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----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, July 05, 2005 10:54
AM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] The smartest
people became Americans
Ed,
At 08:56 05/07/2005 -0400, you
wrote:
A few points, Keith. One is that
it is always a little dangerous to try to link particular physical
characteristics, like brain size, to intelligence and then assign superior
intelligence to a particular people.
I don't think any biologist would doubt that brain size (compared with
body mass) is a fairly sure guide to intelligence. However, this is something
that non-biologists have enormous resistance to accepting and is still highly
controversial. This general effect is significant, of course, when comparing
between species, but not necessarily between individuals. Several so-called
geniuses have had small heads, so it is said, but these instances have been
rare. (I've forgotten who these were supposed to be -- Anatole France and
Voltaire come to mind.)
New stuff from
Ed: A website I accessed says the following: "While there is rough
correlation between brain size in relation to overall body size and
intelligence, scientists caution that that correlation is very loose. Human
brain size varies considerably, just as body size does. The brain size of
recognized "geniuses" can vary from 1000 cc to 2000 cc in modern humans.
Clearly, one has to examine far subtler features of the brain to understand
the relations between physical characteristics and intellectual capacities or
between brain physiology and social or cultural behavior." (http://www.wsu.edu:8001/vwsu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/phychar/culture-humans-2two.html)
The "average" brain size for Homo sapiens
sapiens, as you know Keith, is 1400 cc. On the subject of geniuses with
small heads, I recall a statue of Peter the Great in St. Petersburg.
Either his body was huge and his head of normal size or his head very small
and his body of normal size, or both. Of my three IQ heros (see below),
the little girl in Sao Paulo and the Yukon Indian had normal sized heads,
while the incredible human calculator in Delhi had a rather small head, just
big enough for a few layers of microchips.
It kind of smacks of the kind of
thing Phillip Rushton, a Canadian psychologist (or whatever), tried to do
when he argued that the longer the penis the less intelligent its bearer was
likely to be. Some African groups had long penises, and Rushton
therefore deemed then less intelligent. That they were also much
taller than other people was deemed irrelevant. When it comes to brain
size, we mustn't forget that Neanderthals had larger brains than we
do. Were they more intelligent? I don't think
so.
Most of the brain is taken up with body senses and
control and Neanderthals were, quite simply, larger than us. (They might also
have had more nervous and brain tissue devoted to muscle control -- their bone
thickness suggest far greater muscle development than humans.) What seems to
be important as regards applied intelligence is the relative size of the
frontal lobes as compared with the rear cortex but, as far as I know no
calibration has been possible yet in the case of Neanderthals where only
skulls remain. It is very possible that Neanderthals were just as intelligent
as Homo Sapiens (in the sense that we term intelligence today) but died from a
disease that their genes were susceptible to and ours weren't. Like you, I
personally don't think they were as intelligent as us and died out because we
were much more efficient at hunting, etc, because we were already trading
long-distance for better quality flints and wood and they didn't. (Recent
finds contradict earlier beliefs about their lack of intelligence -- they
were, in fact, skilful at making stone tools and some scientists think that we
actually learned some of these skills from them, although most think that
tool-making arose indepedently in the two species.) Certainly no traded
objects have been found at Neanderthal grave sites but far more evidence is
needed yet to be sure.
Personally, I think that intelligence is
a rather randomly distributed thing.
I agree.
Geneticists consider that the development of the brain in the foetus is due to
well over 1,000 genes. The random re-arrangement of this number when sperm
meets egg make it unlikely that there are huge differences between any human
baby at birth, anynore than there are huge differences in physical abilities
between most people. What happens during the first few months and years of a
child's life -- when millions of brain cells die if not used -- is much more
important. However, as in the world of highly competitive sport today, where
marginal differences in physical abilities win Olympic medals, I would suggest
that the same might apply now in terms of marginal differences brain size in
the increasingly competitive world of business and technology.
Based on their performance, the
three most intelligent people I've known or observed were a little black
girl in the Sao Paulo slums, a hotel clerk in Delhi and an Indian in the
Yukon. Perhaps the apparent intelligence of the Asians you mention is
more a thing of social organization than absolute IQ. In terms of
social organization, my three very smart people never had much of a chance,
although the little girl I observed in Sao Paulo did hit the newspapers for
the kinds of things she was into as she matured.
It
may be culture that's more important in the general social environment of a
particular culture. Orientals certainly have a stronger sense of family than
Europeans so that if, for example, one member of a family hits upon a good
business idea then all the family, however distant, are drawn in by a sense of
obligation. Fei Xiaotong's book, "From the Soil" is good on this. (His
research stems from before the Chinese Revolution and his books were banned
from the universities during the Communist regime until a few years after Mao
Zedong's death. And, of course, a great deal of the revival of Chinese
business since then has been due to a relatively small number of expat Chinese
returning from Singapore and elsewhere in Asia. Fei Xiaotong had long since
become 'respectable' again and died not long ago, one of the most revered
scholars in China.)
When it comes to the peopling of the
Americas, there is an increasing amount of evidence that early peoples
arrived via various routes and with various gene pools. The best book
I've read on the matter is Elaine Dewar's "Bones". Dewar, a
journalist, spent a lot of time interviewing anthropologists and
archeologists on the matter. In addition to the Bering Straits, routes
included across the Atlantic from Europe, across the Pacific, and even
across the Atlantic from Africa. Sites like Monte Verde in Chile and
the footprints in Mexico suggest that man not only came to the Americas much
earlier than was believed a decade or so ago, but stayed.
It would seem very likely that man had also arrived earlier than
11,500BC in America by crossing across the Atlantic from France along the edge
of the ice cap at about 20,000BC but this contingent seems to have died
out. The latest research about "Mexican Man" is fascinating, whether he
started across the Pacific from north-west China or from Indonesian isalnds at
around 40,000BC. Of course, the evidence may not be substantiated to
everyone's satisfaction.
More new stuff from Ed:
From what I've read, I'm not so sure that the Solutreans (probably) who
traversed the Atlantic along the ice-cap's edge died out. Again, I
suggest you look at Elaine Dewar, published in 2001 and therefore reasonably
current.
While I'm generally sympathetic
to North American Indians wanting to preserve their culture, one thing that
really bothers me is that they want to bury any ancient bones found on their
traditional lands (or any lands for that matter), claiming the bones are those
of their ancestors. There was a terrific fight between Indians of the
Northwestern US and anthropologists over Kennewick man because the Indians
wanted to bury him before he could be studied. We had a similar incident
with respect to some bones, about 5,000 years old, that turned up on an
island in the Ottawa River. Again, there was immediate pressure from the
local Indians to bury them because they were the bones of their ancestors,
which was hardly likely.
Ed
Keith
Ed
- ----- Original Message -----
- From: Keith Hudson
- To: [email protected]
- Sent: Tuesday, July 05, 2005 2:53 AM
- Subject: [Futurework] The smartest people became Americans
- 754. The smartest people became Americans
- In posting No 750." The smartest people on earth" I put forward the
argument held by some evolutionary biologists that the smartest people on
earth come from a comparitively small area of Korea, Japan and north-east
China. Today, people from this region have larger brain sizes and score
higher on (Western authored) intelligence tests than Europeans. These
people are also pretty smart economically and industrially, by far the
most of the engineering innovations of pre-Industrial Revolution Europe
having come from China originally.
- They are probably smarter because they are the descendants of the
leading edge of migratory man which left Africa via Ethiopia about 85,000
years ago and ended about 40-30,000 years ago when it bumped into the ice
cap in north-east Asia. Forced by population pressure from behind, early
man would have passed through a wide variety of environments as he went
along, and then up, the Asian coastline, his mental abilities being
successively refined by the different viscissitudes along the way. Since
30,000BC, the high intelligence of those early migrants has probably
become diffused somewhat when the migration largely stopped, man spread
inland and intermarriage started taking place throughout Asia.
- But when the ice cap had finally retreated to its minimum at about
15,000-10,000BC a further migratory route opened up. This was between the
north-east peninsula of Asia and Alaska, along the edge of the ice cap
across what is now known the Bering Sea. From there man migrated down the
western coast of America and then inland, populating the whole North
American continent. This race of early man is known as Clovis Man and has
been widely believed among anthropologists to be the first appearance of
man in the New World..
- It now appears that the intelligence (and courage) of early man in
north-east Asia was such that he had already made a migration across the
Pacific Ocean! This would have been at about the time further northward
progress was blocked by the ice cap barrier at around 40-30,000BC. Such a
suggestion would have been inconceivable until recently, but evidence is
now revealing that there are remains of early man at around that date
living in Mexico. Professor Matthew Bennett's evidence, briefly described
in the The Times article below, remains to be tested and will no doubt be
fiercely debated by those who hold to the Clovis Man-only lobby.
- I only have one comment to make on this. No evidence of man's presence
earlier than about 11,500BC has yet been found on the broad mass of the
North American continent so it seems likely that those who established
themselves in Mexico, very smart though they undoubtedly were, became
extinct through some overwhelming environmental circumstance or other.
Otherwise, they would have spread into America itself. If Professor
Bennett's evidence is more widely accepted -- and it appears to have had
some substantiation already -- then the search will now be on for the
fossilised bones of this Mexican Man. Then, with luck, DNA analysis can
add to the evidence.
- Perhaps the heading of this piece is a misnomer. Perhaps it should
have been: "The smartest people became Mexicans" but then, considering
that present-day Mexicans are now migrating -- legally and illegally --
into America (once again preferentially along a coastline!) at the rate of
above one million a year, and that President Bush has recently persuaded
Congress to accept a free trade treaty with Central American countries,
then Mexicans can be considered Americans. And perhaps even vice versa. Or
at least part of America will when, as seems possible from the higher
birth rate of Hispanics, the United States divides into two distinct
cultural regions mainly speaking Spanish and American respectively.
- Keith Hudson
- <<<<
- FOOTSTEPS IN TIME THAT ADD 30,000 YEARS TO HISTORY OF AMERICA
- Lewis Smith
- Discovery by British scientists adds 30,000 years to the human history
of a continent
- The discovery of human footprints, preserved by volcanic ash, have put
back the likely date that the American continent was colonised by Man by
almost 30,000 years, British scientists say.
- The prints, found by the scientists at the edge of a lake in Mexico,
are thought to be about 40,000 years old. Their discovery upsets the
widely accepted theory that Man first reached America across a land
bridge, now covered by the Bering Sea, 11,500 years ago. Casts of the
footprints reveal that a community of Homo sapiens lived in the
Valsequillo Basin, near Puebla in central Mexico. Their feet ranged in
size from those of small children, aged about 5 or 6, to adults who would
have fitted size eight shoes.
- The prints were found at the bottom of an abandoned quarry and were
preserved in volcanic rock. From the size of the prints, researchers from
Liverpool John Moores University and Bournemouth University estimated that
the adults ranged in height from 3ft 9ins to 6ft. Almost 270 prints were
found at the site, two thirds of them human and the rest from animals
including mammoths, an extinct species of camel, prehistoric cow and deer.
The Liverpool and Bournemouth team discovered the footprints in September
2003 but have only recently had confirmation of their age from scientists
at Oxford University. Dating techniques included radiocarbon dating and
optical stimulated luminescence.
- Until now it was widely believed that Clovis Man was the first human
to set foot on the continent at the end of the last Ice Age. Previous
academic research has suggested, however, that human occupation of the
American continents may have begun several thousand years earlier.
- The footprints are the first evidence of earlier colonisations and
would suggest that the first settlers reached the West Coast from Japan or
other Pacific Ocean communities.
- Professor Matthew Bennett, of Bournemouth University, said yesterday:
"Our evidence of humans in America 40,000 years ago is irrefutable."
- He accepted that there would be resistance to the theory that the
original migration was not over the Bering Sea. It is quite
controversial. "They are not very happy in North America. They are very
wedded to the idea of colonisation 11,500 years ago."
- The Times -- 5 July 2005
- >>>>
- Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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