It may be wondered why a number of American anthropologists reject the concept of race...

It may be wondered why a number of American anthropologists reject the concept of race. The answer has been given by two Polish anthropologists, Kaszycka and Strkalj (2002, p. 334). They write:
Americans have become very sensitive to race, and the term has acquired strongly sensitive connotations. Many American scientists have opted for the non-existence of human races. Furthermore, the growing demands of "political correctness" militate against the use of the term in and outside science.... Few scientists dare to study racial origins, lest they be branded racists simply for being interested in the problem.

The reason for the rejection of the concept of race by a number of American anthropologists is apparent from the title of Montagu's book Man's Most Dangerous Myth. Montagu evidently believed that people's consciousness of race is dangerous because it tends to foster racial an-tagonisms that can escalate into conflict. To prevent this it would be better for the concept of race to be suppressed. In Europe most anthropologists accept the validity of the concept of race. Thus, a survey of Polish anthropologists carried out in 2001 found that 75 percent agreed with the proposition "There are biological races within the species Homo sapiens" (Kaszycka and Strzalko, 2003). It is mainly in the United States that the existence of race has come to be
14
denied by a number of anthropologists and a few biologists and social scientists who have sacrificed their scientific integrity to political correctness.

There has been some work on the musical ability of African Americans but this is little known because it has not been summarized in general textbooks on intelligence such as those of Brody (1992) and Mackintosh (1998) or in specialist textbooks on race differences in intelli-gence such as those by Loehlin, Lindzey, and Spuhler (1975) and Jensen (1980, 1998). The
39
general outcome of these studies is that African Americans perform less well than Europeans on tests of musical abilities of pitch discrimination, tone discrimination, and memory, but they perform about the same as Europeans on tests of rhythm.

The first attempt to estimate the intelligence of Africans was made by Galton (1869) on the basis of his own experience of them during his travels in southwest Africa and the accounts of other travelers. He constructed a scale of grades of intelligence in which one grade was equivalent to 10.425 IQ points on the IQ scale. He estimated that Africans were about two grades below the English, giving them an IQ of 79. Subsequent studies of the IQs of general
23
population samples of Africans in sub-Saharan Africa have shown that this estimate overesti-mated the African IQ by slightly over one grade.

Have a bump.

IQs of African-European Hybrids
We now consider studies of the IQs of African-European hybrids. The prediction from the genetic theory of race differences is that the IQs of racial hybrids should fall approximately midway between those of Europeans and Africans. To examine this prediction, studies of Af-rican-European racial hybrids are summarized in Table 4.12. Row 1 gives results for Brazil showing that hybrids known as "browns" score intermediate between Europeans and Africans. Row-2 gives results from Germany from the Eyferth (1961) study showing the IQ of African-European hybrid children was 94 in relation to 100 for European children. The mean IQ of the African-European hybrids was 96.5 but is reduced in the table to 94 to allow for the secular increase of the IQ from the date of the standardization. Row 3 gives results from South Africa for Europeans, Africans, and Coloreds, who are largely African-European, and shows that the IQ of 83 of the Coloreds falls exactly half way between that of Europeans (100) and that of Africans (65). Row 4 gives results from a more recent study in South Africa collected ap-proximately sixty years later and showing a sample of Coloreds with an IQ of 86 compared with an IQ of 100 for Europeans. Africans were not included in this study but the IQ of 86 is much higher than that of pure Africans in South Africa. Row 5 gives results from a further South African study showing an IQ of 80 for Coloreds.

The problem of the genetic and environmental contributions to the low IQ of Africans has been debated since the early decades of the twentieth century, particularly in regard to the problem of the low IQs obtained by African Americans in the United States. Many hundreds of papers and a number of books have been devoted to this problem and it is not possible to deal with it adequately. Three positions have been taken on this question:

1. The IQ difference between blacks and whites is wholly environmentally determined or at least there is no compelling evidence for any genetic contribution to the low black IQ. This position has been taken by Flynn (1980), Mackintosh (1998), Nisbett (1998), Fish (2002), Brody (2003), and many others.
2. The IQ difference is determined by some mix of genetic and environmental factors. This position has been taken by Loehlin, Lindzey, and Spuhler (1975), Vernon (1979), and Waldman, Weinberg, and Scarr (1994, p. 31), who conducted one of the most important stud-ies of this question involving the IQs of black children adopted by white couples.
3. The IQ difference is largely genetically determined. This position has been taken by Garrett (1945, 1961); McGurk (1953a, 1953b), who showed that when blacks and whites were matched for socio-economic status, blacks scored 7.5 IQ points below whites; Kuttner (1962), who argued that black-white differences in intelligence were reflected in the differences in the building of early civilizations; Shuey (1966), who made the first compilation of black-white IQ differences, from 1916 up to 1965; Osborne and McGurk (1982), who made an updated compilation of Shuey's work covering the years 1966-1980; and Jensen (1969, 1974, 1980, 1998), who has made numerous contributions to this issue and concluded that about two thirds of the American black-white IQ difference is attributable to genetic factors. Others who have taken the largely genetic position are Shockley (1969), Eysenck (1971), Baker (1974), Levin (1997), Rushton (2003), and the writer (Lynn, 1994c, 2001).

There are six major arguments for the presence of some genetic determination of the intelli-gence difference between Africans and Europeans.
First, the two races have evolved independently in different environments over a period of approximately 100,000 years (Mellars and Stringer, 1989; Cavalli-Sforza, 2000). When two populations evolve largely in isolation from each other for this period of time genetic differ-ences between them

inevitably evolve for all characteristics for which there is genetic variability. These differ-ences evolve as a result of genetic drift, mutations, founder effects, and most important, adap-tation to different environments. The extreme environmentalist position that there is no ge-
47
netic difference between the two races for intelligence defies this general principle of evolu-tionary biology and should be ruled out as impossible.

Don't like 80% of eastern european anthropologists support biological notion of race?
Even in soviet times it was that way

Second, the consistency with which Africans obtain low IQs in so many different locations can only be explained by the operation of a strong genetic factor. If only environmental fac-tors were responsible for the different IQs of different populations, we should expect to find some countries where Africans had higher IQs than Europeans. The failure to find a single country where this is the case points to the presence of a strong genetic factor.
Third, the high heritability of intelligence found in twin studies of blacks and whites in the United States, in Europe, Japan, and India shows that intelligence is powerfully affected by genetic factors and makes it improbable that the differences between Africans and Europeans, or between any other pairs of races, can be solely environmentally determined.

Fourth, the brain size difference between blacks and whites points to a genetic difference, considering the high heritability of about 0.9 of brain size and the correlation of approxi-mately 0.4 between brain size and intelligence.
Fifth, several egalitarians have proposed that white racism may be responsible for impairing the IQs of the blacks. Thus, Weinberg, Scarr, and Waldman write that their result that black children adopted by whites have low IQs "could indicate the results of environmental influ-ences such as the pervasive effect of racism in American life" (1992, p. 41) and "the IQ re-sults are consistent with racially based environmental effects in the order of group means" (p. 40). Mackintosh (1998, p. 152) also falls back on white racism in a final attempt to argue that the low IQ of the black adoptees can be explained environmentally and suggests that perhaps "it is precisely the experience of being black in a society permeated by white racism that is responsible for lowering black children's IQ scores." These egalitarians do not explain how hypothetical white racism could impair the IQs of black children reared by middle class white parents. There is no known or plausible mechanism by which supposed white racism could impair the IQs of blacks. Nor do they attempt to explain how it is that Africans throughout sub-Saharan Africa, who are not exposed to white racism, except in South Africa, have IQs of approximately 67.

Sixth, the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study carried out by Waldman, Scarr, and Weinberg (1994) was designed to show that when black infants are adopted by white parents they would have the same IQs as whites. The authors of this study examined groups of black, white, and interracial babies all adopted by white middle class couples. In the event it turned out that at the age of 17 the IQs were 89 for the blacks, 98 for the interracial, and 106 for the white. Thus, a 17 IQ point difference between blacks and whites remains when they are reared in the same conditions. Being raised by white adoptive parents had no beneficial ef fects on the intelligence of the black children because their IQ of 89 is thesame as that of blacks in the north central states from which the infants came. The interracial group with its IQ of 98 falls midway between the black and the white, as would be predicted from the genetic cause of the

difference. A full analysis and discussion of this study has been given by Levin (1994) and Lynn (1994c), together with an unconvincing reply by Waldman, Weinberg, and Scarr (1994, p. 43) in which they assert "we feel that the balance of the evidence, although not conclusive, favors a predominantly environmental etiology underlying racial differences in intelligence and that the burden of proof is on researchers who argue for the predominance of genetic ra-cial differences". Notice that their use of the term ''predominantly environmental etiology" concedes that accept that genetic factors are also present. While the results of this study show that differences in family environment cannot explain the low black IQ, it remains possible that blacks provide an inferior prenatal environment as a result of poorer nutrition of pregnant black women or possibly of the greater use of cigarettes that might impair the growth of the fetal brain. These possibilities are rendered improbable by studies showing that the nutrition of American blacks throughout the twentieth century was not inferior to that of whites (see Chapter 13, Section 7). Another possibility is that black babies might suffer greater impair-ment of the brain because pregnant black women might smoke cigarettes more, since there is some evidence that smoking retards fetal growth, but this is rendered improbable by numer-ous studies showing that blacks smoke cigarettes less than whites.

Despite their commitment to the egalitarian position, it is interesting to note that Waldman, Scarr, and Weinberg conclude that their evidence shows that both genetic and environmental differences contribute to the black-white IQ difference: "We think it is exceedingly implausi-ble that these differences are either entirely genetically based or entirely environmentally based" (p. 31). Thus, while there is nothing in their data that can justify this conclusion, be-cause they provide no evidence for any environmental contribution to the low black IQ, their final position is not greatly different from that advanced by Jensen (1969), that both genetic and environmental factors are responsible for the low black IQ, but where Jensen proposed that the relative contributions are about two thirds genetic and one third environmental, Waldman, Scarr, and Weinberg have concluded that both factors are involved, although they do suggest a quantification of the magnitude of the respective contributions.
In fact, the results of the Minnesota Interracial Adoption Study show that both conclusions are incorrect. The conclusion to be drawn from this study is that rearing black children in a white middle class environment has no effect at all on their IQs at age 17.

Well, I guess Sup Forums already knew that.

During the last 200,000 years the ancestors of the Africans continued to inhabit the tropical and sub-tropical environments of equatorial sub-Saharan Africa. This environment was not strongly cognitively demanding for them because primates had become adapted to it for some 60 million years. During the evolution of the hominids Homo erectus were largely plant eaters but supplemented their diets with scavenging the carcasses of animals killed by lions, leop-ards, and cheetahs (Lee, 1968; Tooby and de Vore, 1989). The evolving Africans lived much as hunter-gatherer peoples in tropical and sub-tropical environments do today, subsisting
146
largely on plant foods, of which numerous species are available throughout the year, and on insects and eggs, with only occasional supplementation from animal meats obtained from hunting.

The ready availability of plant foods, insects, and eggs throughout the year meant that the evolving African peoples in tropical and sub-tropical Africa did not have to hunt animals to obtain meat. A conference of anthropologists was convened in 1966 to debate the Man the Hunter thesis of the importance of hunting for contemporary hunter-gatherers, at which "the consensus of opinion was that meat is of relatively little nutritional importance in the diets of modern tropical foragers" (Stanford and Bunn, 2001, p. 4). In 1999 a similar conference took place at which there was "a consensus that hominid diets were primarily plant based, as they are among modern tropical foragers" (Stanford and Bunn, 2001, p. 356). Hence the Africans had no need to develop the intelligence, skills, tools, and weapons needed for hunting large mammals. Furthermore, the temperature of equatorial Africa varies annually between ap-proximately 32°C. in the hottest month and 17°C. in the coldest, so the African peoples did not encounter the cognitively demanding requirements of having to make needles and thread for making clothes and tents, to make fires and keep them alight, or to prepare and store food for future consumption. It was relatively easy to keep babies, infants, and young children alive because there was no need to provide them with clothing and from quite a young age they were capable of going out and foraging for food by themselves.

Nevertheless, the brain size of the Africans increased during the last 200,000 or so years from approximately 1,186 to l,276cc, and it can be reasonably assumed that this entailed an in-crease in their intelligence to its contemporary value of 67. This increase occurred because of continual directional selection for intelligence, i.e., the more intelligent individuals had more surviving offspring. The genetical processes will have consisted of the increase in the fre-quencies of the alleles for higher IQs and probably of some mutations for higher intelligence. If these mutations for higher intelligence appeared they would have spread through the popu-lation because high intelligence is a fitness characteristic but they would not have spread so rapidly and extensively as in the races in temperate and cold climates because the selection pressures for higher intelligence were not so strong in the benign climate of equatorial Africa.
The level of intelligence that evolved in the Africans was sufficient for them to make a little progress in the transition from hunter-gathering to settled agriculture, but not sufficient to develop anything that could be called a civilization with a written language and arithmetic, construction of a calendar, cities with substantial stone buildings, and other criteria set out by Baker (1974).

Some of the peoples who colonized the Near East between 100,000 and 90,000 years ago mi-grated northwards and around 60,000 years ago reached the Caucasus, from which they spread into the Ukraine and then, around 40,000 years ago, into central and western Europe. Other peoples from Southwest Asia began to colonize Southeast Europe from Anatolia. These peoples evolved into the Europeans with their paler skins and, in the north of Europe, their fair hair and blue eyes. The Europeans were largely isolated from the South Asians and North Africans on the south by the Mediterranean Sea, and on the east by the Black and Caspian Seas, the high mountains of the Caucasus and Himalayas, and the Kara Kum desert in present-day Turkmenistan. In the last ice age, which lasted from around 28,000 to 10,000 years ago, the winters were significantly colder than those in South Asia with the coldest winter month falling to about -5°C. The terrain in Europe became similar to that of present-day Alaska and Siberia. The north of England, Germany, Russia, and the whole of Scandinavia were covered with a permanent ice sheet and the remainder of Europe was cold grasslands and tundra with a few clumps of trees in sheltered places.

These cold winters must have been the main selection pressure for an increase in the brain size and intelligence of the Europeans that drove the average brain size up to l,369cc and their IQ up to 99. Expressing the increase in their brain size as encephalization quotients (EQ) to control for body size, Cutler (1976) has estimated that pre-Wiirm Europeans had an EQ of 7.3

and by the end of the Wiirm glaciation they had an EQ of 8.1. When the ice sheets that cov-ered northern Europe receded by about 10,000 years ago the Europeans with their increased intelligence were able to make the Neolithic transition to settled agriculture. However, despite their high IQ they were not able to develop early civilizations like those built by the South Asians and North Africans because Europe was still cold, was covered with forest, and had heavy soils that were difficult to plough unlike the light soils on which the early civilizations were built, and there were no river flood plains to provide annual highly fertile alluvial depos-its from which agricultural surpluses could be obtained to support an urban civilization and an intellectual class (Landes, 1998). From around BC 2500 the Europeans overcame these prob-lems in the relatively benign climate of southern Europe, where they developed the first Euro-pean civilizations in Crete and Greece. From around BC 700 the Italians began to build a civi-lization that eventually became the Roman empire and by 200 AD embraced the whole of Europe west of the Rhine and included the Danube basin, the Near East, and North Africa. These first European civilizations in Greece and Rome surpassed those of the South Asians and North Africans in science, mathematics, technology, literature, philosophy, and the arts. The western Roman Empire collapsed in 455 AD and European culture suffered a setback in the ensuing dark ages, but from about the year 1000 AD it revived and from around the year 1500 the Europeans became the foremost people in virtually all areas of civilization, as exten-sively documented by Murray (2003).

The genetical processes through which the higher IQs of the Europeans have evolved will have consisted of changes in allele frequencies towards a greater proportion of alleles for high intelligence and probably also through the appearance of new mutations for higher intelli-gence and the rapid spread of these through the population. The probability of new mutations for higher intelligence in the Europeans will have been increased by the stress of the extreme cold to which the Europeans were exposed.
The lower IQs in the range 90 to 94 in Southeast Europe are probably attributable to some gene flow between South Asians and Europeans across the Dardanelles and Aegean, produc-ing a cline of South Asian and European hybrids in the Balkans with IQs intermediate be-tween those of Europeans (99) and South Asians (84). The same cline is present in Turkey where the IQ of around 90 is only fractionally lower than in the Balkans.