tell us not only about the people they can name but also people beyond that that they can't name ...

Some personal things about this blonde Spencer Wells:

My father (...) he comes from a military family. His father, whom he never knew because he died in World War II, graduated top of his class from West Point and was apparently a wild man out in the field. I think maybe I got some of my love of danger and going to strange places from him. ...

Ashkenazi Jewish subgroups and founder events

Ashkenazi Jews "constitute a model population for the search of disease-causing mutations and disease-susceptibility genes".

A new genetic study about Ashkenazi Jews (1) confirms

"the interpretation of little or no gene flow of the local non-Jewish communities in Poland and Russia to the Jewish communities in these countries" over the last 1000 years. "The differences between Jews and non-Jews are far larger than those observed among the Jewish communities." So, the study says, Ashkenazi Jews are "an isolated population that has undergone a recent bottleneck".

But its main result is, that researchers claim to have found a difference in haplogroup frequencies (mostly of mitochondrial haplogroups K and H) between Ashkenazi Jews from Russia and Ashkenazi Jews from Poland and Romania.

And because the differences are not caused by non-jewish genetical influence it is most likely that they reflect founder events, researchers say. So they claim the results are "consistent with the view that the ancestry of the Ashkenazi Jewish population is a result of at least four different founder events."

____________

1. Feder, J., Ovadia, O., Glaser, B. et al. Ashkenazi Jewish mtDNA haplogroup distribution varies among distinct subpopulations: lessons of population substructure in a closed group. Eur J Hum Genet 15, 498–500 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ejhg.5201764, https://www.nature.com/articles/5201764

Group selection - a very simple thing ...?

Does one crucial heritable trait like intelligence can change inborn altruism inside of a society?

I think: Yes. If you are more intelligent than another person, you can be more efficient with your altruistic deeds. And if a whole group is more intelligent than another group this gives this group an advantage.

But we know: Nowadays inborn intelligence of human groups does not "per se" correlate with fitness. Sometimes yes - for example in modern Israel, for example (broadly spoken) in the Western Hemisphere between 1500 and 1900. But often (today in the Western Hemisphere): No. So let us say: There is a difficult connection between intelligence and fertility in humans.

But IF human groups act mostly like the Western Hemisphere between 1500 and 1900 and like modern Israel today it is clear, that we would say, that more efficient altruism would evolve by group selection, because it is different fertility of genetically different groups that shapes human variability of traits at any given period.

And I think this is what happened in human history and evolution mostly. Aszkenazi Jews where seperated enough from other groups for thousand years and were able to evolve (by this) a "more efficient altruism" than all the other human groups have today AND they had another fertility rate than Sephardic Jews. This has not happened by extinction of (other) groups - only by separation.

I think there are a lot of other heritable traits that influence altruism in this way or another. We do not have "one" gene for altruism ...

(Razib Khan had some thoughts about group selection and motivated me for this post.)

Beginning of agriculture in China by migrations from Europe?

Last year in the journal "Archäologie in Deutschland" there were given hints by Detlef Gronenborn (pdf., german language), that archaeological connections exist between the first european farmers (the Linearbandkeramiker) and new detected archaeological cultures in Russia (Elshan-Culture) and Northern China. (More from Detlef Gronenborn here - also in English.)

Now it seems that we have ancient genetic data for this connections as well. And that would mean, that these connections were'nt only cultural but also genetic. This would be a very great surprise.

The Phylogeography of Haplogroup N1a

Gokcumen O et al.

Recent studies have revealed a complex geographic distribution of haplogroup N1a. This rare and distinctive lineage is widely distributed across Eurasia and Africa, but always found at very low frequencies. However, despite its rarity, the genetic diversity within N1a has remained relatively high (h=0.9605). The reduced median network of N1a haplotypes not only reflects this level of diversity, but also exhibits several relatively well-defined branches. The distribution of N1a is intriguing because of revealing previously unrecognized connections between populations. What makes N1a even more interesting is the prevalence of this lineage in ancient European populations. Haak et al. (2005) found that 25% of their European Neolithic samples belonged to N1a and dated to ~5000 BCE, whereas the frequency of this lineage in contemporary Europeans is only ~0.2%. In addition, an Iron Age skeleton from Kazakhstan had an N1a haplotype, suggesting the existence of this lineage in the Altai Republic in ~500BCE (Ricaut et al. 2004). Indeed, we found several haplogroup N1a mtDNAs in indigenous Altaians and Altaian Kazakhs. To further elucidate the phylogeography of this lineage in Central Asia, we sequenced the whole mtDNA genomes of our N1a haplotypes, and analyzed the resulting data with several quantitative methods and simulation programs to estimate their expansion times and spatial distribution in Eurasia. Our findings suggest that there are two well-defined sublineages within N1a, and that the dispersal of this haplogroup could be associated with the Neolithic expansion and with prehistoric interactions between Central Asian and European populations.

What sort of people will have babies in the future?

In a new article people like Bruce Lahn, Steven Pinker, Jared Diamond, Peter Richerson and Daniel Dennett are asked, what they think at the moment about the (past and) the future of human evolution. Daniel Dennett has a good point:

... "The question to ask is this," said Dennett at Tufts. "What features are shared by most of the people having babies that survive to have babies of their own?"

And I think, the answer is very simple. As far as we know the best and most robust factor, that correlates with fertility in humans nowadays is religion, Mr. Dennett! - You aren't surprised?

But Daniel Dennett has more interesting things to say:

... "In different environments, different pressures may well dominate. If pandemics or huge shifts in the environment occur, this may create bottlenecks, through which only a lucky few can pass their genes.

"Perhaps tolerance for mercury in the diet, or an ability to digest kudzu, or a pronounced fondness for living underground in the dark will be strongly favored after some catastrophe."

However, Dennett added, "Since evolution is an amplifier of noise - unpredictable insertions into the prevailing patterns - it is a mistake to extrapolate current trends with much confidence."

Incest: Good for the Jews

In an Online Journal called "Jewcy" you can find an interesting article: "Incest: Good for the Jews - The benefits of a small tribal gene pool". An overview about current thinking concerning jewish population genetics. - But first - what does this online journal is telling "About Us"?:

"Jewcy has become a cultural icon at the forefront of a new wave of Jewish culture and pride.” - Guardian “[Jewcy] is the accoutrement of choice for a new breed of Jewish hipsters...”- Washington Post

Jewcy Media Group is an entertainment and media company devoted to helping Jews (and anyone else) find, use, share, and expand meaning and community.

With its online site, theatrical productions, and steady diet of exciting events, Jewcy is the premier Jewish media and entertainment outlet for progressive free-thinkers.

WHY NOW?

In the thick, messy context of contemporary American life, it’s a remarkable moment to be a Jew. There is unparalleled opportunity for people hell-bent on making a meaningful difference with their lives, but also an unprecedented uncertainty about the relevance of old traditions and institutions.

This much we know: we’re hungry. Hungry for meaning. For community. For continuity and clarity and inspiration. For intelligent, thoughtful analysis of consequential ideas and issues. Our affluence, our boundless access to information, our education and unprecedented acceptance into the cultural mainstream carry with them unlimited possibilities – and unlimited possibilities carry equal measures of hope and fear.

So, what does matter now? ...

In this online journal you can find the following overview concerning jewish population genetics:

Incest: Good for the Jews
The benefits of a small tribal gene pool

by Joey Kurtzman, January 1, 2007

Genetically, Ashkenazi Jews are freaks. For most of Jewish history in Europe, cherem-wielding rabbis and an unwelcoming Gentile world made inbreeding a far more appealing option than intermarriage. As a result, Ashkenazim became what scientists call an “endogamous group,” which is another way of saying that they have been sleeping with their cousins for a thousand years. And because endogamous groups often develop distinctive genetic profiles, nothing gets a population geneticist hotter than incest.

Ashkenazim aren’t the only group that has kept outsiders out of the gene pool. Most other such groups, however, are isolated, rural populations, like the Amish or the inhabitants of Australia’s Norfolk Island. Ashkenazim are the best-studied group of cousin-kissers on the planet because they’re convenient. A scientist doesn’t need to trek out to the boonies to do her research when she’s got a million Ashkenazi Jews outside her door in the same city where she lives and works.

So endogamy and cosmopolitanism go a long way towards explaining why Jewish DNA has been the source of a gobsmacking number of important genetic findings. Unfortunately, the news coverage of those findings has focused primarily on the negative: genes that predispose us to Tay-Sachs disease, breast cancer, intestinal disease…and the list goes on.

But not all the startling stories hiding in Ashkenazi DNA are bad. Freakishness has its benefits. Some of our genetic eccentricities are more Übermensch than sissy-pants, more Schwarzenegger than DeVito.

Here’s a brief tour through four of the happier genetic quirks discovered about the Ashkenazi wing of our tribe in recent years.

RESISTANCE TO HIV

Yes, you still need to use condoms. But a significant proportion of Ashkenazi Jews have a mutation in a gene called CCR5, and the most common strain of HIV uses the protein produced by CCR5 to climb inside people’s cells. The mutation prevents HIV from exploiting that protein to gain access. If you get two copies of the mutant gene, then most strains of HIV will have little to no chance of getting into your cells. If you get one copy, you’re still less likely to contract HIV, and, if you do, your prognosis is better.

The number of Ashkenazi Jews who have the mutation varies among different Jewish subgroups. According to a study conducted at the Center of Neurogenetics in Paris, a whopping 45 percent of Litvaks (Jews from Lithuania) have at least one copy of the mutation. Ethiopian Jews, on the other hand, don’t have it at all.

Population geneticists aren’t sure why Jews have the mutation in such high numbers. Some of the microbes responsible for Europe’s plagues may have used the same protein, and, as one theory goes, the plagues hit Jews harder than most other European populations, leaving us with a genetic advantage today. Wearing the same heavy clothes every day and never bathing may have had its benefits.

LOW RATES OF ALCOHOLISM

“Shicker iz a goy, shicker iz a goy, shicker iz er, trinken muz er, vahl er iz a goy!” That racist old Yiddish ditty translates: “The goy is a drunk! The goy is a drunk! He has to drink, because he’s a goy!” Classy stuff.

Jews made a mint in Europe by distilling alcohol and selling it to Gentiles, and then we sang songs about what drunks they were. But it turns out Gentiles really are more likely than Jews to become drunks, and it’s not because young Jews learn how to drink responsibly by quaffing Manischewitz at the Seder table, or any of the other old, folk explanations.

Twenty percent of Ashkenazi Jews have a genetic mutation on chromosome nine that causes an unpleasant reaction to alcohol—headaches, nausea, flushing—which in turn makes heavy drinking and alcoholism less likely. This mutation is almost nonexistent among non-Jewish Europeans, but common among Asians.

It’s a model minority thing, apparently.

LOW RATES OF CERVICAL CANCER

It’s not cause you’re not a slut, that’s for sure. The low incidence of cervical cancer among Jewish women has been a longstanding mystery to scientists. People used to think that a circumcised penis was like a magic wand, protecting Jewish women from a nasty cancer that was far more common among non-Jews. That partly explains why American Gentiles started doing like the poor biblical boys of Shekhem and slicing off their foreskins. Once all these Gentiles started circumcising their kids, the bad news came in: Low rates of cervical cancer have nothing to do with circumcision.

The low incidence of human papilloma virus (HPV) among Jewish women may partly explain their low rates of cervical cancer. And scientists have recently discovered that a genetic mutation called p53-D12 predisposes some women to cervical cancer; that mutation is rare among Jewish women.

HIGH RATES OF INTELLIGENCE

“The world is riddled—riddled!—with dumb Ashkenazi Jews,” as Leon Wieseltier reminds us. Too true, Leon. But with the tribe’s lineup including Freud, Einstein, and Speed Levitch, and Ashkenazim possessing an exceedingly high mean IQ, Jews have more than their share of smarties. They’ve also got more than their share of neurological disorders such as Tay-Sachs and Gaucher’s disease. According to a recent study at the University of Utah, there’s a connection: The same genes that cause diseases such as Tay-Sachs and Gaucher’s can also help make you a little Einstein.

The genes in question promote the growth of brain cells. Basically, if you get two of those genes, your brain cells will be afflicted by the kind of extreme and disordered cell growth associated with Tay-Sachs. Get only one of those genes and the cell growth within your brain is enhanced, meaning your grandma will never shut up about you at the mah-jongg table. Or so the Utah researchers argue.

The theory attempts to answer the question of what causes higher rates of intelligence among Jews. And as the theory’s premise is clear and testable, we’ll know for certain in a few years whether it’s the right answer. As to the question of why the gene is there in the first place, it’s all conjecture from here on in.

Some think it’s because our smartest guys became big Talmud chachams and got the girls, while the smartest non-Jewish Europeans became priests and spilled their seed into bed sheets. Or, others postulate, maybe it’s because Jews had to pursue talky, cognitively taxing professions because they weren’t allowed to own land or join guilds. Whatever the explanation may be, Jews got the smahts, baby.

N E X T

Do: What do DNA and endogamy mean for Jewish chauvinism – and antisemitism? Leave your comments below.
Go: Feel certain that your family tree takes you directly back to King David himself? Then meet thousands of other crazies like yourself at the Eternal House of David Reunion in Jerusalem on May 28-30, 2007.
Read: Evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker wrote [subscription necessary] on Jewish IQ in The New Republic in June 2006. A more controversial evolutionary psychologist Kevin MacDonald has spent a career addressing Jewish group characteristics, which he terms an “evolutionary strategy” to keep tribal chromosomes exclusive. Judith Shulevitz called MacDonald “Evolutionary Psychology’s Anti-Semite” six years ago in Slate.

Human traits and their evolution - a new book

The OMIM-databank ("Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man") is full of scientific literature concerning data and theories about the evolutionary causes of the worldwide distribution (frequencies) of inborn human traits - of EVERY inborn human trait, we know about today. Only very few popular science books exist today, that try to give the public an understanding at least of the tip of the iceberg, that is formed by that databank - that is humanity's knowledge about itself. So a lot of reason exist to welcome books, that are publicised in that field. We have to thank "Gene Expression" once more for giving a hint to a new book in this field:

A review of Survival of the Sickest, by Sharon Moalem with Jonathan Prince

(...)

Most of the chapters are centered around the population genetics of a disease. This is fascinating material, and Moalem (along with his co-author) does a wonderful job presenting it. Each chapter starts with an observation--a high prevalance of Type I diabetes in Europeans, the frequency of a genetic disease called hemochromatosis, or the geographic distribution of favism, for example--which sets the stage for a series of anecdotes that eventually leads the reader to his evolutionary hypothesis (for the examples given, these hypotheses are adaptation to cold and resistance to the plague and malaria, repectively). Some of these anecdotes are worth the price of the book alone (though, it must be noted, I didn't pay for my copy, so I suppose I can't judge)--there's an investigation of the biology of a toad that allows itself to freeze solid each winter that is particularly remarkable, and the section on host manipulation by parasites would make Carl Zimmer proud. A large number of human traits are touched on from this perspective--apart from the ones mentioned above, traits like skin color, alcoholism, taste, and even skull shape get mentions[1].

While these chapters are the highlight of the book, an alert reader may notice a couple hints that perhaps the science isn't definitive on some of these stories: first, the oft-added qualifier that a given theory (for example, that the high rate of hypertension in African-Americans is due to selection for salt retention on slave boats) is "controversial", and second, that there are a number of theories for some of the observations. The prevalence of diabetes, for instance, is attributed to metabolic systems unaccustomed to carbohydrate-rich diets (pg. 26), a selective sweep for better cold response during the Younger Dryas (pg. 46), and transgenerational epigentic effects, the so-called "thrifty phenotype" hypothesis (pg. 166). These possibilities are not mutually exclusive, but a reconciliation of all of them would certainly have been desirable.

(...)

[1] Moalem gives a cursory look at the concept of "race" with regard to these traits, but essentially chooses not to discuss it, preferring to cite a Nature Genetics editorial from 2001 as saying that "population clusters identified by genotype analysis seem to more informative than those identified by skin color or self-declaration of race". Regular readers know that much has changed since 2001; in particular, there doesn't seem to be much of a distinction between genetic clusters and clusters based on self-declaration of race [Tang et al. 2005].

Population bottleneck during "out of africa"

New hints for a population bottleneck concerning (anatomical modern) humans leaving the african continent were presented in "Annals of Human Genetics":

"... At the NF1 gene locus two clearly separated groups of haplotypes, corresponding to the two haplogroups described by us (Schmegner et al. 2005), are present in the European population and both Asian populations, but not in the African population. This argues against a population bottleneck during the immigration of the AMH into Europe, because a reduction to two NF1 gene lineages during this event would not have affected the Asian populations. At the chromosome 22 locus a different picture is obtained for the European and Asian populations, with no split into two clearly separated subgroups of haplotypes. The patterns for the two loci in the African population are quite similar. Therefore, if a population bottleneck is considered to explain the variability patterns, the HapMap data show that this bottleneck most probably occurred throughout the emigration of the AMH out of Africa. Recently signs of a population bottleneck in variability data obtained for a number of genomic loci in European and Asian populations, but not in African populations, were described and also led to the conclusion that this bottleneck occurred after the appearance of the AMH in Africa, and thus presumably during the emigration out of Africa (Harpending & Rogers, 2000; Balciuniene et al. 2001; Alonso & Armour, 2004; Marth et al. 2004; Stajich & Hahn, 2005; Voight et al. 2005)."

And for Europe only:

"Regarding demography, the most plausible explanation is the assumption of a severe bottleneck in the history of the European population: in the case of the chromosome 17 locus two ancient lineages passed this bottleneck; for the chromosome 22 locus it was only one ancient lineage."