arab thoroughbreds

greg cochran says (or writes, i guess — unless he talks to his computer monitor like some of us people do…):

“If a new environment favored lower (or higher) aggressiveness in males, a Y-chromosome that induced lower (or higher) aggressiveness would take off. And since different Y chromosomes do indeed affect the level of aggressiveness in mice [which I just found out], possibly by affecting testosterone production – this mechanism is plausible….

“Fortunately for all concerned, the selective value of aggressiveness, etc. has been the same for all human populations forever and ever, before and after the development of agriculture. Otherwise you might see weirdly rapid expansions of particular Y-chromosome haplogroups – common, yet only a few thousand years old.”

i nominate as one such example of this selection that never happened the “YCAII=22-22 and DYS388≥15″ cluster of haplogroup J-M267 which, depending on who you read, may or may not be related to the arabs’ expansion out of their peninsula in historic times. whatever the full story, haplogroup J-M267 certainly looks arab-expansiony:

hage and marck have shown how mating patterns can affect the distribution of sex chromosome haplogroups (mmmm-hmmm!). the prevalence of father’s brother’s daughter’s (fbd) marriage amongst the arabs could certainly have had an effect on the successful distribution of the J-M267 haplogroup, especially the YCAII-whatchamacallit cluster mentioned above if it was really connected to the arab expansion.

remember that fbd marriage concentrates y-chromosome types into these patrilineages, so fathers, sons, grandfathers, paternal uncles, paternal nephews, paternal male cousins, etc., all share the same y-chromosome (barring variations due to mutations, of course):

of particular interest is how men (“C” in diagram above) ensure that their male grandchildren by their daughters (“E” in diagram above) also have their y-chromosome, ’cause they marry their daughters off to their paternal nephews (i talked about that here). this doesn’t happen in most marriage systems. so, really, ALL the males in (ideal) arab, fbd patrilineages share the same y-chromosome.

this is one way that inbreeding could serve to accelerate the acquisition of “genes for altruism” in a population. if, say, those genes were aggression genes on the y-chromosome — genes that led to altruistic behaviors in the sense that the individuals having them were more likely to “kill thy unrelated neighbor” and make life better for themselves and their own — then inbreeding, especially father’s brother’s daughter’s marriage, could help those genes pile up more quickly.

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tweaking just ONE gene…

…is all it takes to get some of the most recognizable of racial differences between human populations.

via steve sailer, from nicholas wade in the nyt:

East Asian Physical Traits Linked to 35,000-Year-Old Mutation

“Gaining a deep insight into human evolution, researchers have identified a mutation in a critical human gene as the source of several distinctive traits that make East Asians different from other races.

“The traits — thicker hair shafts, more sweat glands, characteristically identified teeth and smaller breasts — are the result of a gene mutation that occurred about 35,000 years ago, the researchers have concluded….

“The first of those sites to be studied contains the gene known as EDAR. Africans and Europeans carry the standard version of the gene, but in most East Asians, one of the DNA units has mutated.

“Seeking to understand if the gene was the cause of thicker hair in East Asians with the variant gene, a team of researchers led by Yana G. Kamberov and Pardis C. Sabeti at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass., decided to test the gene in mice, where its effects could be more easily explored….

“The Broad team engineered a strain of mice whose EDAR gene had the same DNA change as the East Asian version of EDAR.

“When the mice grew up, the researchers found they did indeed have thicker hair shafts, confirming that the changed gene was the cause of East Asians’ thicker hair. But the gene had several other effects, they report in Thursday’s issue of the journal Cell.

“One was that the mice, to the researchers’ surprise, had extra sweat glands. A Chinese member of the team, Sijia Wang, then tested people in China and discovered that they, too, had more numerous sweat glands, evidently another effect of the gene.

“Another surprise was that the engineered mice had less breast tissue, meaning that EDAR could be the reason that East Asian women have generally smaller breasts.

“East Asians have distinctively shaped teeth for which their version of EDAR is probably responsible. But the mice were less helpful on this point; their teeth are so different from humans’ that the researchers could not see any specific change….

“A team led by Dr. Sabeti and Sharon R. Grossman of the Broad Institute has now refined the usual scanning methods and identified 412 sites on the genome that have been under selection. Each site is small enough that it contains at most a single gene.

“Each race has a different set of selected regions, reflecting the fact that the human population had dispersed from its African homeland and faced different challenges that led to genetic adaptation on each continent. About 140 of the sites affected by natural selection are in Europeans, 140 in East Asians and 132 in Africans, the authors report in another article published Thursday in Cell….“

so cool!

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ancient chinese hbd thinking

from wu qi, the fourth century b.c. chinese version of jared taylor (~_^) [pg. 12 - links added by me]:

“Qin‘s nature is strong. Its terrain is difficult. Its government is severe. Its rewards and punishments are reliable. Its people do not yield; they are all belligerent. Therefore they scatter and fight as individuals. As the way to attack them, one must first entice them with profit and lead them away. Their officers are greedy for gain and will separate from their generals. Take advantage of their separation to attack them when scattered, set traps and seize the key moment, then their generals can be captured.

“Chu‘s nature is weak. Its terrain is broad. Its government is disorderly. Its people are weary. Therefore when placed in formations they cannot maintain them long. As the way to attack them, strike and cause disorder in their camp. First ruin their morale by nimbly advancing and then rapidly withdrawing. Cause them fatigue and toil. Do not join in actual combat, and their army can be destroyed.”

apparently, wu characterized all of the nine cultural regions of china at the time like this, but i haven’t found them yet (to be honest, i haven’t looked that hard).

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the problem with china

i remember reading a long time ago about how, when bangkok’s elevated train system was built (don’t recall if it was the failed berts or the skytrain or what), everything from the pillars to the platforms was made over dimensioned, because everyone, all the city planners and the engineers, knew — they all knew — that there would be cheating involved at every stage of the construction process — watered down concrete would undoubtedly be used, reused steel reinforcements would take the place the new ones that should’ve been installed, etc., etc. everything had to be over dimensioned to ensure that the whole thing wouldn’t just fall over. (costly, no?)

china has the same fundamental problem — what m.g. has referred to a disregard for the commonweal. the chinese (and other asians, with the apparent exception of the japanese) simply care less about unrelated members of their society than northwest europeans do. and this goes way back — from greif and tabellini [pgs. 18-20]:

“Charity in pre-modern China was generally given to kin. The innovator of the clan trust, Fan Chung-yen (989-1052), “had ruled that the lineage should aid only relatives with lineage ties that were clearly documented in the genealogy” (Smith, 1987, p. 316). Only in the early 17th century non-Buddhist, impersonal charity permanent organizations were established on some scale. Although the Chinese authorities encouraged impersonal charity, moral philosophers decried it viewing the diversion of assistance way from kin immoral. A popular 17th century morality book “tells of a generous scholar who was derided by a member of his lineage for lightly giving money away to strangers ”(ibid)….

“The lack of self-governed cities in China was not simply due to a more powerful state, but also to a pervasive kinship structure that facilitated state control over cities. Indeed, immigrants to cities remained affiliated with their rural kinship groups. As late as the 17th century, in a relatively new city “the majority of a city’’s population consisted of so-called sojourners, people who had come from elsewhere and were considered (and thought of themselves as) only temporary residents …. suspicions were always rife that sojourners could not be trusted ”(Friedmann, 2007, p. 274). As noted above, families that moved to cities retained ‘their allegiance to the ancestral hall for many generations, the bonds of kinship being much closer than those of common residence’ (Hsien-Chin, 1948, p. 10).”

allegiance in china, for a very long time, has been to the clan, not the broader community.

china’s being touted nowadays as the “IT” country of the twenty-first century (third millennium?). maybe. certainly the chinese seem to have the requisite number of iq points — and intelligence is, of course, essential in succeeding in this world. you definitely don’t get very far without it.

but — and if anyone ever takes anything away from this blog, i’d like it to be this — there’s more to human biodiversity than iq.

think, for example, about the probable differences in the life histories of your average person with an iq of, say, 135, and a psychopath with an iq of 135. or a neurotypical with an iq of 135 vs. an aspie with 135. different, right? (no, i’m not saying that the chinese are a bunch of psychopaths — i’m just trying to illustrate that iq is not everything.)

the chinese are not trusting — read greif and tabellini — nor particularly trustworthy (they don’t trust each other!). not when it comes to non-family members anyway.

it’s mighty difficult to build a civil society — or, i think, a successful market economy — without trust — without concern for the commonweal. i don’t see the chinese doing it anytime soon — not without a little evolution first.

china might turn out to (continue to) be a smashing economic success story — if it does, it’s going to look very different from what happened in europe/the u.s. the system won’t be built on trust in strangers — maybe in families/clans, but not strangers — so it won’t be built on corporate entities, not public ones anyway (see greif and tabellini, pg. 24). something to keep in mind if you’re gonna do some, what half sigma has dubbed, hbd investing in china.

(note that none of this is meant to be a criticism of the chinese, nor should it be taken as such. they’re merely hbd observations. we westerners might not particularly like how the chinese operate, but in terms of numbers, they are clearly in the lead right now in the Game of Life. their system may prove to be the superior one — although it didn’t get them to the moon first. or mars.)

previously: the return of chinese clans and the return of the return of chinese clans

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professors lynn and nyborg respond to ron unz

@american renaissance: Replies to Ron Unz

one interesting excerpt:

“Mr. Unz concludes that the East Asians are an exception to his theory that depressed socio-economic conditions are responsible for the low IQs in southern Europe.

“The East Asians are indeed an anomaly for Mr. Unz’s environmentalist theory. The IQ in impoverished China is the same as that in affluent Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, and South Korea. But Mr. Unz is wrong in his assertion that the high IQs of the East Asians despite depressed socio-economic conditions are an exception. The same problem for Mr. Unz’s environmentalist theory is present in the IQs of western and eastern Europe, where communism depressed socio-economic conditions but IQs have been virtually identical to those of affluent western Europe. In our 2012 compilation we give a median IQ of 97.2 for ten former communist countries and a median IQ of 99 for 14 countries of northern and central western Europe. This negligible difference of 1.8 IQ points indicates that the depressed socio-economic conditions of eastern Europe had virtually no adverse impact on their national IQs.

“The comparison of the IQs in eastern Europe with those in northern and central western Europe provide a quasi experiment to test Mr. Unz’s environmentalist theory. Take a group of ten nations in eastern Europe, subject them to communism for half a century, with the result that their standard of living is greatly reduced compared with that in the control group of 14 affluent countries of northern and central western Europe. Mr. Unz’s environmentalist theory predicts that the IQs in the nations in eastern Europe will be greatly impaired, while our genetic theory predicts that the adverse environment will have had little adverse effect on their IQs. The fact that the impoverished environment of communism has had virtually no adverse effect on he IQs in eastern Europe confirms our theory of the largely genetic determination of national IQs and is a serious anomaly for Mr. Unz’s environmentalist theory.

“The IQ of 97.2 in eastern Europe is significantly higher than that in the Balkan nations that have also experienced depressed socio-economic conditions comparable to those in eastern Europe, but where the median IQ is 92. The most reasonable explanation for this is that the people of the Balkans are a mixed race European-Middle Eastern people who differ genetically from those of eastern and western Europe.”

previously: ron unz and iq and mexican-american iq and more from ron unz on iq and rural white americans and ron unz’s rural/urban data… and irish-american iqs and distributions of wordsum scores

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irish-american iqs

or wordsum scores, rather.

donnacha thinks that i make too much out of any possible differences between different groups that came Out of Ireland — scots irish vs. native irish, for example.

they look different in the gss though.

if we look at the mean wordsum scores for protestant irish-americans vs. roman catholic irish-americans, they look like this:

protestant irish-americans = 6.08
roman catholic irish-americans = 6.99

now wordsum scores are not the exact equivalents of iq scores, but they are an ok proxy. (to convert wordsum scores to iq scores, see the awesome epigone.) in any case, the point is that the scores between different sub-populations of irish-americans are different.

why? i dunno.

but i can tell you that the largest group of gss protestant-irish (24% of the total) is found in the south atlantic region of the u.s. (virginia, west virgina, the carolinas, etc.) and another 14% are in the east south central region (kentucky, tennessee, etc.), so i’m gonna call this group as being largely scots-irish — hackett fischer’s backcountry folks.

meanwhile, a full 32% of gss roman catholic irish-americans grew up in the mid-atlantic region (new york, new jersey, pennsylvania). another 21% are in the east north central region (illinois, wisconsin, michigan). by virtue of their religion and their settlement patterns, i’m gonna call this group as being largely native irish.

so i think that there are differences between scots-irish folks and native irish — at least in the u.s.

why there should be a difference in iq between the two groups, i’m not sure. inbreeding depression? the native irish and the lowland scots (the ancestors of the scots-irish) both had long histories of inbreeding. and a lot of the scots-irish in the u.s. certainly kept right on inbreeding after they got here. but the irish back in ireland seem to have still been inbreeding probably into the late nineteenth/early twentieth century, too. not by the mid-twentieth century, though.

dunno. that might not be it at all. perhaps the roman catholic irish simply started outbreeding more once they got to the u.s. unlike the scots-irish. again, dunno. maybe it’s something else.
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speaking of protestant vs. roman catholic iqs, here are the wordsum scores for german-americans:

protestant german-americans = 6.17
roman-catholic german-americans = 6.50
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gss nesstar searches:

1) RACE (OF RESPONDENT) + ETHNIC (COUNTRY OF FAMILY ORIGIN) + RELIGION (IN WHICH RAISED) + WORDSUM
2) REGION OF RESIDENCE (AGE 16) + RACE (OF RESPONDENT) + ETHNIC (COUNTRY OF FAMILY ORIGIN) + RELIGION (IN WHICH RAISED)

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more from ron unz on iq

ron unz has a new post up: Unz on Race/IQ: The Rural/Urban Divide. he says:

“[O]ne very intriguing pattern is that according to Lynn’s IQ data certain European populations such as the South Italians, Irish, Greeks, and South Slavs tended to have IQs much lower than other European populations such as the British and the Dutch. However, according to the Wordsum-IQ data, this pattern is exactly reversed in the United States, with the descendents of immigrants from Southern Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Yugoslavia having much higher IQs than Americans of British or Dutch ancestry.”

as i (and others) have already pointed out to ron, he has no way of knowing from the gss data if italian- or irish- or greek- or slavic-americans are comparable to the italians and irish and greeks and slavs back in europe. for one thing, there is the problem with the irish of which irish we’re talking about, both in the u.s. and in the republic of ireland. native irish? scots-irish? anglo-irish? for another thing, how italian or slavic is someone who self-identifies themself as italian or slavic on the gss? fully? one-half? one-quarter? (is obama black or white?) if you don’t have your populations sorted out from the start, any comparisons will be a waste of time.

also, where are the wordsum data for all these groups? i mean, i know they’re in the gss, but how about a chart or a link or at least some search terms for the searches conducted. most sciencey bloggers nowadays present their data, not just write lengthy articles with barely any references. ron is making some strong, and possibly very interesting, claims here. someone out there might like to try to replicate his findings.

and how about looking at other data in additon to the gss (if possible)? chuck (the occidentalist) has shown that the gss wordsum scores for mexican-americans aren’t in accord with other iq measurements for that population, so maybe it would be a good idea to look at some additional data, too. just to be on the safe side. (note that i’m not discounting the gss wordsum data completely. i understand that it’s a fairly good proxy for iq scores.)
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ron also again rejects the idea that european immigrants to the u.s. (and elsewhere) might have “self-sorted” themselves — i.e. higher iq folks emigrating leaving lower iq folks behind, thus resulting in low average iqs back in europe and higher iqs for these populations in their new homes. because he believes this, ron concludes that nineteenth century european immigrants to the u.s., and europeans back in europe, have experienced extraordinary increases in their iqs in the last couple of generations:

“Finally, let us consider the European evidence. Today, the international PISA academic tests are widely regarded as one of the best means of estimating national IQs, and if we consider the 2009 PISA scores, we find that the scores were extremely similar for Ireland, Poland, Britain, France, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and several other countries. Since Lynn standardizes the British IQ to 100, that indicates that Ireland and Poland today have IQs around 100, which seems quite plausible.

“However, a huge sample placed Ireland’s IQ at 87 in 1972, and Lynn himself has stated that his own Ireland research in the late 1960s convinced him that the Irish were a low IQ population, whose only hope for the future lay in a strong eugenics program. So the evidence indicates that the Irish IQ was around 87 at that point, and has risen nearly a full standard deviation in the four decades which followed. Lynn also provides two additional very large samples, which placed the Irish IQ at around 92 in the early 1990s, so at the half-way mark, the Irish IQ had risen by half the difference between the endpoints, which seems remarkably consistent.

“Obviously, for the Irish to raise their Flynn-adjusted IQ by nearly a full standard devision in just over one generation is a total absurdity from a genetic perspective; thus, the huge rise must be due to some class of ‘environmental’ factors. When we consider that Ireland had been one of most rural European countries and rapidly urbanized during exactly that period, the impact of urbanization seems a plausible possibility.”

to repeat, i don’t think ron has convincingly shown what the iqs of italian- and irish-, etc., americans are, so it remains difficult to compare the old and new world iqs for each of these populations. and several commenters (like in this discussion thread) have suggested that the one figure of 87 for the irish in 1972 is just one figure, so perhaps it’s not all that reliable. (the data on which that 87 score is based upon are from a master’s thesis, btw. i found the reference here – opens pdf.)

but let’s say, for the sake of argument, that that figure was correct. ron doesn’t think that this low score could’ve been the result of selective migration because he thinks the immigrants would’ve been from the lowest classes of european society (i.e. presumably those with the lowest iqs):

“Even if we ignore all contemporaneous evidence and argue that 19th century European immigrants to America and elsewhere somehow constituted the IQ elite of their originating countries, the theory of selective migration still remains implausible…. So even if we hypothesize that the Irish, South Italians, Jews, and Greeks who immigrated to America constituted the smartest small slice of their generation — rather than, as seems more likely, often the poorer and most miserable….”

this, however, is an erroneous assumption. from thomas sowell’s Ethnic America: A History (pgs. 22-23):

“Although the cost of a trip to the United States in the hold of a cargo vessel was less than ten pounds sterling (less than fifty dollars at contemporary exchange rates), the poorest of the Irish could not afford even that, so that immigration was very low from the poorest fourth of the Irish population. Those a notch above them on the economic scale emigrated in large numbers, often by selling their belongings, using up savings, and spending money sent by relatives already in America. From one-third to three-quarters of the Irish immigrations to America in the 1830s and 1840s was financed by money sent from North America.”

so, as i said in my previous post, it wasn’t “the poorer and most miserable”, or even “the smartest small slice of their generation” that emigrated from ireland to the u.s. (or britain or australia), but folks in the middle — individuals above “the poorest fourth of the Irish population”. in other words, people of average-ish iqs.

and they left in the millions. for 140-150+ years.

if that wasn’t a dysgenic brain drain, i don’t know what was.

and all that emigration (and famine-related deaths) is reflected in this population graph for the republic of ireland:

the population of the republic of ireland seems to have bottomed out just around the time of lynn’s 87 iq score for the irish in the 1970s. the irish economy improved in fits and starts in the decades after that, and really took off in the heydays of the celtic tiger nineties and noughties (how’d that work out for them anyway?). then there wasn’t any need for anyone with half a brain to leave the country anymore — and there was an additon of something like 1.4 million individuals in two-and-a-half generations (ca. a 35% increase in the population) — and the iq scores started to improve (as ron points out the average iq was measured to be 93 in the early 1990s) — possibly (i’d say likely) as the national average regressed to its natural mean (whatever that might be, presumably higher than 87). (plus the usual flynn effect and possibly effects of better nutrition and other stuff like that.)

that scenario is a strong possibilty anyway, which ron just dismisses based on very shaky evidence.

speaking of dysgenic brain drains, how about southern italy? according to wikipedia (so it must be true!), 80% of immigrants from italy to the u.s. came from southern italy. and look at the iq (pisa) scores there today.

(btw, i don’t think this mass emigration scenario is the whole story re. the low iq scores for the peripheral european countries, but it certainly shouldn’t be discounted as easily as ron has done.)
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ron theorizes that these differences in average iqs have something to do with urban vs. rural living, which is an interesting idea, but he hasn’t made a convincing argument i think. he talks, for instance, about differences in iqs between urban and rural white americans:

“Next, consider the aggregate IQs of rural and urban/suburban whites. During the 1970s according to Wordsum-IQ data, the intelligence gap between whites raised on farms and those who grew up in an urban/suburban background was enormous, almost exactly equal to the white/black gap.”

well, that’s interesting, but again i ask — where are the data? (show me the data! (~_^) )
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finally, ron says:

“Unfortunately, this discussion has been almost entirely restricted to narrow racialist circles, with virtually all non-racialist journalists or pundits maintaining a studious silence on the matter and giving the controversy a very wide berth, although I would argue that issues of race and intelligence have considerable importance in American society.”

i agree! the situation is unfortunate. very unfortunate. i wish everybody would think and talk about human biodiversity all the time! (ok, maybe not all of the time.) i wish it were a regular topic on oprah! (does she even have a show anymore?) i can’t see how we’re gonna solve even half the world’s problems if we don’t — but then i’m beginning to suspect that most people aren’t really interested in that (prolly me, neither). *sigh*

thanks to ron for bringing up the subject at all! (^_^) (although i think there are big holes in his argument. (~_^) )

previously: ron unz and iq and mexican-american iq and a message for ron unz

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mexican-american iq

chuck (the occidentalist) looks at ron unz’s claim that mexican-american iqs have been increasing (rather dramatically) over the last thirty to forty years:

“The differences [between white and mexican/hispanic iqs] ranges from 0.35 SD (GSS) to 0.77 SD (TIMSS grade 8 science). The average of the differences comes out to 0.61 SD or, when averaging PISA, TIMSS, and PIRLS tests scores per year, per grade (e.g., PISA 2009 MAth + Reading), 0.59 SD. This is not largely different from the general intelligence difference reported by Roth et al. (2001), which is notable given what was said about Spearman’s hypothesis. On re-analysis, Ron Unz’s claim concerning the difference in the GSS sample was upheld; this claim, though, was contradicted by all other samples.“

previously: ron unz and iq

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