Jason Malloy has noted (as has Steve
Sailer) that the white admixture of genes into the black American population can not explain the
discrepancy between the average West African IQ (~70) and that of American blacks (~85). On a
tantalizing note, Lynn did some work in England that seemed to show that the South Asian IQ was about
95 [1]-about 15 points higher than the mean in India. The IQ that Lynn gives for Fiji Indians though is
about 85. This does not take into account the different streams of migration (I would not be surprised if
South Asians in the United States had mean IQs of 110 at least because of the nature of that migration)
and possible dysgenic effects. But an optimist can hope that if Third World nations modernize
their IQs will rise. I would like to see how the "Celtic Tiger" now fares after 10 years of economic
development (Ireland had the lowest IQ in Western Europe at ~90).
[1] The Indians were higher, Pakistanis and Bangaldeshis somewhat lower. Lynn attributed this to the
fact that latter groups were more likely to be recent arrivals with a less fluent command of the language.
But the East African exile population probably has more social and genetic capital than typical of South
Asia.
Hey, the Irish are 93- a mere point below Israel!
http://fp.rlynn.plus.com/pages/article_intelligence/t4.htm
And you know how smart they're supposed to be, what with inventing the uzi and making the desert
bloom and so forth.
Also, that "Irish curse" thing has just gotta' be a myth.
(. . .Not that a guy named Malloy has any reason to care or anything.)
Posted by: Jason Malloy at January 5, 2003 02:45 AMisrael is 20% arab and half the jews are "sephardic" (which includes non-sephardic oriental jews from
iraq, yemen and central asian, not to mention the falashas). for jewish IQ, look not further than the
ashkenazi elite.
as godless would have said, israel has a multi-modal IQ distribution :) also, as far as irish IQ, the fact that
protestants in Northern Ireland have far higher IQs than catholics is always used as proof that racial
differences don't really exist, just prejudice (obviously, i don't believe that one leads to the other).
I was musing about the Flynn affect the other day (I really, really need to get a life...), and I had a thought
I haven't seen elsewhere: Could the otherwise unexplainable drop in crime during the 90s be due to the
crossing of an IQ "threshold" (a la Griffe) in the population?
As a representative of the Irish of Eastern Europe, the Polish (though the Irish were fortunate to have the
English as oppressors, Poles had to endure Prussians and Russians), I'm awaiting the day we will rise up
to the era of a "Slavic Tiger", rather than the unfortunately more alliterative "Slavic Sloth."
I have to admit I think the 99 IQ for Poland was slightly inflated, it did come from two separate widely
disparate readings of 92 and 106. Seeing as it was likely that Polish researchers were behind both
numbers, the 92 would probably be more accurate.
I think the discrepancy between the Slavic worlds and Germanic worlds is particularly interesting. Does it
have a genetic component? Slavs and Germans are closely related, both have fair complexion and wide
instances of light hair and blue eyes. Slavs tend to be shorter and have wider skulls. Linguistically,
Slavic appears more closely related to Iranian and Germanic to the Celtic and Romance languages, though
it is possible that German was originally more closely related to Slavic and Baltic and then thru cultural
proximity, became more influence by the other European languages. In some ways Germans appear to be
the more gifted older brothers.
And in a certain sense, the Slavs do seem to be a younger culture. Whereas there are clear historical
references and ample archeological documentation of Celtic and Germanic culture, the origin of the Slavs
is much more murky. This would point to an "ethnogenesis" of Slavs probably around 2000-2500 years
ago around Eastern Poland/Western Ukraine. Ethnogenesis is the ethnic/cultural equivalent of speciation
and likely occurs when a small band becomes isolated from a larger ethnos and develops independently
for several generations or hybridizes with other small bands. It is possible that isolated bands were cast-
offs from the larger group's lower, servile class. It is likely that the recent ethnogenesis of Slavs in a
culturally isolated area is the reason that their neighbors tended to be much more politically organized and
posess a more sophisticated culture. These characteristic continue even today.
Is it time for a Polish joke? I got millions from living in Milwaukee.
Anyway. A not on black admixture. I believe there was an article on how there is a bimodal distribution
of white genes in the American black population.
To wit: the vast majority (90+%) of American blacks have nearly no white genes (less than 5-7% IIRC).
The rest are anywhere from 30% to more white.
David
Posted by: David at January 5, 2003 01:39 PMI'm a big fan of "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" but individual country's scores should be taken with a
grain of salt, unless there are either a lot of studies (such as the 10 for Japan) or a major IQ test has been
standardized on a national sample (as in Britain and the US). It's hard to put together a truly
representative sample. In general, there is a surprising amount of internal validity (e.g., if there are two or
three studies for one country, the averages come out roughly the same). There are enough exceptions
however (such as the 92 and 106 for Poland) to demonstrate that individual country scores are not terribly
trustworthy.
David, fire away with the Polish jokes; I’ve probably heard them already. But if not, please
include explanations;-)
Regarding the white admixture in black Americans. According to Steve Sailer’s article on
population geneticist Mark Shriver, there are two bits of information we can use to determine how the
genes are distributed
- The average African-American's proportion of white ancestry appears to be 17%-18%.
- Only about 10% of self-identified adult African-Americans are more than half-white.
Assuming a normal distribution, to fit these stats would require at least a bimodal distribution. One
possibility is that 80% of black Americans are clustered around 10% white and 20% are clustered around
50% white. It could also be multimodal with clusters around 1/16, 1/8, ¼, ½, etc. white. It would take
many generations of random inbreeding to create a single modal distribution. Given that the breeding
isn’t completely random and there is a continuing and rising influx of white genes into the black
population, this is unlikely to occur.
The slavs are white alpines (short, braquicephalic skulls, etc), and germans are white nordics (tall,
dolicocephalic skulls) and mixed alpine-mediterraneans (mesophalic skulls), this is the diference
Juan, as a nitpicker I think it's more accurate to say Slavs tend more toward the Alpine archtype and
Germans to the Nordic. Then you have the Dinaric Serbs who are quite tall as reflected in their basketball
success. Whether or not these traditional subraces reflect genetic relatedness is an open question, afterall
the Alpine category was used to describe people from the Alps. Slavs seemed to be an afterthought in this
traditional classifying scheme.
these terms you are using are more for entertainment purposes in my opinion. after all, bavarians and
austrians tend to be "alpine."
I think the low Indian IQs are of a piece with the low Afrikaner IQs -- typically rural. With a more
stimulating early environment they could well rise. And the Sephardim being racially mainly Arab is a
sufficient explanation for the surprisinglyy low Israeli IQs.
By the way, there will be a good review of the evidence for the importance of IQ on
http://gfactor.blogspot.com tomorrow.
This book is not based on science. The authors seem to have a very poor knowledge of statistics. And it is
also ridiculous that the most intelligent and ancient people like Indians-Greeks-Iranians-Israelis etc have a
lower IQ than the US/UK??? Was it an English language test?I am an American and see no difference
between the IQ of a tennessee redneck and a Ghana tribal.
just stumbled on this, have to say that in recent IQ tests done on the national t.v. station of britain (BBC1)
it was found that the irish scored highest in IQ and general knowledge. they were ahead of the english
welsh and scots. these stats people are coming up with about IQ of different nationalities are (as a
scientist and a statistician) unfounded. if any major study was done on IQ in ireland i would have known.
as an addition. as i understand it this flynn effect involves a rise in jewish iq some few decades after
arrival in america. doesn't this logically support the notion that either (1) this generation having no new
"superior" genes brought into their gene pool as generally the jewish population is an insular one, the
increase must be brought about by environmental effects, such as education or as the second generation in
the adopted country perhaps they became more culturally atuned to the specific IQ test. or (2)the trauma of
their previous existence retarded their developement. the second option certainly explains why other
peoples of obvious cultural achievement as greeks, iranians etc. got such low scores. utter rubbish
something like neo-eugenics based on cranial contours.