Very interesting article. This kind of research is finally revealing the origins of group differences in cognitive ability today. It seems to have something to do with experience with agriculture and centralized civilization. This created greater selection pressures for cognitive ability and educational attainment. But this probably not the whole story. For example, the area around the Fertile Crescent has the longest record of agriculture and civilization, but these regions do not exhibit high cognitive ability now. There must something more to the story.
Cognitive evolution stopped and reversed during the time of the Roman Empire, and the same thing likely happened in the Middle East — for the same reason. Once the elites attained a certain level of wealth and power, they no longer translated their social and economic success into reproductive success. Instead, they squandered it on nonprocreative forms of sex or sought younger mistresses of lower socioeconomic status.
Christianity ended the fertility collapse among the elites by limiting male polygyny and female hypergamy, thereby increasing the reproductive importance of elite women. Islam attempted a similar project of moral reform but largely failed — probably because it failed to curb polygyny and hypergamy. In fact, both increased with the steady expansion of the slave trade between Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.
And speaking of slavery in the Middle East, most of the slave in that region were from of Middle East ethnic groups like Semitics and Iranians. Africans only made up no more than 20% of all slaves in that region
According to Lewis (1990, pp. 72-77), Middle Eastern slaves were overwhelmingly of African origin from the 18th century onward, due to the efforts of European powers to stop slave raiding within their territories.
Lewis, B. (1990). Race and Slavery in the Middle East. Oxford University Press.
I could quote other authors, if you wish. The decrease in the supply of European slaves had the effect of increasing demand for African slaves.
If you read French, I can recommend these sources:
Plazolles Guillen, F. (2012). “Negre e de terra de negres infels …”: Servitude de la couleur (Valence, 1479-1516), in R. Botte and A. Stella (eds.) Couleurs de l’esclavage sur les deux rives de la Méditerranée (Moyen Âge – xxe siècle), pp. 113-158, Paris: Karthala.
Verlinden, C. (1977). L’Esclavage dans l’Europe médiévale, vol. II, Ghent.
Polygyny was never all that common in the Middle East in the last 3000 years including today. Only 1%-4% of Middle Eastern men have more than one wife and most that do only have 2. Also, despite higher polygyny rates compared to Europeans the Middle East consistently has lower rates of male bachelorhood (incels) between the two regions throughout all of history.
So I really doubt that polygyny played much of a significant role in the cognitive (de)evolution of the Middle East, especially when compared to hypergamy and many actual dysgenic breeding patterns.
In the Middle East, polygyny was much more common among men of higher social status. Goody (1973, p. 176), citing a Moroccan survey from the 1950s, states that the polygyny rate was 21% for men of the "petite bourgeoisie" but only 3.1% for the entire population.
A higher polygyny rate among elite males would disrupt Gregory Clark's model of cognitive evolution, i.e., the higher social classes continually replace the lower ones through higher fertility and lower mortality.
Goody, J. (1973). The Character of Kinship, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Makes you wonder if industrial society, for all its apparent might, has the capacity to successfully craft and then more important- consistently impose, positive selective pressure on its population for centuries. I would say no. The risk of unintended consequences for such plans seems high as well, with the results on society and culture unknown until many generations later. Or maybe there are other approaches that are less obvious...
"Makes you wonder if industrial society, for all its apparent might, has the capacity to successfully craft and then more important- consistently impose, positive selective pressure on its population for centuries."
There is also a scientific society, which greatly benefits the industrial society. Through embryo selection and genetic enhancement, science can also provide positive selective pressure for IQ and other positive human traits. The ascent of humanity can be significantly assisted by voluntary genetic manipulation.
Would the process of embryo selection based on established SNPs for higher intelligence necessarily narrow the diversity of genes responsible for higher intelligence in the population? You might risk simultaneously raising the average IQ while narrowing the diversity of genes responsible for it at the same time, which could have all sorts of interesting systemic effects on a civilisational scale.
This is my main criticism of eugenics, i.e., eugenicists tend to focus on cognitive ability to the detriment of mental traits that are no less important for an advanced society.
If you select only for cognitive ability, you will not get a high-trust society. You will get a lot of high-IQ sociopaths who will prey on the majority. High-trust societies are the outcome of selection for a broad basket of mental and behavioral traits, not only cognitive ability but also empathy and guilt proneness, as well as higher thresholds for the expression of violence.
"This is my main criticism of eugenics, i.e., eugenicists tend to focus on cognitive ability to the detriment of mental traits that are no less important for an advanced society.
If you select only for cognitive ability, you will not get a high-trust society."
I agree. While Intelligence is one of the most important, integrity is paramount. Some time back, I listed what I felt were critical human traits for the ascent of humanity: Integrity, intelligence, inquisitiveness, intuitiveness, industriousness, insight, inspiration, imagination, inventiveness, and intentness. Some appear nebulous or hard to define or test for, but they are necessary in an advancing society. Of course, everyone is encouraged to present their own.
This certainly seems much more appealing, especially if we can genetically enhance the reproductive material directly so we can make superbabies through regular intercourse. We want to keep enough variety in our genepool to prevent from being eradicated by plagues, or any other such limited-genetic-diversity problems. With this method, we'll maintain a broad trove of genetic diversity, but always with the dice loaded in favor of each successive generation.
It'll probably mostly or entirely be men, at least at first, who go through the testes-boosting procedure. But that'll be more than enough to bring huge gains. I know I'd sign up in a heartbeat if I had the chance.
Believe me , China is the least likely . All prominent socila scientist in 20th century were Eugenicist . Mao was a midwit who wanted honour of a great intellectual , nothing made him more angry than some questioning is intellect . Communism is midwittery and envy writ large
Great piece. One comment though. You said: "the increase in Mongolia may partly reflect gene flow from Han Chinese".
However, if you look at the increase for Mongolia, you'll see that their EA starts at around the same as NE_China, and then it increases above and beyond that of NE_China. Admixture from northern Han Chinese shouldn't raise the Mongolian EA BEYOND that of the northern Han Chinese. The "Ancient" Mongolian and NE_China PGS were the same anyway, so Han admixture shouldn't be able to explain any of the Mongolian rise, unless I'm mistaken.
That regional analysis is a simple comparison between ancient genomes and modern genomes. So we don't see what happened between those two points in time.
I suspect that mean cognitive ability rose in northeast China until the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE) and then fell. But I can't prove that suspicion because the general results for eastern Eurasia show only stagnation or slight decline during the post-Tang period.
In the case of the Mongols, I believe that they, like other northern hunting peoples, were strongly selected for the ability to store, process, and manipulate huge volumes of spatiotemporal data (see my discussion of this point in: https://www.anthro1.net/p/adapting-to-an-environment-of-their). They thus started off at a higher cognitive level but later benefited from Han admixture once the situation had reversed during pre-Tang times.
Of course, this is conjecture. I hope we will see more detailed regional data, specifically for northeast Chinese and Mongols.
If I understand it correctly, Mongols started higher, then northern Hans surpassed them due to social complexity. Northern Han later peaked around the Tang Dynasty. During that peak Mongols received a lot of northern Han admixture, and then later the northern Han EA fell below that of Mongols?
That's my conjecture, except for the last part ("and then later Han EA fell below that of Mongols"). After all, there are IQ studies that show lower IQ among Mongol participants than among Han participants.
I don't know whether that contradiction is real or apparent. Keep in mind that this graph is a simple comparison between ancient and modern genomes.
Re: the smaller EA increase among Northern Chinese than Southern Chinese
I have written at length on the many cultural and genetic differences between Northerners and Southerners
from sebjenseb we know that Northerners and Southerners have the same IQ on average
take that with my writings on the cultural differences and what is written here about submissiveness, rule following, and resistance to boredom - there's the answer for why EA is higher among Southerners nowadays than Northerners
Northern Chinese are genetically closer to Japanese, Koreans and Mongolians than they are to Southern Chinese (who are genetically closer to Southeast Asians).
Cognitive ability correlates with socioeconomic status. This correlation has been shown by several studies. Gregory Clark studied social outcomes of English lineages between 1600 and 2022, and concluded that the persistence of SES over time was primarily genetic:
"A lineage of 422,374 English people (1600 to 2022) contains correlations in social outcomes among relatives as distant as 4th cousins. These correlations show striking patterns. The first is the strong persistence of social status across family trees. Correlations decline by a factor of only 0.79 across each generation. Even fourth cousins, with a common ancestor only five generations earlier, show significant status correlations. The second remarkable feature is that the decline in correlation with genetic distance in the lineage is unchanged from 1600 to 2022. Vast social changes in England between 1600 and 2022 would have been expected to increase social mobility. Yet people in 2022 remain correlated in outcomes with their lineage relatives in exactly the same way as in preindustrial England. The third surprising feature is that the correlations parallel those of a simple model of additive genetic determination of status, with a genetic correlation in marriage of 0.57."
References
Clark, G. (2023). The inheritance of social status: England, 1600 to 2022. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(27), e2300926120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2300926120
Connelly, R., & Gayle, V. (2019). An investigation of social class inequalities in general cognitive ability in two British birth cohorts. The British journal of sociology, 70(1), 90-108. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12343
Hart, S. A., Petrill, S. A., Deckard, K. D., & Thompson, L. A. (2007). SES and CHAOS as environmental mediators of cognitive ability: A longitudinal genetic analysis. Intelligence, 35(3), 233-242. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2006.08.004
Liu, H. (2018). Social and genetic pathways in multigenerational transmission of educational attainment. American Sociological Review, 83(2), 278-304. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122418759651
Lin, M. J. (2020). The social and genetic inheritance of educational attainment: Genes, parental education, and educational expansion. Social science research, 86, 102387. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2019.102387
The Clark article is open source and the data are fascinating, though it’s mainly observations of phenotypes rather than direct observation of dna. All it really proves is that the phenotypes used to measure “status” correlate either with patterns of genetic inheritance or with other things that mimic patterns of genetic inheritance.
The problem is, financial inheritance and the child nurturing both mimic genetic patterns of inheritance. Perhaps the father’s family is more important in financial inheritance and the mother’s family more important to the nurturing component, but each parent would have about half of the aggregate effect, just like with genetics. Similarly, correlations between parents and children would imply correlations with more remote descendants and also with collaterals.
The other articles cost money. Which is the best value?
Clark's model has been tested by looking at change over time in DNA from human remains, specifically alleles associated with educational attainment, IQ, and SES.
"Our data supports Clark’s model’s weak hypothesis, suggesting a widespread increase across Europe in genetic predispositions for intelligence and EA traits. Comparing contemporary and medieval Europeans, we observed increases in EA3 (Cohen’s d = 0.389, p < .001), EA4 (Cohen’s d = 0.537, p < .001), IQ PGS (Cohen’s d = 0.31, p < .001), and SES (Cohen’s d = 0.201). This trend is notable, considering no significant increases in these traits since the Iron Age, as delineated by historical period analysis."
Piffer, D., & Kirkegaard, E. O. (2024). Evolutionary Trends of Polygenic Scores in European Populations From the Paleolithic to Modern Times. Twin Research and Human Genetics, 27(1), 30-49. https://doi.org/10.1017/thg.2024.8
One more quibble with Clark, the occupational status correlations changed significantly over time, social changes clearly are impacting the data, it’s messier than he suggests
"One more quibble with Clark, the occupational status correlations changed significantly over time, social changes clearly are impacting the data, it’s messier than he suggests."
I very much agree. Peter Frost's comment above was, 'Cognitive ability correlates with socioeconomic status.' That would mean that the entertainment world and most well-known political figures, both groups have 'socioeconomic status', are cognitively superior. I have a hell of a problem with that.
"Life is an IQ test. Success in life doesn't necessarily mean moral behavior."
It is, to some degree. However, I did not have moral behavior in mind; I had intelligence in mind. Maxine Waters has socioeconomic status, and she is stupid on a stick. The entertainment world and political figures are replete with examples of this. Our culture has changed, and socioeconomic status has, in many cases, lost its cognitive superiority.
Did Piffer's paper have any data on Korea and Japan? They're in NE Asia and they're quite advanced and developed. Whereas Mongolia today is not exactly thriving right? Mongolia's PISA scores are below average.
He mentions Japan and Korea in his paper, but I would have to look at the original datasets to get the numbers. It looks like he lumped those two countries into "NE China" (which, if true, should have been named "NE Asia").
A question, readers: what explains the rapid prestige ascent of “scientific studies” that insist on mechanistic determinist physicalist “explanations” of the operations of entire societies?
Out of nowhere, I keep finding myself reading “social analysis” consisting of capsule generalizations (like “high trust”) that pose as authoritative definitions to derive a taxonomy of sorting entire societies (sometimes very large and complex ones)—which are in turn comparatively aligned to measures of the frequency of alleles in the local populations under scrutiny, in order to derive “conclusions” based entirely on a handful of data correlations upheld solely on the strength of probability estimates. Not only do such claims partake of an inherent vulnerability to the Correlative Fallacy, the comparisons are drawn between two categories that are defined on the basis of entirely different criteria!
It’s quackery. One might as well attempt to explain human language in terms of gene transmission.* Moreover, it’s high time that correlative probability ranges stopped being taken for granted as certainties, which an increasingly popular—and pernicious—Conclusion Creep. The correlations documented by the data sets in these studies practically always consist of narrow estimates of isolated aspects that have an unfortunate tendency to foreclose alternative researches—even when the correlations are less than entirely robust, which is quite often the case. Their presentation as the sole support for a research conclusion appears to me to more closely resemble financial analysis than hard science. And, as with financial analysis, the metrics are often liable to manipulation. Particularly in the case of metastudies, which often bear an unsettling similarity to the use of tranches in CDOs to launder the aggregated studies and have the end product certified as AA grade reliable.
Human societies, their complex behaviors, and the roles played by the individuals who comprise them are not to be reduced to the subroutines of some grand computer program, with parameters determined by static conceptualizations drawn from scatter plots of genetic data!
I’m not indicting metric anthropology per se; I recognize that the research has some important uses, including in the context of cultural anthropology. I’ve even used it myself. But it’s imperative to not get carried away. I don’t think metrics-focused methodology scales up very well for the purpose of generating insights into cultural anthropology or social psychology. And the more ambitious the scope of the study and the grander the theoretical speculations, the more spurious the value of the studies.
[* oh yeah…someone has performed that exercise in sloppy sophistry too, haven't they? ]
A model of reality is necessarily a simplification of reality. I'm not even talking solely about science. Whenever you interact with the world — shopping for a product that best corresponds to your needs, evaluating a potential girlfriend or boyfriend, etc. — you are using a tiny subset of the information out there. Hopefully, you will use the most relevant information. But is that always the case? Is that even usually the case?
It's easy to dump on scientists, but at least they make an effort to review the literature, check for sampling bias, analyze the data for significance, and note the limitations of their findings. And that approach has produced results. Today, we know a lot more than we did a hundred years ago. And our lives have improved considerably — thanks to those godawful scientists.
If you have a specific beef with a specific conclusion, that's fine. But all I see in your comment is a lot of moaning and groaning.
I'm not cracking on scientists, or science. I'm cracking on extravagant conjectures drawn from threadbare evidence, and from the pretensions of Big Data that isn't. I'd like the era of Big Data to get here, really. That may not happen on some topics, but I'm hopeful. Data is certainly continuing to accumulate, which I view as a good thing, as long as it's factual. In the meantime, every increased ability to compile metrics and do statistics or game theory with them does not lead to a probative result. The amount of evidence in the findings still often insufficient, and hence liable to mislead.
I actually think that there ought to be gradations of reliability in scientific evidence. The gravitational constant, a metallurgic assay, a genomic identification, troubleshooting an electronic circuit, synthesis of a chemical formula, etc. doesn't not require a probability range hedge in order to buttress the conclusions it asserts. That's all first-order certainty, and no interpretation--conjecture--is required.
Assertions built of probability assertions are, at minimum, second-order inferences with less reliability. That isn't to say that they're valueless. Statistics is a valid empirical discipline, when done properly. I don't view medicine as a strict scientific discipline, but modern medical research combines science and empiricism in ways that are a net positive. Strong probability correlations are strong. But even strong correlations are sometimes due to confounding factors. The evidence is often best considered as indicative, not conclusive. The is especially true when assessing the complexities of human behavior, especially social behavior. I also tend to suspect data comparison correlations using isolated variables, because the finding are so often preliminary. I've noticed a lot of it being accepted uncritically by people because it reinforces their own personal agendas. Seemingly out of impatience to find anything science-y, as conclusive proof for their preconceived notions.
There's more than one evolutionary factors that play into the rise (and fall) of intelligence in a population. And most Sub-Saharan Africans embraced some form of agriculture (horticulture, pastorialism, etc) by 1000BC
Very interesting article. This kind of research is finally revealing the origins of group differences in cognitive ability today. It seems to have something to do with experience with agriculture and centralized civilization. This created greater selection pressures for cognitive ability and educational attainment. But this probably not the whole story. For example, the area around the Fertile Crescent has the longest record of agriculture and civilization, but these regions do not exhibit high cognitive ability now. There must something more to the story.
Cognitive evolution stopped and reversed during the time of the Roman Empire, and the same thing likely happened in the Middle East — for the same reason. Once the elites attained a certain level of wealth and power, they no longer translated their social and economic success into reproductive success. Instead, they squandered it on nonprocreative forms of sex or sought younger mistresses of lower socioeconomic status.
Christianity ended the fertility collapse among the elites by limiting male polygyny and female hypergamy, thereby increasing the reproductive importance of elite women. Islam attempted a similar project of moral reform but largely failed — probably because it failed to curb polygyny and hypergamy. In fact, both increased with the steady expansion of the slave trade between Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.
https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/how-christianity-rebooted-cognitive
And speaking of slavery in the Middle East, most of the slave in that region were from of Middle East ethnic groups like Semitics and Iranians. Africans only made up no more than 20% of all slaves in that region
According to Lewis (1990, pp. 72-77), Middle Eastern slaves were overwhelmingly of African origin from the 18th century onward, due to the efforts of European powers to stop slave raiding within their territories.
Lewis, B. (1990). Race and Slavery in the Middle East. Oxford University Press.
Are you seriously quoting an Orientalist instead of an Historical Anthropologist on the region?
I could quote other authors, if you wish. The decrease in the supply of European slaves had the effect of increasing demand for African slaves.
If you read French, I can recommend these sources:
Plazolles Guillen, F. (2012). “Negre e de terra de negres infels …”: Servitude de la couleur (Valence, 1479-1516), in R. Botte and A. Stella (eds.) Couleurs de l’esclavage sur les deux rives de la Méditerranée (Moyen Âge – xxe siècle), pp. 113-158, Paris: Karthala.
Verlinden, C. (1977). L’Esclavage dans l’Europe médiévale, vol. II, Ghent.
Polygyny was never all that common in the Middle East in the last 3000 years including today. Only 1%-4% of Middle Eastern men have more than one wife and most that do only have 2. Also, despite higher polygyny rates compared to Europeans the Middle East consistently has lower rates of male bachelorhood (incels) between the two regions throughout all of history.
So I really doubt that polygyny played much of a significant role in the cognitive (de)evolution of the Middle East, especially when compared to hypergamy and many actual dysgenic breeding patterns.
In the Middle East, polygyny was much more common among men of higher social status. Goody (1973, p. 176), citing a Moroccan survey from the 1950s, states that the polygyny rate was 21% for men of the "petite bourgeoisie" but only 3.1% for the entire population.
A higher polygyny rate among elite males would disrupt Gregory Clark's model of cognitive evolution, i.e., the higher social classes continually replace the lower ones through higher fertility and lower mortality.
Goody, J. (1973). The Character of Kinship, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Makes you wonder if industrial society, for all its apparent might, has the capacity to successfully craft and then more important- consistently impose, positive selective pressure on its population for centuries. I would say no. The risk of unintended consequences for such plans seems high as well, with the results on society and culture unknown until many generations later. Or maybe there are other approaches that are less obvious...
Yeah, top-down eugenics is destined to fail. Laissez-faire eugenics is much more likely to have positive results. https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/eugenics
"Makes you wonder if industrial society, for all its apparent might, has the capacity to successfully craft and then more important- consistently impose, positive selective pressure on its population for centuries."
There is also a scientific society, which greatly benefits the industrial society. Through embryo selection and genetic enhancement, science can also provide positive selective pressure for IQ and other positive human traits. The ascent of humanity can be significantly assisted by voluntary genetic manipulation.
Yes, every problem has a solution.
The first step is to acknowledge there is a problem. The rest is easy.
Would the process of embryo selection based on established SNPs for higher intelligence necessarily narrow the diversity of genes responsible for higher intelligence in the population? You might risk simultaneously raising the average IQ while narrowing the diversity of genes responsible for it at the same time, which could have all sorts of interesting systemic effects on a civilisational scale.
This is my main criticism of eugenics, i.e., eugenicists tend to focus on cognitive ability to the detriment of mental traits that are no less important for an advanced society.
If you select only for cognitive ability, you will not get a high-trust society. You will get a lot of high-IQ sociopaths who will prey on the majority. High-trust societies are the outcome of selection for a broad basket of mental and behavioral traits, not only cognitive ability but also empathy and guilt proneness, as well as higher thresholds for the expression of violence.
"This is my main criticism of eugenics, i.e., eugenicists tend to focus on cognitive ability to the detriment of mental traits that are no less important for an advanced society.
If you select only for cognitive ability, you will not get a high-trust society."
I agree. While Intelligence is one of the most important, integrity is paramount. Some time back, I listed what I felt were critical human traits for the ascent of humanity: Integrity, intelligence, inquisitiveness, intuitiveness, industriousness, insight, inspiration, imagination, inventiveness, and intentness. Some appear nebulous or hard to define or test for, but they are necessary in an advancing society. Of course, everyone is encouraged to present their own.
Embryo selection is limited in its scope. You can only use what is available. A much better longer-term approach is genetic enhancement.
This certainly seems much more appealing, especially if we can genetically enhance the reproductive material directly so we can make superbabies through regular intercourse. We want to keep enough variety in our genepool to prevent from being eradicated by plagues, or any other such limited-genetic-diversity problems. With this method, we'll maintain a broad trove of genetic diversity, but always with the dice loaded in favor of each successive generation.
It'll probably mostly or entirely be men, at least at first, who go through the testes-boosting procedure. But that'll be more than enough to bring huge gains. I know I'd sign up in a heartbeat if I had the chance.
If anyone can, it's the Chinese.
Believe me , China is the least likely . All prominent socila scientist in 20th century were Eugenicist . Mao was a midwit who wanted honour of a great intellectual , nothing made him more angry than some questioning is intellect . Communism is midwittery and envy writ large
Great piece. One comment though. You said: "the increase in Mongolia may partly reflect gene flow from Han Chinese".
However, if you look at the increase for Mongolia, you'll see that their EA starts at around the same as NE_China, and then it increases above and beyond that of NE_China. Admixture from northern Han Chinese shouldn't raise the Mongolian EA BEYOND that of the northern Han Chinese. The "Ancient" Mongolian and NE_China PGS were the same anyway, so Han admixture shouldn't be able to explain any of the Mongolian rise, unless I'm mistaken.
That regional analysis is a simple comparison between ancient genomes and modern genomes. So we don't see what happened between those two points in time.
I suspect that mean cognitive ability rose in northeast China until the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE) and then fell. But I can't prove that suspicion because the general results for eastern Eurasia show only stagnation or slight decline during the post-Tang period.
In the case of the Mongols, I believe that they, like other northern hunting peoples, were strongly selected for the ability to store, process, and manipulate huge volumes of spatiotemporal data (see my discussion of this point in: https://www.anthro1.net/p/adapting-to-an-environment-of-their). They thus started off at a higher cognitive level but later benefited from Han admixture once the situation had reversed during pre-Tang times.
Of course, this is conjecture. I hope we will see more detailed regional data, specifically for northeast Chinese and Mongols.
If I understand it correctly, Mongols started higher, then northern Hans surpassed them due to social complexity. Northern Han later peaked around the Tang Dynasty. During that peak Mongols received a lot of northern Han admixture, and then later the northern Han EA fell below that of Mongols?
That's my conjecture, except for the last part ("and then later Han EA fell below that of Mongols"). After all, there are IQ studies that show lower IQ among Mongol participants than among Han participants.
I don't know whether that contradiction is real or apparent. Keep in mind that this graph is a simple comparison between ancient and modern genomes.
Re: the smaller EA increase among Northern Chinese than Southern Chinese
I have written at length on the many cultural and genetic differences between Northerners and Southerners
from sebjenseb we know that Northerners and Southerners have the same IQ on average
take that with my writings on the cultural differences and what is written here about submissiveness, rule following, and resistance to boredom - there's the answer for why EA is higher among Southerners nowadays than Northerners
Northern Chinese are genetically closer to Japanese, Koreans and Mongolians than they are to Southern Chinese (who are genetically closer to Southeast Asians).
The article says upper class fertility and increases in cognitive performance are closely correlated. How strong is this effect and why?
Cognitive ability correlates with socioeconomic status. This correlation has been shown by several studies. Gregory Clark studied social outcomes of English lineages between 1600 and 2022, and concluded that the persistence of SES over time was primarily genetic:
"A lineage of 422,374 English people (1600 to 2022) contains correlations in social outcomes among relatives as distant as 4th cousins. These correlations show striking patterns. The first is the strong persistence of social status across family trees. Correlations decline by a factor of only 0.79 across each generation. Even fourth cousins, with a common ancestor only five generations earlier, show significant status correlations. The second remarkable feature is that the decline in correlation with genetic distance in the lineage is unchanged from 1600 to 2022. Vast social changes in England between 1600 and 2022 would have been expected to increase social mobility. Yet people in 2022 remain correlated in outcomes with their lineage relatives in exactly the same way as in preindustrial England. The third surprising feature is that the correlations parallel those of a simple model of additive genetic determination of status, with a genetic correlation in marriage of 0.57."
References
Clark, G. (2023). The inheritance of social status: England, 1600 to 2022. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(27), e2300926120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2300926120
Connelly, R., & Gayle, V. (2019). An investigation of social class inequalities in general cognitive ability in two British birth cohorts. The British journal of sociology, 70(1), 90-108. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12343
Hart, S. A., Petrill, S. A., Deckard, K. D., & Thompson, L. A. (2007). SES and CHAOS as environmental mediators of cognitive ability: A longitudinal genetic analysis. Intelligence, 35(3), 233-242. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2006.08.004
Liu, H. (2018). Social and genetic pathways in multigenerational transmission of educational attainment. American Sociological Review, 83(2), 278-304. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122418759651
Lin, M. J. (2020). The social and genetic inheritance of educational attainment: Genes, parental education, and educational expansion. Social science research, 86, 102387. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2019.102387
"Cognitive ability correlates with socioeconomic status."
Please take a look at my comment to David Abbott below.
That reply was really helpful.
The Clark article is open source and the data are fascinating, though it’s mainly observations of phenotypes rather than direct observation of dna. All it really proves is that the phenotypes used to measure “status” correlate either with patterns of genetic inheritance or with other things that mimic patterns of genetic inheritance.
The problem is, financial inheritance and the child nurturing both mimic genetic patterns of inheritance. Perhaps the father’s family is more important in financial inheritance and the mother’s family more important to the nurturing component, but each parent would have about half of the aggregate effect, just like with genetics. Similarly, correlations between parents and children would imply correlations with more remote descendants and also with collaterals.
The other articles cost money. Which is the best value?
Clark's model has been tested by looking at change over time in DNA from human remains, specifically alleles associated with educational attainment, IQ, and SES.
"Our data supports Clark’s model’s weak hypothesis, suggesting a widespread increase across Europe in genetic predispositions for intelligence and EA traits. Comparing contemporary and medieval Europeans, we observed increases in EA3 (Cohen’s d = 0.389, p < .001), EA4 (Cohen’s d = 0.537, p < .001), IQ PGS (Cohen’s d = 0.31, p < .001), and SES (Cohen’s d = 0.201). This trend is notable, considering no significant increases in these traits since the Iron Age, as delineated by historical period analysis."
Piffer, D., & Kirkegaard, E. O. (2024). Evolutionary Trends of Polygenic Scores in European Populations From the Paleolithic to Modern Times. Twin Research and Human Genetics, 27(1), 30-49. https://doi.org/10.1017/thg.2024.8
One more quibble with Clark, the occupational status correlations changed significantly over time, social changes clearly are impacting the data, it’s messier than he suggests
"One more quibble with Clark, the occupational status correlations changed significantly over time, social changes clearly are impacting the data, it’s messier than he suggests."
I very much agree. Peter Frost's comment above was, 'Cognitive ability correlates with socioeconomic status.' That would mean that the entertainment world and most well-known political figures, both groups have 'socioeconomic status', are cognitively superior. I have a hell of a problem with that.
Life is an IQ test. Success in life doesn't necessarily mean moral behavior.
"Life is an IQ test. Success in life doesn't necessarily mean moral behavior."
It is, to some degree. However, I did not have moral behavior in mind; I had intelligence in mind. Maxine Waters has socioeconomic status, and she is stupid on a stick. The entertainment world and political figures are replete with examples of this. Our culture has changed, and socioeconomic status has, in many cases, lost its cognitive superiority.
Here are the free versions:
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/132202058.pdf
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2659658/
https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/70711300/34dba2255bcf9c659e65617114868689d08b-libre.pdf?1635891198=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DSocial_and_Genetic_Pathways_in_Multigene.pdf&Expires=1739245303&Signature=cNWc6S0wgtvfHW~kh7utjgQPVRBIAeivcj47smxK6PNauCIfKXWIifSX9seM455wgqH8P-l-aelAVLw~-IhB3dTSS6gQL87QPzQqy-MS-VRIDyY7k4rUnmOGC7FwO8lyuMsanpWNZ-qccGubU9xs5CGjKwmnpSZTDOxkP2TPSpF72BJHpBcj-zOADWrnxgTTDtNoWK5R09v8rvePLKAJmLRFaX5HpLOMxWleTrsyt2WTvYrahWaJhUWR2KRlmWc0xYkxaZum8g1yjEyiY30wgZaCYHe0~hecd8QZ~0V0YoiEhgo86azBqG9JQjeBqBODyHv9H41CSq6i7r35VD9daA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA
Did Piffer's paper have any data on Korea and Japan? They're in NE Asia and they're quite advanced and developed. Whereas Mongolia today is not exactly thriving right? Mongolia's PISA scores are below average.
He mentions Japan and Korea in his paper, but I would have to look at the original datasets to get the numbers. It looks like he lumped those two countries into "NE China" (which, if true, should have been named "NE Asia").
The full text can be found at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/388531517_Directional_Selection_and_Evolution_of_Polygenic_Traits_in_Eastern_Eurasia_Insights_from_Ancient_DNA#fullTextFileContent
A question, readers: what explains the rapid prestige ascent of “scientific studies” that insist on mechanistic determinist physicalist “explanations” of the operations of entire societies?
Out of nowhere, I keep finding myself reading “social analysis” consisting of capsule generalizations (like “high trust”) that pose as authoritative definitions to derive a taxonomy of sorting entire societies (sometimes very large and complex ones)—which are in turn comparatively aligned to measures of the frequency of alleles in the local populations under scrutiny, in order to derive “conclusions” based entirely on a handful of data correlations upheld solely on the strength of probability estimates. Not only do such claims partake of an inherent vulnerability to the Correlative Fallacy, the comparisons are drawn between two categories that are defined on the basis of entirely different criteria!
It’s quackery. One might as well attempt to explain human language in terms of gene transmission.* Moreover, it’s high time that correlative probability ranges stopped being taken for granted as certainties, which an increasingly popular—and pernicious—Conclusion Creep. The correlations documented by the data sets in these studies practically always consist of narrow estimates of isolated aspects that have an unfortunate tendency to foreclose alternative researches—even when the correlations are less than entirely robust, which is quite often the case. Their presentation as the sole support for a research conclusion appears to me to more closely resemble financial analysis than hard science. And, as with financial analysis, the metrics are often liable to manipulation. Particularly in the case of metastudies, which often bear an unsettling similarity to the use of tranches in CDOs to launder the aggregated studies and have the end product certified as AA grade reliable.
Human societies, their complex behaviors, and the roles played by the individuals who comprise them are not to be reduced to the subroutines of some grand computer program, with parameters determined by static conceptualizations drawn from scatter plots of genetic data!
I’m not indicting metric anthropology per se; I recognize that the research has some important uses, including in the context of cultural anthropology. I’ve even used it myself. But it’s imperative to not get carried away. I don’t think metrics-focused methodology scales up very well for the purpose of generating insights into cultural anthropology or social psychology. And the more ambitious the scope of the study and the grander the theoretical speculations, the more spurious the value of the studies.
[* oh yeah…someone has performed that exercise in sloppy sophistry too, haven't they? ]
A model of reality is necessarily a simplification of reality. I'm not even talking solely about science. Whenever you interact with the world — shopping for a product that best corresponds to your needs, evaluating a potential girlfriend or boyfriend, etc. — you are using a tiny subset of the information out there. Hopefully, you will use the most relevant information. But is that always the case? Is that even usually the case?
It's easy to dump on scientists, but at least they make an effort to review the literature, check for sampling bias, analyze the data for significance, and note the limitations of their findings. And that approach has produced results. Today, we know a lot more than we did a hundred years ago. And our lives have improved considerably — thanks to those godawful scientists.
If you have a specific beef with a specific conclusion, that's fine. But all I see in your comment is a lot of moaning and groaning.
I'm not cracking on scientists, or science. I'm cracking on extravagant conjectures drawn from threadbare evidence, and from the pretensions of Big Data that isn't. I'd like the era of Big Data to get here, really. That may not happen on some topics, but I'm hopeful. Data is certainly continuing to accumulate, which I view as a good thing, as long as it's factual. In the meantime, every increased ability to compile metrics and do statistics or game theory with them does not lead to a probative result. The amount of evidence in the findings still often insufficient, and hence liable to mislead.
I actually think that there ought to be gradations of reliability in scientific evidence. The gravitational constant, a metallurgic assay, a genomic identification, troubleshooting an electronic circuit, synthesis of a chemical formula, etc. doesn't not require a probability range hedge in order to buttress the conclusions it asserts. That's all first-order certainty, and no interpretation--conjecture--is required.
Assertions built of probability assertions are, at minimum, second-order inferences with less reliability. That isn't to say that they're valueless. Statistics is a valid empirical discipline, when done properly. I don't view medicine as a strict scientific discipline, but modern medical research combines science and empiricism in ways that are a net positive. Strong probability correlations are strong. But even strong correlations are sometimes due to confounding factors. The evidence is often best considered as indicative, not conclusive. The is especially true when assessing the complexities of human behavior, especially social behavior. I also tend to suspect data comparison correlations using isolated variables, because the finding are so often preliminary. I've noticed a lot of it being accepted uncritically by people because it reinforces their own personal agendas. Seemingly out of impatience to find anything science-y, as conclusive proof for their preconceived notions.
There's more than one evolutionary factors that play into the rise (and fall) of intelligence in a population. And most Sub-Saharan Africans embraced some form of agriculture (horticulture, pastorialism, etc) by 1000BC