I’ll address these questions later. For now, I’ll leave you with this article:
Got that?
So much variation. Yes, there is enormous physiological and psychological variation amongst races.
That’s what I’ve been saying isn’t it? And the author even used the word “silly”. This is the first time I have seen this article.
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There can be mixed-race people only because there are races. He also explains that disagreement about the number of races does not disprove their existence either. Different people just draw lines at different places.
Most importantly, Mr. Wade points out that ?brain genes do not lie in some special category exempt from natural selection. They are as much under evolutionary pressure as any other category of gene.? And since human evolution is ?recent and copious,? the brains of different populations function differently. This is the book?s main heresy: After the races separated, they evolved different mental patterns that gave rise to different social patterns.
Social behavior evolved
The idea that human races have been evolving right up until the present is not new. The 10,000 Year Explosion, written in 2009 by Henry Harpending and Gregory Cochran, is the best introduction to this subject, and explains why evolution has been roaring along 100 times faster during that last several thousand years than it did during the Stone Age.
Mr. Wade goes over some of the same ground, pointing out how dramatic a change it was for our ancestors to switch from nomadic hunting to settled agriculture. For the first time, something more than bare subsistence became possible. This led to trade, wealth and poverty, government, taxes, con men, priests, etc.?an evolutionary environment completely different from the African savannah. As Mr. Wade notes, new circumstances produced new people:
As soon as the mode of subsistence changes, a society will develop new institutions to exploit its environment more effectively. The individuals whose social behavior is better attuned to such institutions will prosper and leave more children.
Some old habits were no longer useful. Farmers had to think ahead and save seed corn, whereas hunters immediately gorged themselves on kills that would rot in a few days. Smash-and-grab made sense for fast-moving nomads but not for city-dwellers who had to live with neighbors. As a rule, the longer a population has been farmers, the more the hunter has been bred out of it. The last 10,000 years has therefore seen the domestication of what had been the equivalent of a wild animal.
Not all groups are equally domesticated. Tribes that have been nomads into modern times do not adapt well to settled life. The Kalahari Bushmen think of animals only as game, not as livestock, so if someone gives them goats to tend, they eat them. Australian aborigines have not adapted well, either.
The Yanomano of the Amazon are notoriously violent, not just against outsiders but among themselves. According to one anthropologist, Yanomamo men who have killed someone in battle have 2.5 more children than those who have not. The means the Yamomano are evolving towards more violence, not less.
Mr. Wade emphasizes that behavior of this kind is influenced by genes, although only a few alleles that affect social behavior have been found. One is MAO-A, the ?warrior gene,? variants of which are clearly associated with a hair-trigger temper and violence. Maoris, for example, are warlike and crime prone?and they have a high incidence of this variant.
This, in fact, is Mr. Wade?s boldest assertion: that different races behave differently because they are genetically different and genetic differences give rise to differences in social institutions. He is at pains to argue that the genetic differences are small?so small that they are almost undetectable at the individual level?but that once a group has been nudged even slightly in a particular genetic direction it may be receptive to institutions that completely change the nature of society.
Mr. Wade cites one study that estimates fully 14 percent of the human genome has been under evolutionary pressure since the races separated, and that substantial differences are therefore inevitable. DNA studies show that Tibetans split off from Han Chinese only 3,000 years ago, so it must be only since then that Sherpas evolved their ability to function so well at high altitudes. Indeed, there are more than 30 lung- and circulation-related gene variants that are more common in Tibetans than in Chinese. Mr. Wade also notes that American blacks may already be less likely than Africans to have sickle cell anemia?because they live on a continent without malaria where there are no benefits to sickle cell alleles. Evolution is constant.
Mr. Wade makes the crucial point that what is known as ?national character? is undoubtedly genetic, and that is why group behavior is consistent. Jews prosper everywhere they go. So do overseas Chinese. If the Malays and Indonesians envy the success of their Chinese minorities, why don?t they just copy their good habits? Mr. Wade argues that they can?t; they don?t have the genetic predisposition to act Chinese.
Africans likewise cannot maintain government institutions. Their colonial masters wrote nifty constitutions for them, showed them how elections work, and explained the importance of an independent judiciary. That all ended up in the ditch once Africans took over.
^^ Please read the rest of this article if you wish to discuss this seriously.