Does this model of Christianity and other sociological factors changing Roman IQ via polygenic pressures account for the massive population changes paleo-genomics has also revealed in chronological parallel?
The IQ changes from the Republican to Imperial to Late Antiquity map exactly the genealogical changes we see from native Latin in the Republican era, to mass Levantine (“Oriental”) migration in the decadent period, to the collapse cleansing urban centres and bringing a fresh influx of Nordic blood.
The Italians of the Republican era are genetically closest to modern day Catalans and Lombardians (South Europeans with 0-5% MidEast admixture - highEEF w/30% WSH); the Imperial era Italians in urban centres were basically mestizos, up to half Levantine, and closest to modern day Maltese, Greeks, Sicilians.
Elementary application of deduction would suggest that actually paleo-genomic factors are stronger, and the relatively large intra-European gap we see between North and South Italy can be explained by the difference in the size of the genetic legacy from the destructive migration of the Imperial period.
I think it's also worth discussing Civil Wars (probably plague too but lets leave that aside). The end of the Republican era was one of untold slaughter of Romans. Not just the utterly devastating wars we know of Ceaser and Octavian, but going all the way back to the Social War and the rest. In a Civil War everyone that dies is Roman. People noticed how thinned out the talent pool got by the end.
A similar process happened during the Crisis of the Third Century.
Christianity it seems to me was part of a broader attempt to solve the Civil War problem. The explosion of religions with similar characteristics around the world probably owes to this same problem amongst many other factors. How do you attain relative internal peace and continuity in a large empire that lasts longer than a single personality?
Paganism seems fine enough working at the city state level (where people know one another) and perhaps during expansionary periods there is enough loot to spread around amongst grasping pagans. But how does one settle into something at scale that lasts.
It largely depends on how much that population values intelligence. Nature seems to have placed things on the hypergamy list that are fixed in placed and aren’t moving down anytime soon. Intelligence appears to be negotiable based on the what’s going on in that current environment. You then add polygyny to the mix and I absolutely see how we get cognitive decline. Here’s a current example, Vincent Harinam mentioned an anonymous survey with a substantial sample size of ten thousand female college students. They were asked if they would be a second wife to a very rich man and seventy percent of them said yes. If we can get intelligence to be fixed on that list and replace it with height or how much money a man makes then problem solved. I don’t see that happening at all;as a matter of fact, the exact opposite is happening.
According to Satoshi Kanazawa children get their general intelligence from the mother’s side of her genes. What happens is that a society becomes safer which leads to decadence and that is when it appears intelligent women just stop wanting to have kids or just so few that society can’t sustain itself. The absolutely nutty part is that under those decadent conditions is when Intelligent women are most attracted to intelligent men. Too bad that at that point they don’t want to have kids. You just have to laugh at the irony of it all.
I don't think g-factor being primarily inherited from mothers is very likely, unless the alleles associated with IQ are all dumped on the X chromosome, and I'm fairly sure that's not consistent with current GWAS findings.
I believe you just mentioned the reason Kanazawa gave for why most intelligence comes from the mother’s side. I’d have to refer back to the book. But his claims have been debated. I’ve read studies claiming that a mom has more of an influence on her son only. I’ve also read that there’s a small increase that leans toward the mom but the difference is negligible. The point is, that I don’t know so don’t debate me. I didn’t make the claim or conduct any of the studies. It appears that this debate is still going on, based off what I read. Either way we’re screwed. Here’s what’s not debatable: high IQ women have little to no kids. And it’s definitely coming from the women. High IQ men are more than willing to have kids just like any other man. So this drop in IQ that we’re currently in the middle of isn’t coming from the men choosing to not have kids.
I agree that feminism has been catastrophic from a birthrates perspective and would eventually be catastrophic from a eugenic perspective as well, but we're probably going to see a social system crash before that happens.
Also, at this point in the sexual revolution, a certain amount of retraining of men will probably be necessary if you want to restore monogamous marriage norms, though getting young men more jobs would also help.
I have no fundamental reservations about GWAS studies. On the contrary, I find them highly interesting.
I also find the study by Piffer, Dutton, and Kirkegaard (2023) very interesting, but I do not think that the interpretation is justified in any way.
The sample of ancient Romans was divided into five groups and the number of individuals was
Pre-Iron Age 16
Republic 11
Imperial 48
Late Antiquity 24
Medieval 28
Contemporary 41 (page 2 mentions 33)
It is unclear how the subsamples were composed, but it is clear that they are by no means a representative sample for the period in question. On this extraordinarily weak basis, no meaningful conclusions can be drawn about cognitive development.
* * * * *
I have addressed a different aspect of this study here:
Yeah, I don't think the basic theory/analysis put forward by Frost here is implausible, but I would be cautious about leaping to rather large conclusions from very small and potentially unrepresentative sample-sets.
My objection refers exclusively to the study by Piffer, Dutton and Kirkegaard. Polygenetic scores are only a crude indicator of genotypic intelligence; and with such small, in no way representative, samples, the explanatory power is basically nil.
The group with the highest polygenetic score belongs to the Republican period. This subsample includes only eleven (!) individuals. In a highly stratified heterogeneous society, as found in ancient Rome, it is impossible to obtain a representative sample with only eleven individuals. The sample is also far too small for the other periods and it is unclear what they might be representative of.
I find the study very interesting, but it is in no way justified to draw such far-reaching conclusions from it. For that, the samples would have to be many times larger and it would be necessary to know what they are representative of in the first place.
Ancient Rome had about one million inhabitants. Imagine conducting intelligence tests with samples ranging in size from 11 to 48 in six cities with about one million inhabitants and making statements about the intelligence level of the population. One would rightly be laughed at.
The remaining arguments are much more substantive. Unfortunately, they are weakened by the reference to a completely unrepresentative study.
I know practically everyone who reads this magazine is likely a materialist, but I have to ask the question:
What if Christianity actually was the intervention of God in the world? What if our societies trended towards violence, warfare and genetic degeneration, and the gospel of Christ is both the answer to our practical problems over the long term, and a message from the divine of our salvation?
What if both of those are somewhat similar?
Anyway, thanks for doing this excellent research. Interesting findings even though I disagree with many of your hasty conclusions.
"By favoring monogamy and, conversely, by limiting male polygyny and female hypergamy;"
Why would this intensify selective pressure for intelligence.
Also, these scores are insane. Tell me someone has them for other groups/periods. Please,tell me you have them for Greece from Mycenaean period all the way up until late antiquity.
It gave people an ethical system that hadn't collapsed into sophistic nihilism. Thus cutting down on generals proclaiming themselves emperor and starting civil wars.
Does this model of Christianity and other sociological factors changing Roman IQ via polygenic pressures account for the massive population changes paleo-genomics has also revealed in chronological parallel?
The IQ changes from the Republican to Imperial to Late Antiquity map exactly the genealogical changes we see from native Latin in the Republican era, to mass Levantine (“Oriental”) migration in the decadent period, to the collapse cleansing urban centres and bringing a fresh influx of Nordic blood.
The Italians of the Republican era are genetically closest to modern day Catalans and Lombardians (South Europeans with 0-5% MidEast admixture - highEEF w/30% WSH); the Imperial era Italians in urban centres were basically mestizos, up to half Levantine, and closest to modern day Maltese, Greeks, Sicilians.
Elementary application of deduction would suggest that actually paleo-genomic factors are stronger, and the relatively large intra-European gap we see between North and South Italy can be explained by the difference in the size of the genetic legacy from the destructive migration of the Imperial period.
Love all this.
I think it's also worth discussing Civil Wars (probably plague too but lets leave that aside). The end of the Republican era was one of untold slaughter of Romans. Not just the utterly devastating wars we know of Ceaser and Octavian, but going all the way back to the Social War and the rest. In a Civil War everyone that dies is Roman. People noticed how thinned out the talent pool got by the end.
A similar process happened during the Crisis of the Third Century.
Christianity it seems to me was part of a broader attempt to solve the Civil War problem. The explosion of religions with similar characteristics around the world probably owes to this same problem amongst many other factors. How do you attain relative internal peace and continuity in a large empire that lasts longer than a single personality?
Paganism seems fine enough working at the city state level (where people know one another) and perhaps during expansionary periods there is enough loot to spread around amongst grasping pagans. But how does one settle into something at scale that lasts.
How exactly did female hypergamy have a negative impact on cognitive capacity of the population? Seems very counterintuitive to me.
It largely depends on how much that population values intelligence. Nature seems to have placed things on the hypergamy list that are fixed in placed and aren’t moving down anytime soon. Intelligence appears to be negotiable based on the what’s going on in that current environment. You then add polygyny to the mix and I absolutely see how we get cognitive decline. Here’s a current example, Vincent Harinam mentioned an anonymous survey with a substantial sample size of ten thousand female college students. They were asked if they would be a second wife to a very rich man and seventy percent of them said yes. If we can get intelligence to be fixed on that list and replace it with height or how much money a man makes then problem solved. I don’t see that happening at all;as a matter of fact, the exact opposite is happening.
Upper class men were having children with lower class women therefore were less likely to pass on their cognitive ability
According to Satoshi Kanazawa children get their general intelligence from the mother’s side of her genes. What happens is that a society becomes safer which leads to decadence and that is when it appears intelligent women just stop wanting to have kids or just so few that society can’t sustain itself. The absolutely nutty part is that under those decadent conditions is when Intelligent women are most attracted to intelligent men. Too bad that at that point they don’t want to have kids. You just have to laugh at the irony of it all.
I don't think g-factor being primarily inherited from mothers is very likely, unless the alleles associated with IQ are all dumped on the X chromosome, and I'm fairly sure that's not consistent with current GWAS findings.
I believe you just mentioned the reason Kanazawa gave for why most intelligence comes from the mother’s side. I’d have to refer back to the book. But his claims have been debated. I’ve read studies claiming that a mom has more of an influence on her son only. I’ve also read that there’s a small increase that leans toward the mom but the difference is negligible. The point is, that I don’t know so don’t debate me. I didn’t make the claim or conduct any of the studies. It appears that this debate is still going on, based off what I read. Either way we’re screwed. Here’s what’s not debatable: high IQ women have little to no kids. And it’s definitely coming from the women. High IQ men are more than willing to have kids just like any other man. So this drop in IQ that we’re currently in the middle of isn’t coming from the men choosing to not have kids.
I agree that feminism has been catastrophic from a birthrates perspective and would eventually be catastrophic from a eugenic perspective as well, but we're probably going to see a social system crash before that happens.
Also, at this point in the sexual revolution, a certain amount of retraining of men will probably be necessary if you want to restore monogamous marriage norms, though getting young men more jobs would also help.
And why should I believe you over him?
But you’re willing to debate me? That makes sense.
Children get half their intelligence from their mothers, and half from their fathers.
Take it up with Kanazawa. Have you read the book?
I'm not interested in debating every crank who write a book.
I have no fundamental reservations about GWAS studies. On the contrary, I find them highly interesting.
I also find the study by Piffer, Dutton, and Kirkegaard (2023) very interesting, but I do not think that the interpretation is justified in any way.
The sample of ancient Romans was divided into five groups and the number of individuals was
Pre-Iron Age 16
Republic 11
Imperial 48
Late Antiquity 24
Medieval 28
Contemporary 41 (page 2 mentions 33)
It is unclear how the subsamples were composed, but it is clear that they are by no means a representative sample for the period in question. On this extraordinarily weak basis, no meaningful conclusions can be drawn about cognitive development.
* * * * *
I have addressed a different aspect of this study here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/kirkegaard/p/ancient-genomics-ama-with-davide?r=29yrch&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=39283088
Yeah, I don't think the basic theory/analysis put forward by Frost here is implausible, but I would be cautious about leaping to rather large conclusions from very small and potentially unrepresentative sample-sets.
My objection refers exclusively to the study by Piffer, Dutton and Kirkegaard. Polygenetic scores are only a crude indicator of genotypic intelligence; and with such small, in no way representative, samples, the explanatory power is basically nil.
The group with the highest polygenetic score belongs to the Republican period. This subsample includes only eleven (!) individuals. In a highly stratified heterogeneous society, as found in ancient Rome, it is impossible to obtain a representative sample with only eleven individuals. The sample is also far too small for the other periods and it is unclear what they might be representative of.
I find the study very interesting, but it is in no way justified to draw such far-reaching conclusions from it. For that, the samples would have to be many times larger and it would be necessary to know what they are representative of in the first place.
Ancient Rome had about one million inhabitants. Imagine conducting intelligence tests with samples ranging in size from 11 to 48 in six cities with about one million inhabitants and making statements about the intelligence level of the population. One would rightly be laughed at.
The remaining arguments are much more substantive. Unfortunately, they are weakened by the reference to a completely unrepresentative study.
I know practically everyone who reads this magazine is likely a materialist, but I have to ask the question:
What if Christianity actually was the intervention of God in the world? What if our societies trended towards violence, warfare and genetic degeneration, and the gospel of Christ is both the answer to our practical problems over the long term, and a message from the divine of our salvation?
What if both of those are somewhat similar?
Anyway, thanks for doing this excellent research. Interesting findings even though I disagree with many of your hasty conclusions.
"By favoring monogamy and, conversely, by limiting male polygyny and female hypergamy;"
Why would this intensify selective pressure for intelligence.
Also, these scores are insane. Tell me someone has them for other groups/periods. Please,tell me you have them for Greece from Mycenaean period all the way up until late antiquity.
> Christianity failed to save the Empire and may even have hastened the eventual collapse.
It probably saved its Eastern half.
I’m all ears, but how?
It gave people an ethical system that hadn't collapsed into sophistic nihilism. Thus cutting down on generals proclaiming themselves emperor and starting civil wars.