> Alternatively, the decrease in brain size may simply reflect a decrease in mental storage of spatiotemporal data, due to the abandonment of hunting over large expanses of territory.
Worth noting that the modern peoples with the largest brain sizes are Siberian indigenous peoples followed by Inuit. Their visuospatial skills are anecdotally prodigious whereas their overall IQs are modest (low 90s).
I've wondered about this. Wolves and coyotes are smarter than domestic dogs, but dogs appear smarter to us because they behave in ways we associate with intelligence in canines. We look at those tiny brained farmers and say, "smarter". But maybe they just had better conflict avoidance? Now, hunter gatherers are the losers. They were the guys that never could learn to do anything else and were pushed into the worst land, (except in the Americas). My thought is that the only place we can really compare intelligence between hunter gatherers and farmers is in the Americas. Yet here we have barriers at every level to test, compare, even to be certain of a group's historical activities.
What if you control for the social complexity variable and just compare prehistoric hunter gatherers from cold climates with the same from warm climates? IE don’t Inuit, Siberians, Sami and such have higher IQs than equatorial hunter gatherers like sub-Saharan Africans and aboriginal Australians?
Gracious that you cited me after reading a stray comment I made on the internet. Thanks!
Regarding your interest in sexual selection in human self-domestication, have you read Robert Bednarik's work? He puts forth a model where male preference for neonoteny drove the gracilization of human skeletons in the last 40,000 years. Book title: The Domestication of Humans (available on Library Genesis).
See also treatment of Bednarik's idea in James Thomas's dissertation Self-domestication and Language Evolution or the more recent paper Globularization and Domestication.
I saw this week response to Uber soy by Kevin Byrd and he didn't respond to for some reason could you respond to this I'm not an expert in the field please I'll quote it Uber soy I saw a response to you by Kevin Byrd can you respond to this
This is some embarrassing flailing. I document several misrepresentations and inaccuracies in your video. The claims about the cause of the Flynn effect decline and the relationship of g-loaded IQ subtests and culture were just two direct refutations. You seem very confused about the fact 84% of genes are expressed somewhere in the brain at some point during development. This has no implication for racial differences unless you can specifically identify expression differences between races and their relationship to IQ. This research has not and likely cannot be done and the genetic data I presented shows there is no evidence of substantial genetic differences between races for genes associated with intelligence when you correct for biases in GWAS engage with your references the whole time, and bring up studies that address the crucial weaknesses in your cited work. It's a literature review based on some of the latest genetic studies and on economic papers that correct for the shoddy statistical analyses used in much of the IQ literature. It isn't the "sociologist's fallacy" to show that accounting for these socioeconomic differences reduces the gaps since there is strong evidence and historical documentation that these socioeconomic differences between races are not genetic themselves and again no evidence from that genetics contributes to these racial gaps. Bringing up the Coleman report is irrelevant when I present papers from this decade (not half a century ago) showing that data from 4 million students pointing toward economic inequality and segregation as driving the majority of achievement test score gap in schools. You should update your references to the proper century. Now addressing the rest of your tantrum in order: 1. Yes, correlational research is weak and needs either experimental validation or more robust methods to infer causality. 2. They are fundamentally interactions, they are not separable as genetic or environmental and they show that phenotypes can change in different environments. 3. Laughing does not refute my own published researcher showing that genes associated with intelligence do not show the patterns that would be present if natural selection were acting to make Europeans more intelligent than Africans. 4. Your evidence for dysgenics relies on faulty genetic methods prone to false-positives and from researchers with no credibility or expertise. 5. The sibling study on the Flynn is precisely the kind of well-designed study that can distinguish genetic from environmental causes and it unambiguously supports environment and precludes genetic causes. 6. Fst between dog breeds are much larger than between human populations. The paper I cited references 3-5% for human races and 27% for dogs using comparable genetic markers. 7. The distinction between within- and between group heritability is a fundamental aspect of that statistical method. Also the data I presented did show school districts where there are no racial test score gaps, a closing racial test score gap for national standardized tests, and IQ tests which show no racial gap. have to once again stress that the "g" in g-factor is not referencing genetics. genetics and the g-factor are largely unrelated thing. Also, the study about education and gender inequality is not "unknown" and uses data from three well known large studies with representative samples sizes. 9. The Ritchie and Tucker-Drob paper does not show a fade-out effect from these education gains. At least read what you try and criticize. 10. I cited papers that controlled for income and wealth and they accounted for nearly the entire gap in academic performance. 11. That paper I cited is literally the main reference in your own review paper, along with a large single-cohort study of 18,000 people showing a correlation of 0.27, which the authors settle on as the most likely value
"Among the subsamples, Bronze Age Greeks showed the highest level of cognitive ability as measured by alleles associated with IQ, but this result was not replicated by alleles associated with EA."
The discrepancy between the educational attainment and IQ PGSs seems strange (I must admit I hardly understand the topic).
Moreover, surprised about the medieval Irish scoring so high on the IQ PGS, higher than all the other medieval Europeans. I had heard before that the medieval Irish monks were special or something but, obviously, one cannot make any inferences about Ireland as a whole from that. What does the fact that it is left-skewed tell us?
I'm also surprised by the relatively low score of medieval Germany, but I always did think they were lacking culturally until the early modern age. Aside from German epic poets like Wolfram Von Eschenbach and the Nibelungenlied, German literature doesn't really take off (dramatically) until the 18th century with Lessing, Kant, Goethe, etc. From the little I've read and what literary critics appear to value and pay attention to, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, etc., literature are much more interesting until that point. I know that the political fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire was not favorable, but still... The Minnesinger music is like chalk to my ears. Trecento, Troubadour music, and the like are much more pleasant to listen to.
This is another great and highly anticipated update to your regular posts Peter!
My first question is why did the Bronze Age Greeks show the highest level of cognitive ability as measured by alleles associated with IQ? What were the driving factors for this increase?
My second question that is the fact you've mentioned that in Western Europe, mean cognitive ability seems to have fall since the turn of the twentieth century. In your opinion will this trend continue for the next 50 to 100 years? Is there anything that can be done to reverse this decline? What would it take to raise intelligence to the same increases seen in the early medieval period?
> Alternatively, the decrease in brain size may simply reflect a decrease in mental storage of spatiotemporal data, due to the abandonment of hunting over large expanses of territory.
Worth noting that the modern peoples with the largest brain sizes are Siberian indigenous peoples followed by Inuit. Their visuospatial skills are anecdotally prodigious whereas their overall IQs are modest (low 90s).
I've wondered about this. Wolves and coyotes are smarter than domestic dogs, but dogs appear smarter to us because they behave in ways we associate with intelligence in canines. We look at those tiny brained farmers and say, "smarter". But maybe they just had better conflict avoidance? Now, hunter gatherers are the losers. They were the guys that never could learn to do anything else and were pushed into the worst land, (except in the Americas). My thought is that the only place we can really compare intelligence between hunter gatherers and farmers is in the Americas. Yet here we have barriers at every level to test, compare, even to be certain of a group's historical activities.
What if you control for the social complexity variable and just compare prehistoric hunter gatherers from cold climates with the same from warm climates? IE don’t Inuit, Siberians, Sami and such have higher IQs than equatorial hunter gatherers like sub-Saharan Africans and aboriginal Australians?
Gracious that you cited me after reading a stray comment I made on the internet. Thanks!
Regarding your interest in sexual selection in human self-domestication, have you read Robert Bednarik's work? He puts forth a model where male preference for neonoteny drove the gracilization of human skeletons in the last 40,000 years. Book title: The Domestication of Humans (available on Library Genesis).
See also treatment of Bednarik's idea in James Thomas's dissertation Self-domestication and Language Evolution or the more recent paper Globularization and Domestication.
I saw this week response to Uber soy by Kevin Byrd and he didn't respond to for some reason could you respond to this I'm not an expert in the field please I'll quote it Uber soy I saw a response to you by Kevin Byrd can you respond to this
This is some embarrassing flailing. I document several misrepresentations and inaccuracies in your video. The claims about the cause of the Flynn effect decline and the relationship of g-loaded IQ subtests and culture were just two direct refutations. You seem very confused about the fact 84% of genes are expressed somewhere in the brain at some point during development. This has no implication for racial differences unless you can specifically identify expression differences between races and their relationship to IQ. This research has not and likely cannot be done and the genetic data I presented shows there is no evidence of substantial genetic differences between races for genes associated with intelligence when you correct for biases in GWAS engage with your references the whole time, and bring up studies that address the crucial weaknesses in your cited work. It's a literature review based on some of the latest genetic studies and on economic papers that correct for the shoddy statistical analyses used in much of the IQ literature. It isn't the "sociologist's fallacy" to show that accounting for these socioeconomic differences reduces the gaps since there is strong evidence and historical documentation that these socioeconomic differences between races are not genetic themselves and again no evidence from that genetics contributes to these racial gaps. Bringing up the Coleman report is irrelevant when I present papers from this decade (not half a century ago) showing that data from 4 million students pointing toward economic inequality and segregation as driving the majority of achievement test score gap in schools. You should update your references to the proper century. Now addressing the rest of your tantrum in order: 1. Yes, correlational research is weak and needs either experimental validation or more robust methods to infer causality. 2. They are fundamentally interactions, they are not separable as genetic or environmental and they show that phenotypes can change in different environments. 3. Laughing does not refute my own published researcher showing that genes associated with intelligence do not show the patterns that would be present if natural selection were acting to make Europeans more intelligent than Africans. 4. Your evidence for dysgenics relies on faulty genetic methods prone to false-positives and from researchers with no credibility or expertise. 5. The sibling study on the Flynn is precisely the kind of well-designed study that can distinguish genetic from environmental causes and it unambiguously supports environment and precludes genetic causes. 6. Fst between dog breeds are much larger than between human populations. The paper I cited references 3-5% for human races and 27% for dogs using comparable genetic markers. 7. The distinction between within- and between group heritability is a fundamental aspect of that statistical method. Also the data I presented did show school districts where there are no racial test score gaps, a closing racial test score gap for national standardized tests, and IQ tests which show no racial gap. have to once again stress that the "g" in g-factor is not referencing genetics. genetics and the g-factor are largely unrelated thing. Also, the study about education and gender inequality is not "unknown" and uses data from three well known large studies with representative samples sizes. 9. The Ritchie and Tucker-Drob paper does not show a fade-out effect from these education gains. At least read what you try and criticize. 10. I cited papers that controlled for income and wealth and they accounted for nearly the entire gap in academic performance. 11. That paper I cited is literally the main reference in your own review paper, along with a large single-cohort study of 18,000 people showing a correlation of 0.27, which the authors settle on as the most likely value
"Autism has become more common since the last ice age."
In which of the studies should I look to read more about that?
"Among the subsamples, Bronze Age Greeks showed the highest level of cognitive ability as measured by alleles associated with IQ, but this result was not replicated by alleles associated with EA."
The discrepancy between the educational attainment and IQ PGSs seems strange (I must admit I hardly understand the topic).
Moreover, surprised about the medieval Irish scoring so high on the IQ PGS, higher than all the other medieval Europeans. I had heard before that the medieval Irish monks were special or something but, obviously, one cannot make any inferences about Ireland as a whole from that. What does the fact that it is left-skewed tell us?
I'm also surprised by the relatively low score of medieval Germany, but I always did think they were lacking culturally until the early modern age. Aside from German epic poets like Wolfram Von Eschenbach and the Nibelungenlied, German literature doesn't really take off (dramatically) until the 18th century with Lessing, Kant, Goethe, etc. From the little I've read and what literary critics appear to value and pay attention to, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, etc., literature are much more interesting until that point. I know that the political fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire was not favorable, but still... The Minnesinger music is like chalk to my ears. Trecento, Troubadour music, and the like are much more pleasant to listen to.
Human brains did not shrink in size thousands of years ago:
https://neurosciencenews.com/evolution-brain-shrinkage-21195/
This is another great and highly anticipated update to your regular posts Peter!
My first question is why did the Bronze Age Greeks show the highest level of cognitive ability as measured by alleles associated with IQ? What were the driving factors for this increase?
My second question that is the fact you've mentioned that in Western Europe, mean cognitive ability seems to have fall since the turn of the twentieth century. In your opinion will this trend continue for the next 50 to 100 years? Is there anything that can be done to reverse this decline? What would it take to raise intelligence to the same increases seen in the early medieval period?