# Are people of Northern Hemisphere smarter than people of Southern Hemisphere **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 8, 2016, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-of-northern-hemisphere-smarter-than-people-of-southern-hemisphere/765359 "2016-09-08T19:47:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2016, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-of-northern-hemisphere-smarter-than-people-of-southern-hemisphere/765359/21 "2016-09-09T13:09:13Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Perhaps I am the first person to openly point out that the vast majority of human beings live north of the Equator. No, **Sage Rat** did. > [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Only 12% of the current human population exists in the Southern Hemisphere. I didn’t do it openly. [But I did bring pictures](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=19616479&postcount=18) 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2016, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-of-northern-hemisphere-smarter-than-people-of-southern-hemisphere/765359/22 "2016-09-09T13:22:41Z")
I’m clearly one of the stupid Northern Hemisphereans. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2016, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-of-northern-hemisphere-smarter-than-people-of-southern-hemisphere/765359/23 "2016-09-09T13:45:22Z")
It’s time I confess. I’ve lived my whole life in the Northern Hemisphere. And yet I’ve never won a single Nobel Prize. Not even an Economics one. I feel guilty about this. It’s not as if my failure reflects poorly only on me. I know that my winning a Nobel Prize would have made everyone else who lives in the same arbitrarily defined half of the planet as I do smarter as well. So I’ve let you all down. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2016, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-of-northern-hemisphere-smarter-than-people-of-southern-hemisphere/765359/24 "2016-09-09T22:17:20Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > No, hunter-gathering [was](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_prehistoric_Southwest) [the](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Agricultural_Complex) [exception](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_on_the_prehistoric_Great_Plains), not the rule. Hm, I would agree that I was wronger than I was righter, but I do note that assuming your links are exhaustive, it would still seem to leave 50% or greater of the US and 90% of Canada outside the agrarian region. Though, I don’t know what the population density was of the Native Americans geographically, so potentially the agrarian region could have been the majority of everyone. Mostly, I’m just curious whether there’s a word for this sort of setup, where people are in a static, agrarian lifestyle but not part of a centralized government and without any writing system (I believe that the definition of “civilization” requires that.) When I was a kid, everything seemed to jump straight from “hunter gatherer” to “civilized”. What’s the name of the midpoint? ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2016, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-of-northern-hemisphere-smarter-than-people-of-southern-hemisphere/765359/25 "2016-09-10T00:15:18Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Hm, I would agree that I was wronger than I was righter, but I do note that assuming your links are exhaustive, it would still seem to leave 50% or greater of the US and 90% of Canada outside the agrarian region. Though, I don’t know what the population density was of the Native Americans geographically, so potentially the agrarian region could have been the majority of everyone. > > Mostly, I’m just curious whether there’s a word for this sort of setup, where people are in a static, agrarian lifestyle but not part of a centralized government and without any writing system (I believe that the definition of “civilization” requires that.) When I was a kid, everything seemed to jump straight from “hunter gatherer” to “civilized”. What’s the name of the midpoint? That’s just elementary level history books simplifying the process so they can be assigned into conceptual categories. In reality it’s a much more complex and varied scenario. “Pre-writing” glyphs were used extensively by agrarian societies for record keeping. > **[History of writing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing)** > > The history of writing traces the development of writing systems and how their use transformed and was transformed by different societies. The use of writing prefigures various social and psychological consequences associated with literacy and literary culture. > With each historical invention of writing, true writing systems were preceded by systems of ideographic and mnemonic symbols called proto-writing, which were not fully capable of recording spoken language. True writing, where the conte... ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2016, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-of-northern-hemisphere-smarter-than-people-of-southern-hemisphere/765359/26 "2016-09-10T03:35:01Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Hm, I would agree that I was wronger than I was righter, but I do note that assuming your links are exhaustive, it would still seem to leave 50% or greater of the US and 90% of Canada outside the agrarian region. Though, I don’t know what the population density was of the Native Americans geographically, so potentially the agrarian region could have been the majority of everyone. > > Mostly, I’m just curious whether there’s a word for this sort of setup, where people are in a static, agrarian lifestyle but not part of a centralized government and without any writing system (I believe that the definition of “civilization” requires that.) When I was a kid, everything seemed to jump straight from “hunter gatherer” to “civilized”. What’s the name of the midpoint? Agrarian regions almost by definition have a higher population density than hunter gatherer ones. I think “tribe” is the term for a political unit of organization higher than a band, lower than a kingdom. (Not all kingdoms have writing systems though). ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2016, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-of-northern-hemisphere-smarter-than-people-of-southern-hemisphere/765359/27 "2016-09-10T06:43:40Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Agrarian regions almost by definition have a higher population density than hunter gatherer ones. I think that would depend on how the map was drawn. If you take the entirety of a great desert and say that it’s controlled by the Little Endians, even though really they’re lined up along a few rivers and oases and most of the land is devoid of anything but war parties scouting for encroachers. And then you compare that a lush region full of flowering plants, lots of tubers, and easily hunted wildlife, where you’ve got tribes depleting the land and moving on. I think you _could_ find that for the largest extent of “control” the hunter gatherers are more densely populating the land. Note the emphasis on “could”. I don’t know that, that’s true. I have read, however, that the origins of agrarian society - at least in the Middle East - seem to have come about due to the end of the Ice Age. This made previously lush regions no longer able to support hunter gatherers. And, rather than relocate, some people figured out how to use their ingenuity to find ways to make the land able to continue supporting them even though it was no longer as naturally giving as it had been before. So I do think it’s plausible that if the land is a 100/100 on the givingness scale, then you’ll have 100 people. And if the land is more like 60/100 but ingenuity is pushing that back up to some other number, it’s possible that you’re still only raising it to an 80 or a 90. Maybe traditional farming techniques are able to make it better than a 100/100, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it does not. And, of course, the population will cap out at whatever the land can support, no matter how ingenious you are. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2016, 9:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-of-northern-hemisphere-smarter-than-people-of-southern-hemisphere/765359/28 "2016-09-10T09:15:19Z")
> [@Nansbread1](#): > > To make this question less of imho and more factual maybe we should look at GDP, standard of living, poverty indices, nobel prize winners, scientic advancement, political stability, well being and educational levels etc etc. > > After factoring in population numbers obviously. > > Will that then tell us if either hemisphere has a clear lead in the smartness/intelligence stakes. Northern Hemispherians get smarter than Southern ones by staring at water draining out of their tubs. Due to the Coriolis effect, they observe the water swirl in the more pleasing direction, and this triggers neurons to fire more vigorously. What, you haven’t stared at your bath water draining out yet? Do it now…you’ll be amazed how much smarter you’ll feel afterwards! I’m pretty sure Cecil addressed this in a column. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2016, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-of-northern-hemisphere-smarter-than-people-of-southern-hemisphere/765359/29 "2016-09-10T13:05:31Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Hm, I would agree that I was wronger than I was righter, but I do note that assuming your links are exhaustive, it would still seem to leave 50% or greater of the US and 90% of Canada outside the agrarian region. Though, I don’t know what the population density was of the Native Americans geographically, so potentially the agrarian region could have been the majority of everyone. No, they weren’t exhaustive, for instance I could have included the [Patayan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patayan), the [Pima](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pima_people#History_prior_to_1688), all of the Oasisamerican Consider that the areas that practiced at least agriculture cover the entire Eastern Woodlands, Great Lakes , Mississippi Valley, Great Plains and Southwest. Much more than 50% of the US. And of the rest, large parts are desert or otherwise marginal - the only _dense_ non-agricultural populations in North America are the Pacific Northwest and Florida fisher-hunter-gatherers, and even they aren’t living your stereotypical hunter-gatherer lifestyle, with their permanent villages (and copperworking in the PNW). 90% of Canada is irrelevant, most of the native population would be living in that southern 10% and are _mostly_ going to be either Great Lakes & Woodlands agriculturalists (Iroquois and Southern Algonquians) or sedentary PNW salmon/whale hunters. > [@](#): > > Mostly, I’m just curious whether there’s a word for this sort of setup, where people are in a static, agrarian lifestyle but not part of a centralized government What makes you think these people didn’t have centralized government? “Anarchists don’t build [pyramids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monks_Mound)” would seem like a useful rubric in this case… > [@](#): > > and without any writing system (I believe that the definition of “civilization” requires that.) By this measure, the Inca weren’t a civilization, either, then. Me, I prefer a simple “cities=civilization” definition, and am happy to take a persistent, developed iconography, such as the [Southeastern Ceremonial Complex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeastern_Ceremonial_Complex#Motifs) had, as a “good enough” characteristic. > [@](#): > > When I was a kid, everything seemed to jump straight from “hunter gatherer” to “civilized”. What’s the name of the midpoint? “Settled”, when a culture has built settlements without the extensive specialization and/or stratification to count as cities, regardless of their size. So, for instance, to use North American examples, I’d classify the Southwestern pueblos as settlements, not cities, but Cahokia was a city. Note that by my scheme, the Pacific Northwest tribes would qualify as more than just HGs too, and be “settled” instead. I know that the actual binary there is nomadic vs settled. Maybe that’s too ambiguous then, and we can come up with a better term than "settled’ - I prefer nomad/sedentary, and a H-G/Settled/Civilized progression. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2016, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-of-northern-hemisphere-smarter-than-people-of-southern-hemisphere/765359/30 "2016-09-10T14:29:15Z")
In order to test the hypothesis, a series of IQ tests were administered to random groups of Eskimos and penguins. It was found the Eskimos scored significantly higher. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2016, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-of-northern-hemisphere-smarter-than-people-of-southern-hemisphere/765359/31 "2016-09-10T15:09:25Z")
I would assume the people who live on the bottom of the world have more blood concentrating in their brains instead of us on the top where it tends to concentrate in our feet. This should result in greater intelligence for the southerners. I asked someone from South America about this and he said I was wrong, which am further proof that they is smarter than we. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2016, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-of-northern-hemisphere-smarter-than-people-of-southern-hemisphere/765359/32 "2016-09-10T15:38:28Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > In order to test the hypothesis, a series of IQ tests were administered to random groups of Eskimos and penguins. It was found the Eskimos scored significantly higher. Cue the victory chant “Nor-THERN Hemm-a-SPHERE! Nor-THERN Hemm-a-SPHERE! Nor-THERN Hemm-a-SPHERE!!!” > [@TriPolar](#): > > I would assume the people who live on the bottom of the world have more blood concentrating in their brains instead of us on the top where it tends to concentrate in our feet. This should result in greater intelligence for the southerners. I asked someone from South America about this and he said I was wrong, which am further proof that they is smarter than we. Ref George Orwell: “South head good; North head bad!” ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2016, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-of-northern-hemisphere-smarter-than-people-of-southern-hemisphere/765359/33 "2016-09-10T15:48:30Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Native Americans, Australian Aboriginals, Hawaiians, etc. are all from the same genetic population as the Japanese. > > If you compare grades by ethnicity, your average Japanese kid will probably be near the top of the spectrum. Your average Native American kid will probably be near the bottom. > > In the Americas before the Europeans came, most of the large, organized empires were in Central and South America. North Americans largely stayed as hunter gatherers (with exceptions). But since the land bridge from Asia to the Americas was in Alaska, everyone living in Central and South America are presumably the descendants of North Americans. None of that is correct, but since others have addressed the last 2 paragraphs, I’ll address the first. It’s only true in the sense that all non-Sub-Saharan African populations are the same. [DNA analysis](http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2011/09/dna-confirms-aboriginal-culture-one-of-earths-oldest) has shown that European and Asian populations are more closely related to each other than either is to Australian Aboriginals. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2016, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-of-northern-hemisphere-smarter-than-people-of-southern-hemisphere/765359/34 "2016-09-10T18:18:17Z")
No, but we are more numerous and heavier, which explains why the poles will soon flip, putting us all on the bottom. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2016, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-of-northern-hemisphere-smarter-than-people-of-southern-hemisphere/765359/35 "2016-09-10T18:52:13Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > No, but we are more numerous and heavier, which explains why the poles will soon flip, putting us all on the bottom. Dammit, I don’t want to have Alpha Centauri looking over my shoulder all the time. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-of-northern-hemisphere-smarter-than-people-of-southern-hemisphere/765359.md?page=1)