In the early part of the 20th century many Finns were dismayed when anthropologists labeled them
“Mongoloids” because of the peculiarity of their language. Finnish is not Indo-European, but Finno-Ugric
(a branch of the Ural-Altaic family of languages [1]). Similarly the Hungarians were also thought to be
Mongoloids, despite their European physical appearance (Zsa Zsa Gabor’s inhuman countenance not
withstanding). Most of the other Finno-Ugric languages aside from Estonian are to be found in Siberia
among Mongoloid peoples.

How to explain this conundrum? The most obvious solution was to posit that the Finno-Ugric peoples
entered Europe from the east and mixed with the Scandinavian population already extent in the region,
because there is one record historically of such an occurrence, the Magyars in the 7th and 8th centuries,
later to become the “Hungarians.” The intrusion into Europe by nomadic peoples, often of Ural-Altaic
origin, was common right up until the Mongols [2]. While the southern Finno-Ugric peoples took up
nomadism, it was assumed that the northern branch, later to become the Finnish peoples, continued the
ancient sub-Arctic hunting and fishing tradition that dominated the northern fringe of Eurasia in the
boreal forest zone. These people were assumed to have entered Scandinavia and the Baltic through the
northern forests of what would become Russia, beyond the limit of conventional agriculture.

So this article,
translated and posted on the Human Races Archive
(run by a brown guy from what I know) is very interesting because it pops that neat little narrative that
passes as “conventional wisdom” about the Finno-Ugrics.

The gist: A Y-chromosome polymorph, Tat C, is found among the Finno-Ugric and Baltic (Latvians and
Lithuanians) peoples of Europe as well as the affiliated peoples in Siberia, and even among the Inuit that
eventually reached Greenland! But the story becomes even more peculiar on closer observation, for the
Tat C lineages of Europe are more diverse than those of the eastern peoples. The implication is
obvious, it is the Tat C lineages of Europe that have a greater time depth, allowing them to change and
diversify [3].

But it does not end there-these lineages are found at lower levels among the Norwegians and Swedes. But
the polymorph becomes negligible among the Slavic peoples! The article makes clear that there is a sharp
demarcation between the Lithuanians and Poles, peoples that are historically associated. Tat C is almost
nonexistent among other European peoples. What to make of all this?

First, let us remind ourselves of what else we know about European “archaeogenetics”. Europeans are a
mixture of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, and Neolithic “newcomers,” that is agreed. But the quotient of
each is debated, whether that be 20%
Neolithic or 50%. But an
aproximate SE => NW gradient or cline seems to appear in both models. The Basques are
generally used to represent the pristine Paleolithic stock of Europe, and most studies that I have seen tend
to confirm that they lack the markers that are associated with Neolithic migrants. So add to this a third
component, the Finno-Ugrics. It seems plausible that the ice sheet over Scandinavia separated two
Paleolithic populations in what was to become “Europe.” Along the western edge, there were the people
that represent what early 20th century anthropologists would term the “Nordic” type, and on the eastern
edge there were the “East Baltics.” The aforementioned studies seem to indicate that despite linguistic
affinities between Swedes and Greeks as compared to the Finns, the Scandinavian groups are mixtures
between the “Nordic” and “Finno-Ugric” populations, while the Greeks share more with the peoples of
Anatolia (to their chagrin) and the Levant [4].

Now what about the sharp difference between the Slavic peoples and the Finno-Ugric & Baltic peoples?
This is the most tantalizing mystery in the article. It is noted that the Lithuanians and Poles have
traditionally been closely associated, but it must be clarified that this did not imply intermarriage between
ethnic groups. The first two centuries of Polish-Lithuanian union were royal and personal,
in other words, though ruled by the same royal house, created by the marriage of a Lithuanian Grand
Duke and a Polish princess, the two nations kept their own institutions . Late in the 16th century the
Polish and Lithuanian states merged more thoroughly, and this resulted in the total absorption of the
Lithuanian aristocracy into Polish culture. By the 19th century Lithuanian culture was village centered
and functionally illiterate and pre-modern. The backward and isolated nature of rural Lithuania preserved
it from being assimilated into the relatively sophisticated Polish ethnos, and the dissolution of
Poland-Lithuania and the rise of nationalism resulted in the creation of an indigenous Lithuanian
intelligentsia. Prior to the Counter-Reformation the Lithuanians of the country were de facto
pagan. Until the latter portion of the 18th century Catholic priests were still seeking out “snake groves”
and burning the reptiles venerated by the ignorant pagan peasants. The Lithuanians were a people set
apart, their dense forests saved them from the genocide that awaited the Prussian tribes at the hands of the
crusading Germans and rebuffed the expansion of the Russian principalities of Novgorod and Moscow
after the fall of Kievan Rus. Poland by its nature is rich agricultural land and is today the most populous
of the east-central European nations. Lithuania in sharp contrast is still a small and sparsely populated
state, and there is no doubt that it was so in ancient times. But it did produce fierce warriors, explaining
why the Poles sought an alliance with them. The Mongols did not touch them in their deep forests,
though they did destroy Kievan Rus and Piast Poland, allowing the pagan Balts to fill that power vacuum
in the next century.

And yet if the dark forests of the Baltic were such a barrier to Slavic demographic penetration, it is
peculiar that the Lithuanians (and Latvians) speak what some consider to be the most archaic of modern
Indo-European languages. Some have even postulated that the original Indo-European homeland was the
Baltic shore. Indo-Europeanologists have sometimes classed Baltic and Slavic together as the “Balto-
Slavic” group. Other linguists have objected to this, and assert that any similarities between the two
groups is the result of intimate contact over thousands of years. And yet I have just argued in the prior
paragraph that the two groups did not in fact interact much despite their geographic proximity. In
addition, the Tat C polymorph is nearly as prominent among the Baltic people as among the Finns! This
does not fit well with the idea that the Lithuanians represent a hybrid median between two populations,
rather it seems that either the Finns or the Balts were acculturated at some point in the past.

The genetic footprint of the “Indo-Europeans” on Europe is indeterminate. Cavalli-Sforza indicated that
he saw a possible cline from the east to the west that indicated a “Kurgan” expansion from the steppes. Of
course, he later seemed to side with Colin Renfrew’s theory that the Indo-Europeans were the farmers that
brought agriculture to Eur
ope 10,000 years ago. It seems likely to me that the Indo-Europeans did not
leave much of a genetic footprint throughout much of the region that they linguistically assimilated.
Though the Basques are a genetic isolate, they are not different enough from other western European
populations to give credence to a theory that postulates a demographic change concomitant with the
expansion of Indo-European languages.

Indo-European exists above a non-Indo-European substrate in much of its range. In India the “Dravidian”
substrate has been gleaned in languages such as Marathi. The common Greek nth seems to be
non-Indo-European (and 40% of the vocabulary of Greek as well as most of the ancient gods are non-
Indo-European). Before Romanization it seems plausible that the “Iberians” who were neither Basque nor
Celtiberian spoke a non-Indo-European language in what is today Andalusia and Valencia with some
relationship to Basque. The non-Indo-European substrate of Germanic is also known. To me this argues
compellingly for a model of elite cultural diffusion [5].

So why was it that the Scandinavian peoples of the west but not the east became “Indo-Europeans,” while
the Baltic peoples of the south but not the north did as well? We might ask also why the Indo-Europeans
did not penetrate into Iberia or southern India. The most obvious answer is geography. Spain was farther
from the central point of radiation of Indo-European culture than Italy or Greece. Both the latter
peninsulas seem to have had non-Indo-European populations. The Minoans and the later “Pelasgians”
seemed to have spoken non-Indo-European languages (some Greek city-states asserted Pelasgian origins,
claiming to be “autochthonous,” Athens being the most prominent). The Etruscans were certainly non-
Indo-European, though there are indications that their origin was in Asia Minor. A minority of the non-
Latin tribes of Italy seem to have been non-Indo-European (generally the more isolated ones). In Spain, it
seems only the Celtiberians of Galicia and its environs, almost certainly settlers from the north, were
Indo-European speakers prior to the arrival of the Greeks and Romans. Along the northwest edge of
Europe there are still debates as to whether the Picts are Indo-European or not. In any case, it is clear that
a flood of Indo-Europeans did not overwhelm any given region of Europe, but that the spread of that
family of languages was piece-meal and haphazard.

Likely the Lithuanians and Latvians were “Indo-Europeanized” at a very early point in their history. The
presence of Estonian could indicate a “reconquest” of territory by Finno-Ugric tribes that moved south
from Finland during a period of colder conditions in northern Europe. The lack of genetic similarity
between Slavs and Baltics might be simply because both groups become “Indo-European” via cultural
diffusion, possibly from the same tribe of Indo-Europeans (they are both of the satem sub-group,
along with Indo-Iranian, Armenian and Greek). Until historic times, most of northern Sweden and
Norway was the domain of the Finno-Ugric Sami, reindeer herders, so it seems that the Indo-Europeans
succeeded in imposing their language only on areas with some level of agriculture, and so possibly greater
division of labor between classes and a more complex tribal system.

In sharp contrast it seems that a plausible scenario of elite cultural diffusion going from the western sub-
Arctic zone into Siberia seems to have left a genetic footprint. This might be because the population bases
of cultures that practiced agriculture was far greater than the hunting and fishing societies that the Finno-
Ugrics penetrated, explaining why the latter show a clear Finno-Ugric connection while the Indo-
European peoples seem rather unrelated to each other [6].

The west-east progression of the Finno-Ugrics actually is reminiscent of ideas about Indo-European
expansion east. The Tocharian people of what is today Xinjiang (East Turkestan) were Indo-Europeans
who seemed to the superficially have a “Celtic” flavor (they spoke a centum language, grouped
with Romance, Celtic and Germanic, were European in appearance and even wore kilts!). The original
horse-people of the Altai region of western Mongolia were quite possibly of the same phenotype. While
the Indo-Europeans probably left a light genetic footprint on the settled and dense populations of western
and southern Eurasia, they almost certainly made their impact felt among the people of Inner Asia. In
fact, the revelation that the people of Xinjiang have affinities with Europeans is probably the echo of the
ancient Indo-European expansion into the east, south of the Finno-Ugrics in the grasslands between the
deserts and the ice [7].

Finally, I would like to add that I believe this sort of cultural and genetic change has occurred many times
throughout human history, only the later ones of the Indo-Europeans, Semitic peoples and Finno-Ugrics
were crystallized and preserved by the creation of literacy, statecraft and national units that imposed stasis
on what was previously a multi-tribal world where ties of blood, language and religions were fluid and
ever changing. I suspect that the megalith builders that left their marks from the eastern Mediterranean to
Cornwall brought their language, only to have been superseded by later cultural innovators.

[1] Finno-Ugric is the most prominent Uralic group of languages. The Altaic group is represented by the
Turkish and Mongolian tongues.

[2] Huns, Avars, Pechenegs, Magyars and Bulgars to name a few.

[3] This is the standard logic behind “Out-of-Africa.”

[4] Please note that a few studies, in addition to the primary one cited here on the Finno-Ugrics, indicates
that the maternal lineages of both Finns and Swedes are rather more similar than their paternal ones.
This I believe in partially a result of patrilocal marriage patterns that seem the human norm. The transfer
of women from village to village along a great chain seems to shuffle mt-DNA rather more than the more
prominent volkswanderung that is the stuff of legend and would move diverse paternal lineages
across the globe.

[5] Note that in ancient times Indo-Europeans ruled large portions of the Levant. The Mitanni of Syria
were Indo-Aryans, while some have indicated that the Kassite ruling dynasty of post-Amorite Babylonia
were also Indo-Europeans. In neither case did the Indo-European language or culture survive the fall of
their dynasties. The difference is that Indo-Europeans could impose their culture on marginal and less
advanced areas of the ancient Middle East, Anatolia, Armenia and Iran, but the model of elite cultural
transfer breaks down when the conquered people come bearing the gifts of literacy and sophisticated
statecraft.

[6] If the Finno-Ugrics are indigenous European people that date to the last Ice Age, and the Sami are at
least as authentic as the Finns in their Finno-Ugric character (it could be that the Sami have more
“Mongoloid” in their maternal lineage than the Finns), it would seem to lend some credence to the idea
that blondism has no direct adaptive value, but is rather sexually selected. The Sami are a relatively
swarthy people, and many would assert that the Finns are a degree darker than the Swedes (southern
Sweden is the only region of the world where a majority of the population has both blonde hair
and blue eyes). If the Finno-Ugric presence in northern Europe is as ancient the pre-Indo-European
Nordic peoples, it is curious to consider why blondism is traditionally more prevelant in one group than
the other if adaptive considerations are paramount.

[7] All that
I have said is unoriginal and highly tendentious. For obvious reasons the Mongolian and
Turkic peoples of Inner Asia bristle at the notion of “culture bearers” from the west bringing with them
the accoutrements of their lifestyle. In addition, I think it is plausible that there was not one particular
racial type (as in “Nordic” for instance) that was dominant among Indo-Europeans. Rather they were a
coalition of tribes that spanned several areas of the west-central Eurasian steppe that by happenstance
were bestowed pasturelands that made them predisposed to domesticating and using the horse to its
greatest extent. Perhaps the settled tribes of eastern Europe viewed the horse riding Indo-European bands
as the Aztecs viewed the Spaniards-almost god-like beings who sat upon great noble beasts beyond legend.
The eastern people of Eurasia would in this scenario be more like the plains Indians, taking the horse and
making it their own, and in the end reversing the conveyer belt of migration and invasion from west-to-
east to east-to-west. And so history goes round and round.

This article tells of a hospice in South Africa where women die of AIDS. 25%-that is the
percentage of South Africans who have HIV. Of course, very few whites have AIDS. It seems that it is
doing what the Afrikaner governments could not, slow down the growth of the black population. Of
course, if the percentage of blacks begins to drop because of AIDS, I have no doubt that the semi-literate
masses incubated in the townships will erupt in genocidal violence against the white middle & upper class
that seems to be immune from the scourge.

The strangeness of it all is that black Africa’s most sophisticated political elite is turning a deaf ear to the
problem. If authoritarians like Musveni in Uganda can affect behavioral change and mitigate the spread
of the epidemic, what prevents a Democratic elected government from doing so? (Senegal has been able to
combat the spread of HIV and it is a democratic state, so that can not be the problem)

Imagine a thought experiment. Population A and population B are defined as two groups with 100 individuals. They live in a village together. Population A has an average IQ of 115 while population B has an average IQ of 100. Both have a normal distribution.

Would it be reasonable to assert that if one was restricted to having to pick a leader at random from one of the two groups one would pick the individual from A? But would it not also be reasonable to wonder if it might not be more rational to look at each individual from both populations and note who might be the best leader and allow the village vote?

Not too controversial, no? But over at Unmedia that is what Ikram Saeed seems to believe when he says:

If you (and Sailer, and the _Bell Curve_ acolytes, etc) are right, oughtn’t you argue for a _Brave New World_ type societal hierarchy? I haven’t seen your blog answer the really interesting questions it raises.

I have answered questions more rudely put in this vein on my old blog. Let me reiterate, Suman is not the only libertarian on this blog! I have been a long-term reader of Lew Rockwell and Reason. I am a broad-church libertarian. Where freedom is an option, let that be I always say. Over the years I have pulled back from my flirtation with anarcho-capitalism and my longer affiliation with minarchism. My adherence to Natural Rights has given way to a more utilitarian, even Rawlsian, view of society (informed in large part by evolutionary psychology and Hume).

Is does not = ought. Both the Left and the Right seem to forget this when their conservative strain comes to the fore. Knowledge is dangerous to the established order. Perhaps. But knowledge always finds a way to see the light and expose frauds for what they are. I favor genetic engineering and information technology because I believe the arrow of civilization points in that direction-we must ride the tiger, lest humanity’s dance with progress falter.

Whether race realism, evolutionary psychology, behavioral genetics, etc. have any validity as empirically verifiable theories, my personal politics remain libertarian. I call myself conservative for two reasons: 1) the American Left tends to see the world as here or there, with us or against us, 2) I abhor multiculturalism and the debasement of the hard-won freedoms of the West in homage to the communitarianism of the post-Modern Left. Guilt is no basis for justice and history is no excuse for tyranny.

A “Brave New World” is not contingent on race realism (the controversial “science” that Mr. Saeed seems to be pointing to). It is contingent on some hard-wiring of human facilities via biology, whether it be through genetic or developmental modes. Psychologists generally do accept that some portion of intelligence (g) is genetically inherited, some portion developmentally influenced and some portion environmentally modified. If the state, ne the Leviathan, so wills it, the stratification of castes, alphas to zetas, is possible today even if all races are equal in aptitudes.

Conversely, let us wander the fields of Rawlsianism, the realm of what Thomas Sowell would term “Cosmic Justice.” Humans are not responsible for what endowments they are born with. So goes the theory, behind the veil of ignorance, they would choose a particular (moderately liberal redistributionist with a respect for basic rights) political order. Behind the “veil of ignorance” we are all without race, without caste, class or creed. Like Christianity, Rawlsianism implies that those endowed with greater aptitudes and abilities use them to advance the good of the community as well as their individual preferences.

My espousal of race realism leaves me open to the possibility that East Asians have higher IQs than other human populations. Does that imply I believe that the former have a right to rule the latter? Of course not. High g is no guarantee of liberty, and low g is no block on decency. I might generalize what behaviors a person of high or low g might be prone to, but individuals are individuals [1]. Newtonian mechanics is good science on human scales, but on the level of an individual atom or molecule it collapses. Likewise, we must never forget that individuals do matter-and that the great foundational triumph of liberalism was to halt history in its tracks and turn toward the future and declare that the individual matters as an end in and of itself. History teaches lessons, but not always ones that we must emulate. Similarly, if there is one thing that the 20th century has taught, let us be careful before we declare what the obvious implications of any scientific finding are.

My personal understanding of Human Biodiversity gives me a different perspective on specific issues, because those issues are undergirded by assumptions, most often the axiom of equality. As a libertarian I have a skepticism of social engineering, and Human Biodiversity is a tool in my kit to attack that particular tendency. I do believe human beings are different essentially, that races on average are different essentially. I speak of these things because only a few others will.

But in the end, I will admit, that essentially we are all equal under the eyes of the Law (and God(s) if you so believe). To give ground to realism does not mean abondaning your idealism.

[1] Individuals of low g are more criminally prone. But I don’t believe it is because they are essentially without empathy or moral sense. I think that is more of an issue of an inability to judge rationally the consequences of decisions and impulse control. In addition, these individuals are more likely to be put in a situation where the cost vs. benefit of crime seems more rational because of low socio-economic status.

Update: The old blog software was messed up by the server transfer. Most of the posts can be found here.

This href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/28/international/africa/28AIDS.html?pagewanted=all&position=top”>article tells of a hospice in South Africa where women die of AIDS. 25%-that is the percentage of South Africans who have HIV. Of course, very few whites have AIDS. It seems that it is doing what the Afrikaner governments could not, slow down the growth of the black population. Of course, if the percentage of blacks begins to drop because of AIDS, I have no doubt that the semi-literate masses incubated in the townships will erupt in genocidal violence against the white middle & upper class that seems to be immune from the scourge.

The strangeness of it all is that black Africa’s most sophisticated political elite is turning a deaf ear to the problem. If authoritarians like Musveni in Uganda can affect behavioral change and mitigate the spread of the epidemic, what prevents a Democratic elected government from doing so? (Senegal has been able to combat the spread of HIV and it is a democratic state, so that can not be the problem)

Note: Thanks to Randall Parker for getting me to fix a lot of typos…I’ve been blogging on the fly on my breaks from my work….

This story about the travails of India’s Brahmins was forwarded to me by a friend. It is interesting, so I forwarded it off to Suman to comment on it, but alas my pagan bhai did not find it illuminating enough to scratch his blogging itch-so I will step forward. I do it a bit self-consciously, because if I had to pick a religion for my children, and it was a binary choice between Hinduism and Islam, I would pick Hinduism (Arya or Brahmo Samaj so that my iconoclastic tendencies are placated). But as someone from a long-standing Muslim family I hesitate to speak much of idolatrous practices as I do have an ancestral aversion to them [1].

Though I find Hindu metaphysics uninteresting and idolatry a bit unnerving, I am true to my Muslims roots in having an almost irrational distaste for caste. Muslims have a class structure, but there is a fluidity and theoretical opportunity that is far different than Hindu caste, which religiously sanctions inequality, as opposed to accepting it as one of the sins of mankind. I have an a priori bias on this issue. Keep that in mind, for perhaps there are great benefits to having a caste system (Gandhi thought it eliminated the more crass competitive aspects of Western culture, and it is not a great surprise that the British aristocracy had a soft spot in their heart for a nobility based on blood).

Brahmins form ~ 5% or so of India’s population. They are overrepresented among the intellectual classes. Chandrasekhar and Tagore for instance, the two early Indian Nobel prize winners (Physics and Literature) were Brahmins (this might also be indicative of the strengths of Tamil and Bengali Brahmins respectively). As the article makes clear, Brahmin privilege is a fact of life. But quotas and discrimination are also facts of life. As I’ve mentioned before, South Asians do not have an aversion to talk about human biodiversity, likely because of a history of endogamy. The article moots ideas that imply Brahmin genetic superiority. In addition, it broaches the questions of history, did Brahmins reach their positions of power by manipulating British prejudices?

I don’t believe that caste was invented by Europeans. But, Europeans tended to systematize it, and so crystallized structures that before might have been a bit more fluid. There are instances of castes changing status throughout Indian history, and before the Gupta era (400 CE) caste was likely far more fluid, especially with the rise of non-Indian and Sudra warlords that would attain the status of Kshatriyas [2]. The evidence seems clear that upper caste Indians are relatively recent residents of India compared to lower caste Indians. This dovetails well with the historical record of conquest by invaders from the northwest over older residents of the subcontinent [3]. Revisionists tend to dismiss the fact that the “Dasas” were dark and snub-nosed, but I think one has to be blind to not to notice that lower-caste and Dravidian (linguistically non-Aryan) south Indians are darker and more snub-nosed than upper caste or north Indians.

So caste is real. Brahmins probably are somewhat smarter than other Indians. And so forth. What does that mean? The article above goes into detail about the political calculus that dominates the Indian consensus: in the north (the Hindi-heartland) Brahmins are numerous enough and ally with other clean twice-born castes (Kshatriyas, Vaisyas and Kayasthas) to maintain political power and representation in the civil service [4]. In the south, where Brahmins are only 3% of the population, and the Dravidian masses harbor ill will against them as alien interlopers from the north they have lost the trappings of power. This sentiment was initiated and abetted by the British, who reassured their fellow Aryan Brahmin brothers of how superior they were, while attempting to convert the lower castes to Christianity. In the south the civil service is dominated by non-Brahmins, presumably intellectually challenged incompetents.

It seems that from that one would gather that the social situation in the north would be far better than that in the south, as we presume that the upper castes have more genetic capital and would be better at governance. And yet anyone who knows the situation on the ground will know this is not the case. Not only do the two southern states of Karnataka and Andhara Pradesh serve as the leading lights for India’s high-tech revolution, but Kerala and Tamil Nadu, two states less prosperous than their northern neighbors, have vital statistics far better than the states of the Hindi heartland. What is going on here?

Clearly the fragmented coalition politics of the north has lead to an ossification of a backward social system, while the disenfranchisement in the south of Brahmins and other elites has led to change and a more equitable distribution of resources. No doubt it is unjust that Brahmins are kept out of the civil service, but as a libertarian, I must ask the question, what good is a civil service anyway? Perhaps incompetent Dalit clerks are less efficient in extracting bribes than smooth-talking Brahmins. The article notes that south Indian Brahmins have channeled their energies to the private sector, leading to the rise of the high-tech sector in Bangalore and Hyderabad. In the north, Brahmins, if they have the same genetic capital, are more likely to be found in government service than the private sector, and you have a more Third World pattern of career aspiration (government work rather than private sector work is more lucrative with officials acting more like the ancient Roman publicani than public servants). I know that some patent clerks do great scientific work on the side, but no doubt many wasted their lives when they could have been doing something innovative.

Now I must also ask, why is it that Brahmins, and in particular southern Brahmins, are so intelligent, at least from the fruit of their endeavors? I think the answer is hypergamy. It is not unheard of among some Brahmin groups for younger sons to marry women of a caste just below them (the Namboothiri Brahmins of Kerala do this with Nayars). It seems reasonable that Brahmins, their ritual purity guaranteeing prestige, would only risk sullying their blood with promising individuals, or at least women from important families. Remember, even high caste individuals are mostly “Asian” rather than “European” in mt-DNA, so it seems likely that the newcomers picked the more exceptional individuals for mates. Over many generations, even a small amount of inter-caste marriage would likely lead to the percolation upward of exceptional genetic talents. I think that South Indian Brahmins, because of their small numbers, and the scarcity of “Aryan blood” in the south, could be even pickier than Brahmins in the north, where the gap between Kshatriyas and Brahmins was small enough that the latter likely had less leverage in mate selection from the masses (exceptional lower caste brides in this scenario would not have been concentrated among the 3% Brahmin upper caste but among the 40% Brahmin-Kshatriya-Vaisya upper caste triumvirate).

But with the freezing of caste lines during modern times, this process of hypergamy likely stopped (only 5% of Indian castes practice it). Affluence and literacy often lead to an increase in “traditional” behavior because it is more feasible, so just as Muslims show more fidelity toward the strictures of the Koran once they can read it and comprehend it (or more likely the local cleric can), Hindus with greater caste consciousness because of a historical and social understanding of who they are are perhaps less likely to accept someone of eminent abilities “marrying up” into their level. In addition, the ancient t
rick of moving geographically and rising up the social ladder is likely more difficult today in the age of instantaneous communication than it was in the past when data was more at a premium and historical creativity the norm.

The ancient Chinese had a saying: Three generations up, three generations down. Augustus Caesar already saw in his long life the withering of ancient patrician lines and he attempted to arrest the decline of the aristocracy and halt the rise of the equestrian order. Churn is the order of the day throughout the history of our species, all of us have the blood of kings and beggars within us. Hernstein and Murray argued in THE BELL CURVE that in the United States this churn is not as prevalent as it once was, doctors are more likely to marry other doctors than acquire a trophy wife (back in the days when there were few female doctors and women were judged more on their physique than their intellect-and I mean it half-seriously at least). In nations like China and Korea where the population’s physical appearance is homogeneous there is less of a shock for a peasant to rise to prominence, because the face of a peasant is not that different from the face of a plutocrat. Though East Asian societies are straight-jacketed by nepotism and cronyism, they have no metaphysical or theological opposition to the meritocracy per se.

Not so with India. In the future The Hindu Rate of Growth might very well be dependent on whether India decides to abandon its adherence to caste, and follow its westernized elites and begin to value accomplishments (wealth) more (the great middle-class of Indian castes, from village Brahmins to small landholder are probably the ones who favor retention of caste, while the rarified elite can dispense with it and the outcastes would like to move past it). It is obvious that those in positions of power and intellectuals will have more social and genetic capital that the unwashed masses (on average). On the other hand, while in China a brilliant son of a janitor might rise to lead the nation, would Indians allow a black-skinned Dalit to take the helm of the nation? (In more than a symbolic role) And perhaps in the long run more importantly, would they allow a brilliant Dalit to marry their daughter?

OK, that’s enough brown for me for a while….

[1] My paternal grandmother was from a Bengali Brahmin family that converted to Islam around 1920 after their tenants began to become restive about having to deal with a Hindu landlord. My paternal grandfather was from an ashraf family, the class of Muslims that claims descent from non-Indians, generally Persian, Turkish or Afghan. Many ashraf in Bengal make up their ancestry, but my grandfather’s physiognomy was non-Bengali enough that there was probably something to it. My mother’s family claims an Islamic pedigree of about five centuries through both her parents.

[2] Kshatriyas are the ruling and military class in the caste system, though their true occupation is often far less glamorous today or even in the recent past. Many ancient rulers of India, like the Maurya dynasty, were elevated Sudras. In addition, before the conquests of the Muslims, invaders from the northwest (White Huns, Kushanas, Greeks, etc.) had regularly supplemented India’s ruling Kshatriya class. The Rajputs for instance have some of the same central Asian antecedents that I likely do, though my non-Indian ancestors came later after their foreskins had been snipped and they walked in the path of the One God.

[3] India is not particularly special in this regard, as China and Europe regularly succumbed to barbarian conquest. All three major civilizations tended to absorb the newcomers, or eject them, the only exception being the Muslims in India. The reason that nomadic horseman so easily conquered outnumbered dense sedentary civilizations is that the former were natural warriors who could easily escape defeat, while the latter needed to be well organized and trained for warfare, and outlay of resources were not always manageable. In addition, India has the added burden of not being a good breeding ground for horses.

[4] Minutiae for those out of the loop, the main general caste categories are Brahmins (priests), Kshatriyas (warriors), Vaisyas (commoners) and Sudras (servile population). Dalits or outcastes exist outside caste. The Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaisyas are “clean” castes who wear the sacred thread that marks them as twice-born and of higher status. Some scholars speculate that the three top castes have their origins in early Indo-European social structures, while the Sudras have their origins among the conquered “Dasas.” Of course there is far too much mixture to assert with clear and clean accuracy these sort of assertions deterministically, but they surely have some probabilistic validity, though nou doubt some indigenous shamans become Brahmans and many an indigenous warlord become Aryanized. Note that this generally applies only to the north, especially the Hindi states where about half of Indians live. In the deep south, where Indo-Aryan languages never “took,” the only upper caste are the Brahmins, who trace their ancestry to the north. So the dynamics in the south are rather different, for powerful Sudra clans remained in temporal positions of importance rather than being reduced to servile status by Aryan and Aryanized warlords.

Posted by razib at 12:24 PM

I’m taking a small break from my development project, so I was kicking back with the book A Brain For All Seasons: Human Evolution & Abrupt Climate Change by William Calvin. I’ve read many of his other books and didn’t find him to be particularly controversial. But I stumbled upon this on page 41:

…There is far more variation within modern African Homo Sapiens than there is within the Out of Africa groups. Modern Africans really need the variation in reserve, just to work around the challenges from their parasite load and their fickle climate. The Asians and Europeans, besides being less rich in genetic variations that they can tap, seem to have specialized somewhat toward one end of the parental-care spectrum, concentrating on relatively fewer offspring (their biology results in having fewer fraternal twins) who grow up more slowly (somewhat slower growth rates, later puberty, and so forth).

More on page 61:

You see a lot of assumptions about bigger brains having been important for colonizing Eurasia with its wintertime challenges, but that’s simplistic. I certainly suspect that the different environments of Eurasia caused some variants among the African immigrants to thrive better than others (and planning ability is often needed to get through the winter), and I’m quite willing to assume that the somewhat bigger brains came along with a package, but I’d really like to know what that package is.

Posted by razib at 12:26 PM