Dr. Greg Cochran on the possibility of gene frequencies shifting in populations leading to changes in phenotype (eg; IQs going up and down yo-yo style over thousands of years):
Look, _nobody_ thinks about this. I’m not just talking about people who want to celebrate their ancestors’ real or imagined achievements.
If you really want to understand long-range historical trends, assuming that that is even possible, you’re going to have to take selection over historical time into account. Or so it seems to me.
OK, I know Greg is working on a quantitative study of Ashkenazi Jews in this context (or so I gather from his comments). Kevin MacDonald’s work focuses on the group selection strategy having a eugenic effect. Does anyone know of other studies? David Sloan Wilson has done some work on Overseas Chinese (I am reading a book on what I now know is the great transnational crime racket that is the Chinese Diaspora).
I have shot-the-shit and talked to friends about possibilities that different historical experiences have had on discrete populations. Myopia for instance comes to mind (imagine a Chinese guy wearing glasses, and an Australian Aborigine wearing glasses, and reflect on which mental image seems a little ridiculous). But do these selection pressures apply anymore today? Famine is now man-made (in other world, chains of supply from surplus to deficit regions are blocked by political barriers). Many people seem to agree that for the past few generations in the modern West the “lower orders” have been more prolific.
Update: Some readers might be interested in this site: http://www.cashforbirthcontrol.com.
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