Neanderthal theory and race

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While IQ tests do measure something, that something is just certain facets of a person's intelligence. The type of intelligence measured by IQ tests isn't put to good use without the social and emotional intelligence to use it properly. A well rounded view of a person's real intelligence level would take into account social and emotional intelligence.

I find the sort of IQ levels quoted for some African countries impossible to believe. If studies like those of Vanhanen and Lynn are to be taken as official at all, I find what they quote almost offensive. Surely literacy plays a large part in the artificially low levels quoted. There's a lot of literacy involved in IQ tests (unless they get adapted for literacy level but I'm pretty sure they don't). Today most African countries, while presently relatively the poorest countries, are at a more advanced stage of development than today's most developed countries had been in 1800. Are we to believe that African IQ levels today aren't as high as what ours in the most developed countries had likely been in 1800? With the IQ average of 100 being an average of the UK specifically, it must be something that's skewed especially towards the most developed countries such as the UK.

OP, i actually think i get where you are going with your posts. putting aside the technical details (i don't really know what all that means), it seems you're saying that racism can be best countered by acknowledging the differences between races (in a general way), and by being aware that specialisation and environmental differences led to selection of different traits in different races. you seem to be suggesting that these differences should be looked at not in terms of a hierarchy of importance, but in terms of valid variations that enrich all of us when we share these speecialisations across cultures.

also, on the flip side you seem to be saying that the denial of racial differences gives racists ammunition because it is scientifically untrue that all races are identical.

is that the gist of it? i have no idea if i agree or not, but i'm trying to clarify what you are saying.

I think they will try to turn the Neanderthal DNA into a positive as well, only because they had larger brains, and completely ignore the fact that black Homo Sapien(as well as white, I guess, please don't be too rough on me if I'm wrong about some of this), with smaller brains came around right as Neanderthal was dying out, BUT were able to make projectile tools and ha far more common sense than Neanderthal did. Neanderthal had been waking right up to the animals and getting mauled for thousands of years O_O

There was impairment in the temporal and parietal lobe.

What's this "race" nonsense you're all talking about? Is it related to the idiotic belief that the colour of my skin means I have identical genetics to everyone around me with the same coloured skin?

I found this video extremely interesting.


TheSunAlsoRises

On the topic if Europeans / Asians are superior to African.

One the individual level, no. No race is superior to any other race at the indivual level.

Proof:
Lets first examine successful Neanderthal traits with no drawbacks. These traits would quickly become fixed in the population they were introgressed into, and then would spread to neighbour populations, until everybody had the trait. This process would easily finish in 30,000 years. What this means is that all such traits are human universals today, and there exists no variation. Finding these traits is tricky, just because there is no variation in them, and the ancestral traits has been selected out. The only way to do this is to sequence a modern human before they interbred with Neanderthal. IOW, useful Neanderthal traits with no drawbacks are not part of neurodiversity.

Next, lets examine neutral and negative traits. These traits could only make it by "hitch-hiking" on advantageous traits, for instance by being close to them on a chromosome, or by being linked to social / communication / mating behavior, since this creates asortative mating and keeps species isolated from on another. This kind of asortative mating, carried over by introgression, is also why we have a large complex of neurodiversity traits were all traits are linked to each others, rather than Neanderthal traits scattered all over.

Most (if not all) neurodiversity traits are instead involved in balanced selection. They have drawbacks, but can survive at some frequency by being useful when present in certain amounts. In short, they build-up human diversity.

OK, so neurodiversity can be kept in the genome by balanced selection. Intrinsic to balanced selection is that the traits are not better / worse than their alternatives, there are simply advantages to variation in behaviors. Also, if the neurodiversity (or neurotypical) trait were more advantageous, it's frequency would go up because it would breed more. Since introgression happened long ago, the frequencies have become stable, and thus no trait is more advantageous than any other, and both are retained in suitable proportions.

It follows from this that on a indivual level (on average), every individual, regardless if he/she is neurodiverse or neurotypical has equal possibility to survive and thrive. From this also follows that since there is a low functioning autistic group, which have all kinds of problems, and where most would not survive a 100 years ago, there must also exist another outlier on the other side that has above average fitness. In short, there is much higher variation in fitness of neurodiversity traits, but the mean is still equal as for the neurotypical group.

BTW, this argumentation works just as well against the "Aspies are the next step in human evolution" camp. Aspies are not superhuman, nor subhuman. Because of the balanced selection we are involved in, we are on average as fit as neurotypicals.

Then there is another issue, and that is: Are Eurasians (as a population) more fit than Africans? The answer to this question is yes, and it has to do with the higher diversity that creates a higher total fitness. Because Eurasians have both the ancestral traits, and the neurodiversity traits, and these complement each others, Eurasians become more fit, and also has much higher living standard than Africans. This is exactly the argument in Western political correctness about migration. It is claimed that diversity is beneficial, and it is as long as it is real genetic diversity.

One also needs to remember that there was a fast technological "explosion" after Hn and Hs met in Eurasia, and it is pretty likely that is the result of diversity and mixing.

Of course not. Color of skin is only indicative of region of origin. If region of origin is hot and sunny, it is pretty likely that color of skin would be dark in order to absorbe more UV radiation.

OTOH, if color of skin is dark, chances are much smaller that an individual would carry neurodiversity genes, since these were primarily introgressed in colder climates. But if a dark skinned individual does carry neurodiversity traits, these are exactly the same traits as somebody with fair skin would have, and with the same advantages and drawbacks.

On the issue of neanderthal derived differences in racial intelligence specifically, consider this;
All non-Africans are said to have neanderthal DNA which some race-IQ proponents say creates an IQ gap. Yet the lowest recorded average in IQ is from Australian Aboriginals in outback communities who have neanderthal DNA. Meanwhile we know that ancient and feudal era Africans assembled themselves into states, kingdoms and empires with gold, metal tools and weapons and agriculture. Only the technicality of the absence of written language prevents us from being able to say "African civilisation" by most accepted definitions of civilisation but I still do anyway . Too many racists are simplistic in their mentality and forget this and the level of society Africans had until the population collapse caused by selling too many people into slavery. Things have only been relatively bad since then. There weren't enough people to defend the empires/kingdoms so Europeans stopped trading with their "equals" and started colonising their "lessers".
This is not that difficult to grasp. But racists will ALWAYS want it to be even simpler. They either don't know about Africa's true history or they just don't want to.
Either Aboriginal neanderthal DNA didn't help them on IQ tests at all or the pitiful environmental conditions of outback isolated communities as well as IQ test cultural biases overrides any genetic neanderthal DNA advantage of the Australian Aboriginal, who were the first modern humans to use bored axe heads on shafted handles and the first people to use genuine ocean going vessels to cross "Wallace's Line", a stretch of ocean that sliced south east Asia in half even when the seas were lower. In fact aboriginal Australians were the first to implement many unique human innovations tens of thousands of years before they would be repeated again elsewhere. Today's IQ scores don't reflect this.

On the issue of "race" I think it's obvious these groups don't divide us significantly in any biological way. To deny that Homo sapiens sapiens was a sub species of many firsts would be to deny that very small divide that makes us human and separates us by leaps and bounds from even our closest relatives like Homo neanderthalensis. After all we're still here, they're not.
If the cheetah somehow left Africa and within 60,000 years somehow arrived on every continent we could say this for sure;
The cheetah populations on each continent, and even in far spread parts on one continent, would have to evolve to suit the local evolutionary pressures. African cheetahs would remain the same if Africa remained the same. But European, Asian, American and Australian cheetahs would change. I think these groups MIGHT, even in that time, begin to become new fully fledged sub species of the African cheetah. This is because most other mammals still rely far more heavily on their bodies to survive than they do their minds. The cheetah coat on all the different continents would have to be adapted to the local flora to avoid being spotted by its new prey and also new potential predators higher up the food chain. Their digestive systems might have to begin changing to suit a new type of animal being eaten. As might the position of their eyes on the head or length of limb and tail as they run over new terrain or longer/shorter gestation in a new climate as well as new courting and breeding habits to deal with different levels of rainfall etc. Add all these factors and more up and a whole organism is being worked on by evolution so at the end you can have completely different creatures even in "intelligence" and behaviour.
We can say this about so many of the other land mammals that could have potentially spread out of Africa including other primates. But why is it wrong to say this happened to humans? Because we were a sub species of firsts. We left Africa with something no other animal ever has, not even the ancestors of Homo neanderthalensis. We left with the modern African human brain within the last 60,000 years.
We still had to change our "coat" to deal with UV differentiation (including some cranial changes and Asian eye shape etc) but most of the other changes were unnecessary in any dramatic way. We were skilled enough hunters wherever we went that the only thing we had to change was our overly successful hunting behaviour! Every time modern man went to a new continent there was mass die off of large mammals so over time we would have developed primitive ecology, "Only hunt what you can eat" which is a decision beyond most other mammals like cheetah.
We all likely cooked food for the most part so the only way our digestion changed was some people got used to non meat stuff (milk, wheat etc) that some others never did. That doesn't clearly define sub categories when it's so inconsistent though.
Hunting habits, having children, choosing habitats and basically anything else I can think of would no longer be determined by evolution blindly but predominantly by human cultural choices. Instead of droughts and famines causing mass die off humans could somewhat learn from and plan to avoid such disasters unlike other mammals. Instead of migrating according to some rigorous instinct which can end in extinction if the climate or conditions change in one place you're heading to humans can assess the land and choose specifically where to go. The modern human refugee (someone fleeing from extinction consciously and sometimes with complex planning) is a slap in the face to evolution.
This idea that man has been acted on by evolution in the last 60,000 years in the exact same way hominids were acted on by evolution before the modern human brain (even just 500,000 years earlier) is a bad joke that denies our very uniqueness which makes us human. Evolution can and still does act on us selectively but far more slowly as now culture is king and we to a large extent can determine our own futures now. This is what humans did on each continent. If there were cereal crops, enormous alluvial rivers, donkeys and oxen in Australia instead of Mesopotamia then chances are most of us would be black right now speaking of the plight of the poor white and/or Asian man numbering less than a million in his native Europe and/or Asia. Mesopotamians didn't "evolve" to invent the wheel or written language. They consciously assessed the land, the plants and animals around them and exploited the abundance they were given by chance to maximum output.
People like Aboriginals didn't "devolve" to live in inhospitable climates, they made conscious decisions with a brain the same as yours that are still little understood and disregarded or dismissed by most people still as primitive. For example they controlled and exploited fire like it was on a string, using it as effectively as and even more extensively (across the whole continent of Australia) than the Sumerians used water to ensure that people ate. Now fire kills more modern Australians in horrific summer bushfires than sharks do because native people no longer shape the Australian landscape to prevent these disasters. Ironically, natural selection is now acting on modern white Australians (thinning the genes of risk taking people who live in bushfire zones) in a way it didn't on Aboriginal people who consciously understood fire and intentionally controlled it like a tool or a beast of burden.
I agree with population genetics and that in some small way natural selection might favour certain types of minds in some places over others but it seems obvious that neurodiversity is still present in all populations. No "race" I've heard of is free of ASD's, schizophrenia, ADHD etc. So if this is how you define a "race" (by it's neurodiversity) then a race could be changed within just generations. So race becomes so flimsy it isn't worth talking about as a thing that divides us.
If you want to change racial gaps in the U.S then end the insidious war on drugs and close the private prison industrial complex which relies on and preys on the 16% of urban black youth who get locked up on non violent minor drug charges.
Stop being so militaristic starting wars all over the world and preying on poor urban youth with shopping mall recruiters to fight on the front line so corporations like Halliburton can make rich white men richer.
Does anyone really need proof that African Americans would prosper on a more even playing field? What about WW1 when there was less competition for jobs because thousands of white men were off at war? Has anyone heard of the so called "Black Wall Street"? Then unemployed white veterans came home, saw Negro mansions with chandeliers and grand pianos and it was only a matter of time before a single accusation of rape would boil over into the massacre of hundreds of people. The businesses and lovely homes of the Greenwood Community were bombed from planes, burned and looted.
As I said, this isn't that difficult to grasp but racists want it to be even more simplistic than it is.

EXPECIALLY wrote:
"Neanderthal had been waking right up to the animals and getting mauled for thousands of years O_O
There was impairment in the temporal and parietal lobe"

I remember reading that about Neanderthal in National Geographic once. They catalogued the injuries recorded in skeletal fossils of Neanderthal. You know what group of modern humans their injuries most resembled? Rodeo bull riders. Is anyone seriously suggesting that the white cowboy is the modern human bearer of Neanderthal intelligence genes and risk taking habits that made western civilisation predominantly white and English speaking?

If it wasn't for the tsetse disease west Africans could have used horses outside west Africa. African cavalry with steel weapons might have poured out of Africa into the Middle East and into Eurasia to create a black modern world.
If Xerxes had fought a better war and annihilated the Greeks with his huge numbers or if Islam didn't turn away from science in medieval times the modern world might have been Arabic/Semitic.
If the Americas or Australia had just a handful of West Asia's crops and animals the planet might have turned out mostly native American or Aboriginal (especially given aboriginals were way ahead in technology for some reason around 40,000 years ago. Probably because of the abundance of the Asian lands they wandered through leaving plenty of time to invent).
If Tokugawa Ieyasu didn't ban muskets and become an isolationist after the battle of Sekigahara in 1600 the world might have been Japanese. At this time the Japanese had more guns than anyone else on earth.
In the grand scheme of things 1 to 3.1% of Neanderthal DNA probably doesn't mean very much in anything.

Evidence that indigenous africans have genetics associated with Neurodiverse traits, and they are suggested as beneficial to their way of life:

The Ariaal Nomads of Kenya are one of the most isolated groups from modern society, among indigenous Africans.

Research has identified the DRD4 7R mutation associated with ADHD at high rates in these isolated African indigenous Nomads; suggested as of survival value for the Nomads, as compared to their settled counterparts.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080609195604.htm




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_vs._farmer_theory




Whether or not ADHD and the "thrill gene" was advantageous to this indigenous population, is up to debate, but whether or not indigenous Africans have the DRD4 7R, gene linked to ADHD, at high rates, is a scientific finding, based on objective genetic evidence.

This is proof that the genetics associated with the neurodiverse traits of ADHD, exist at high rates in some indigenous groups in Africa.

ADHD is definitely, not specific to Ancestoral Heritage from Neanderthals, per research that shared Neanderthal DNA does not exist in most people of indigenous African populations.

And, Neurodiverse traits definitely exist in the indigenous people's of Africa, potentially at higher rates for some traits, than comparable groups in Europe or America, as evidenced in this research.

Neurodiversity exists in all populations of the world. 1 to 4 percent shared Neanderthal DNA variants only means 1 to 4 percent DNA at this time. There is a 50 percent evidenced association between the DRD4 7R gene and ADHD.

There are only a couple of modern significant mutations of variants associated with neanderthal dna that amount to no more than a 1 percent association with autism, as well as with mental retardation, schizophrenia, Downs Sydrome, and Diabetes.

So, there is actually more genetic evidence related to our ancestors out of Africa, potentially contributing to neurodiverse traits in Europe and America, than any current associations evidenced with neanderthal DNA variants.

The implication above in the underlined statement from your quote that the diversity evidenced in indigenous Africans, is not beneficial genetic diversity as it relates to migration, and that Africans are less fit than Eurasians because they lack neurodiverse traits, is easily refuted by the one piece of research I provided on Ariaal Nomads from East Africa. Ariaal Nomads are both evidenced as neurodiverse and extremely fit, to have been able to adapt to a harsh environment as desert nomads and thrive.

And Barack Obama's father was a Harvard graduated indigenous Kenyan African, whom obviously had neurodiverse traits, and likely passsed some of those beneficial neurodiverse traits on to the President of the US, who also graduated from Harvard University.

There is too much evidence for the existence of neurodiversity among indigenous Africans, to suggest that they lack or even have significantly overall lower levels of neurodiverse traits than any other peoples of the world.

Their neurodiversity likely expresses itself somewhat differently because of cultural differences and adaptations necessary to their specific environmental conditions, as suggested in the research among Indigenous African Ariaal Nomads.

You are wrong, aghogday in relation to ADHD and the DRD4 7R allele.

Source: http://scan.oxfordjournals.org/content/5/2-3/188.full

This article is a meta-analysis, and it shows that American Indians are the ones that have the highest prevalence of DRD4 7R (this is also the group that has the higest prevelance of neurodiversity). The meta-analyis also claims that there is a negative association between DRD4 7R and ADHD in Middle East (they are not related), that it is positively correlated in Europe and in American Indians, while the allele is rare in Asia. There is no mention of the situation in Africa (meaning this has not been researched).

However, even with the current material, with the allele almost being fixed in American Indians, and almost absent in Asia, says that it is not uniformely distributed world-wide, and this is regardless of the situation in Africa.

Here is the study that associates DRD4 7R to Neanderthal: http://www.pnas.org/content/99/1/309.short

The research as quoted above did not study American Indians. They found a 78% prevalence in South Americans from Chile and Brazile, whom were of non-native american descent.

The Americans that were part of the European Caucasian groups were not American Indians, American Indians are classified as Native American Indians, not Caucasians. Native American Ancestry and American Ancestry are different ancestrys.

I've already provided evidence from research in a previous post that the gene is rare in Asia, so I've already provided evidence that the gene is not uniformly distributed world wide.

ADHD exists and is diagnosed world wide, where diagnosis is available, however the gene is only associated, not present in all diagnosed cases; obviously there are other associations as well, related to the disorder. The study I quoted that suggested the gene was associated with 50 percent of kids diagnosed with ADHD was in the US, it didn't indicate that was a world wide statistic.

As the study you quoted indicated, cultural differences across countries, may play a role in the strength of association and prevalence of diagnosis.

I stated the prevalence of the gene might be higher in some indigenous African groups than Europe or America, but did not mention South America. The incidence is higher among nomadic indigenous africans than those that are settled. But, it exists in both groups.

You have suggested a greater percentage of American Indians have responded in the Aspie Quiz in the US, than the relative percentage of the population there, but that has nothing to do with the folks in Chile or Brazile, whom are South Americans evidenced to have the DRD4 7R gene at rates of 78%.

The meta-analysis did not include studies from indigenous South American Indians either, if those studies exist.

It is not true that the DRD4 7R gene has not been researched in Africa, this study chose not to include those studies nor did it include studies from other areas in the world.

The research I provided has been peer reviewed, and is also referenced in Wiki, along with another meta-analysis that includes four studies from Africa, referenced in that same wiki article I linked. There is a high prevalence of the DRD4 7R gene among the Indigenous African Ariaal Nomads and a lower prevalence in their settled counterparts.

The fact that Ariaal Indigenous Nomad Africans whom are suggested not to have any Neanderthal DNA, do indeed have high rates of DRD4 7R genes is evidence that the gene is not specific to Neanderthal DNA and modern human beings.

The article you presented from 2001 stated the most likely explanation of the spread of the DRD4 7R gene was from the migration out of Africa, and suggested a potential relationship with neanderthals and admixture couldn't be ruled out.

Since neanderthal DNA is present in Asians and the DRD4 7R gene is rare there, and the DRD4 7R gene has been evidenced at high rates in indigenous Africans with no Neanderthal DNA suggested as possible in that population group, it's not looking like Neanderthals are likely the only source of the gene, and there is no current evidence that they are the source of the gene, per the neanderthal genome that has been sequenced, so far.

At this point in time there is more actual evidence that it originated in Africa, and was spread from the migration out of Africa.

If the gene is found in the Neanderthal genome in the future, it will only provide evidence that Neanderthals were one potential source of the gene.

My source says otherwise. http://www.pnas.org/content/99/1/10.full



IOW, it is rare to non-existent in East Asian and in San (the most ancient group in Africa). That kind of prevalence is not compatible with an out-of-Africa migration, since we would not expect one specific allele to be selected out in Asia and reach high frequences in Europe and America. That's an extremely unlikely scenario.

Also, it is Native American Indians (in South America) where it is very common, not in newer groups that migrated there. This is also the likely scenario. Since none of the imigrant groups (Caucasians, Africans) have this high frequency of DRD4 7R, we would not expect them to contribute to it, so the only likely scenario is that this is the situation in American Indians.



That means nothing if it is only them. They could be outsiders. Unless we can trace their ancestry to only Africa in some other means, we have no idea if they are a native African group or not. Also, note from the source above that the allele is rare in San, which we know is one of the most ancient groups in Africa, with the highest divergence to other African groups. In fact, it is only because of San that we can "pin-point" the origin of modern humans to Africa, since if San is removed, Africans are no longer more diverse than South Asians.

Apart from the fact that I know one individual (Aspie) that has 3.3%, you are dead-wrong. This is functional diversity, not random mutations, so it could mean all diversity we currently have. Remember that the difference between chimp and humans is in this range, and I suppose you won't say that difference means nothing?

I don't see why you need to bring Neanderthals into it, though. Where the genes came from is irrelevant now. Isolated populations are much more genetically different from the average than Eurasians are from Africans. If you want to study genetic differences, shouldn't you be focusing on those groups?

I recommend, for example, the Silicon Valley effect: The increased diagnosis of autism among populations of engineers, scientists, and similar groups of "nerdy" folks.

You're right when you say race isn't a scientific concept. Region-of-origin makes more sense. You can't really say "African", either; Northern Africa is much different from southern, and the extreme south of the continent has ancestry from other areas entirely. Nor can you refer to Europe as a single region; there are lots of mountain ranges in there that isolated people. And then there are the invasions and wars and migrations that took place.

Regarding IQ tests, I recommend you study the effect of culture on cognition. You'll need some sociology, some developmental neuroscience, and some psychology. Also study statistics and psychological testing. We've come a long way since the black-and-white viewpoints of eugenics, tabula rasa, and even Piaget.

It's funny, considering how genetically homogeneous humans are compared to most other species, that we should keep studying the differences... Makes sense, though. We're wired that way. Anything that's different sticks out to us.