# Another Africa thread hijacked **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 1, 2011, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767 "2011-04-01T13:04:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 25
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2011, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/481 "2011-04-15T13:49:20Z")
[QUOTE=New Deal Democrat] The Democrat Party is the party for third world minorities that are less evolved because they are closer in number of generations to the stone age. [/QUOTE] Congrats, NDD. You rank up there with **Cesario** , our [former] friendly neighborhood pedophile, for most disgusting sentiment I’ve ever seen aired on a message board. ---
**Author:** ![random6x7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8baadc/32.png) [@random6x7](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/random6x7)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2011, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/482 "2011-04-15T14:20:54Z")
> [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](#): > > The Democrat Party is the party for third world minorities that are less evolved because they are closer in number of generations to the stone age. _What?_ How do you figure? You do realize that modern humans evolved in Africa, right? ---
**Author:** ![New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9d8465/32.png) [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/New_Deal_Democrat)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2011, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/483 "2011-04-15T14:56:31Z")
> [@olivesmarch4th](#): > > Congrats, NDD. You rank up there with **Cesario** , our [former] friendly neighborhood pedophile, for most disgusting sentiment I’ve ever seen aired on a message board. What’s disgusting is that you cannot refute it. Agriculture and civilization have different population pressures than a paleolithic existence. ---
**Author:** ![New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9d8465/32.png) [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/New_Deal_Democrat)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2011, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/484 "2011-04-15T15:01:45Z")
> [@random6x7](#): > > _What?_ How do you figure? You do realize that modern humans evolved in Africa, right? Modern humans evolved in Africa over 100,000 years ago, and continued to evolve. Because whites and Orientals have been practicing agriculture and civilization longer than African Negroes, they have evolved further. The 10,000 Explosion explains how racial differences in intelligence and crime, which are documented in The Bell Curve, evolved. > **[Home - The 10k Year Explosion](https://the10000yearexplosion.com/)** ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2011, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/485 "2011-04-15T15:35:16Z")
> [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](#): > > What’s disgusting is that you cannot refute it. Agriculture and civilization have different population pressures than a paleolithic existence. Can’t refute what? That you are a paleophile? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2011, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/486 "2011-04-15T15:54:20Z")
> [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](#): > > Modern humans evolved in Africa over 100,000 years ago, and continued to evolve. Because whites and Orientals have been practicing agriculture and civilization longer than African Negroes, they have evolved further. > > The 10,000 Explosion explains how racial differences in intelligence and crime, which are documented in The Bell Curve, evolved. > > [http://the10000yearexplosion.com/](http://the10000yearexplosion.com/) Nah, white people are just blacks that became curdy. [http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/jm-ledgard/exodus](http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/jm-ledgard/exodus) As for the Bell Curve book, virtually no one in the scientific community is taking it seriously for the errors and the cherry picking of research the makers of the Bell Curve book did. > **[Cavalli-Sforza on “The Bell Curve”](https://abagond.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/cavalli-sforza-on-%E2%80%9Cthe-bell-curve%E2%80%9D/)** > > Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, a Stanford geneticist, said in 1995 that “The Bell Curve” (1994) by Charles Murray and Harvard psychologist Richard J Herrnstein is wrong on the science. Murray and Herrn… > [@](#): > > Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, a Stanford geneticist, said in 1995 that “The Bell Curve” (1994) by Charles Murray and Harvard psychologist Richard J Herrnstein is wrong on the science. > > Murray and Herrnstein said that IQ is about 60% genetic. That was the best value as of 1976. Since then several important papers, particularly Rice, Cloninger and Reich (1980), have come out showing that the true number is about 33%. > > Cavalli-Sforza says that the best known way to to tell how much genes affect something like IQ is to do adoption studies and then run the numbers through path analysis. At first that did give a number close to 60%, but since 1980 it has been repeatedly turning out numbers close to 33%. > > Cavalli-Sforza: > > > [@](#): > > > > ``` > > It is somewhat disconcerting that all these papers are totally ignored in “The Bell Curve”…. Researchers who might be called “IQ hereditarians” are in general reporting high heritabilities for IQ without any information on how these calculations have been obtained, or why the other papers here cited have been ignored. It is unlikely that they were not seen or read; they are published in well-known scientific journals. > > > > ``` > > But even if we assume that IQ is 60% genetic between parent and child, that still does not mean the difference between blacks and whites is mainly genetic. > > Height, for example, seems to be much more genetic than IQ and yet people in Europe are much taller now than 200 years ago. Since there has been almost no change in the genes of Europeans in that time, the difference is pretty much 0% genetic. Despite height being highly genetic. > > Murray and Herrnstein know this and admit this, yet they still say it is “likely” the difference in IQs between blacks and whites is mostly genetic. > > Which is pretty strange when they themselves admit that SAT scores between blacks and whites have narrowed by 30% in the past 19 years. At that rate there will be almost no difference in 70 years. It is not as if they think the SAT is not a good rough measure of intelligence. > > Cavalli-Sforza thinks almost none of the difference is genetic: both the American adoption study by Sandra Scarr and Barbara Tizard’s study of British orphans showed that when blacks and whites are brought up under the same circumstances the difference pretty much disappears. > > He further points out that: > > > [@](#): > > > > ``` > > * the charts are misleading, > > * correlation is not cause and that > > * the g factor is likely a statistical artefact. > > > > ``` > > He thinks IQ tests measure a small and rather uninteresting part of intelligence and that it is impossible to make one that is reasonably culture-free. [http://books.google.com/books?id=ApuuiwUkEZ0C&pg=PA280&lpg=PA280&dq=It+is+somewhat+disconcerting+that+all+these+papers+are+totally+ignored+in+“The+Bell+Curve”&source=bl&ots=WpI3d8mSdv&sig=ysu6eXpnaILkCjYOq3n2YOYEG6k&hl=en&ei=UOOkTdWBOOHs0gGE3vHxCA&sa=X&oi=book\_result&ct=result&resnum=4&sqi=2&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=It%20is%20somewhat%20disconcerting%20that%20all%20these%20papers%20are%20totally%20ignored%20in%20“The%20Bell%20Curve”&f=false](http://books.google.com/books?id=ApuuiwUkEZ0C&pg=PA280&lpg=PA280&dq=It+is+somewhat+disconcerting+that+all+these+papers+are+totally+ignored+in+%E2%80%9CThe+Bell+Curve%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=WpI3d8mSdv&sig=ysu6eXpnaILkCjYOq3n2YOYEG6k&hl=en&ei=UOOkTdWBOOHs0gGE3vHxCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&sqi=2&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=It%20is%20somewhat%20disconcerting%20that%20all%20these%20papers%20are%20totally%20ignored%20in%20%E2%80%9CThe%20Bell%20Curve%E2%80%9D&f=false) [http://books.google.com/books?id=GzV5zFzhbIAC&pg=PA284&lpg=PA284&dq=without+any+information+on+how+these+calculations+have+been+obtained,+or+why+the+other+papers+here+cited+have+been+ignored&source=bl&ots=-qNgPIcEkz&sig=sqpCR7aBU-OANu3Meg-UoNVi-4U&hl=en&ei=rWeoTf7YH5C0sAO\_m8T6DA&sa=X&oi=book\_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=without%20any%20information%20on%20how%20these%20calculations%20have%20been%20obtained%2C%20or%20why%20the%20other%20papers%20here%20cited%20have%20been%20ignored&f=false](http://books.google.com/books?id=GzV5zFzhbIAC&pg=PA284&lpg=PA284&dq=without+any+information+on+how+these+calculations+have+been+obtained,+or+why+the+other+papers+here+cited+have+been+ignored&source=bl&ots=-qNgPIcEkz&sig=sqpCR7aBU-OANu3Meg-UoNVi-4U&hl=en&ei=rWeoTf7YH5C0sAO_m8T6DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=without%20any%20information%20on%20how%20these%20calculations%20have%20been%20obtained%2C%20or%20why%20the%20other%20papers%20here%20cited%20have%20been%20ignored&f=false) ---
**Author:** ![random6x7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8baadc/32.png) [@random6x7](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/random6x7)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2011, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/487 "2011-04-15T21:03:07Z")
Agriculture was invented in several areas around the world at different times. Fertile Crescent ~11kybp Southeastern Asia ~9kybp New Guinea ~9-6kybp Subsaharan Africa ~5-4kybp Central Mexico ~5-4kybp South America ~5-4kybp Eastern US ~4-3kybp (kybp= thousand years before present) I’d give the Mexicans a pass on their delay. They had to take teosinte and turn it into corn. Someone once claimed that, knowing what you’re doing and working at it, it’d take a decade of breeding to manage that. Presumably, they were working a bit more blindly. So why do your racial categories group together hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, and agriculturalists? Europeans didn’t get agriculture until around 7kybp, and they just copied off their neighbors. So are New Guineans smarter, then? They’re usually lumped in with Australian aboriginals, who do even worse on the IQ tests than Africans do. Does the fact that American Indians actually had to invent agriculture themselves alleviate the 2-3000 year gap between them getting it and Europeans copy-catting? Am I smarter than Jesus, since we’ve had another 2000 years of civilization since him? Are the Seneca smarter than the Crow? This probably also means that Eastern Europeans, who got agriculture first because of their proximity to the Middle East, are smarter than Western Europeans, right? But then why are their IQs slightly lower than Western Europeans? Not that I think **NDD** will change his mind, not after popping out with the polygenism (_really?_), but I thought I’d make it clear that this is a ridiculous theory. ---
**Author:** ![New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9d8465/32.png) [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/New_Deal_Democrat)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2011, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/488 "2011-04-15T21:35:24Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Can’t refute what? That you are a paleophile? > > 🙂 That my arguments are valid. ---
**Author:** ![random6x7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8baadc/32.png) [@random6x7](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/random6x7)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2011, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/489 "2011-04-15T23:06:12Z")
Yeah, can’t say I’m surprised that you ignored my post again. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2011, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/490 "2011-04-15T23:21:35Z")
> [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](#): > > That my arguments are valid. Like **random6x7** , I’m also not surprised you avoided my other post. Your arguments \*\*are \*\*invalid. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2011, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/491 "2011-04-16T01:44:45Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > [http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/jm-ledgard/exodus](http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/jm-ledgard/exodus) > > As for the Bell Curve book, virtually no one in the scientific community is taking it seriously for the errors and the cherry picking of research the makers of the Bell Curve book did… > > Cavalli-Sforza thinks almost none of the difference is genetic: both the American adoption study by Sandra Scarr and Barbara Tizard’s study of British orphans showed that when blacks and whites are brought up under the same circumstances the difference pretty much disappears. 1. Cavalli-Sforza was apparently not aware of the follow up study at age 17. Heritability increases as people mature and the gains at age 7 had [disapeared at age 17](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption_Study). 2. The Tizard study only looks at people aged 4. There is no follow up, as there was with the Scarr & Weinberg study. 3. To suggest that no one is taking TBC seriously is a [major distortion](http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~cfc/Chabris1998a.html) of [reality](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream_Science_on_Intelligence). ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2011, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/492 "2011-04-16T01:53:12Z")
> [@random6x7](#): > > Agriculture was invented in several areas around the world at different times. > Fertile Crescent ~11kybp > Southeastern Asia ~9kybp > New Guinea ~9-6kybp > Subsaharan Africa ~5-4kybp > Central Mexico ~5-4kybp > South America ~5-4kybp > Eastern US ~4-3kybp > (kybp= thousand years before present) > > I’d give the Mexicans a pass on their delay. They had to take teosinte and turn it into corn. Someone once claimed that, knowing what you’re doing and working at it, it’d take a decade of breeding to manage that. Presumably, they were working a bit more blindly. > > So why do your racial categories group together hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, and agriculturalists? Europeans didn’t get agriculture until around 7kybp, and they just copied off their neighbors. So are New Guineans smarter, then? ory. New Guineans had ‘female farming systems’. This has an impact on the type of behavioural traits most likely to be passed on. You’re not likely to see as many ‘nerdish’ traits being useful. > [@](#): > > Among low density gardeners, on the other hand, the typical pattern is that most of the gardening work is done by women, freeing men from subsistence responsibilities. Boserup (16) calls these “female farming systems,” a euphemism for societies where men live off women. Freed from domestic responsibility, men can occupy their time decorating themselves and planning the next raid. Widespread systems of such societies, as in highland New Guinea or lowland South America, seem to be stable as the chronic raiding and warfare suppress population growth. [http://www.pnas.org/content/99/1/10.long](http://www.pnas.org/content/99/1/10.long) ---
**Author:** ![Belowjob2.0](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Belowjob2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Belowjob2.0)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2011, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/493 "2011-04-16T02:19:47Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > New Guineans had ‘female farming systems’. This has an impact on the type of behavioural traits most likely to be passed on. You’re not likely to see as many ‘nerdish’ traits being useful. > > [http://www.pnas.org/content/99/1/10.long](http://www.pnas.org/content/99/1/10.long) Really. Could you tell us more about New Guinea? ---
**Author:** ![pinguin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac8455/32.png) [@pinguin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinguin)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2011, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/494 "2011-04-16T02:23:51Z")
> [@random6x7](#): > > Agriculture was invented in several areas around the world at different times. > Fertile Crescent ~11kybp > Southeastern Asia ~9kybp > New Guinea ~9-6kybp > Subsaharan Africa ~5-4kybp > Central Mexico ~5-4kybp > South America ~5-4kybp > Eastern US ~4-3kybp > (kybp= thousand years before present) > > I’d give the Mexicans a pass on their delay. They had to take teosinte and turn it into corn. Someone once claimed that, knowing what you’re doing and working at it, it’d take a decade of breeding to manage that. Presumably, they were working a bit more blindly. > > So why do your racial categories group together hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, and agriculturalists? Europeans didn’t get agriculture until around 7kybp, and they just copied off their neighbors. So are New Guineans smarter, then? They’re usually lumped in with Australian aboriginals, who do even worse on the IQ tests than Africans do. Does the fact that American Indians actually had to invent agriculture themselves alleviate the 2-3000 year gap between them getting it and Europeans copy-catting? Am I smarter than Jesus, since we’ve had another 2000 years of civilization since him? Are the Seneca smarter than the Crow? This probably also means that Eastern Europeans, who got agriculture first because of their proximity to the Middle East, are smarter than Western Europeans, right? But then why are their IQs slightly lower than Western Europeans? > > Not that I think **NDD** will change his mind, not after popping out with the polygenism (_really?_), but I thought I’d make it clear that this is a ridiculous theory. Interesting. Only a detail. It is still argued where agriculture started in the Americas. Some evidence points to Peru and not Mexico as the focal point of the spread of maize. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2011, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/495 "2011-04-16T02:41:08Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > 1. Cavalli-Sforza was apparently not aware of the follow up study at age 17. Heritability increases as people mature and the gains at age 7 had [disapeared at age 17](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption_Study). > > 2. The Tizard study only looks at people aged 4. There is no follow up, as there was with the Scarr & Weinberg study. > > 3. To suggest that no one is taking TBC seriously is a [major distortion](http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~cfc/Chabris1998a.html) of [reality](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream_Science_on_Intelligence). You really do not know the definition of virtually, huh? As it has been demostrated in the past, your citations do not show what you think it does. As Sforza has been named before as a defender of your point of view when he is not, the conclusion is that the bell curve does not have the recognition that you think it does. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2011, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/496 "2011-04-16T02:46:53Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > You really do not know the definition of virtually, huh? > > As it has been demostrated in the past, your citations do not show what you think it does. As Sforza has been named before as a defender of your point of view when he is not, the conclusion is that the bell curve does not have the recognition that you think it does. Well, I thought you were suggesting that no one takes it seriously. That’s clearly not correct & most of its basic observations have been supported by subsequent research. As [Steven Pinker summarized](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/magazine/11Genome-t.html?pagewanted=2): > [@](#): > > To study something scientifically, you first have to measure it, and psychologists have developed tests for many mental traits. And contrary to popular opinion, the tests work pretty well: they give a similar measurement of a person every time they are administered, and they statistically predict life outcomes like school and job performance, psychiatric diagnoses and marital stability… > > The most prominent finding of behavioral genetics has been summarized by the psychologist Eric Turkheimer: “The nature-nurture debate is over. . . . All human behavioral traits are heritable.” By this he meant that a substantial fraction of the variation among individuals within a culture can be linked to variation in their genes. Whether you measure intelligence or personality, religiosity or political orientation, television watching or cigarette smoking, the outcome is the same. Identical twins (who share all their genes) are more similar than fraternal twins (who share half their genes that vary among people). Biological siblings (who share half those genes too) are more similar than adopted siblings (who share no more genes than do strangers). And identical twins separated at birth and raised in different adoptive homes (who share their genes but not their environments) are uncannily similar. Also, you’re ducking the point that Cavalli-Sforza’s comments about adoption studies are pretty obsolete given he clearly wasn’t aware of the follow up study by [Scarr & Weinberg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption_Study). ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2011, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/497 "2011-04-16T03:09:56Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > Well, I thought you were suggesting that no one takes it seriously. That’s clearly not correct & most of its basic observations have been supported by subsequent research. As [Steven Pinker summarized](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/magazine/11Genome-t.html?pagewanted=2): > > Also, you’re ducking the point that Cavalli-Sforza’s comments about adoption studies are pretty obsolete given he clearly wasn’t aware of the follow up study by [Scarr & Weinberg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption_Study). You keep repeting the same sources over and over, that does not make a consensus or a majority. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2011, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/498 "2011-04-16T04:19:08Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > You keep repeting the same sources over and over, that does not make a consensus or a majority. A majority in relation to what? What part of Pinker’s [comment](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/magazine/11Genome-t.html?pagewanted=2) do you take issue with? I’ve already pointed out to you that the idea that group differences in intelligence are purely due to environmental variation is certainly **not** the [majority view or consensus view](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_IQ_Controversy,_the_Media_and_Public_Policy_%28book%29). ---
**Author:** ![random6x7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8baadc/32.png) [@random6x7](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/random6x7)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2011, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/499 "2011-04-16T04:45:12Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > New Guineans had ‘female farming systems’. This has an impact on the type of behavioural traits most likely to be passed on. You’re not likely to see as many ‘nerdish’ traits being useful. > > [http://www.pnas.org/content/99/1/10.long](http://www.pnas.org/content/99/1/10.long) So? Does farming only impact men’s intelligence? Why doesn’t horticulture affect intelligence? Or are you rather overly narrowly defining “agriculture” to suit your needs? The peoples in the Americas practiced intensive agriculture. Why are their IQs lower? And here’s a good one: Iraq is home to the Fertile Crescent, as well as some of the oldest civilizations in the world. Why is the average Iraqi IQ a mere 87? Maybe it would be easier if you guys would say how, exactly, farming impacted IQ. That might help. > [@](#): > > Interesting. Only a detail. It is still argued where agriculture started in the Americas. Some evidence points to Peru and not Mexico as the focal point of the spread of maize. Possibly. But that still doesn’t answer my other questions, the biggie being why you would lump agriculturalists, pastoralists, and hunter-gatherers under the same racial categories if agriculture caused this big old change in brain function. ---
**Author:** ![random6x7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8baadc/32.png) [@random6x7](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/random6x7)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2011, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/500 "2011-04-16T04:51:25Z")
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