The society type evolves due to a combination of geography and technology and then humans are forced to adapt to their new environment (the society type). This is much the same as animals having to adapt to their biome, it just adds on another level of complexity.
Groups very likely genetically adapted in ways that enabled better success within their society, but there are too many differing society types on the same continent to suppose that race is the best way to understand the process.
In other words, individuals in differing society types in Sub-Saharan Africa evolved separately from each other. Same race, but differing society types.
Same for Europe, Asia, and the New World.
And to come at it from the opposite perspective, individuals in the same society type in different continents evolved in similar directions. For example, Europeans and Asians within Agrarian societies. Same society type, but differing races.
Until recently marriage was largely within the same village or neighborhood, so I don’t see how there was much smearing there could have been across such a large group as races. Marriage to other people on the other side of the continent was very rare, except among elites.
Genetic tests can easily detect ethnicity and in some cases even villages showing that there is still substantial genetic differences within races. Race is just too high a level to be useful.
But it’s not really “race”. Ashkenazi Jews and Palestinian Muslims are both Caucasian / West Eurasian and yet there is a massive IQ gap. Ashkenazi intelligence and in fact Ashkenazi ethnogenesis emerged in the last 1000 years and Muslim dysgenics emerged in the last 1500 years. Race is much older than that.
Slavery is not evil because it is racist, slavery is evil because it is slavery. Slavery is also ancient. It provided the renewable sustainable biodegradable energy for the elites for millennia.
Interracial slavery did not become commonplace until a leap in transportation technology in the 16th Century allowed slaves sold by Africans to be transported to the Americas to provide sustainable renewable energy for the elites. Technological improvements in energy production later made it possible to eliminate slavery in the West. Within approximately 100 years of the Watt-Wilkinson collaboration that produced an efficient fossil fueled steam engine, slavery was abolished in the West.
Slavery reappeared in Germany during the fossil fuel shortage of the first half of the 1940s. (Audrey Hepburn’s half-brother along with many other Belgians, Dutch, French and other Europeans were enslaved to ameliorate the fossil fuel shortage)
I am not sure I get your point. Humans are good in recognition tasks. But this doesn’t make race a biological reality. The fact the Bandu, Khoisan and Pygmies are assigned to the same race while Europeans and East Asians are not is biological malpractice.
My main point is that neither the race of a society nor the existence of racism against members of that society tells us much about how it has evolved over the last 10,000 years. This strongly conflicts with the assumptions of many ideologies on the Left and Right.
Society types are far more useful concepts for explaining that variation.
You are correct that because humans can recognize something does not make it a biological reality. The fact that the results of DNA tests very closely conform to the perceived race of a person does.
I have no problem with defining Khoisan and Pygmies to be different races from Bantu people. I think the reason that it is not widely done is that Khoisan and Pygmies have tiny populations compared to Bantu and other groups. If the Khoisan and Pygmies had populations in the hundreds of millions, they would clearly be considered separate races.
As I stated in the article:
"Just because humans have differing opinions on how many racial categories exist does not make the concept of “race” untenable. It is merely a question of how deep you want to drill down... Regardless of how far you drill down, you are still left with biology, geography, and self-identification towards a group as strongly correlated. This is no different than the biological classification scheme for plants and animals. It depends on which level of abstraction is most useful for answering the question at hand."
No, because you still have to explain the cause of those average differences in intelligence. There is no evidence that I know of for average intelligence differences between Hunter gathers by region 10,000 years ago.
Variations in average intelligence are more likely the outcome of different types of societies rather than the cause of them. In other words, more complex societies gave far greater advantages to intelligence than relatively simple societies. And certain geographies enabled different types of food production which enabled more complex societies.
I believe this article explains differences in historical outcomes and average differences in intelligence (though I do not mention intelligence specifically, it is clearly one of the most important heritable characteristics).
This is just a broad brush encapsulation of cultures over time … it’s fair, I think, without blaming anyone… just basic cause and effect:
Just a theory I have.
Environment seems to have self selected. The Arctic for stoicism in the face of brutal decisions (sending grandma to die on the ice), the temperate for inventiveness(if you don’t build a warm home, stack wood, and store food for winter, you die), and the tropics for entertainment(food constantly grows, so focus on music, entertainment, social skills). Over succeeding generations women selected their mates for success. The result is what we have today…
When people from the tropics move to the temperate regions, they are horrified at the selfishness of people unwilling to give away their food and homes. The temperate peoples cannot understand why people from the tropics take and take without (apparently) doing anything productive, yet enjoy the talent of other peoples … in entertainment.
As for the arctic (and desert, somewhat). They can war. Raid the temperate regions. And the loss of life is just accepted as a part of reality. They have suffered huge losses in wars. Also the more inventive and resourceful a person was, the further north they could go and still survive… but the populations are low because the weather is so brutal and resources are so few.
The thing about the talents of the temperate peoples, is that innovation / inventiveness can “stack” by being taught to successive generations to build on … things like mechanics and architecture … less so for dance and drumbeats. So over time the tools of each region advance at different rates, and recently the inventiveness escalated.. to where other regions want to have the same tools and the same infrastructure/lifestyle as the temperate regions.
This doesn’t prove your point. Read the full Wikipedia article and it clearly shows that there is huge genetic variation within Africa. How can individuals that are so genetically similar belong to the same race? Sure humans can create arbitrary categories and use a combination of skin color and physical characteristics to assign individuals to the categories. But this doesn’t mean that the categories represent biological reality.
Yes, you are correct about the huge genetic variation within Africa. You can make a strong case that Sub-Saharan Africa is actually composed of many races, but many of those races have very small populations (for example, Khoisan, Pygmies) so they are not considered important enough to fit into global racial classifications.
Yes, the fact that DNA tests identify the racial ancestry and often ethnic ancestry of an individual human proves that it has a biological foundation.
Do you believe that species (also a category) do not "represent biological reality?" Why about Phylum and Kingdom?
As I stated in the article:
"Physicists, chemists, biologists, geologists, archeologists, social scientists, historians, philosophers, and regular everyday people use categories because they are useful. These academic specialties group individuals based on important characteristics and ignore less important characteristics. There is often blurring around the edges between categories because the variables are continuous rather than discrete."
You are correct, but your point is not really relevant to the topic of my article. Conquerors have always been cruel, regardless of race or racism. It was the same in Europe and Asia.
Yes, that is true. My point is that your presentation of some of the facts, which you dismiss as unfortunate but ordinary historical events, is not entirely accurate, because some of it was extraordinary even by historical standards. That doesn't change the conclusion of your article, which I read with great interest and which is why I subscribed to your Substack.
I guess my reply is that most of human history has been dominated by horrible events of violence and oppression.
I think realizing that enables us to set a baseline expectation that enables us to realize just how fortunate we are today, and why it is worth studying how we got here.
great nuance
Well said.
Of course, it's also possible that humans living in different society types have adapted to them in different ways.
Yes, that is exactly what I argue.
The society type evolves due to a combination of geography and technology and then humans are forced to adapt to their new environment (the society type). This is much the same as animals having to adapt to their biome, it just adds on another level of complexity.
I go into more detail here:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-our-deep-history-explains-global
So society type is the key concept that enables us to understand different levels of development in human history, not race or racism.
My point is that the races may very well have (genetically) adapted to different society types.
Groups very likely genetically adapted in ways that enabled better success within their society, but there are too many differing society types on the same continent to suppose that race is the best way to understand the process.
In other words, individuals in differing society types in Sub-Saharan Africa evolved separately from each other. Same race, but differing society types.
Same for Europe, Asia, and the New World.
And to come at it from the opposite perspective, individuals in the same society type in different continents evolved in similar directions. For example, Europeans and Asians within Agrarian societies. Same society type, but differing races.
On the other hand, until recently races corresponded to breeding populations reasonably well. Thus adaptations would get smeared across the races.
Until recently marriage was largely within the same village or neighborhood, so I don’t see how there was much smearing there could have been across such a large group as races. Marriage to other people on the other side of the continent was very rare, except among elites.
Genetic tests can easily detect ethnicity and in some cases even villages showing that there is still substantial genetic differences within races. Race is just too high a level to be useful.
But it’s not really “race”. Ashkenazi Jews and Palestinian Muslims are both Caucasian / West Eurasian and yet there is a massive IQ gap. Ashkenazi intelligence and in fact Ashkenazi ethnogenesis emerged in the last 1000 years and Muslim dysgenics emerged in the last 1500 years. Race is much older than that.
By the way, the argument that you are making sounds like what Nicholas Wade argued in favor of in this book:
https://techratchet.com/2021/06/17/book-summary-a-troublesome-inheritance-genes-race-and-human-history-by-nicholas-wade/
I think my argument is more persuasive.
I've read Wade's book. He's not the only one making that argument.
Slavery is not evil because it is racist, slavery is evil because it is slavery. Slavery is also ancient. It provided the renewable sustainable biodegradable energy for the elites for millennia.
Interracial slavery did not become commonplace until a leap in transportation technology in the 16th Century allowed slaves sold by Africans to be transported to the Americas to provide sustainable renewable energy for the elites. Technological improvements in energy production later made it possible to eliminate slavery in the West. Within approximately 100 years of the Watt-Wilkinson collaboration that produced an efficient fossil fueled steam engine, slavery was abolished in the West.
Slavery reappeared in Germany during the fossil fuel shortage of the first half of the 1940s. (Audrey Hepburn’s half-brother along with many other Belgians, Dutch, French and other Europeans were enslaved to ameliorate the fossil fuel shortage)
bartleby.com/251/1003.html
Slavery did not become obsolete because mankind became better. It became obsolete because fossil fueled power is more efficient.
I am not sure I get your point. Humans are good in recognition tasks. But this doesn’t make race a biological reality. The fact the Bandu, Khoisan and Pygmies are assigned to the same race while Europeans and East Asians are not is biological malpractice.
My main point is that neither the race of a society nor the existence of racism against members of that society tells us much about how it has evolved over the last 10,000 years. This strongly conflicts with the assumptions of many ideologies on the Left and Right.
Society types are far more useful concepts for explaining that variation.
You are correct that because humans can recognize something does not make it a biological reality. The fact that the results of DNA tests very closely conform to the perceived race of a person does.
I have no problem with defining Khoisan and Pygmies to be different races from Bantu people. I think the reason that it is not widely done is that Khoisan and Pygmies have tiny populations compared to Bantu and other groups. If the Khoisan and Pygmies had populations in the hundreds of millions, they would clearly be considered separate races.
As I stated in the article:
"Just because humans have differing opinions on how many racial categories exist does not make the concept of “race” untenable. It is merely a question of how deep you want to drill down... Regardless of how far you drill down, you are still left with biology, geography, and self-identification towards a group as strongly correlated. This is no different than the biological classification scheme for plants and animals. It depends on which level of abstraction is most useful for answering the question at hand."
Doesn't the reality of avg. racial/ethnic/group differences in intelligence factor into this?
No, because you still have to explain the cause of those average differences in intelligence. There is no evidence that I know of for average intelligence differences between Hunter gathers by region 10,000 years ago.
Variations in average intelligence are more likely the outcome of different types of societies rather than the cause of them. In other words, more complex societies gave far greater advantages to intelligence than relatively simple societies. And certain geographies enabled different types of food production which enabled more complex societies.
I believe this article explains differences in historical outcomes and average differences in intelligence (though I do not mention intelligence specifically, it is clearly one of the most important heritable characteristics).
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-our-deep-history-explains-global
My theory goes something like this:
Geography > Food Production > Society Type > Avg differences in heritable characteristics (of which intelligence is one of the most important).
This is just a broad brush encapsulation of cultures over time … it’s fair, I think, without blaming anyone… just basic cause and effect:
Just a theory I have.
Environment seems to have self selected. The Arctic for stoicism in the face of brutal decisions (sending grandma to die on the ice), the temperate for inventiveness(if you don’t build a warm home, stack wood, and store food for winter, you die), and the tropics for entertainment(food constantly grows, so focus on music, entertainment, social skills). Over succeeding generations women selected their mates for success. The result is what we have today…
When people from the tropics move to the temperate regions, they are horrified at the selfishness of people unwilling to give away their food and homes. The temperate peoples cannot understand why people from the tropics take and take without (apparently) doing anything productive, yet enjoy the talent of other peoples … in entertainment.
As for the arctic (and desert, somewhat). They can war. Raid the temperate regions. And the loss of life is just accepted as a part of reality. They have suffered huge losses in wars. Also the more inventive and resourceful a person was, the further north they could go and still survive… but the populations are low because the weather is so brutal and resources are so few.
The thing about the talents of the temperate peoples, is that innovation / inventiveness can “stack” by being taught to successive generations to build on … things like mechanics and architecture … less so for dance and drumbeats. So over time the tools of each region advance at different rates, and recently the inventiveness escalated.. to where other regions want to have the same tools and the same infrastructure/lifestyle as the temperate regions.
Then how can DNA tests identify the racial ancestry and often ethnic ancestry of an individual human?
Here is just one example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_Africa#/media/File:ADMIXTURE_analysis_of_Horn_of_Africa_populations_in_a_broad_context.png
Note: the author of this comment deleted their own comment, not me.
Same for other comments below.
This doesn’t prove your point. Read the full Wikipedia article and it clearly shows that there is huge genetic variation within Africa. How can individuals that are so genetically similar belong to the same race? Sure humans can create arbitrary categories and use a combination of skin color and physical characteristics to assign individuals to the categories. But this doesn’t mean that the categories represent biological reality.
Yes, you are correct about the huge genetic variation within Africa. You can make a strong case that Sub-Saharan Africa is actually composed of many races, but many of those races have very small populations (for example, Khoisan, Pygmies) so they are not considered important enough to fit into global racial classifications.
Yes, the fact that DNA tests identify the racial ancestry and often ethnic ancestry of an individual human proves that it has a biological foundation.
Do you believe that species (also a category) do not "represent biological reality?" Why about Phylum and Kingdom?
As I stated in the article:
"Physicists, chemists, biologists, geologists, archeologists, social scientists, historians, philosophers, and regular everyday people use categories because they are useful. These academic specialties group individuals based on important characteristics and ignore less important characteristics. There is often blurring around the edges between categories because the variables are continuous rather than discrete."
You are correct, but your point is not really relevant to the topic of my article. Conquerors have always been cruel, regardless of race or racism. It was the same in Europe and Asia.
Yes, that is true. My point is that your presentation of some of the facts, which you dismiss as unfortunate but ordinary historical events, is not entirely accurate, because some of it was extraordinary even by historical standards. That doesn't change the conclusion of your article, which I read with great interest and which is why I subscribed to your Substack.
Good point and thanks for the sub!
I guess my reply is that most of human history has been dominated by horrible events of violence and oppression.
I think realizing that enables us to set a baseline expectation that enables us to realize just how fortunate we are today, and why it is worth studying how we got here.
Please keep your comments relevant to the topic of the article.