I just finished reading Coming Apart, and I'll be damned if it didn't say exactly what I have been thinking lately about class in America.
I also believe that years from now, The Bell Curve will come to be seen as a true Galileo-moment, a time when someone had the nerve to speak an uncomfortable truth that the establishment (and society) just wasn't yet ready to accept the ramifications of.
So what do folks here think of him and his work?
The ironic thing about 'The Bell Curve's' is that Murray and Herrnstein deliberately restricted scope of the analysis to whites. They went out of their way to separate race from the issue, and just look at white population data, and everyone lost their minds anyway.
We don't live under fucking dynastic feudalism like most leftists believe. Your IQ is what determines your grades, which determines your GPA, major, degree, and subsequent salary. Different races in the US have income gaps that correspond exactly with what you would think they would be because of their IQ gaps.
Watching the scientific community abandon what will someday come to be seen as the "unified field theory" joining biology with anthropology and sociology is still painful for me to think about.
And he's right on the money about how class is stratifying along genetically-driven intellectual lines in the US. As someone from an upper middle class background who lives and works around a lot of working class people, I see the reality that he cautions of every day.
Murray is an honest scholar.
Lots of people laud him and Hernstein as geniuses, but their great achievement wasn't intellectual - it was moral.
If every social scientist shared Murray's devotion to truth for its own sake, we would live in a much more just and beautiful civilization. The real lesson from Murray's career is that it doesn't take a grand unified theory to forge a legacy. You simply need to be willing to follow the facts wherever they lead.
Despite his conservadad and libertarian cuck tendencies, he should be applauded for his guts.
He's very brace
The media has been surprisingly welcoming to him, given his history. Whenever his more recent work warrants mention, most media sources don't incessantly deride him over his past. It's fascinating how he 'almost' became a pariah, but recuperated over the years and has a snug little hovel in the political mainstream. All without renouncing his beliefs, he now just keeps them hush hush (but will still speak candidly when prompted)
Eh, IQ doesn't determine it, as IQ is probabilistic not deterministic. However, it is a very good predictor of success, something like 1.5-0.6 in academics.
>true Galileo-moment
More like a Copernicus moment
Racial equality vs Race realism in increasingly becoming like the old Ptolemaic vs Copernicus systems in Astronomy
The Ptolemaic system (geocentrism) had to keep creating more and more complex and bizarre explanations for retrograde planetary motion before scientists had to discard it and replace it with heliocentrism (Copernicus)
I think the "white privilege" nonsense is our "geocentric" moment where everything gets so complex and illogical people simply have to drop racial equality.
I didn't read any of his books, because I doubt they're available in Poland and I won't pay too much money for some foreign books
But I've been listening to interviews with him and reading reviews of his book and this guy is one of these people working in the field of humanities that should be paid even by tax payer money
Because this guy writes on important things, not some ideologized, marxist, gender whatever bullshit
>IQ predicts your GPA
God, wish. My cognitive psychologist-administered IQ test back in middle school scored a 145, and my SAT was in the 1500s (which also correlates with an IQ in the 140s)
I've always been incredibly bored in school, which in combination with my rampant ADD has meant that my grades have always been a mess, though I test incredibly well.
pretty sure they are all free on the internetz
lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com
underrated comment
>Eh, IQ doesn't determine it, as IQ is probabilistic not deterministic.
IQ's probabilistic nature has nothing to do with whether or not it can determine things.
>rampant ADD
Into the trash you go. Not representative.
Uhh, user...
Are you me?
I've been using the "white privilege and internalized race expectations are the planetary epicycles of 21st century social science; An ever-increasingly complicated set of theoretical modifications and excuses that are postulated to defend a politically-motivated hypothesis that is only growing weaker in the face of new evidence" argument for years now!
It's pretty incredible to watch. He's pretty much exactly what we need more of, a scholar who tells the truth but knows how to phrase it so as to avoid being called "Like literally Hitler XDDD", etc.
Fucking hell, this
>Into the trash you go. Not representative.
You take that back!
I may make something of myself, yet!
bumping underrated thread
Thanks, based user
On a related note, I sometimes wonder if deep down he is an outright eugenicist (though if his hypothesis is true, how can you blame him), but is smart enough that he'll never cross that line publicly, since he knows it would instantly discredit all of his work, and has instead decided to present society with the facts as he sees them, knowing that such a conclusion will one day be unavoidable in the case of incontrovertible evidence.
Yeah, that makes sense to me as well.
He knows he can't make the horse drink, but he also knows that once surrounded with water, odds are that it eventually will
I wonder if the book has been translated into Mandarin yet. These facts would currently be more easily integrated into East Asia than the west. They don't have to deal with minority sensitivities since they're homogeneous, and no one minds being told they have the highest IQ societies on Earth.
I'm not wild about the prospect, but I think there is a good chance that the world could end up bifurcated by a Brazilified 90 IQ West, and a eugenic 110 IQ East.
>a Brazilified 90 IQ West, and a eugenic 110 IQ East.
This is the sort of stuff that keeps me up in cold sweats at night. White America was on course for that IQ 110 reality before the civil rights movement and the influx of illegals, and arguably Scandinavia was already there.
Whites are truly victims of their own pathological empathy and compassion, and our unwillingness to acknowledge the fact that not everyone is like us and (literally) thinks like us will be our undoing as a society.
>everyone lost their minds anyway.
Why wouldn't they? Implying that factors that are out of anyone's control is the cause for an entire group of ppls lowered performance and life outcomes(when compared to whites) is a fucking scary thing to process.
Honestly, even if it's true, we as society should just ignore all genetic causations for IQ(I elaborate at the bottom), because the truth in this case would obliterate the self-esteem of way to many ppl, and on net, that would do more harm to society than good.
Think about it logically, there is nothing gained from telling a black boy that he most likely won't be able to compete with whites and Asians in stem fields, besides destroying his self confidence and creating animosity for him to lash out because he was unfairly punished by being unlucky at the genetic lottery. Just make society fair in the traditional sense(equal standards, performance matching in schools) and let the pieces fall were they may.
In point, until we can modify intelligence thru science, I think, research on racial IQ differences should be censored.
>In point, until we can modify intelligence thru science, I think, research on racial IQ differences should be censored.
But even now, with as little genetic engineering ability as we have, we still know more about how to modify genes than we do about how to modify culture. Pic related shows that Murray's observations are reproducible domestically, and with respect to wealth, IQ actually has a 6 FOLD larger effect at a national level than an individual level.
It's not JUST about modifying genes, or eugenics. Even something like air dropping protein packs for infant nutrition could increase national GDPs by two figures, even if they only have a one or two point effect on national average IQ.
If there was simply no solution to the problem, and the data would basically just being telling people that there was an unavoidable disaster (basically the killer asteroid scenario), then I might agree with you, but there are real policy actions that we could take right now to improve this whole thing at a global level. Doing nothing may guarantee the worst dystopian fears that has.
You also ignore the reverse issues with ignoring IQ determinacy. You invite mass resentment and hatred of proportionately more successful demographics. The only logical conclusion that people will make is that "those people" must be cheating, or otherwise subverting me and my family. Looks like we better kill those evil Asians, or whomever, because they're obviously not succeeding as a group for any material reason other than corruption. I simply don't think you're considering all of the OTHER dystopian possibilities that come from NOT acknowledging science.
I can understand where you're coming from.
This is a SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE! or MAN ISN'T THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE AFTER ALL!-tier revelation and it's all at once a fucking bleak and incredibly scary thing for people to process.
At the same time though, I believe that however painful it may be, we need to take steps that if not outright eugenicist, at least prevent further dysgenic pressures from acting on our societies and our populations.
As to what we do for that black boy?
We take every possible measure to ensure that he is born into the best and most nurturing of possible circumstances, and we realize that it is our civic responsibility as a society to ensure that there are realistic employment options for every American, regardless of their intellectual ability, so that everyone can partake of the inherent dignity of self-sufficiency.
just read coming apart. pretty good
PLEASE, HOW DO I OVERCOME THIS? How do I build discipline? How do I get myself motivated to really do self-improvement?
Fuck me.
clap, clap, clap
I believe it was Lee Kuan Yew, but it might have been a different major East Asian leader, who said that labor redundancy is going to be one of the biggest social questions of the 21st century. They're already thinking about it at the highest levels over there, and we're still lying and promising infinite jobs for everyone. We need serious proposals the theories about viable future systems in which majorities may have no economic utility. The more humanistic people ignore these question, the more they guarantee that the "kill them all" crowd will be the only ones with an answer on hand when these problems start to emerge.
We need real theories of post-labor economics. It's going to happen whether we censor the research or not--really has a habit of not giving a shit about what one wants.
I just let my girlfriend whip my ass into shape
On the flip side, nothing phases me (other than the prospect of failing in my life goals) and so I help her to negotiate the stresses of everyday life.
youtube.com
Also, your brain won't completely finish developing until your mid 20's if you're a male. Even without ADD, many younger men have concentration issues. Part of it is biology. The industria/post-industrial education structure is not ideal for most developing male brains.
Oh, I've resolved myself to the fact that we're going to end up with an Elysium-style society in the US within my lifetime.
I'm just trying to ensure my place on the space station, or at least somewhere close to it.
perhaps you are really not as smart as you think. or perhaps you are trying to define success by the wrong measure. make your life rich first, the money will come later.
>I'm just trying to ensure my place on the space station, or at least somewhere close to it.
This is one of my core life philosophies now. Walls are going to go us, and I need to make sure my family will be on the right side of those walls. It probably won't even sound hyperbolic when I'm explaining it to my kids in 15 or 20 years. It's not even as simple as just being rich. People with deep ties to some rural farming town in Nebraska will be better off than even many upper-middleclass, unskilled, white collar urban hipsters for instance. It's social, geographic, even what passport you hold.
Oh, absolutely.
I'm banking on an upper middle class life in New Hampshire or Maine
Yes, Murray is smart and observant, but, his omniscience ends in history. History gets fuzzy, the further you go back.
If Murray ever took the time to read marx's first big works. He'd understand why the west became the powerhouse it is.
Guilds... They were the backbone that pushed the industrial revolution into overdrive.
Guilds were like universities, except it was apprentice based hierarchical system that lasted until one retired.
Various Guilds did anything and everything. Bolts, screws shoes, dresses, furniture, mining machines, everything.
Then, the elite's decided to ban the guild system, and instead favor centralized forms of manufacturing... That was the birth of the French revolution and marx himself.
Fast forward today, where most modes of production is centralized in the west... there is no competition, and stagnation sets in, and magically diversity becomes attractive... not realizing we killed western diversity when we killed the guild system... for GREED.
It's no wonder that East Asians beating everyone these days. Murray is somewhat right about IQ giving an edge, but, his solution is amateur, and he doesn't realize how the past unfolded from a guilded era of diverse production into a centralized power era.
Murray's solution is more financial suffering, and libertarianism(atomized weak workers cult)...
Dollo's law states we can never return to what the west was... The only way forward is to create something new, or this is as far as "we" western people go... this is probably as far as we go as a species desu our vices overtook us long ago... not there is only cthulu waiting our state of consciousness.
Go home, Sup Forums, you're high...
...
You've been playing too many MMORPGs
librivox.org
Chapters 38-41 are only relevant to my comment about guilds.
Entertain yourselves.
scratch that I meant audio section 38-41 not chapter 38 doesn't exist.
>we killed the guild system
>It's no wonder that East Asians beating everyone these days
Right, like East Asians have guilds instead of centralized forms of manufacturing.
Marx's critiques of capitalism were academically legitimate. He is actually a pretty good source for learning about economic history, but his prescriptive theories are where he deviates from scholarly history and economics. You really need to clearly preface every reference to Marx though. I shouldn't have to explain why.
This: Das Kapital is a phenomenal read
Economic theories generally don't work.
The nature of buying and selling equates to having the hope of creation and destruction.
Marx got everything completely ass backward. He though Industrial capitalism would take over the world followed then by communism.
Instead Industrial capitalism took over the world then it got taken over by financial parasitical capitalism.
You haven't been reading your Michael Hudson
As I said, he prescriptions and predictions were completely wrong. As a pure economist though, he was very good--that's not a controversial statement. Had he not been involved with Hegel, dialectical materials, and never waded into "the science of history", he would probably be remembered today as just a good economist with maybe some rumored wacky private ideas.
I think this whole debacle has revealed something sinister about Western society, which is that people treat high IQ as a virtue.
Of course there will be all sorts of factors influencing IQ, including group genetics. But why is that so threatening to leftists? It's because leftists think that IQ is a great noble magic that runs the world.
Good people are the key to everything, not high IQ people. There will always be enough high IQ people to push the boundaries, there will never be enough good people to cope with the consequences.
We now place zero (ZERO) emphasis on hard work, virtue, and ethics. In fact you can impress people nowadays by saying you're so smart that you never had to work. Guess what? That makes you an incomplete human being. And it will matter, in times of strife.
did you just ask for a trigger warning?
The lesser humans should be taken as a slave species, and the violent tendencies bred out of them.
Everything has a purpose. But not everything has the same purpose.
No, I suggested people should clarify whether they're merely talking about Marx's critiques of Capitalism, or whether they are arguing for Marxism, especially if they drop a wall of text. It's just asking to be misunderstood.
This syrupnigger has it right
East Asians are probably the last bastion of what we call "westernism" ironically.
East Asians are still Fresh, and haven't gone through the phase in which "socialism" or community is completely crushed to complete global individualism by extremely greedy trust fund babies...
I give it 1 or 2 generations before you see decay like the west does.
>I give it 1 or 2 generations before you see decay like the west does.
Yeah, they're not immune, but for their sake, hopefully the west will be well into an undeniable decline fueled in part by racial strife. It will be harder for policy makers to argue globalism to East Asians in 2040 if the west is on fire because of it.
Karl Marx took the classical economics of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, etc to it's logical conclusion in his analysis.
There shouldn't be anything controversial about it aside from it being generally outdated.
the controversial part is that some people think it's good
His critiques of Smithian economics WERE good. Das Kapital was considered a required addendum in economic curriculums irrespective of the question of Communism. Das Kapital isn't a "Marxist" text--it's a dryish, academic tome of relatively non-ideological economic analysis. Marxism, as we know it, was and is an attempt to find a "solution" to the observed problems in Das Kapital, but the text itself can exist independent of MarxISM. It's really hard to explain the distinctions, especially since Marxists continue to act like Das Kapital leads inextricably to the Marxist economic program, when it obviously doesn't since even conservative economics praise it on its merits as a work on economics.
Das Kapital is basically just a textbook on classical economics.
It's funny that commies read it and think it's relevant to their revolution bullshit. That's what "The Communist Manifesto" was for.
Well if this news isn't understood then egalitarians will continue to blame racism for the plight of the blacks instead of biology, and thus likely expand the scope of government to further regulate human conduct.
"Skin deep"
our anti communist dictator salazar taught das kapital in his classes for instance
>I give it 1 or 2 generations before you see decay like the west does.
This is assuming social evolution "progresses" down a linear path.
Europeans have always been xenophilic. Asians have always been xenophobic. They will outlive us all.
It's fucking bubbles from trailer park boys!
That's a good anecdote. I'll remember that.
The financial evolution is clear as day, well documented and studied time immemorial. Fatten up the pigs, and it makes for an easy kill.
Whites are a war breed, just like Arabs. That's why they fit so well into London.
Europe was probably the most divided and contentious place on Earth up until very recently. Europeans are xenophobic. If Europeans driven to the point of pure nihilism couldn't stop it, then it will be a tall order for whomever is next.
The Bell Curve is flawed for several reasons.
The argument makes four assumptions.
>There major differences between racial groups and IQ
>IQ tests directly measure intelligence.
>IQ is highly heritable.
>Highly heritable traits cannot be changed.
And thus it makes two claims
>Racial IQ differences are significantly or entirely due to genetic factors.
>Racial IQ differences cannot be changed (and thus it is pointless to try).
The first one assumption is completely true. There are major, significant differences in IQ between blacks, whites and asians. No one with any credibility denies this. Where the argument comes is in the cause.
The second assumption is a little more murky. IQ tests are predictors of academic and life success, but whether they are direct measures of intelligence, or even what intelligence is, is up for debate. Also, simply because IQ tests are predictors of academic success does not mean one is causing the other, there could be other factors influencing these results. Correlation != causation, etc.
Third assumption, IQ is highly heritable. This is incorrect. Credible studies put IQ as around high .5 to low .7 in heritability. This means it is moderately heritable, but a significant amount is also due to other factors other than genetics as well. It's also worth noting that heritability is a population, proportion statistic. An average. Heritability can vary highly from individual to individual. Obviously if you're born with brain defects, then your intelligence will be very dependent on genes. Each generation has higher IQs than the previous one, and they need to keep rescaling the tests. This shows environment has influence.
Fourthly, that highly heritable traits cannot be changed. This is wrong. PKU is a good example. PKU is 100% heritable, but you can completely change it solely with environmental factors, just by changing your diet as an infant.
Thus, the base assumptions are wrong, the claims cannot be verified.
>The argument makes four assumptions.
>>There major differences between racial groups and IQ...
You didn't read the FUCKING book! It compared WHITE socioeconomic groups. The books is not about racial differences in IQ. Godfuckigndamnit, not I'm having a tantrum.
And it used socioeconomics to extrapolate to race.
>Poor people are poor because they are stupid. Most poor people are black.
I've never heard of the copernicus moment before. But I when I first heard "white privilege" explained, I remember thinking "This is it, they are completely out of excuses and are now resorting to calling the universe racist"
Update yourself on the current research.
Mind giving a personal synopsis of that book?
IQ is 6x more determinant as a macro variable at population or national levels vs. individuals. IQ is an exponential multiplier in group productivity--essentially a positive feedback loop of productivity. This scales all the way from a single office environment to an entire country. Even small fluctuations in average IQ can have HUGE impacts on national productivity. We should HOPE that the problem is genetic, and not sociological, because have virtually no hard scientific answers to "fix culture". General intelligence (g) IS a real metric, accurately tested by the best IQ tests, and we know this because it can also be tested with non-fakable, non-culturally bias tests, like visual response tests--a purely neurological test. The data is looking more and more like g is as inheritable as height.
Unfortunately, damn near every nonbiased study of nature vs nurture as it relates to IQ has pushed things squarely in the "nature" direction.
It's getting to the point that cognitive psychologists and geneticists are having to omit data that adds to the already overwhelming preponderance of evidence that suggests there are significant differences between the races, including in terms of intelligence.
There are also compelling arguments that the Flynn effect is measuring something other than IQ, and that actual IQ in the west may well have peaked in the 19th century.
These two things together suggest that IQ is somewhat similar to a person's height. A harmful childhood environment can certainly stunt your growth, but all the nurturing in the world won't make you grow any taller than your genes say that you will. Similarly, more and more evidence is pointing towards a reality that early childhood interventions may only be able to create 2-5 point improvements in IQ, far from the major changes that many people hope they might make.
I’ve always led a rather quiet life. A professor of literature who loved his work, that’s all. No war ever called me to serve, and, frankly, the spectacle of pointless butchery makes me ill. I wouldn’t have made a very good soldier, I’m afraid. Still, had I been with Actius, once upon a time, I think I would have reveled in killing my share of Hun. And with the likes of Charles Martel, and Godfrey of Bouillon, and Baldwin the Leper, I’m sure I would have shown a certain zeal in poking my blade through Arab flesh. I might have fallen before Byzantium, fighting by Constantine Dragasès’s side. But God, what a horde of Turks I would have cut down before I gasped my last! Besides, when a man is convinced of his cause, he doesn’t die quite so easily! See, there I am, springing back
to life in the ranks of the Teutons, hacking the Slav to shreds. And there, leaving Rhodes with Villiers de l’Isle-Adam and his peerless little band, my white cloak blazoned with the cross, my sword dripping blood. Then sailing with Don Juan of Austria, off to even the score at
Lepanto. Ah, what a splendid slaughter! ... But soon there’s nothing left for me to do. A few trifling skirmishes now and again, none of
them too well thought of these days. Like the War Between the States. when my side is defeated and I join the Ku Klux Klan to murder
myself some blacks. A nasty business, I admit. Not quite so bad with Kitchener, though, skewering the Mahdi’s Moslem fanatics,
spilling their guts. ... But the rest is all current events, a sad little joke. Most of it has already slipped my mind.
Perhaps I’ve done my bit, killing a pinch of Oriental at the Berlin gates. A dash of Vietcong here, of Mau Mau there. A touch of Algerian rebel to boot. At
worst, some leftist or other, finished off in a police van, or some vicious Black Panther. Yes, it’s all become so terribly ugly. No fanfares
anymore, no flags, no hosannas ... Oh well, you’ll have to excuse an old professor’s pedantic prattle. But you see, I too have stopped thinking and just want to tell you where I stand. You’re right, I’ve never killed a soul. Much less any of the types I’ve just
conjured up, all of them standing here before me, at last, in your flesh, all rolled into one. But now I’m going to live those battles over, all at once, those battles that I feel so much a part of, deep in my soul, and I’m going to act them out, right here, all by myself, with one single shot.
Yup, this.
The more we study it, the less we realize we can do to improve G beyond taking advantage of its heritability and incentivizing reproduction among individuals with high IQs while dis-incentivizing reproduction between individuals with low G.
Even then, the whole "regression to the mean" phenomena suggests that progress will occur much more slowly than we might otherwise like it to.
the following racial groups are not fully human and should not be viewed as such:
Negroid (Bantu, Nilotic, Cushtic)
Pygmoid
Khoi-San
Australoid-Papauan
None of those groups have ever achieved anything of historical value and should have their populations culled with the exception of small, strictly contained, populations in remote reservation areas for study and preservation.
The fact that those are considered separately is ridiculous in the first place. I hate academia.
Do you know any reasons why different ethnic groups would be selected for greater or lesser amounts of general intelligence?
What is this from?
Is this one of those quietly-acknowledged-in-private-but-not-mentioned in public situations amongst the relevant researchers and scientists?
I'd think that outright eugenics programs would be...looked down upon, to say the least (and for good reason to an extent) but are there any solutions to this other than selecting immigrants for intelligence?
...
>Do you know any reasons why different ethnic groups would be selected for greater or lesser amounts of general intelligence?
There are hypotheses, but no more certainty than knowing why certain races would be selected for greater or lesser height. All we can do is look at different environmental pressures and extrapolate some reasonable guesses. The cold vs. warm weather stuff requiring different time preferences is plausible but by no means definitive when you consider Inuits have relatively low average IQs, though there is some evidence they have extraordinarily high spacial reasoning abilities (navigating on featureless terrain).
We'll probably map all of the genes before we actually understand the reasons for their different distributions.
>are there any solutions to this other than selecting immigrants for intelligence?
You don't have to outright give immigrants IQ tests to restrict immigration to high IQ people--look at Singapore. Also, considering the multiplier effect of IQ and productivity, if lower IQ societies create incentives for high IQ immigrants, that could have dramatic effects on quality of life and GDP. To put it simply; pushing high IQ immigration on the 3rd world makes more sense than pushing low IQ immigration on the 1st world.
>To put it simply; pushing high IQ immigration on the 3rd world makes more sense than pushing low IQ immigration on the 1st world.
Anyone doubting this juste has to look at Qatar, the country was formed 40 years ago and now they're modern when it comes to appearances.
But the warm climate vs cold climate has always been intriguing to me. How in the Old World cold means smarter and in the New World it was the ones in the hot climate that were smart. Maybe that's where nurture intervenes. Aztecs and Mayans were more in conflict with each other than Inuits and algonquins so smarter people (or societies) survived better wars and territorial conflicts.
Well, native Americans have similar IQs to South East Asians, and both peoples build amazing jungle stone monument complexes centered around religious worship. They were also agricultural societies vs. hunter gatherers, which is what you had in northern climates in both the eastern and western hemisphere. Agriculture has some positive effects even for groups in the 80-90 IQ range, but it seems that when you combine high IQ with agriculture, THAT is when you get explosions of highly advanced civilization.
Basically, evolutionary pressures that pushed societies towards agriculture are what selected for high IQ, not hot vs cold.
Take the old world, where warm places occupy huge swaths of the habitable landmass in Africa, Asia, and Oceana. There, hominid settlements were able to self-sustain on hunter-gathering alone because of the vast, vast overabundance of natural flora/fauna to eat.
When humans migrated to Europe and Northeast Asia, they passed through choke-points where long-term human settlement at any significant density was impossible without agriculture. Cooincidentally, many of these locales were also perfect for farming (the fertile crescent, the Mediterranean, the Indus valley, the rivers of China, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, etc).
As Europeans and East Asians moved northward, they reached places with severe winters where masterful use of agriculture was necessary to survive the winters while retaining a high population. This is why high IQ truly thrived in places like the UK, France, Germany, Russia, Scandinavia, Northern China, Korea, and Japan.
KIKE
Now in the New World things were somewhat flipped. The vast expanses of landmass occurred in more temperate latitudes in North America, and the massive overabundance of flora/fauna to eat meant that what is now the US and Canada could sustain population densities of hunter-gatherer societies on par with Africa, even in frigid climes.
Meanwhile, as humans passed through Mexico, the climate became more arid and the land more sparse, and so agriculture was forced to develop once populations hit a certain density. This is why Mexico and Central America would give rise to civilizations on par with those of Southeast Asia, where climates and land availability were similar.
Once in South America, Human settlement was split by the Andes, and took stunningly different paths on either side of that impassible barrier. The humans that broke left and settled in the Amazonian rainforest encountered conditions that were not unlike those of sub-saharan Africa, capable of supporting large hunter-gatherer populations, which is why Amazonian tribes are somewhat similar to sub-saharan African or New Guineaean ones in terms of technological/intellectual development.
Meanwhile, the humans who broke right and followed the Pacific found themselves stuck between the desert and the ocean, and were forced to develop agricultural techniques on par with China's in order to survive in large numbers. This is why, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Inca were easily the most advanced peoples in the pre-columbian New World.
I actually wonder what the Inca might have become. China had a 3000-5000 year head start, but if left unperturbed, the Inca could have easily matured into a civilization to rival what China became.
>I actually wonder what the Inca might have become. China had a 3000-5000 year head start, but if left unperturbed, the Inca could have easily matured into a civilization to rival what China became.
Think of how safe and comfortable it would be prior to the Age of Sail to have an empire that controlled basically everything in SA besides the Amazon basin. Talk about a fortress of a continent. The lack of horses would have been a really unfortunate limiting factor though. Maybe they could have selectively breed llamas or something, and physically altered them as radically as a dog breed into some mammoth long distance transportation animal.
>Your IQ is what determines your grades
Studying determines your grades.
This kind of shit is the real answer to the Drake equation. Aliens will not visit us because they suspect they would be immediately attacked by the uppity primates on on the third rock from Sol who can't even get along with each other, so how would they respond to them?
Yup, which is why I'd argue that entrance exams are far, far better predictors of academic potential than GPA is.
There are plenty of geniuses with shitty grades, but someone with a great GPA who "just doesn't test well" was only good at applying themselves, and was never really, truly intelligent in the first place.
Would they have even needed horses?
They built roads that were as good as the Roman ones, and they basically skipped a linguistic generation PAST written language and went straight to abstract code as a means of record keeping and long-distance communication.
That they were also able to achieve such perfect tolerances in their stonework bode really, really well for their potential to develop further into what might even resemble an industrial power.
It would have been difficult to reliably conquer and then control EVERY single ethnic group south of the Amazon to Tierra Del Fuego without some kind of mobile cavalry. All large land empires had horses, camels, or both. Llamas are enough like camels that I think they could have done it.