In science, as opposed to Western music, the U.S. comes into prominence. However, in Europe, classification of national origin or ethnicity still requires using language as a marker, due to the many defunct nations, principally in the old Habsburg lands and Germany. So this list will be organized slightly differently. I used the same method of including only those who scored at least 10; but in the sciences the dispersion is much less than in music, i.e. a greater fraction of all biologists than composers are considered significant.
- Germany, Austria, and German-speaking Bohemia: 35
- England: 21
- U.S.A.: 19
- France: 12
- Italy: 11
- Switzerland: 6
- Ancient Greece: 5
- The Netherlands: 4
- Russia and Ukraine: 4
- Canada: 3
- Denmark: 3
- Sweden: 3
- Ancient Rome: 1
- Belgium: 1
- Poland: 1
- Spain: 1
- Darwin: 100
- Aristotle: 94
- Lamarck: 88
- Cuvier: 83
- Morgan: 75
- Linnaeus: 59
- Harvey: 51
- Schwann: 48
- Hales: 48
- Swammerdam: 47
That Aristotle is still the second most important biologist after nearly 2,400 years is astounding; he must have been one of the greatest minds ever. Or perhaps there's another explanation, namely that he was so early in the game that it was comparatively easy for him to make discoveries. Against that, Newton said that if he saw further than others, it was because he stood on the shoulders of giants. Aristotle had no giants' shoulders on which to stand.
If it is not nature, it is nurture.
ReplyDeleteThe reason is, IMHO, that Spain and Poland were not successful lands at the time biology developed most.
Poland moved from an expansionist power to a conquered country under foreign domination. Spain have not a free, productive society for a few centuries.
Germany, Austria and Boemia, like England, France and Italy had a much more free and market oriented society. It would be interesting to look at Italy and see where, in Italy, the best biologists come from.
Call me a sceptic, but I'll bet you can be a top-flight biologist without knowing anything about the views of Aristotle or the work of Lamarck. The absence of Mendel from the list makes me guffaw. This method is Not Very Good.
ReplyDeleteMendel was ranked No. 18. On Lamarck, Murray says, after dismissing Lamarckism:
ReplyDelete"But his Systeme des Animaux sans Vertebres founded modern invertebrate zoology, the three-volume Flore Francaise classified the wild plants of France, and his work on evolution, while ultimately proved wrong, was pivotal in stimulating others' thinking. He also introduced the very term "biology"."
As for the views of Aristotle, all scientists become superseded eventually, and one just doesn't have to know about the famous scientists or their findings.
In other words, you say "this method is Not Very Good" because it clashes with your prejudices. The whole point of Murray's book was to catalog human achievement in the arts and sciences as objectively as possible.
ReplyDeleteThe difference is IQ, not at the mean, but in the distribution. La Griffe calculates Germany's smart fraction as 41%, the same as Italy, Holland and Austria. France and the UK are slightly lower. However, the German population, historically, was much larger, thus in sheer numbers a greater smart fraction.
ReplyDeleteIf the English speaking world is combined, the total is larger than the German speakers. If the total is Germanic/Nordic peoples, they virtually sweep the board.
"However, the German population, historically, was much larger, thus in sheer numbers a greater smart fraction."
ReplyDeleteNo, it wasn't. This came about only during the 19th Century and early 20th Century. 1/5 of Europe's population in the 17th Century was French and even as late as 1800 there were approximately 30 million French against 25 million Germans. For complex reasons, the French population stagnated earlier than that of the rest of Europe, which is one of the main reasons for the huge shifts of power between Napoleon and Hitler.
“[I]f that committee in Stockholm, which has the unenviable task each year of pointing out the most creative scientists, had the liberty of giving awards posthumously, I think they should consider Aristotle for the discovery of the principle implied in DNA.”
ReplyDeleteMax Delbrück, “Aristotle —Totle—Totle”, in Of Microbes and Life, ed. J. Monod & E. Borek (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1971), p.54-5.
OK, accepting the population numbers, Germany still has a higher mean IQ and thus smart fraction (assuming consistency). 102/98 and 41/31 percent according to La Griffe. The right hand tail of the German bell curve is larger.
ReplyDeleteCiao, Dennis. I'm happy to see that you like Murray's book. So do I. As you, I consider it for the most part to be a very good book, which does not mean that it is flawless. All of the individuals who are mentioned are indeed major figures, although the ranking between them can be debated. I, too, believe Mendel deserves a higher ranking in biology.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to non-Western figures in the sciences, he does list the most important ones. I believe the most serious omission is the Japanese mathematician Seki Takakazu, and I don't recall whether he mentioned Shen Kuo. I have to read Human Accomplishment one more time, probably.
Regarding the Germans, this is an intriguing question. I am quite convinced that IQ is an important variable and I have seen several rankings listing the Germans as having the highest average IQ in Europe. Nevertheless, IQ does not explain everything. No single factor ever does. For instance, it does not explain why Europeans and people of European origins outperformed East Asians by such a wide margin, despite the fact that the latter match us in average IQ.
It is interesting that very roughly speaking, IQ increases the further north you get. This means that Europe as a whole has higher IQ than the Middle East, and much higher than tropical Africa. However, there are also minor differences within Europe, and not necessarily statistically insignificant ones. Europeans north of the Alps have slightly higher IQs than those in southern Europe. It is possible to argue that the Swedes and Dutch have outperformed some of the Balkan peoples because of this. The Italians are often listed as having the highest mean IQ in southern Europe, which is consistent with the fact that Italians make up the southern European nation that ranks the highest in modern human accomplishment. The greatest riddle are the Greeks, who in ancient times could produce great geniuses such as Aristotle, Archimedes and Hipparchus, but today have one of the lowest IQs on the European continent.
The fact that average IQ seems to increase the further north you get is consistent with the "cold weather" hypothesis for the evolution of human intelligence in prehistoric times championed by Micheal Hart in Understanding Human History, which I have commented upon previously.
Dennis,
ReplyDeleteScientists specialize to some field and thus often select their view narrowly, which causes lack of background. They often grab quantities so exclusively, that the necessary written and/ or visual explanations are inadequate.
This keeps the reductionism debate running.
IQ (60-80% of variations genetic), culture (partly genetic, less than IQ and allows more social construction), number of people to some extent and societal complexity produces these.
Small, structurally less complexly organized and peripheral countries don't produce these much or at all, even if they have the intellectual capability to do it in relation to the size of the people. The said small countries solve different set of questions, on average more practical questions. Symphony orchestra is a specialized luxury. There was no symphony orchestras much before Sibelius' time in Finland and there weren't many then or now and in smaller Estonia they came later. Inventions like steam engine and sewing machine are inventions compelled by the necessities of big, work-differentiated, hierarchical and complex cities. Engineering is an everyday necessity in small countries, but astrophysics, physics etc. are more redundant.
Germany is situated in the middle of Europe, so almost all the knowledgeable men or their ideas, capitals, inventions, wares, services etc. go through it and to it.
Germany has to compete more economically with it's neighbours than peripheral countries.
I wrote earlier:
1. What is the proportion of liberalism and traditional conservatism in society? Liberalism commercializes (business, market), bureaucratizes and
directs to ngo's everything that is in humans; needs, normal, abnormal security, sex, food, entertainment, transportation, creativity, artistic expression, all kinds of foreigners, strangers etc. The “good” part in this is that it generates a lot of commerce and clientilism, thus support jobs, but it degenerates, overtaxes, creates exogamy, depletes, atomizes and eventually destroys society. Traditional conservatism supports more austere and dynamic work and public morality, protects Europeans/natives and gives society endurance, but when less of what is in humans is commercialized and clientilized, it produces less consumption in the home market. Thus society would have to export more or it would have to settle for slightly less materia and services (This is the price of society’s endurance).
Continued ...
Part 2.
ReplyDelete2. System complexity. Large cities are complex systems, that require or spawn large numbers of specialized experts; water purification chemists, sewage system engineers, modern art producers, art critics, air ventilation experts for large buildings, tolerance bureaucrats, pet physicians etc. Existence of complexity in itself creates pressure towards liberalism. Also, because in big cities large numbers of strangers constantly meet and interact with each other, management of it creates pressure towards tolerance and liberalism (to ensure the productive uninterrupted flow of
people, things, services and capital). In little towns systems are less complex, so less specialists are needed. E.g. compost outhouse toilet might be enough and modern art critics are a rarity. Small towns are also more independent of outside systems. Their inhabitants can more easily produce their own food, energy, housing etc. than big city residents. Unemployment is less threatening. In small towns often similar people who know each other meet in peaceful pace. Thus there is no need for nor pressure towards tolerance for strangers and liberalism. Conservative morality works well. The structure of areas decide much of their cultural content or pressure towards certain cultural content.
IQ test give direction, but the problem with them is the possible lack of motivation, so it is better to look at school results and competitive tests, like Pisa and Timms.
I, my classmates and others in my school destroyed an IQ test, i.e. answered only part of the questions quickly and in fumbling way, and went to lunch, when we heard that it doesn't affect school numbers.
Steve Sailer writes about the effects of motivation to test results in his latest article:
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/100106_climate_gate.htm
We could think humans as temporary genetic waves produced by their ethnic-cultural sea. The sea, if it is maintained, will produce among other things high IQ's in the future. Too much is talked about high IQ people and too little about maintaining the genetic-cultural seas that produced them.
Dennis or Fjordman,
ReplyDeleteNot that it changes the general point, but how high will Sweden climb in the list for Chemistry?
So why Germans at the top? Well Germanic people has always been the very motor of Western civilization, and the Germans are the the most populous as well as typical Germanic country in Europe. And looking at the US it doesn't change the picture considering the very high German ancestry there. Th share of Germans is even higher in the USA than in Europe.
The Germans were all over Eastern Europe with their colonies and cultural influence until Stalin's purge of them after WWII. And in the West, Germanic people were virtually everywhere: Britain, France, USA, Australia, Canada, etc.
More accurately: 1. What is the proportion of liberalism and traditional conservatism in society? Liberalism commercializes (business, market), bureaucratizes and
ReplyDeletedirects to ngo's everything that is in humans (literally or metaphorically as loci of profit/ bureaucratic/ organizational utilization); needs, normal, abnormal, security, sex, food, entertainment, transportation, creativity, artistic expression, all kinds of foreigners, strangers etc.
Conservative Swede: The nations that had the biggest impact on the development of chemistry were the usual suspects: France, Germany and Britain, followed by the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, Russia, Switzerland, Belgium etc. However, if you look at per capita contributions you could claim that Swedes did more per person to develop modern chemistry than any other nation on Earth. The average person would be familiar with Alfred Nobel because he invented dynamite and established the Nobel Prizes, and he does receive a very high ranking in the Technology index. However, by far the most scientifically important Swedish chemist was Jöns Jacob Berzelius, who also receives by far the highest ranking of any Scandinavian in the Combined Sciences index by Murray. I suspect that the Swedish scientist closest to him in importance would be Linnaeus. Sweden does well in chemistry and biology and to a lesser extent in astronomy, technology, physics and medicine.
ReplyDeleteDenmark does well in astronomy and astrophysics, with individuals such as Tycho Brahe (born in southern Sweden), Ole Rømer and Ejnar Hertzsprung. The only science category where Norway performs best among the Nordic nations is mathematics, with Niels Henrik Abel receiving by far the highest ranking. If I recall correctly, number two on the list is also Norwegian, Sophus Lie. Both are correct, in my view. Henrik Ibsen is ranked highest from the Nordic countries in Western Literature, followed by August Strindberg from Sweden and Hans Christian Andersen from Denmark. Edvard Munch is ranked highest in Western Art and Edvard Grieg in Western Music, only rivaled by Jean Sibelius.
I don't think there is much of an IQ difference between the Nordic peoples. If Denmark and (southern) Sweden rank highest in the sciences I suspect this has partly to do with population density and different levels of urbanization; you don't just need a few smart people sitting on separate mountain tops, you need a cluster of smart people to create innovation. Finland would probably receive a higher ranking now with Nokia and telecommunications, Linus Torvalds and Linux etc.
The Germans would be in top 3 in almost any science and art one could think of. Only ancient Greece and perhaps Italy of the Renaissance can compete with the Germans regarding the contribution to the Western civilization.
ReplyDeleteI think that one explanation, besides the high IQ, is what I would call a "culture of the genius": a tradition to recognize and emulate the talents and merits of the exceptional man. No surprise that the most important counter-reaction to the egalitarian Enlightment - Romanticism - was a product of German thinking.
This is also the reason why the Germans are so hated by the new world order (Nazism is only a pretext): the German thinkers used to be the most eloquent critics of the egalitarian, democratic paradigm, the tyranny of the mediocre. The so-called process of "de-Nazification" was a pretext to make the Germans throw up all this tradition of thinking.
@dearime - according to (for example) Science as a process, by David L Hull - Mendel did not actually influence the course of science by his discovery, or at least only slightly. Genetics was rediscovered around 1900 (without knowledge of Mendel's work) by about 3 separate groups, and they colluded to prevent a priority dispute by agreeing to promote Mendel as their precursor. This was an unusual thing in the history of science.
ReplyDeleteSo the counter-factual situation where Mendel did not exist would still have genetics discovered at about 1900, but maybe marked by an ugly priority dispute.
It is likely that the German contribution to intellectual life generally (including biology) was related to its many universities - which were much more highly professionalized than those elsewhere, and were sufficiently numerous to compete with one another and allow both students and Professors to develop careers by moving between them.
In their days, Halle, Jena, Heidelberg, Goettingen and Berlin were arguably the premier European universities (perhaps Edinburgh was their only rival?).
So 'Germany' (i.e. the pre-unification Germanic states and cities including Austria, probably Switzerland, parts of Czech and Hungary etc) had a great advantage in working on systematic and cumulative disciplines.
For instance, it does not explain why Europeans and people of European origins outperformed East Asians by such a wide margin, despite the fact that the latter match us in average IQ.
ReplyDeleteIt does, in fact, explain the difference according to La Griffe. In the analysis of Why Asians lag shows a very strong correlation between verbal IQ and NE Asian per capita GDP variance despite a higher mean IQ.
No Scottish, Welsh or Irish biologists to boot?
ReplyDeleteArmance: You make several good points. The twin Enlightenment nations, the United States and France, are currently at the forefront of Western (read: European) demographic suicide. The German-speaking lands are pretty bad, too, as are virtually all Western nations these days, but slightly less bad by comparison. Notice that the only people in Switzerland who voted against the minaret ban in the fall of 2009 were the French-speaking cantons, and the only real resistance to Islamization in Belgium is found in Flemish-speaking Flanders. Maybe there is something about the French language that makes you want to kill yourself?
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I have noticed that many Americans claim that there are no similarities whatsoever between the American and the French Revolutions of the late eighteenth century. I agree with Conservative Swede that there are differences, but also more similarities than many Americans care to admit. For one thing, there were people who actively participated in both revolutions. Thomas Paine springs to mind.
It is true that there was no Terror in the USA as there was in France, and no dictator a la Napoleon afterward. Every thinking person would prefer Thomas Jefferson to Maximilien Robespierre, just like every thinking person would prefer John Locke to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. However, just like seriously flawed men can occasionally do something good, good men can also inadvertently contribute to something bad.
John Locke's "blank slate" concept can under certain conditions be not only false but patently dangerous, especially when combined with the idea that all human beings are born with equal natural abilities. Thomas Jefferson was the primary writer of the American Declaration of Independence from 1776, which states that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...."
The problem is that this simply isn't true. As all Western school children are currently taught, the American Founding Fathers were slave owners who apparently did not believe in this statement literally. Yet if you read the American Declaration of Independence as it is, without qualification, then it is a lie, and a huge one at that. This was already present in the founding document of the United States.
Perhaps the simplest explanation for why the USA is currently dying is because it was founded on a lie.
Conservative Swede asked about Swedes in chemistry. Out of 63 figures (those with point scores 10 or above), 5 are Swedish: Arrhenius, Bergmann, Berzelius, Scheele, and Svedberg. Based on this, Sweden's rank would rise substantially. Even more amazing considering Sweden's small population.
ReplyDeleteNobel didn't make the list with a point score of 1.
I would put Louis Pasteur at the top of the list.
ReplyDeleteThe complete omission of Pasteur is egregious.
It could be argued that his discoveries and inventions have improved the human condition more than those of anyone who has ever lived.
silly girl: Murray lists Pasteur in the Medicine category, where he is number one.
ReplyDeleteAdmittedly, assigning to categories can be somewhat arbitrary. Pasteur was not a physician, but a microbiologist, but most of his research was directed toward medicine.
Fjordman,
ReplyDeleteOne of the reasons why the modern Greeks have such a different level of achievement from classical Greek civilization is that they are not the same peoples.
If you accept the ancient European king lists and what the ancient Europeans say about themselves, you will discover that many claim descent from the refugees of Troy and Thracia, both of which would be considered part of classical Greek civilization. Many refugees after the Trojan war fled north to the Ukraine and then migrated West to Germany and Sweden.
As an illustration, Tacitus' description of the Germans in the 1st century AD sounds very similar to Xenophanes' description of the Trojan allies and neighbors, the Thracians, 5 centuries earlier.
Tacitus (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/tacitus1.html):
For my own part, I agree with those who think that the tribes of Germany are free from all taint of intermarriages with foreign nations, and that they appear as a distinct, unmixed race, like none but themselves. Hence, too, the same physical peculiarities throughout so vast a population. All have fierce blue eyes, red hair, huge frames, fit only for a sudden exertion.
Xenophanes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thracians#cite_note-43):
Men make gods in their own image; those of the Ethiopians are black and snub-nosed, those of the Thracians have blue eyes and red hair.
It could be that when the Classical Greeks were joined first to the multi-ethnic/multi-cultural Alexanderan Empire and then later the multi-ethnic/multi-cultural Roman Empire their original genetic endowment became diluted; whereas the isolated Trojan War refugees maintained their genetic lines in the European hinterlands and went on to become the still high-achieving modern Germanic peoples.
Moreover, the original, high-achieving, Roman people also claimed descent from the Trojan refugees. But, the original Roman stock also became diluted as they conquered and inter-mixed with their neighbors in the comfortable Mediterranean climate.
This whole idea of Germans being some old, pure race and the others getting diluted is silly and not really backed up by either genetics or common sense. Don't overlook huge evolutionary swings just over the last 2500 years, for one. The Jews of ~0 were nothing special cognitively, but by the 19th Century had become world beaters. The Vikings were ruthless barbarians (yes, I know, not just that) in 900 AD but the world's most pacifist people by around the year 2000.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, the people of the future will be shaped by the environment of today. They will likely be more domesticated but also dumber, as society is not currently selecting for intelligence, but is still selecting away from violence. But of course anything from a return of eugenics to a few decades of collapse in the wake of a nuclear war or other collapse could, and probably will radically change the selective forces.
KingM: You're contradiction yourself. On the one hand you claim that we may well be approaching decades of severe political and economic turbulence, which I agree with. On the other hand you claim that we will continue to be "selecting away from violence." Both cannot be true at the same time. If we are approaching a discontinuity in Western history then we will probably witness selection pressures in favor of ethnocentric warrior creeds.
ReplyDeleteEuropeans, and arguably people from the Germanic-speaking regions of northwestern Europe in particular, have for centuries been among the least ethnocentric people on Earth, which is why we invented archaeology, comparative linguistics etc. I don't think any single factor ever explains everything, not even genes or IQ, but if we assume that Europeans, and Germanic Europeans in particular, have a genetic profile which favors altruism then we will probably be facing a bottleneck in the coming generations where only those whites capable of carving out a land exclusively for them and expelling intruders will survive and pass on their genes.
Perhaps the simplest explanation for why the USA is currently dying is because it was founded on a lie.
ReplyDeleteIf so why was it alive and well, and landing men on the moon in 1969?
Your comment about "people getting dumber" is interesting, though. For hundreds of thousands of years, early humans became more intelligent very, very slowly due to evolutionary pressures as average IQ rose, probably more in colder regions than in tropical ones. What we have witnessed during the past century is the unprecedented situation where the global human population has exploded, but mainly in dysfunctional Third World countries. If high-IQ countries such as Germany and Japan have stagnating populations and low-IQ countries such as Nigeria and the Yemen have booming populations, does that not mean that the global average IQ is declining? It probably does. What kind of effect will this have on world civilization? This question is perhaps the greatest possible taboo that exists in the modern West, but in my view it needs to be asked.
ReplyDeleteHave we arrived at the unprecedented situation of "survival of the least fit"? I suspect that this question stems from a misunderstanding of the theory of evolution. The most "fit" are the ones who successfully pass on their genes. End of story. Survival of the fittest is first and foremost survival of the survivors. If we don't survive then we are by definition not the most fit. Around WW1, people of European origins made up at least a third of the world's population. Now we're soon down to single digits and still falling. This is rapidly turning into a question of survival.
Personally, I am quite confident that whites possess the necessary genetic skills and intelligence to survive the coming bottleneck, but it is possible that whites in the future will come from fewer bloodlines than we do today. We should remember that most of the population growth in the Third World has been caused and sustained by the global impact of Western technology. When the West is no longer willing or able to carry these countries on our backs then many of them will simply implode. I am not sure that the global population will be ten billion or more at the end of this century. It may well be substantially lower than it is today when all is said and done.
"why was it alive and well, and landing men on the moon in 1969?"
ReplyDeleteBecause in the 1960s you were still an overwhelmingly European nation, and this is no longer true. The United States is not a "universal" nation. There is no such thing. The USA was founded and shaped primarily by people from northwestern Europe, especially the British. Other settlers from northwestern Europe were genetically and culturally closely related to the British and could seamlessly be absorbed. It became a little trickier with immigrants from certain other parts of Europe, for instance Sicily. Europe is a big place after all. However, it worked for the most part as long as the settlers were other Europeans since Europeans had many things in common to begin with. In contrast, Africans have lived in the Americas for centuries and are still not fully integrated there. This strongly indicates that culture has a powerful genetic component. Even Ethiopian Jews are not integrated in Israel, probably because their genetic profile is too different.
Western civilization is European civilization. When you lose the European majority you are no longer a Western country. Obama marks the transition of the USA from a Western to a non-Western country. It is precisely for this reason that he is hailed by all those who wish to see the death of traditional white Americans, and of white Westerners in general.
Fjordman,
ReplyDeleteMost countries are experiencing the demographic dividend of the demographic transition right now: from high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates. Most countries have lowered their death rates, indeed through 1) Western medicine, vaccination and health care and 2) agricultural efficiency. The Third World is now a unique situation with high birth rates and low death rates. We used to have that in the West too, during the late 19th century.
And indeed birth rates are falling around the world right now. There will simply never be a situation where the least fit procreate endlessly. The population explosions around the world all reflect the progress of modernizations of the societies. But, as we Westerners now know, modernization is a two-edged sword. First, it helps population growth, then, it turns against those who have low time preference.
I don't usually comment, but I hope Mr. Mangan won't mind my interjection into this very interesting conversation.
ReplyDeleteFjordman wrote,
"Yet if you read the American Declaration of Independence as it is, without qualification, then it is a lie, and a huge one at that. This was already present in the founding document of the United States.
Perhaps the simplest explanation for why the USA is currently dying is because it was founded on a lie."
Ouch.
The ironic thing is that the Leftist History professors who have instructed me agree with Fjordman's interpretation of the Constitution. And it's one of the few times that I actually agree with them too. As Jim Kalb has said, "Ideas have consequences," even consequences which their progenitors might not have conceived, such as racial egalitarianism for instance. The Founders did not really mean that all men were equal: they meant that they themselves were equal to the King of England. I think they were conflicted about lower white men, but ultimately, they probably meant for equality of the social ladder to stop at their feet. Just consider the logic of the Electoral College. Unfortunately, however, that's not what they wrote. They established instead an egalitarian creed which successive generations of "radicals" have slowly but surely pushed to its logical conclusion.
As I implied at the beginning of this comment, I do wonder if your evaluation is unjustly injurious to Americans. You say the USA was founded on a lie. If you mean by "USA" the state, then I would say you might have an argument. If you mean, however, by "USA" the people, then I would say you are wrong. Before our independence, we were already a people which had become distinct (but closely related, of course) from the Mother Country since at least the days of Salutary Neglect. The politics might have been shaky, but the people itself was of course real.
Bartholomew: The USA worked well as long as it was understood by everybody that it was an extension of European civilization, only with greater social mobility. However, the seeds of your demise were sown already with the radical egalitarianism implicit in the American Declaration of Independence. This radical egalitarianism was contained for a long time, but was finally realized during the 1960s. The original sin of the USA, in addition to the adoption of unworkable Enlightenment ideas, was the importation of African slaves. This mistake eventually forced you to realize the radical egalitarianism enshrined in your founding document, which was followed to its logical conclusion with the opening of mass immigration by other non-Europeans. When people write the epitaph of the USA they will say that it was a good idea that was killed by radical egalitarianism and the addiction to import of cheap non-Western laborers, who remained and slowly destroyed the country from within.
ReplyDeleteThe United States today is the Diversity Empire, which upholds harmful ideas at home and exports them abroad, especially to Europe. I distinctly recall how US General Wesley Clark bragged that the NATO bombing of Christian Serbs on behalf of Muslims in 1999 was undertaken in order to enforce "diversity." Multiculturalism and genetic Communism is the American Imperial ideology, just like economic Communism was in the Soviet Union. I absolutely hate the European Union, which embodies a radical egalitarianism that stems the French Enlightenment, but even the EU is a secondary force compared to the USA. The idea of mass immigration of non-Europeans did not come from the Communist countries. It came from the USA. Which leads us to a provocative question: Economic Communism collapsed, at least temporarily, when the core state of the Communist bloc imploded, namely the Soviet Union. If we assume that the USA is the core state of the Multicultural bloc, exporting its Imperial ideology, does that mean that the core state, in this case the USA, needs to implode before the other countries can be liberated from the Multicultural madness?
Now there's something to think about.
Fjordman,
ReplyDeleteJust jumped in; sorry if someone has already covered this point. Please note that the ranking of European IQs is by no means unanimous. There is unanimity as to the Germans’ being the highest, but after that there are considerable divergences. Consider Richard Lynn’s recent rankings, per mean:
Germany and Netherlands par: 107
Poland 106
Sweden 104
The rest here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zugMl3qvKI
Another area of importance is comparative standard deviation. The larger the standard deviation the greater the extremes of the population. Japan’s mean IQ compares to the highest in Europe, but it has a smaller standard deviation (I believe 12.5). Whites’ IQ SD is presumed to be 15. I believe that the ethnic intra-white SD differences have not been studied sufficiently.
To make a long story short, it’s the SD difference that makes a country like Japan or Taiwan such a good breeding ground for engineers and such a poor one for Leonardos and Lavoisiers
Takuan Seiyo: I have seen the claim of a larger standard deviation for whites than for East Asians referred to many places and have quoted it myself, but I must say that while it remains plausible I haven't seen conclusive proof that this claim is true.
ReplyDeleteThe Germans usually come out on top, followed by the Dutch, the Swedes and others, with the Balkan peoples having the lowest average IQ in Europe. However, some of the details in between vary considerably. One ranking referred to in the London Times in 2006 listed the Germans and the Dutch as having an IQ that was 13 points higher than the French. I just don't buy that.
Notice BTW that you can state even in the respectable London Times that the Germans have higher IQ than the French. However, if you state that the Germans have higher IQ than Arabs then you've suddenly become a crypto-Nazi. We shouldn't have to put up with this kid of totalitarian anti-scientific nonsense.
Fjordman,
ReplyDeleteArthur Jensen wrote in the G Factor that the SD of blacks is 11 - 12.The SD of Northeast Asians is mentioned in many writings --but not by prime authorities--as 12.5. I asked La Griffe about it and he said 12.5. There is interessting work being done by Jason Richwine on the link between IQ and Immigration, summarized here:
http://whiteamerica.us/index.php/blog/blog/jason_richwine_on_iq_immigration_and_social_capital/
One ranking referred to in the London Times in 2006 listed the Germans and the Dutch as having an IQ that was 13 points higher than the French. I just don't buy that.
ReplyDeleteFjordman, take into account that almost 10% of the French population is now non-European, particularly of African origin - perhaps the highest percentage in Western Europe. I think this is also an explanation regarding the difference in IQ between the European and American Ashkenazi Jews and the Israelis (115 versus 94): in Israel they include also the Arab minority (20% of the population).
Takuan Seiyo,
ReplyDeleteLet me start by saying that I am ingroup biased, which means that I am more honest than people on average. The normal method is to hide the bias under something that sounds as much as possible neutral, objective or universal. Then interactions between people become strategic actions, i.e., manipulation of one sort or another. With certain honesty stability in relations is easier to achieve, when the positions have to be arbitrated to a more solid foundation. That said, I try to get the facts right.
In internet forums we have an increasing phenomenom of travelling people, who pop up and throw their rigid statistics and rankings which are supposed to answer the questions. You say that the rankings are not unanimous, which indirectly gives "more" objectivity to you, thus credibility and thus indirectly more feeling of credibility to what you present (psychological effect).
IQ is a complex thing involving multiple factors. The least the rankings could do is to present a plus minus uncertainty and the lack of it is revealing.
The method of Lynn is to take unquestioningly all the IQ tests he can get his hands on. They are radically variable; number of tests varies between countries; ages differ; there is no knowledge of how representative the tests are in relation to the general population; there is no method to ensure or control the motivation of test takers; tests are highly variable (even if they sometimes try to extract the g-loaded questions apart); tests have been done in times that vary somewhat under hundred years; etc.
Even with "doctoring" there have been embarassing movements in results that were so confidently presented before.
Breathing Finnishness everyday, I know the situation in Finland the best, so it is probably natural to deal with it. Although Finn-Swedes are mixed and many of them have Finnish origins, we could expect them to be somewhere in the middle between Finns and Swedes in their IQ. As the most important expression of intelligence is the school results, where motivation is the highest and which are the practical expression of it, we could, according to Lynn's results, expect that Finn-Swedes have the highest school results in Finland, right? Well, no, it is the total opposite, Finns invariably have every year better school results, despite the fact that their schools are on average more beset with immigrants. This same result have been confirmed in every Pisa test.
We Finns are practical people and IQ tests are in reality useless and without proper competitive motivation. It is not hard to see the lack of motivation in them.
Pisa Raportti 2003 (Kupari, Välijärvi, Linnakylä, Reinikainen et. al. 2003) Pisa 2003 results from Pisa Report 2003 (points); :
ReplyDeleteReading: Finns 543; Finn Swedes 530
Natural sciences: Finns 548; Finn Swedes 524
Problem solving: Finns 548; Finn Swedes 533
Pisa test is said to be an equivalent to IQ test. It is very representative of the general population because of selection methods and large numbers of participants. 5 796 Finns participated n 2003. Competitiveness in it ensures motivation. The tests are in every way as homogenous between nations as possible and the procedures in test taking are carefully controlled.
5 796 Finns participated in 2003.
ReplyDeleteMy dear Finn,
ReplyDeleteThe issue of IQ seems to raise your goat to the point of irascibility, as it does for so many others. The veiled insinuations in your first two paragraphs leave me baffled, so I can't comment on that, but I heartily agree with you that IQ is not everything.
In fact I am the living proof of it for I am a Central European married into a Japanese family of physicists and mathematicians. Any one of them can beat me at chess in 3 minutes flat, and their brains seem to work at double the speed of mine in IQ test-like situations.
But that is hardware. When it comes to software, there is no comparison. Mine is far deeper and wider and therefore the results of the thinking process in real life situations tend to be as good as theirs, if not better.
At any rate, I am not an IQ expert and for that reason I read the experts. And mean IQ is widely held by experts --except those with altered mental chips due to the anathema of fraudulently defined "racism"-- to be a good predictor of group traits ranging from odds of material success in life to sociability, to ability of maintaining a viable democracy, to inclination of obeying the law, even to predictive probability of physical health (see Satoshi Kanazawa).
There are of course several other factors, from motivation, to value system, to family influence etc. None of this invalidates the utilitarian value of IQ testing, however relative and imperfect.
Takuan Seiyo: "But that is hardware. When it comes to software, ..."
ReplyDelete- I sense an implicit reference to software in Finn - Finn Swede situation.
Our school system is extremely homogenous and centrally state controlled. There is only a couple of special schools to high IQ people and their speciality is often only to offer more courses or slightly different courses to study. We could almost say that Finland lacks special schools. These special schools are utilized homogenously by Finns and Finn Swedes. Also the practical culture between Finns - Finn Swedes is extremely similar, e.g., when meeting new people every subtle thing is so similar that it is not possible to tell who is Finn and who is Finn Swede. The differences in a couple of festivities and diet in some parts of Finland doesn't amount to much, except maybe giving slight health advantages to coastal Finn Swedes (more oily fish, less salt, less butter and less read meat).
Software can't explain the school result and Pisa differences between Finns and Finn Swedes.
Also, Pisa (in it's purpose) is not a test that assesses the ability to reproduce what has been memorized. It tests problem solving in unique tasks, with no ready made formula for them, i.e. it tests IQ. The tasks become gradually more difficult. The first tasks test memorized things, and the last tasks the most difficult problem solving. This enables the test to gradually discern IQ.
ReplyDelete"If so why was it alive and well, and landing men on the moon in 1969?" They had German von Braun.
ReplyDeleteArmance said:
ReplyDelete"the German thinkers used to be the most eloquent critics of the egalitarian, democratic paradigm, the tyranny of the mediocre."
Just so. For a faint, contemporary echo of this tradition, in a Christian, monarchical context, see:
http://www.monarchieliga.de/
Re: Nordics
ReplyDeleteFinn, I don’t believe that you get my main point here. With something as complex as IQ, and with tens of thousands of studies not always controlling the same variables, no “official” IQ tables are sufficient to determine whether the Swedes are above the Finns, or the (white) Italians above the (white) French. Differences of a few points are not important either, nor should serve to inspire ethnic pride. Recall the statistician who drowned in a lake with an average depth of 20 cm.
IQ measures are useful for the broad strokes, not the fine ones. Say that I am the Minister of Immigration of Ruritania, and my country has an opening for 100 immigrants. We have 100 Swedish applicants and 100 Finns. Which ones do we let in based on utilitarian considerations?
IQ studies do not provide an answer for that.
But suppose we have 100 Nordic applicants and 100 sub-Saharan ones. Which ones do we let in? IQ measures are a sterling aid in this decision, and a ruling elite that shies from its “racist” implications is bringing doom to its country.
"Say that I am the Minister of Immigration of Ruritania...Which ones do we let in based on utilitarian considerations?"
ReplyDeleteNeither. Ruritania is for Ruritanians. Isn't this the Israeli model?
It's not an assessment of who is above or not. It's a measure of human accomplishment. However, to deny supremacy in some facets of endeavor (is the polar bear or panda bear supreme on the ice?) is to deny evolution.
Finland is not a good place for Swedes to be anymore. Most of the Finland-Swedes have left Finland. Higher education, creativity etc. make people more movable. So it's quite expected that the ones remaining are the ones with lower IQ.
ReplyDeleteBefore Sweden lost Finland to Russia the share of Finland-Swedes were 15%, now it's down to 5% and persistently sinking.
And thanks Fjordman and Dennis for your answers! Very interesting. I sort of wanted to squeeze in Anders Celsius in there too, but he was of course not a chemist.
Of the two men who first walked on the moon, Buzz Aldrin is part Swede and Neil Armstrong is 3/4 German.
ReplyDeleteThe IQ talk, while fun and all, isn't really helpful. No one knows what Darwin's IQ was, or probably anyone else's on the big list for that matter.
ReplyDeleteFjordman said: "The greatest riddle are the Greeks, who in ancient times could produce great geniuses such as Aristotle, Archimedes and Hipparchus, but today have one of the lowest IQs on the European continent."
ReplyDeleteNot really a riddle. The Greeks today are just not the same people (for instance don't have the same frequencies of whatever genes result in high IQ) than the Ancient Greeks.
They've either experienced: 1) replacement by other populations, or 2) enough changes in their own gene pool (through genetic drift or, perhaps, inbreeding or some other dysgenic practice) over the last couple millennia to make them a different people -- or a combination of both.
Gene pools just don't stay the same forever.
Takuan Seiyo: In fact I am the living proof of it for I am a Central European married into a Japanese family of physicists and mathematicians. Any one of them can beat me at chess in 3 minutes flat, and their brains seem to work at double the speed of mine in IQ test-like situations. But that is hardware. When it comes to software, there is no comparison. Mine is far deeper and wider and therefore the results of the thinking process in real life situations tend to be as good as theirs, if not better.
ReplyDeleteThat's a really neat description of, I think, differences in aspects of IQ.
I know IQ measures g and all that; but individuals and groups do differ in which aspects of IQ they are stronger/weaker.
TS, your Japanese in-laws are obviously, like the average Japanese person, stronger in the spatial/three-dimensional aspects of IQ, while you sound as though you're stronger on the linguistic side, which makes sense since you are (I believe) at least partly Ashkenazi Jewish. That the linguistic side of IQ is your strength is very apparent in your writings, which are always a delight to read I might add!
Fjordman said: "Thomas Jefferson was the primary writer of the American Declaration of Independence from 1776, which states that 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal....'
ReplyDelete"The problem is that this simply isn't true. As all Western school children are currently taught, the American Founding Fathers were slave owners who apparently did not believe in this statement literally. Yet if you read the American Declaration of Independence as it is, without qualification, then it is a lie, and a huge one at that. This was already present in the founding document of the United States.
"Perhaps the simplest explanation for why the USA is currently dying is because it was founded on a lie."
Like Bartholomew said, our Founding Fathers most likely did not mean or believe that all men are created equal. They certainly didn't give all men the right to vote at the time, so they must not have believed all men were equal.
Modern day liberals are the ones that have twisted what Jefferson wrote to make it seem like that's what the Founding Fathers meant.
What Jefferson wrote was:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
In other words, all men are the same in that God created all of them with "certain inalienable rights", i.e. life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. NOT that God created them all the same with all the same abilities, etc., etc.; just that they all have those same rights. (Whether or not that is so is a matter of debate, of course.)
The U.S. is dying because Americans today -- many of whom are not, as you point out, of European stock -- have ignored the Founding Fathers' principles.
Hey! Where are all the Irish on your list?! Or women for that matter?!?!
ReplyDelete[Just kidding. ;-)]
Conservative Swede,
ReplyDeleteWhat's the source of your information on Finland-Swedes and the causes of the decline of their share of Finland's population? The total number of Finland-Swedes (or perhaps more precisely, "Swedish-speaking Finns", more on this later) rose rather steadily until 1940 when it reached its peak at 354,000 people. In 2008, there were a total of 290,000 Finland-Swedes.
Also, you're not taking into account that Finns too have migrated abroad in great numbers.
Eileen: What the Founding Fathers thought and what they actually wrote are two very different things. As it reads, without qualification, the American Declaration of Independence is a lie.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious as to your background. You sounded like you could be Irish from what you wrote once before. Are you a self-hating Irishwoman? If so, I'm sure we could arrange a cage fight between you and Dymphna over at the Gates of Vienna. Could be fun.
Eileen, my guess is the Irish aren't on the list because they were too busy producing all the great English literature.
ReplyDeleteWhat's your premise?
Pat
Fjordman said: I'm curious as to your background. You sounded like you could be Irish from what you wrote once before. Are you a self-hating Irishwoman? If so, I'm sure we could arrange a cage fight between you and Dymphna over at the Gates of Vienna. Could be fun.
ReplyDeleteHeh. :-P I'm Irish-American, but don't hold that against me. ;-)
Seriously. I'm not self-hating at all. I'm just able to accept that the Irish have a lower average IQ than, for instance, Germanic peoples -- and what IQ we've got is probably stronger on the linguistic side (that's why we've been producing all the great English lit, m4monologue -- although a helluva lot of those "Irish" were actually Anglo-Irish). So it's no surprise that we haven't produced any Great Scientists. That's ok. I still love my peeps. :-)
Similarly, I'm quite content to accept that the vast majority of women are not going to be Great Scientists either. Doesn't mean I hate my sex, either.
Fjordman said: As it reads, without qualification, the American Declaration of Independence is a lie.
I disagree. Well, in fact, I think you are wrong in this. One needs to read the Declaration of Independence with an ear for 18th century English, not how it's written/spoken today. It's very clear that Jefferson did not mean "all men are created equal." He meant "all men are created equal in that they are endowed with such-and-such inalienable rights." All those phrases belong together -- one can't just stop reading after the word "equal."
It's the modern spin that's the lie.
Re: Thos. Jefferson and the rest
ReplyDeleteEileen, you were kind enough to praise my Ashkenazi Jew verbal facility. It’s true, I have it, probably from those genes, even in a laanguage (Polish) in which I had only three years of grade school education. But I am also a 50% Slav, a Pole, and as such I have a burning desire and talent for liberty.
Combinig the two, I can tell you that Jefferson’s was not a lie, but a compromise that was necessary to keep the Southern States in the federation. It was also a clear example of the tradeoffs that a good writer must do in order to keep his prose punchy and his readers reading.
Of course people are not created equal. It’s absurd to claim that, then and now. But providing the necessary caveats in a concise founding document written in a grandiose, prophetic style was impractical. Likewise, in an era when royals still claimed a divine sanction to rule over their lessers, such a statement made a lot more sense then now.
The other issue is that both Jefferson and Washington were the essence of European landed gentry, at least in the positive sense. The quintessential American Founding Father was Ben Franklin. And Franklin hated slavery and fought against it throughout his life. But even he, who redacted Jefferson’s draft, knew that abolitionist proclamations would kill the nascent national enterprise even before it had begun.
The old "Irish" as opposed to the Anglo-Irish chestnut rears its ugly head again.
ReplyDeleteWhat does it take to be Irish these days? Remove all the intelligent ones from your data, subtract the literate and musically inclined and what you have left is the Irish? It looks to me like your argument proceeds in a circular manner.
You say you are Irish, but you also state that you are "Irish-American", which is it?
Born in Ireland and become a nationalised American I take it. According to your own premise the IQ of Ireland just went up and the USA's went down.
At least there's some good news here.
I suppose next you'll be stating that German IQ can be divided into Catholic and Protestant.
m4monologue said: "What does it take to be Irish these days? Remove all the intelligent ones from your data, subtract the literate and musically inclined and what you have left is the Irish? It looks to me like your argument proceeds in a circular manner.
ReplyDelete"You say you are Irish, but you also state that you are "Irish-American", which is it?
"Born in Ireland and become a nationalised American I take it. According to your own premise the IQ of Ireland just went up and the USA's went down."
Pat,
Wait. Did you just insult my intelligence? I think you did. I don't think that was called for. :-/
By Irish-American I mean I am an American -- born here -- and 100% of my ancestors came from Ireland. I suspect myself to be something of an Irish mutt -- some of my ancestors go way back in Irish history and are, therefore, more Irish than the Old Irish or Normans or Anglo Irish. They were some of the indigenous Irish. Others of my ancestors were probably Normans and I may even have some Scots-Irish in me. Does that satisfy your curiosity?
What does it take to be Irish these days you ask? Well, I dunno. I'd say that if someone's ancestors were in Ireland for a very long time, such as Joyce's (descendant of Daniel O'Connell) then I'd say they're pretty Irish.
But if someone's like Yeats or Wilde and comes from Williamite or Anglo-Irish or even Italian stock, I think that should be acknowledged. Not in any way to denigrate Irish people. I'm just interested in being factual and honest about peoples. And, like I said, a helluva lot of the famous "Irish" authors were from populations that arrived in Ireland relatively recently.
Eileen, I simply came to the logical conclusion that your own statements dictated. If you're offended then go look in the mirror to find the source of your grievance.
ReplyDeleteThe only curiosity I have in your lineage is proving the fatuousness of your argument.
You have proved my point. You make arbitrary distinctions about who and what constitute the Irish and condemn the left overs as low IQ retards.
Well, that's your lot, not mine.
By all means condemn yourself but just leave the rest of us out of your bigoted equations.
Pat
Takuan Seiyo said: I can tell you that Jefferson’s was not a lie, but a compromise that was necessary to keep the Southern States in the federation. It was also a clear example of the tradeoffs that a good writer must do in order to keep his prose punchy and his readers reading.
ReplyDeleteI don't think what he wrote was even a compromise.
The question is a grammatical one. Most people today read this...
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
...and what they hear (because of the way modern English is structured) is this...
We hold these truths to be self-evident:
1) that all men are created equal,
2) that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
3) that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That is simply an incorrect reading. Those three phrases that each begin with "that" are three subordinate clauses that reference each other in sequence. So, what Jefferson was saying was...
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal IN that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights WHICH INCLUDE Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The fact that these three clauses do not stand independantly of one another is further supported by the fact that, if one keeps reading the Declaration, we see that Jefferson did enumerate a list of truths, and the one about being equal in having certain unalienable rights was just the first.
Here is the rest of the text, with enumeration and an added colon by me:
We hold these truths to be self-evident:
1) that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
2) — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
3) — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
When you see the whole text like that, it's apparent that the first sentence is not a set of three truths, but just the first in a series of three.
BTW, I am supported in this reading (more or less) by Lincoln who said:
I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created equal,—equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This they said, and this they meant.... They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all,—constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even, though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, of all colors, everywhere.
Pat said: "You make arbitrary distinctions about who and what constitute the Irish and condemn the left overs as low IQ retards."
ReplyDeleteMy distinctions are not arbitrary at all.
I would define Irish as those people with a majority of genes derived from the earliest settlers of Ireland. You know, the ones that arrived shortly after the last Ice Age.
Those groups that have arrived since then -- Vikings, Normans, Scots, English, Polish, Lithuanians, Nigerians -- are not Irish.
Someone with a combination of genes from indigenous Irish and, say, Scotland (like myself, perhaps, although I don't know for sure) are more or less Irish depending on the amount of genes they have from each population.
I don't know what's so difficult about that. The definitions seem pretty clear to me.
Eileen: I could name William Rowan Hamilton, George FitzGerald and George Gabriel Stokes as first-rate scientists by any standards, all born in Ireland. And Ernest Walton. My country is about as Germanic as you can get, but this hasn't done us a lot of good lately. We are mostly known for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Yasser Arafat, Dhimmi Carter, Al-Gore and the Black Messiah.
ReplyDeleteTakuan Seiyo: My point is that I suspect that some of the radical egalitarianism we see on display has roots dating back to the Enlightenment. Yes, there is cultural Marxism and all that, but before that there was traditional Marxism, and Marxism itself was a bastard child of the Enlightenment.
Those of us who live in Western Europe are currently being destroyed by two different Enlightenment Empires: The United States and the European Union. Of these two, the USA has to be rated as the most powerful. The USA is the true Diversity Empire. The EU is a sidekick, like Tonto was to The Lone Ranger. The EU is just a giant condom designed to hide failing French Great Power libido.
The system that upholds the elites in both of these Enlightenment Empires needs to implode for European civilization to survive. The American elites are just as hostile as the European ones are, and they have bigger guns. In fact, many of the ideas about Affirmative Action and Whiteness Studies originated in North America, not in Europe.
Look Eileen (was going to say c'mon Eileen but it seemed a bit too trite), I probably came on a bit strong, and I certainly don't want my head to explode as I've been criticised for in the past.
ReplyDeleteBut your definition just erased my Irish lineage. How should I refer to my ancestry if not Irish - Viking/Norman?
In any case, if you feel you have to diminish your ancestry in order to ingratiate yourself with others then, sincerely, have more dignity.
Your/our ancestry educated a large swathe of the world via its Catholic institutions. Some criticism can be made there but all up the world owes a debt of gratitude for the selfless and tireless efforts of the Irish in going out into the world and offering opportunity where it wasn't given, and to all comers.
That is but one of many positive legacies the Irish have bequeathed.
All the best to you.
Pat
Eileen,
ReplyDeleteYou provide an elegant explanation.How the Declaration of Independence came to be written, who redacted it, how and why,is a subject requiring hundreds of hours of study more than I have given it. For instance I read somewhere that Jefferson's draft before its redaction contained a condemnation of the King for forcing slavery on the colonies, but I have not seen the primary sources.
Fjordman,
ReplyDeleteYou are right about the U.S. I have a Scot-Highlander friend (part-Norwegian stock, as he says other Highlanders are). He says that the Scots chose to give up their language for English because English was the language of the banks and the long guns. And that's sort of like with America.
Funny you mention Lone Ranger and Tonto. My next 'Meccania-Atlantis' chapter starts with a joke about these two.
Pat said: How should I refer to my ancestry if not Irish - Viking/Norman?
ReplyDeleteWell, you're probably an Irish mutt like myself. I doubt there's many pure-blood Vikings or Normans in Ireland (although I have one set of cousins who look like they just stepped off a long-boat!). In everyday English I think it's probably safe enough to call yourself Irish; but if you were to do any genealogical digging/reflections about yourself, it might prove useful or interesting to keep the Viking and Normans sides of yourself in mind.
In any case, if you feel you have to diminish your ancestry in order to ingratiate yourself with others then, sincerely, have more dignity.
I don't feel like I have to diminish my ancestry to anybody. The joke I made above is the same joke I make with my family and friends. Most Irish people of all backgrounds are proud of our heritage, but we readily acknowledge that we don't produce any Einsteins or Mozarts. That's just how it is. Nothing to get worked up about. Just like I don't get worked up about the fact that neither Einstein nor Mozart were women.
Slán!
Eileen
Takuan Seiyo said: "How the Declaration of Independence came to be written, who redacted it, how and why,is a subject requiring hundreds of hours of study more than I have given it."
ReplyDeleteSure. That goes for me, too.
What little I do know comes from secondary sources such as Maier's "American Scripture."
One of the documents that influenced Jefferson in his writing of the Declaration was the Virginia Declaration of Rights. I think one can hear echoes of what Jefferson was getting at (or, I guess, Jefferson was doing the echoing!) in that document:
That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
All men are equal in that they have inherent rights.
At 1/09/2010 09:46:00 AM
ReplyDeleteAnonymous Old American said...
‘One of the reasons why the modern Greeks have such a different level of achievement from classical Greek civilization is that they are not the same peoples.’
That’s utter nonsense. The Greeks were enslaved for 600 years by the Islamic Ottoman Empire. However the one’s that were forced to convert to Islam is where you will find these ethnic differences. That is in Turkey where there is such a genetic mix. The vast majority of what is now modern Greece did not mix and kept their ethnicity, culture & genetic heritage that originated from the Ancient Greeks. They certainly did resist and succeeded. A similar situation occurred in Britain when it was enslaved by the Roman Empire yet only 5% of the genes in modern Britain can be traced back to Ancient Romans. Britain, just like Greece succeeded in maintaining its ethnicity. Indeed there are scientific papers that have been published that reinforce this argument. It is so easy to come to ‘must have been’ conclusion. See for example http://dienekes.110mb.com/articles/hellenes/rtotah.pdf
It is also true to say that whilst a brutal Islamic conquering empire occupied Greece, it would hardly be expected to have contributed much to the Sciences etc during its occupation whilst other European nations where advancing this knowledge.
Re: Conservative Swede's answer
ReplyDeleteWhat we see in his answer is an anxious attempt to invent something, anything to counter the facts. In order:
- First, source please to your claims. Also note that Finns have traditionally had larger families than Finn-Swedes because among other things there were proportionally more Finns in the rural areas. Among Finns not a long ago families of 11-13 children were not rare.
Also, what Teemu said is true; there have been large movement of Finns abroad, e.g. in sixties and seventies.
- There is not any movement of Finn-Swedes to abroad. They are not some separate entity here. Two of my best friends are Finn-Swedes, I have many Finn-Swede neighbors and I know many others. We have it good here, our identities are Finnish and nothing else. Nobody even remembers Finn /Finn-Swede issue, unless discussion like this pops-up. Finns and Finn-Swedes curse together the immigration policy, that is deteriorating the good situation.
This relational situation applies to large majority of Finn-Swedes. Some small minority coastal Finn-Swedes are a slightly more separate (mainly along the language direction), but they are happy in their own communities and they are not separate from the larger context either.
We all look at Sweden with pity, when it ruins itself with it's soft totalitarian and immigration policies ahead and faster than Finland.
Finland has had higher gross national product than Sweden since 2000. This is quite a reversal of the old situation, because Sweden has a lot of old capital and wealth, is better positioned in relation to markets, and has had more time and opportunities to establish profitable relations.
- Final nail to the coffin. I left something out when I talked about Pisa. The overall results of Finns were higher than the results of homogenous high IQ east Asian countries in all Pisa tests. This excludes even the theoretical possibility that the Finns results has something to do with movements of Finn-Swedes.
What was not understood about the share of Finland-Swedes dropping from 15% to merely 5% of the population?
ReplyDeleteRe: Conservative Swede
ReplyDeleteThe understanding is not in question here. You can start by providing a source, then move on to differential birth rates etc.
How come you don't know this? That's highly remarkable. Even Teemu knows it, if he only applies arithmetic to his figures. [Hint: If a population segment is around 350,000 year 1900, and is still around 350,000 year 1950, i.e. in the period where European populations grew exponentially and more or less doubled, what does that tell you?]
ReplyDeleteRe:
ReplyDeleteWikipedia says this:
"Swedish is the mother tongue of about 275,000 people in mainland Finland and of about 25,000 people in Åland, together representing about 5.5% of the total population (according to official statistics for 2005 1) or about 5.1% without Åland. The proportion has been steadily diminishing since the early 19th century, when Swedish was the mother tongue of approximately 15% of the population (estimate for 1815). However, according to a statistical analysis made by Fjalar Finnäs, the situation of the minority group is today stable.[3][4]"
- One more addition to what changes this proportion. In the nationalization process, many Finn-Swedes changed their language to Finnish (and many Finn-Swedes were and are Finns to begin with).
This same language change process has changed the proportion of Finn-Swedes in modern times also and Finn-Swede activists complain about it. The most stupid of them have imported Somalis etc. to their counties to increase the number of Swedish speakers. The results have been bad.
This is anecdotal, but I witnessed the language change process in practice among my classmates.
So, any statistics about the number of Finn-Swedes is meaningless without proper analysis of corresponding other factors, like language change, differential birtrates etc. Finn-Swede identity is based on mother tongue in statistics and elsewhere, so it is very volatile quantity, easy to change radically without barely nothing happening in real life.
Addition, the emigration wave (involving both Finns and Finn Swedes) in the sixties and seventies was either not cognitively selective or if it was, it was more from the lower IQ population, because those with the worst situation moved abroad. Conservative Swede has of course no data about any selective emigration. It is based on his wishful thinking. He seems to be unable to answer the other points too, which are capable of countering his points alone, without reference to this sideline discussion about emigration.
ReplyDeleteaFinn,
ReplyDeleteThe west coast of Finland is native Swedish land. We came to the same land from two different directions. Most of history water tied harder than land, which is why the coasts of southern Sweden used to be Danish, and why western Finland used to be Swedish (actually the Finnish capital city was founded by Swedes, original name Helsingfors).
Nowadays no one would call the people of southern Sweden Danish. And the same thing is in the process of about to come to its conclusion in Finland. What you refer to as the "nationalization process" is an homogenization which is about to make the Swedes extinct in your homeland -- and this is exactly what you describe yourself too! We see this sort of process in many other European countries too, since the national state became the ideal, and geographical borders became considered more righteous than ethnicity and history.
Fair enough, I figure. Nordic countries have grabbed different parts from each other. But let's be honest about history. And be careful about using a dwindling minority segment of an ethnic group, for generalizations about the ethnic group in general. You wouldn't look at Germans in Romania or Dutch in South Africa to make generalizations.
The Swedes have left gradually, all in all in very high numbers. Yes, they have also intermarried. And yes, Finns left too -- but most of them came back! You are letting yourself be confused by details. Look at the the net numbers! Which I started off with presenting.
Anyway, I doubt it that anyone here is at all interested in this issue. It's too marginal, and it's off topic! If I were a Finn I would take pride in Nokia etc. I would not spend my time in turning figures inside out to find an angle from which Finns would look like they have marginally higher IQ then other Nordic people.
Anyway, Dennis has been correct in categorizing Sibelius as an ethnic Swede. However, it was pointless to point out that Tycho Brahe was from (what is today) southern Sweden. Tycho Brahe was entirely Danish. Modern geographic borders are close to nothing here. Ethnicity and history is everything.
@ a Finn and a Swede
ReplyDeleteA suggestion for the Finn friend.
You might want to examine the validity of your motivations in the various exchanges here. That a Finn may harbor some vestigal bad feelings about Sweden and the once-hegemonic Swedish minority in Finland is understandable. That you are a patriotic Finn is commendable. But when you combine the two in light of present reality, you have to come to a conclusion that you got side-tracked in no-longer relevant things.
Your oppressors are no longer the Swedes, but other Finns. The foes of Norway are no longer in Kopenhagen. They are in Oslo. And so on, for every Western country. You should seek forums like this to make an alliance with a Swede who is against the multiculti Islamo-dhimmi socialist tyranny in his country, because it may help you in waging your own battle against a similar tyranny in yours.
That's all that counts now. The rest need not be forgotten, but you should not allow it to become a perpetual irritant. BTW, the anathema on discussion of group IQ differences and their indicative qualities is one of the weapons that your Finn foes use to subjugate you, dilute your ethnic base, and ultimately replace you altogether in your own country.
A Finn: You really should save that discussion for a different forum. This is an international blog run by an American. You shouldn't abuse Mr. Mangan's hospitality with petty Nordic tribalism. Those of us who come from marginal countries need to realize that, otherwise we will sound incredibly provincial. I deliberately limit the amount of essays I write about my own country for precisely this reason.
ReplyDeleteHow interesting to find such a vibrent blog with such great commenters. Thank you Con Swede! Long time don't s... read ya!
ReplyDelete"Small, structurally less complexly organized and peripheral countries don't produce these much or at all, even if they have the intellectual capability to do it in relation to the size of the people. The said small countries solve different set of questions, on average more practical questions. Symphony orchestra is a specialized luxury. There was no symphony orchestras much before Sibelius' time in Finland and there weren't many then or now and in smaller Estonia they came later. Inventions like steam engine and sewing machine are inventions compelled by the necessities of big, work-differentiated, hierarchical and complex cities. Engineering is an everyday necessity in small countries, but astrophysics, physics etc. are more redundant.
Germany is situated in the middle of Europe, so almost all the knowledgeable men or their ideas, capitals, inventions, wares, services etc. go through it and to it."
A commenter wrote this in the begginig. And I just had to say that it is striking. Fjordman has a Nordicist view of this IQ diferenciation in Europe. Mine is more of a cultural than that, and what the guy I quoted said is also spot on. What shatters Fjordman's Nordicist view is that I HAVE NEVER SEEN ITLALY in a ranking IQ position other than in the top of it. I'd like to see a IQ ranking of Europe in which Italy has not +100 points. This being said? How come Ireland, Russia, Estonia and Finland have so low points, given their Northerner position??
The thing is, usually in a IQ map of Europe you see the Northwest highlighted and then Italy. It is so to such an extent that it may appear that the highest IQ is in the centre of Europe (Sweden - Italy) and that the lower are at the extremes: Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Russia, You got it.
Just my two cents for now.
Thanks to Takuan Seiyo for trying to pacify two intelligent but opinionated neighbors engaged in hair-splitting over test differences. The 7 daughters of Eve gave rise to 95% of the European population.Mitochondrial DNA has mutations that can be traced back to 40,000 plus years ago and certainly the Scandanavian peoples would share several of these clan mothers. Nations are a recent invention, so hunter-gatherers belonging to these seven clans wandered about over large stretches of time, eventually spreading to North and South America, Australia,etc. In Marco Polo's time, the continental races were quite isolated and genetically unique, but exploration and colonization helped alter gene pool composition across much of the world. Still, the race, gender, and age, for example, of DNA in bodies like "The Iceman" or "Cheddar Man" can be readily determined. DNA distinctions between Finns and Swedes are not terribly significant in the larger scheme of things.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting that the oldest clan of all , dating back even beyond 40,000 years, derives from Greece and eventually survived in about 11 percent of all Europeans, mostly in Britain and Scandanavia. It is exactly the Swedes and Finns who share this very old lineage.However, the Saami of Finland and northern Norway share the genes belonging to a clan started in northern Spain about 17,000 years ago. Bryan Sykes dubbed her Velda and the earlier one from Greece was called Ursala. At the end of his Seven Daughters of Eve, he imagines the kind of life each of the seven clan mothers had. It makes fascinating reading.Helena is the mother of 47 percent of all modern Europeans and lived in France some 20,000 years ago. Eventually her descendants spread all over Europe. Scandanavia was uninhabitable when Helena was born because ice covered it entirely and the Baltic was frozen. The clans of Ursala, Velda, and Helena were surely very robust and intelligent to cope with the variety of predatory animals as well as the horrendous weather. The IQ differences between the northern and southern portions of Europe may well have resulted from the challenges of climate and terrain, but agriculture that came into being at 10,000 years ago certainly affected IQ to some extent, as well.
Even though, as Fjordman says, this is "an international blog" - highly international, if I do say so myself - you Scandinavians can feel free to fight all day long on my premises. It wasn't so long ago that countries like Denmark and Sweden actually went to war with each other - OK, it's been awhile.
ReplyDeleteInteresting about the Italians - and I agree with Afonso Henriques' that the comment about Germany's geographical position and size is a good one. whether correct or not - according to Murray, Italians are about the number 4 ranked country in terms of significant figures in the arts and sciences, yet hardly any of the Italian accomplishment occurred after 1700. It was like a switch was turned off. Why?
Dennis Mangan: Italy is a very interesting case study in the genes vs. ideas debate. Italians during the Roman era hardly made any substantial contributions to mathematics or the theoretical sciences, did not produce great sculptors or painters and did not create capitalism. Italians during the Renaissance period did all of the above. I don't think this can be explained by genes alone, just like I don't think you can explain by genes alone why Scandinavians one thousand years ago were feared and respected as warriors, yet are widely viewed as feminized sissies today. IQ isn't everything....
ReplyDeleteIt is not correct to say that Italians disappeared after 1700. It is true that after Galileo they were no longer the leaders in science, but they still produced quite a few major figures such as Luigi Galvani, Alessandro Volta, Guglielmo Marconi and Enrico Fermi. Riccardo Giacconi could be mentioned among Italian-born and educated scientists still alive. This list does admittedly not match that of the Renaissance, but it still dwarfs anything produced in Spain during the same period.
I have seen several writers state that the Italian mean IQ is more than 100. During my visits to Italy I saw a lot of genetic variation among the locals, but if true this is the highest IQ in southern Europe and consistent with the fact that the Italian contribution to science was the highest among southern European peoples during the medieval and modern era.
If the Italian IQ of 100 or more is correct then it presents a challenge to the "cold weather" hypothesis promoted by Michael Hart in Understanding Human History, which says that in prehistoric times (but not necessarily in our industrial society today, when there are other kinds of evolutionary pressures involved) people evolved high IQ in cooler climates. This implies that IQ will slowly rise the further north you get, which is roughly true. Yet Italy has a "too high" IQ according to this theory.
Some people have pointed out that Eskimos should according to this principle be the smartest people on the planet, but evolutionary pressures usually work slowly. Perhaps Eskimos haven't lived long enough in such regions to evolve very high IQs, or perhaps there were other factors involved, too. From what little information I have seen, Eskimos/Inuits have an IQ in the low 90s, which would still make them the smartest among the peoples of pre-colonial America. Finally, there is also the question of Tibetans or others who live consistently at very high altitudes, which is cold as well.
When it comes to mitochondrial haplogroups, there are not really any interesting patterns to be found. Check out H(elena), U(rsala) and V(elda) in this table.
ReplyDeleteWhile if looking at Y-DNA haplogroups (scroll to the bottom for the map) we find several interesting patterns. Swedes and Finns are highly different. Well the Finns are highly different from other Europeans altogether. They are dominantly N3, and the N-branch is for Eskimoes, Samis and different Siberian people (see world map). While Swedes are a mix of R1a and R1b (the most typical European haplogroups) and with a high precense of I1, the typical Scandinavian (actually ur-Germanic) haplogroup.
The interesting thing is that this illustrates how skin colour is not determined by genetic affiliation in the long term perspective which haplogroups represent, i.e. it does not depend on who we were 25,000 or 40,000 years ago. Instead blond hair and blue eyes is clearly a environmental adaption happening the last 10,000-15,000 years while Scandinavians, Finns, etc. have been present in these highly northern regions. To give the full picture of why I'd had to give a small lecture of the significance of vitamin D and the lack och UVB sun rays up here. In short: white skin was necessary for survival!
Reversely, in Africa dark skin was necessary for survival. So when e.g. Auster was upset that someone suggested that the first European had brown skin, this an irrational reaction. Of course he would have been brown.
Europe, being north and cold, lead to other genetic selections, such as the ability to metabolize milk sugar. And, as Fjordman pointed out, the more north the more able and intelligent -- simply necessary for survival.
The darkest people in Europe we find in the south east (Balkans + Southern Italy). Here we see the traces of the influx of neolithic farmers less than 10,000 years ago (e.g. haplogroups J and E3b, see map above). That's less then third of the time than other European haplogroups, thus less time to develop light skin (also they remained far south!)
Notice that haplogroups are not clans! It's just a mutation in the Y-chromosome (or mtDNA) that can be traced far back. A marker that can help us in our puzzle. There is no essence conveyed in haplogroups. However these markers can tell us a lot, if we are lucky.
ReplyDeleteThe I1 group is a late marker which makes it possible for us to follow the presence of ur-Germanic people (compare the I1 map with the Bronze Age map).
Still there's no essence conveyed in haplogroups. Look at the first European map again. The closest ancestry to I1 is I2a, i.e. the Bosnian group, and higher up (the IJ level) Semitic people. Quite as R1a and R1b are tied with native Americans (Q) through the RQ supergroup. There are certainly no patterns of essence to be found here. Climate adaption and ensuing selection have been more determining.
Nevertheless, if we are lucky, a late marker such as I1 (maybe 15,000 years old or less) can tell us a lot. There are some 25% I1 in Finland, but virtually no R1a/R1b. Also when looking more closely I1 is concentrated to the west coast of Finland. This tells us two things:
1) The I1 group must have arrived first to Sweden. Otherwise we would have found today's Swedish mix of I1/R1a/R1b also on the Finnish west coast. But we don't. The Swedes must have been purely I1 when going across the Baltic Sea to Finland.
2) So the Swedes must have gone there very far back. That is before the R1a and R1b came. I'd estimate some 8,000 years ago.
Denmark has higher presence of R1b, which is interesting. The picture I get is the one of the R1b people pushing the I1 people more and more north while the ice disappeared. Here are some more maps (showing how the ice retracted) helping in solving the puzzle of possible movements of Nordic people. Notice e.g. how Denmark used to be much wider (to the West).
The study of haplogroups is very young. We still need much more data for a clearer picture. Nevertheless interesting patterns are already emerging. With more data I expect that we will have scientific breakthroughs in pre-history in a rather near future. Pre-history is the puzzle of archeology, historical linguistics and nowadays genetic history. And when all three types of evidence harmonize with each other, strong hypotheses can be made (in spite of the inherent weakness of the subject compared to history).
It will be interesting to follow this the coming decades.
It is of course interesting in itself the lack of any strong pattern, how evenly spread out the female branch of haplogroups (mtDNA) are across Europe. How come, when much stronger patterns are shown with Y-DNA?
ReplyDeleteWhat does it tell us?
Did the tribes steal women from each other to such a degree that the mtDNA became evenly spread out?
Did H, which dominates, represent a European female ideal?
Look at page 5 of this pdf-file. Little variation of mtDNA across Europe, but still strong patterns across the world.
Also, when a mtDNA haplogroup entered Europe, which Y-DNA group(s) was it in company with? And vice versa.
Do we see some correlation between R1b and H? And between R1a and U? Nevertheless, there has clearly been a lot of intermarrying (movement of women) given how much more evenly spread out the mtDNA are.
Another thought is of course that H(elena) was the group that first developed the genetic qualities necessary for survival in cold Europe. The traces we see from Y-DNA are then men from invading tribes, that managed to breed with Helenas (e.g. kill all the men in a village and take their women) which in such a case would be necessary for surviving and remaining in Europe at early stages of pre-history.
ReplyDeleteAll I have to say is that recent developments within the last century prove that IQ isn't everything. Non-whites from Third World countries, despite "lower IQ" have shown a lot more common sense when it comes to immigration and preservation of identity than whites. Although interestingly enough, East Asians with an even higher IQ are also protective of their identity; First-World South Korea and Japan are steadfastly resisting diversity and population replacement.
ReplyDeleteWhy is that? What is wrong with white people? Is it something in our genes that makes us so open to extinction? I can't help but wonder considering how every single white ethnic group, regardless of culture or economic status, is facing a demographic crisis. Do whites have a self-destruct program in their genes that was turned on during the 60's? And how do we shut it off?
White self-destruction
ReplyDelete@John McNeill-- we have lost the distinction between wisdom and smarts. The Orientals have not.
We once guided ourselves by wisdom. The Bible is a depository of wisdom. Every Indo-European language has a rich trove of folk tales and aphorisms that transmit wisdom. The men who served in the Nordic "things" 1000 years ago were chosen based on their wisdom, not how long they could keep a fake smile on their face.
Now we let ourselves be guided by norms disseminated by TV commercials and are programmed with "modern" education that shed completely our ancient wisdom as though it never existed. Even 40 years ago it would have been common to learn Aesop in European schools, except in French it would have been LaFontaine. We let Trotskyite teachers march through our schools for so long, so effectively. One of the answers to your question is massive civil disobedience with regard to taking our children out of public education into some alternatives like home schooling.
As to the Orientals, while embracing science, they never let go of their cultural baggage. Confucius is all about societal wisdom and personal wise conduct. So is the Japanese Tsurezuregusa. And that is taught in every elementary school. Foreign relations are conducted according to the wisdom of Sun Tzu and the 36 Strategies -- so ancient that no one knows how many thousands of years old. But our foreign relations are conducted by "liberated" menopausal women appointed by utopian male drones with narcissistic personality disorder, the whole +2 SD (i.e. "smart") lot of them possessing the wisdom of a door knob. And so on.
The Orientals are not alone in knowing the simple verities of life. There is a Cameroonian proverb about wariness of aliens that says (as I recall), "Even if it bob in the water for 100 years, a log cannot become a crocodile."
Thanks to Conservative Swede for his informative discourse on Y-DNA as a better surgical tool in analysing the genetics of the Swede-Finn contrast. I was merely laying out the genetic background of Europeans to show that they have seven ancestral clusters based upon maternal lineage.This can be related to the Y-DNA data to arrive at some interesting conclusions, but CS is right that such limited information usually provides few insights into the realities of evolution.
ReplyDeleteCS is also right to speculate about very suggestive data like R1b and H, which seem highly correlated.CS's idea of Helenas being nabbed by invading tribes is highly probable, for they surely had strong adaptive traits for cold climates.CS is generally on target with his implication that no powerful "essence" is denoted by these haplotypes but they do provide useful information that gains some explanatory power if correlated with historical linguistics and archaeology.
My treatment of mtDNA was meant to point out the interesting contribution of this field to understanding European history via pre-history.By itself it does not solve the Swede-Finn problem but combined with Y-DNA studies, one can make out worthwhile configurations. CS again correctly credits these studies with potential value as our techniques improve.His examples of lactose tolerance and skin pigmentation make the point that these haplogroup studies are not able to show deeper effects of evolution that cellular DNA is gradually revealing.
Bryan Sykes used mtDNA to discover the genetic continuities tying most polynesians to each other despite thousands of miles of ocean between and among them.He also was able to remove dentine from a fossil tooth from Cheddar Man, a famous British specimen that provided the oldest DNA ever studied.Here Sykes found enough mtDNA to get good results, results that placed Cheddar Man in the Helena clan. This indicated that Cheddar Man was a hunter-gatherer about 7000 years before farming came to Britain.Sykes was battling the world's foremost population geneticist, Luca Cavilli-Sforza, over the issue of whether or not Europeans were basically Neolithic farmers or Paleolithic hunter-gatherers.He was agonizing over the announcement of his startling discovery when a new study, using Y-DNA, was published by Cavilli-Sforza.Cavilli-Sforza found 10 Y-DNA haplogroups in Europe and analysed the sequences of relevance.His result: the European gene pool is 80% Paleolithic and 20% Neolithic. Sykes had won!!Neolithic farmers were only one-fifth of the European gene pool.
This result is close to being an "essence" for Europeans derive mostly from the very tough hunter-gatherers whose ability to survive in cold climates may well be based upon mutations that increased cognitive powers beyond anything seen before.Cave art in France is the first sign of that creative explosion.
Germany and the rest of Protestant Europe was freed from forced dysgenic Catholic celibacy centuries ago, and thus have been in eugenic upswing since then.
ReplyDeleteCatholic celibacy has been forced upon the intellectual elite in Catholic Europe for around 1,000 years, but after the Protestant Reformation (centered in Germany) the elite Western gene pool began making a come back slowly but surely.
However, the German and general European gene pool was certainly decimated by the two world wars of the 20th century in which tens of millions of White youths died.
Fjordman:"The greatest riddle are the Greeks, who in ancient times could produce great geniuses such as Aristotle, Archimedes and Hipparchus, but today have one of the lowest IQs on the European continent."
ReplyDeleteYou do not know much about European population movements in the 2,000+ years.
The ruling caste of Ancient Greece and even many of the commoners were of Northern and Central European ethic/racial descent. Go and look at the busts and statues of the ruling class of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome too -- their physiognomies are distinctly Northern/Central European, very different from the Turkized/Arabized populations of Greek and the southern half of Italy today.
However, as has happened many times, the ruling classes brought in foreign (i.e., non-White) workers and slaves who ended up replacing the European population in time. Thus most modern Greeks and southern Italians are of Turkish, Arab, or North African origin, the descendants of the slaves and manual workers brought in by the Northern/Central European elite over 2,000 years ago and more -- this happened in ancient Greece and Rome, and it is of course happening all over the Western world now too. Basically, modern Whites are being population-replaced by the non-White manual laborers we are bringing in.
Basically it was a 'helot takeover' that happened in ancient Greece, and a 'prole takeover' in ancient Rome - look at the history of Sparta, only a single Greek province; almost all of them were of Northern/Central European origin, but in time the 'helots' they brought in as manual and agricultural laborers replaced the Northern/Central European Spartan ruling class.
CT:"Sykes was battling the world's foremost population geneticist, Luca Cavilli-Sforza, over the issue of whether or not Europeans were basically Neolithic farmers or Paleolithic hunter-gatherers.He was agonizing over the announcement of his startling discovery when a new study, using Y-DNA, was published by Cavilli-Sforza.Cavilli-Sforza found 10 Y-DNA haplogroups in Europe and analysed the sequences of relevance.His result: the European gene pool is 80% Paleolithic and 20% Neolithic. Sykes had won!!Neolithic farmers were only one-fifth of the European gene pool."
ReplyDeleteOther people say differently; that the Neolithic farmers almost entirely displaced (killed) the natuive European hunter-gatherers; read:
"The wheat-beef people [Neolithic farmers and herders] swept across the western European plains in less than 300 years, a conquest some archaeologists refer to as a “blitzkrieg.” A different race of humans, the Cro-Magnons—hunter-gatherers, not farmers—lived on those plains at the time. Their cave art at places such as Lascaux testifies to their sophistication and profound connection to wildlife. They probably did most of their hunting and gathering in uplands and river bottoms, places the wheat farmers didn't need, suggesting the possibility of coexistence. That's not what happened, however. Both genetic and linguistic evidence say that the farmers killed the hunters. The Basque people are probably the lone remnant descendants of Cro-Magnons, the only trace." - http://www.harpers.org/archive/2004/02/0079915
Re: Conservative Swede
ReplyDeleteCS repeats what he said, but doesn't provide any data or analysis to the points I presented. Then he presents more of the same; "most of the Finns came back", although this is not about the main points, he doesn't show any statistics and sources. Some came back from both groups, but how much. Statistics tell, not claims.
Like I said, his IQ selective emigration is about his wishful thinking. If it happened at all, it was the opposite what he wished. He is also compelled to ignore the language change by the Russian official policies, nationalization and by natural processes.
Anyway, in internet conversation it is hard to know what other people feel, and one can see here the false assumptions growing. I am not angry. I am not "a tribalist" (Fjordman), exclusively, that is, but it is a good realistic position as a foundation from which to observe what is possible with other people. We can see here the typical pattern. No matter what is the outward mask, tribal is always underneath. Or what can be said about Conservative Swede, who shifted suddenly from the topic in question to a completely different and unrelated topic, i.e. claiming that Finns are Asians, or what have you. What can be said about nationalities and taking sides of various commenters? In my view this should be rather aknowledged openly and then some stability arranged, than let it always simmer uncertainly underneath and disturb capriciously different social interactions. Certainty over uncertainty.
But, Swede, if Finns are Asians/ Asian European hybrids, maybe that explains why Finns' Pisa results are better than Finn-Swedes', Swedes' and East Asians' results.
But of course, the ancestry is not such a simple matter as Swede presents. I explain in the next answer.
Re: Conservative Swede
ReplyDeleteFinnish ancestry? Several things should be dealt with:
* When y-dna is used in estimating ancestries, we talk about thousands and tens of thousands of years. It is always based on assumptions to some extent. Good example is Rootsi et. al. 2006 where Finnish ancestry is based on about ten maybes in chain. Even one break in the maybe chain can break the results. How many maybes are needed before the uncertainty is properly aknowledged?
* What is clear is that Finns have some genetic similarities both in y-dna and other dna to Siberian populations.
This is a relation, which in itself doesn't tell anything about which way the genetic influences went. American blacks have 20% European dna, thus European Americans and blacks have many genetic similarities, but it is essential to know the flow of genes to ascertain ancestry. It is possible that N3 was born independently in separate places. It is possible, because N3 is only found in colder areas, that it was selected because of some advantage connected to colder climates. Bottlenecks and genetic drifts could have changed radically the frequency/ existence of some y-dna types. In Finland there have been at least two major bottlenecks (10 000 and 4000 years ago, Sajantila et. al. 1996) and likely genetic drifts afterwards.
* Finnish N3 has the greatest single tandem repeat diversity, more than in Siberia and east Asia (Rootsi et. al. 2006), this despite the fact that they have more population, more different peoples and more interaction between the populations than Finnish people historically have had. Y-dna STR diversity is generally used to indicate the age of y-dna variant, the more diversity, the older; and thus the birthplace.
* Siberian populations have considerable European ancestry. E.g: "The most northerly East Asian
population in the sample (Yakut) has received a significant genetic contribution from the ancestors of the most northerly
European one (Orcadian)"(Hellenthal et. al. 2008) And from another paper: "Our results showed that more than 95% of Uyghur (UIG) haplotypes could be found in either East Asian (EAS) or European (EUR) populations, which contradicts the expectation of the null models assuming that UIG are donors. Simulation studies further indicated that the proportion of UIG private haplotypes observed in empirical data is only expected in alternative models assuming that UIG is an admixture population. Interestingly, the estimated ancestry contribution of 44%:56% (EAS:EUR) based on haplotype sharing analysis is consistent with our previous estimation with STRUCTURE analysis. ... We concluded that the gene pool of modern Uyghurs is more likely a sole recipient with contribution from both EAS and EUR." (Shuhua Xu et. al. 2009) This European ancestry in Siberians, Finno- Ugrians in Siberia and central Asians is typical and confirms the gene flow from Europe to Asia. Cultural, archeological and language studies confirm this direction of the flow too. (Niskanen, 2002)
Continued ...
Part 2.
ReplyDelete* Willems et. al. 2002 shows that Finns' N3 is closely related to the circle waves of diminishing frequency of N3 in Europe that leads to Ukraine. Although these peoples have less STR diversity in N3 than Finns, it is possible that some combination of several fused lineages, mutations, bottlenecks and genetic drifts explain that and thus indicate Ukraine to be the birthplace of Finnish N3. It is also likely that Ukraine is the ice age birthplace of Finno-Ugric peoples, who wandered north and then split to east and west.
* Craniometric Analyses:
"I used the SAS-package to compute Mahalanobis distances
between cranial samples. I used measurement batteries: B39 (35
measurements and 4 indices) and B96 (96 measurements) to
calculate Mahalanobis distances and the measurement battery
B42 (42 measurements) to extract canonical discriminant
function scores. The raw measurements were standardized for
size by using W. Howells’ c-score method (Howells 1989) and
indices were standardized by converting them to z-scores before
analyses. Most of the craniometric data used was collected by
myself (Niskanen 1994b), although data kindly provided by
William Howells is also used.
The results, Mongol-Index:
Europe Average 24,9
French 22.4
German 16.7
Austria 32.4
Czech 25.4
Russia 25.4
British 12.9
Norwegian 28.0
Swedish 20.4
Finnish 25.4
Saami 25.5
Mordvian 39.4
Buryat 90.0
Japanese 69.2
Ainu 52.0
South-Chinese 67.8
(Niskanen 2002)
Niskanen (2002) also also calculated the genetic oriental index from six gene collections from loci that have clear east west gradient:
Europe (av.) 22.8
Basque 12.4
French 18.3
German 19.6
Austria 20.7
Czech 16.7
Russia 21.6
Greek 33.4
British 20.7
Norwegian 20.5
Swedish 18.2
Finnish 25.1
Saami 42.2
Komi 30.1
Mari34.2
Hungarian 21.4
Samoyed 58.0
Caucasus 35.6
Near Eastern 32.1
Indian 55.40
Mongolian 74.9
Buryat 73.4
Korean 78.6
Japanese 87.5
Ainu 92.8
South-Chinese 82.3
Tibetan 81.4
So we can see that Finns are genetically and craniometrically situated according to their east west position.
If you want to go on, I have lot more information in store.
Fjordman said: "I could name William Rowan Hamilton, George FitzGerald and George Gabriel Stokes as first-rate scientists by any standards, all born in Ireland. And Ernest Walton."
ReplyDeleteYes. Thanks for illustrating my point. All of those four men, who happened to be born in Ireland, were Anglo-Irish members of the Protestant Ascendancy. None of them were indigenous Irish.
You may not be able to hear it by the names 'cause you're not Irish or British, but anyone who is can hear it: Hamilton, Stokes, Walton -- all Anglo names. FitzGerald happens to be a Norman name. There's not an O'Donahue or McSweeny in this list.
Hamilton was educated by his uncle who was a graduate of Trinity College which was closed to Catholics at the time. So Hamilton was clearly a member of the Protestant Ascendancy. George FitzGerald's father was a minister -- Protestant Ascendancy again -- with a Norman name to boot. George Gabriel Stokes, son of the Reverand Gabriel Stokes -- Protestant Ascendancy. And Ernest Walton, son of a Methodist minister -- Protestant Ascendancy again.
All from families of recent arrival in Ireland. None indigenous Irish.
Fjordman said: "Italy is a very interesting case study in the genes vs. ideas debate. Italians during the Roman era hardly made any substantial contributions to mathematics or the theoretical sciences, did not produce great sculptors or painters and did not create capitalism. Italians during the Renaissance period did all of the above. I don't think this can be explained by genes alone, just like I don't think you can explain by genes alone why Scandinavians one thousand years ago were feared and respected as warriors, yet are widely viewed as feminized sissies today."
ReplyDeleteEven without any (partial) population replacement, there's no reason to suppose that gene frequencies would remain static in a population. There's no reason to presume that the frequencies of, for instance, IQ-related genes would stay the same in the Italian population from Roman days to the Renaissance or from the Viking days to today's Scandinavia.
(Have you read the "10,000 Year Explosion" yet?)
But there probably was a good deal of population replacement in these populations anyway. Pseudothyrum (above) makes good points about the Ancient Greeks vs. the Greeks. And, as far as the Scandinavians go: 1) lots of Vikings just left; 2) something like 50-60% of the Scandinavian population died during the Black Death; 3) Germans from the mainland moved up into Scandinavia after the Black Death taking advantage of all the abandoned farms; 4) a helluva lot of Norwegians and Swedes emigrated to the States in the 1800s (one third of the Norwegian population, I do believe) -- probably the ones with a little more guts. (Similar story for Ireland, btw.)
So, after all this is said and done, who is left behind? Feminized sissies, perhaps?
Eileen, it is highly offensive that you keep dividing the Irish nation into these sectarian parts.
ReplyDeleteThese men don't just happen to be born in Ireland, they're Irish.
For God's sake if the Irish Government can honour Hamilton as one of their own why can't you? From wiki: "The year 2005 was the 200th anniversary of Hamilton's birth and the Irish government designated that the Hamilton Year, celebrating Irish science."
Fitzgerald lived all of his 50 years in Ireland, probably a lot longer than you considering that you weren't even born there.
You may not be aware but Protestants played a significant role in establishing the nation that is Ireland.
I understand that you only consider those that can establish genetic links "...derived from the earliest settlers of Ireland. You know, the ones that arrived shortly after the last Ice Age." as Irish, but there is more to being Irish than that.
Obviously there is a discrepancy between our definitions. I have never come across this genetic qualification for what constitutes an Irishman and I'm all ears in that regard.
I understand that you are trying to draw distinctions between the descendants of the original Gaels and the descendants of those others since that time(over several hundred years I should add of continued habitation in Ireland). And it is interesting. But can you please stop saying that people born, bred, and died in Ireland aren't Irish? Could you please qualify your statements?
Further, I have Irish ancestry but I am Australian. From what you have said you have Irish ancestry but you are American. To hyphenate your heritage "Irish-American" I suggest is equally offensive to your fellow American citizens.
I am not after an argument, and do not wish to castigate or humiliate you in any way, but simply wish that you would define your premises more concisely. There is the historic peoples of Ireland, now fully independent of Britain, who constitute not just Catholics but also Protestants. They are all Irish.
Again, I understand you are speaking about the Gaels (perhaps you could use that term) when you speak of the Irish genetically but I suggest that it warrants clarification.
Otherwise, it is apparent that you are intelligent, interesting and have much to offer to this blog and thread of which I am enjoying reading and learning from immensely. So, please understand that I have no quibble with you other than that stated above.
Cheers,
Pat
Hey Pat,
ReplyDeleteYou said: "I understand that you are trying to draw distinctions between the descendants of the original Gaels and the descendants of those others since that time (over several hundred years I should add of continued habitation in Ireland). And it is interesting. But can you please stop saying that people born, bred, and died in Ireland aren't Irish? Could you please qualify your statements?"
Well, I think the argument we're having is one over who is an Irish national and who is an ethnic Irish person.
Sure, I might agree to refer to the indigenous Irish as "Gael-Irish" or some such; but in a discussion of ethnicity, why not just simply refer to them as Irish since they were the indigenous ones?
Once upon a time, everyone in Ireland understood this. That's why we had terms such as "Old English", "Scots Irish" and "Anglo Irish." Everyone recognized that these groups came later and were not ethnically Irish. (In fact, they probably wanted to distinguish themselves from the ethnic Irish!)
What you seem to be arguing for is if some group of people happen to live in a place for a couple hundred years or so, then they should be called for that place. That just serves to obscure the origins of peoples. Do you think the ethnic Russians of China ought to be referred to as Chinese because at least some of them have been there since the 1600s? How about the Volga Germans? When they are referred to as Germans and not Russians, why can't the English in Ireland be referred to as Anglos and not Irish? Do you think the Nigerians settling today in Ireland should be referred to as Irish? Irish nationals, yes -- but Irish? Too inaccurate for my tastes.
I find it interesting and informative to know that those Irish nationals that have contributed the most to English literature and science (and probably even the Irish nationalist movement) were not the ethnic/indigenous/Gael Irish but were Anglo-Irish. I find that to be very interesting from an HBD perspective -- and from the perspective of finding out truths about the human race.
From what you have said you have Irish ancestry but you are American. To hyphenate your heritage "Irish-American" I suggest is equally offensive to your fellow American citizens.
I'm sure it is offensive to some Americans. But, I think it would be more offensive just to call myself American when I am not a descendant of some of the founding members of this country. In that ethnic sense, I am not American. I am an American citizen, born and raised, but ethnically I am very Irish -- with very possibly a good dash of Scots and Norman thrown in for good measure. ;-)
I don't want to take this thread OT but in answer to your question:
ReplyDeleteWell, I think the argument we're having is one over who is an Irish national and who is an ethnic Irish person.
Sure, I might agree to refer to the indigenous Irish as "Gael-Irish" or some such; but in a discussion of ethnicity, why not just simply refer to them as Irish since they were the indigenous ones?
Because you are having an academic argument with others here about IQ related to genetic makeup, not who the Irish are as a nation which includes many other sub-groups you have erased from their proper entitlement to being referred to as Irish.
It is important that you distinguish the genetic group you are referring. You are crossing into political/nationalist territory when you erase whole subsets from the identity that is Irish.
And when you equate them to Nigerians you are tripling the offense.
I am trying to work out if you are being deliberately antagonistic or are genuine. I'll settle on the latter.
The nation that is Ireland was born from not just Gaels but men like Wolf Tone who by your definition aren't Irish, which is absurd beyond belief. Unless, of course, you distinguish that you are talking about the Gael Irish.
If you had stated from the outset that you are referring to this one particular genetic group then your meaning and target would have been clear, thus negating any dispute over who you are in fact talking about.
What you seem to be arguing for is if some group of people happen to live in a place for a couple hundred years or so, then they should be called for that place.
Yes, that is why I and Australian Aboriginals are called Australians. If you were going to discuss our genetic constitution then naturally you would have to define which subgroup you were speaking about. Irish Australians, Territory Aboriginals, East Coast Aboriginals, Torres Strait Islanders etc etc However, we are all Australians.
I'm sure it is offensive to some Americans. But, I think it would be more offensive just to call myself American when I am not a descendant of some of the founding members of this country.
Your country was also founded in the Civil War was it not? Many Irish and Irish descended Americans died in that war. I am sure you would not be offending them. It was my understanding that it was their hope that people like you would, in point of fact, want to call yourself American. But, you know America better than I do so I'll take your word for it.
One thing I can tell you is that it angers Australians mightily when citizens born here hyphenate their nationality. It is a sign of disloyalty and taken as a snub.
That is one of the signifiers of "mate". Mates don't exclude or divide themselves from each other in any way.
I live in an area mostly constituted by Australians of Italian, English, Scottish and Irish ancestry and I have never heard any of them refer to themselves as "Nationality-Australian." Yet we do engage and share each others cultural festivities and inclinations. Even the new migrants refer to themselves as Ozzies which fills us all with pride.
But perhaps it's different in America, its not for me to say or determine. So I take back my statement to you in that regard as I was projecting my own Oz culture there.
Cheers,
Pat
Eileen: I'm wondering how non-Irish the "Protestant Ascendancy" was. Since they existed as a group for hundreds of years, wouldn't intermarriage with and conversion of the locals ("Native Irish", i.e. Catholics) have meant that using Catholic and Protestant to define ethnic groups is invalid? I don't know the answer, but it seems almost inevitable that a group like that eventually intermarry, and that the other group convert to enjoy the advantages of power.
ReplyDeleteDon't mind Pat, he's just a wee bit partial on the subject of Ireland and Britain. ;-)
Pat: Descriptions like "Irish-American" are often done in context, but I'd say few people go around describing themselves that way regularly, other than "African-American". When they do use terms like that, I doubt that many take offense.
ReplyDeleteI used to think I understood Americans but the more I read, listen and watch of them the less I know.
ReplyDeleteI don't mean that in a negative way, just speaking honestly. I am truly perplexed by your culture.
That seems to me to be a bizarre situation given all that I thought we have ancestrally and culturally in common.
Maybe it's because you don't play cricket, I really don't know. For all my (our - Australians) dislike of "the English" and calling them "poms" it is not what you Americans think it is. There is a mutual loathing and a mutual love.
Anyway, I don't want to distract the erudite posters above from the subject at hand any longer. I just mean to give some context to yourself and anyone who may follow your link.
Cheers,
Pat
Pat said: "Because you are having an academic argument with others here about IQ related to genetic makeup, not who the Irish are as a nation which includes many other sub-groups you have erased from their proper entitlement to being referred to as Irish."
ReplyDeleteExactly. So, if I/we use the term Irish to mean just any old body who happens to live on the island known as Ireland, then we lose information regarding genetic make-up, which applies to politics as well as academic discussions.
For example, in Dennis' orginal list, the U.S.A. ranks at number 3 in terms of significant biologists. Well, that's interesting -- and clearly one should consider what American cultural practices have contributed to this success -- but it's obviously also important to ask what ethnic groups do those scientists come from? Are they Native-Americans? No? Gee, why not? Are they ethnic-Irish? Not so many of them? Huh. Strange. Oh, they're mostly Germans and Jews? What a surprise!
I'm really not interested in a politcal debate, Pat. I'd prefer to refer everyone from Ireland as "Irish-nationals" and the indigenous Irish as "Irish" because that seems the simplest and clearest.
But, I'd also settle for calling the indigenous Irish the "Gael-Irish" or whatever you or anyone else wants to call them. Frankly, I don't care if we call them all the A, B and C groups that happen live on that island off the west coast of Europe. It doesn't matter to me.
What mattered to me in this instance was to point out that the indigenous Irish (of which I am at least half) have contributed very few significant members to the discipline of biology. Rather, it has been the Anglo-Irish, as in other disciplines, that have contributed the most to that discipline. And isn't that interesting?
However, if I were interested in discussing all of this naming on a political level, I'd point out that newcomers (like Nigerians) arriving in Ireland these days and calling themselves "Irish" is clearly one more way of aiding in the displacement of ethnically Irish people in what was once their own land -- after a long history of being displaced by Vikings, Normans, Scots and English.
Kind of like persuading Aborigines and Native-Americans to include themselves as Australians and Americans 'cause, you know, we're all members of one (propositional) country and isn't that great and let's all hold hands and sing kumbaya. Well, it's hasn't been so great for the Aborigines or the Native-Americans. They lost out, right? (Although they obviously benefitted in many ways, too.) So did the native Irish. But, that's just our luck, right? ;-)
(Please, don't anyone misunderstand me and think that I think we should give Indians or Aborigines or Irish people back their lands. That's not my position. Like any other animal, if you don't defend your terrority, you're out of luck. Shame, but that's how life works.)
Thank you for agreeing Eileen. I think your argument is intelligible now that you have correctly identified which genetic group you are referring to.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's hasn't been so great for the Aborigines or the Native-Americans. They lost out, right?
I have no idea about the American Indians, but no, the Oz Aborigines didn't lose out. They are doing just fine. I met several of them today and they were as happy as Larry.
Matter of fact I'm posting right now from Uluru/Ayers Rock and can tell you that there is not a problem in sight.
The Park and Native lands are all managed co-operatively, the Aboriginals live a mixture of traditional and modern lifestyle, and probably have more opportunity than most people in the world. No one is singing Kumbaya but I'm sure if we cracked open a few cold ones we'd all get a rousing rendition of Waltzing Matilda and My Island Home going.
Don't believe all you see from Hollywood.
Cheers,
Pat
Dennis said: I'm wondering how non-Irish the "Protestant Ascendancy" was. Since they existed as a group for hundreds of years, wouldn't intermarriage with and conversion of the locals ("Native Irish", i.e. Catholics) have meant that using Catholic and Protestant to define ethnic groups is invalid?
ReplyDeleteNo, I don't think it's completely invalid. The groups have fuzzy edges, sure, but the religious divisions do provide a good proxy for the underlying genetic ones.
There has, of course, been some amount of inter-marriage between the native Irish and the later-arriving groups. The longer a particular group has been on the island, the more absorbed they are, of course. The Vikings and Normans are quite well-absorbed, and to a lesser extent the Old-English. But the more recent Anglo-Irish, not so much. The Penal Law prohibiting marriage between Protestants and Catholics wasn't repealed until 1778. That's only 8 or 9 generations ago, and with the significant differences between the two groups in material wealth, inter-marriage was not all that common.
If I can ever find it, I'll post a link to a great map showing the genetic waves flowing from east to west across the island representing the native Irish far out on the west coast versus the more recent commers in Dublin and the east.
In any case, the material point is still that the important scientists that Ireland has produced (none of which appeared on your list anyway!) have been Anglo-Irish in descent, even though they may have been partly native-Irish here and there. There haven't been many native Irish Great Scientists.
Pat said: "The Park and Native lands are all managed co-operatively...."
ReplyDeleteExactly. And, once-upon-a-time those areas were "managed" by just the Aborigines. Now they have to share that management with some other, unrelated group of people.
Pat said: "I think your argument is intelligible now that you have correctly identified which genetic group you are referring to."
ReplyDeleteThat's what I've been doing from the first. ;-)
For a Finn and Pseudothyrum:
ReplyDeleteWho said race is a social construct?? Here we have a dilgent defense of Finnishness and Irishness the likes of which one rarely sees.It shows how much we take pride in our ancestry and country of origin. This is the same pride that instigated wholesale slaughters so we must keep it tamed if possible. At least we get a glimpse of a kind of racial pride that now infects both Europe and America as the have-nots exploit liberal PC mandates that outlaw any species of white pride while permitting "minority" pride.
Several points: a Finn does a good job of raising questions about the exact explanation of the Finn/Swede Pisa differences. This is a reasonable position, but regardless of the historic influences on the Finnish gene pool, it is clear that they score very well on various international tests.Since the actual IQ studies do not show significant differences, it is likely that Finnish schooling is somehow superior to that of other European countries.Whether it is family life or schooling or both we do not know at this point.
The point by Pseudothyrum about Paleolithic hunters being overwelmed by the migrating Neolithic farmers is not likely to be correct. Surely there was some encounters that were bloody, but these populations intermixed enough to create the modern genetic picture of 80/20. Europeans are clearly constituted of much Paleolithic genetics.Bruce Lahn's discovery of brain-building microcephalin at 37,000 years fits this model of smart hunter-gatherers living in Paleolithic Europe.They could not have been massacred and still leave their genetic fingerprints across Europe.They live on today in modern Europeans who may well alter evolution by non-replacemnt breeding practices.
And they're happy to share Eileen. The benefits go both ways.
ReplyDeletebtw. The Irish didn't lose out, not even the Gaels who are still the majority genetic group. The Irish won independence! You won, we won. Go and have a beer to celebrate.
You know there's something far more insidious than physical invasion, it is cultural invasion from afar.
Example: We just played a Test Cricket Series against the West Indies (Windies). The Windies were sponsored by KFC. The tour was sponsored by KFC. KFC put out a series of ads where this Ozzie (White fella) tricks annoying people to get out of his hair by offering them a bucket of KFC. He gets rid of the in-laws so he can watch the cricket on TV for instance.
One of the ads he's surrounded by Windies fans at a Test, who're all playing drums, steel drums and singing. Very annoying. He offers them a bucket of KFC and they all shut up and munch down.
Guess what? Americans find that racist and offensive. KFC tries to explain that a) no one has a clue that you people have some mental issues with offering black people KFC and b) we never had any damn slave trade anyway c) there are next to no African Americans in Oz d) Americans let alone Black Americans don't even watch or care about the cricket and d) wtf are you people on about?
All for naught. The commercial has been banned. American cultural imperialism 1 - Oz nil.
I tell ya, just when you think you've won independence, sure enough, in comes a new big brother to lay down a guilt trip and slowly but surely take over your country. And they don't even have to invade.
Cheers,
Pat
Pat said: "And they're happy to share Eileen. The benefits go both ways."
ReplyDeleteYeah. And I'm sure the Tasmanians are happy to share their island with Europeans, too ... oh, wait ... no, there are no full-blooded Tasmanians left to ask, are there? Shame about that.
btw. The Irish didn't lose out, not even the Gaels who are still the majority genetic group.
In many ways I probably agree with you here because since the time of the Anglos ruling over Ireland, the native Irish have managed to go forth and multiply all over the world, so perhaps in the end it wasn't a "bad" thing for the Irish to wind up having to share their territory with a foreign group.
There are probably a lot of Irish today -- and there were certainly plenty in the past -- who would disagree, though, preferring self-governance to foreign rule or even sharing sovereignty with other peoples. Too bad they didn't manage to defend their territory, but then they were too busy fighting each other and didn't have the same military strength as the invaders (IQ anyone?).
pat:"You know there's something far more insidious than physical invasion, it is cultural invasion from afar."
ReplyDeleteNo, that is completely wrong; culture changes and evolves all of the time and constantly, whilst physical DNA takes many thousands of years to evolve and each race and ethnic groups is genetically unique in some respect.
Again, culture can be changed very quickly, but DNA is a much slower process because it is so ancient.
For instance, I'd rather see the culture and political system of the USA fall completely rather than have White peoples become entirely subsumed in to a invading non-White immigrant mass -- same with your country is Australia. The sullied culture can be repaired and changed easily, but once DNA is subsumed or obliterated it will never come back.
Eman: Right and wrong. You are perfectly correct about the negatives effects of degenerate populations mingling with superior ones. What was lucky in European prehistory was the convergence of two dissimilar populations-the primitive but smart hunter-gatherers- with the Neolithic farmers from the Near East. While IQ gradients run from the very smart North to the duller South in Europe, the "gaps" alarm no-one because every country has national pride and much interesting history to reflect upon. Greece appears to have become duller over time but invading peoples of superior strength and inferior mind could well contaminate what was quite superior in Alexander's time.Such incursions were commonplace.
ReplyDeleteYour DNA hypothesis is plain wrong. While we always thought that DNA changed very slowly, the book called The 10,000 Year Explosion will explode that myth. Indeed, culture becomes a powerful fulcrum of genetic change that created substantial differences among human racial groups. As Europe was undergoing a hybredizing effect from the invasion of farmers, it was ready for even more genetic change from the cultural effects of agriculture. So the European gene pool was perhaps the most dynamic on Earth over the last 10,000 years.Of course you are right about culture changing faster, but this book will alter the way you view change in human populations.
Re: Cornelius Troost
ReplyDeleteAbove I already questioned the present IQ test reliability, and I can go into more details if necessary. If those problems are not attended to, there is no reason to accept the results as such.
The problems with Richard Lynn's scientific methods can likely be explained by the present hostile political and cultural PC-environment, with limited resources, financing and possibilities. He is probably doing the best he can in such an environment, thus the inadequacies are environmental?
It can be thought what kind of high quality IQ results Lynn would acquire, if he had the possibility to orchestrate a Pisa style IQ study.
It is hard to see what are the special things in Finnish education that would make such a difference. It is quite traditional; homework checked; teacher explains the subject matter; teacher asks questions and students answer; students ask questions; some reading or other tasks are done. There are some (minor) variations depending on the subject and purposes, and personal differences in teaching styles. Teaching in it's basic form is uniform in all parts of Finland.
The family life has limited effect on IQ, like Minnesota Twin study and it's comprehensive reanalysis showed (Farber, 1981).
Identical twins reared together + .86
Identical twins reared apart + .75
Fraternal twins reared together + .60
Big fuss was made that immigrants have slightly better school results in Finland than immigrants in Europe on average, until it was pointed out that in Finland there is larger percentage of Russians and other people who have higher IQ's than the general third world immigrants in Europe. The second factor is that the slum development in Finland is behind France, England, Holland, Germany, Belgia etc. However, e.g. east Helsinki is relatively fast on it's way towards ghetto status, which is progressively (sic) depressing it's school results towards European immigrant average.
Given certain basic level of teaching, the results are hard to increase, but easier to decrease, if school work is not appreciated and done, the teaching is interrupted and disturbed, and the school environment is a criminal playground.
@ Fjordman: Multiculturalism does not stem from communism; the USA is the true Diversity Empire
ReplyDeleteWell half of it certainly is; the half that wants to do away with white civilization.
They seem to be overly susceptible to the sentiment that in earlier times would lead people to flagellanism and extreme reclusion; to sit and pine on top of drafty pillars or immured in the boulders of bridges.
Nowadays it manifests itself in the adage that 'everything that exists deserves to be destroyed'. They subscribe to Marx' interpretation of it: that in order to build a new utopia you'll have to reduce the current one to ashes first.
So I really think that multiculturalism does stem from communism: it is simply one of the tools employed to destroy 'bourgeois society'
The other half of the Amercan people - the astro-turf teabaggers, the gun-lobby and what have you are, they are the people who have caught a whiff of the sentiment that led their forebears to step onto a boat, leave everything behind and make a new start in an strange and unknown land, and build the new Jerusalem there
Don't say it isn't so - with America gone there's no hope left
For a Finn:
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments. You may well be right about the Pisa test being stronger than the others. Apparently Pisa does indeed discriminate better than other tests.Assuming Finnish teachers are not rehearsing for that test via special tutering with similar problems, the Pisa may be picking up a slight edge of Finns over the others. However, the factor of Russian immigration could be playing into these data unless the scores were already superior before the latest influx of Russians.
My wife is "Russian" despite technically being Belarussian. She learned English from scratch at age 42-45 with a discipline almost unknown in America.She and nearly all other Russians in Florida operates at a much better level than other immigrants.Finland suffers little and gains much from Russian immigration!
The Finn-Swede debate is a tempest in a teapot compared to the very real dysgenic effects of Mexican immigration here or African immigration into Europe.You have it good, my friend. You had better hope that liberals in Finland do not win the immigration battles as they are (so far) in other parts of Europe, for your high IQ paradise may well join the rest of Europe's dystopia.Russians, of course, exempted.
Re: Cornelius Troost
ReplyDeleteAnd thank you. I tie up some loose ends, and then it's time to move on.
Finnish schools:
School tasks in Finland are versatile; e.g. in mathematics there are abstract, real-life like tasks and variation inside these categories is considerable; however the information I have gathered seems to indicate that this is a general feature in the schools of Western countries. The difficulty level in Finnish schools seems to be also similar to Western countries; e.g. in mathematics approximately in the same ages laws of exponents, quadratic formulas, trigonometry formulas etc. is taught. Exception seems to be those areas in Western countries where schools have had to accommodate the lower skill levels of immigrants and minorities. Usa is one of the notorious countries in this respect, I am sad to say.
The inventive teaching methods in Finland are rare; e.g. Hungarian mathematics where the numbers and their processing is connected to different and real geometric building blocks and their connecting; the Japanese learning of geometry by folding 3D figures from paper; the Japanese calculation of complex and large mathematical problems first with the help of real abacus and then later with the mental picture of abacus, when it is internalized; etc. The reason for this is not prohibitions or discouragement to innovative teaching in Finnish school system, but mere bureaucratic inertia and culture. The bureaucracy in Finland produces well the basic things, but rarely the exceptional things. The innovation is left to those teachers, who have strong will to innovate and to do the extra work for it (Learning the necessary information, replacing the bureaucratically given basic course by creating new, creating methods to teach new courses and evaluate tests, making sure that the new courses comply with bureacratic regulations (red tape) etc.)
*****
I like Russian culture and the way they talk and write; even their ordinary language is often like poetry. Russian traditional literature is probably the best in the world. Russians are in many aspects capable and vigorous people. Unfortunately the Russian immigration to Finland is problematic.
Russia is an empire with many power interests and it uses increasingly the Russians in Finland as power leverage. The more Russians here is, the more forceful the pressure becomes. Finland is a small nation, about 5 million people, St. Petersburg alone has considerably more people. Finns can be easily become a overwhelmed by immigration numbers. Russians have accumulated brutal and quite corrupt culture from Mongol conquest to interaction with it's southern neighbors to Soviet rule. To defend our continuity and existence Finns have had to develop personality traits and culture that withstand the pressures, large part of it from Russia.
*****
I wrote: "It is also likely that Ukraine is the ice age birthplace of Finno-Ugric peoples, who wandered north and then split to east and west."
- More clearly: What the different Finno-Ugric peoples likely did was to be the first peoples and alone in the vast stretch from Finland to Siberia. Thus they created large part of the genetic east west imprint from Finland to Asia. If methods are not devoloped to filter this out from the genetic studies, Finns' position in the genetic maps will be distorted and placed far too east. It is possible that even Niskanen's results above are distorted towards east. Same applies at least to some extent to Saami people.
Here is an example what Siberian Fenno-Ugric people look like; Nenets. The European Asian mix is easy to observe. Enlarge the picture by clicking it:
http://www.ugri.net/100/htm/index.htm
For a Finn:
ReplyDeleteThanks again for your excellent exposition on Finnish education.Once upon a time America had a traditional curriculum with room for innovation as you describe. However, we lost it all as the Sixties revolution made teacher authority an enemy, knowledge a questionable asset, and children a glorious social creature to be rewarded for existing.While radical individualism was the first liberal excess, it has since morphed into some degree of mass man under the iron fist of "political correctness." Today, teachers are still trained to believe that social justice is the highest value and knowledge is subjective and personal.
Somehow Finland has a hold on reality in spite of European liberal excesses. Germany and Russia still "discriminate" by allowing an IQ separation in schooling while avoiding such nasty implications publically.My assumption is that your schooling also "discriminates" by separating out the brightest kids. Here in America we simply manufacture bigger universities and private pseudo-colleges to receive the vast pool of semiliterate students crawling out of high schools with very weal backgrounds.We quite literally bought the false belief of liberals that "We are all the same." Obama's new Race to the Top program will ditribute 4.5 billion to schools willing to reinvent education using tools like charter schools which already have been carefully evaluated and found wanting.They don't make a significant difference in outcomes from the public schools. Hey, evidence never stopped Obama!Alice in Wonderland comes to the White House.
Yes, the European-Asian mix was historically inevitable since the Mongols.Asian polygyny is not all bad, my friend, for Genghis and other emperors were undoubtedly highly fit and passed on excellent genomes.Chinese high IQ's were one product of this cultural tradition. Accidental eugenics. While the genetics maps are not perfect, they tell us much we didn't know a few years ago. They generally make good sense and give us a picture of where we came from and the patterns of movement of evolving populations across the world.
What about national origins of significant bigots? Overlap is high?
ReplyDelete