# People wandering from Africa , affecting IQ? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 19, 2010, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-wandering-from-africa-affecting-iq/543753 "2010-06-19T05:18:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![scamartistry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@scamartistry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scamartistry)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-wandering-from-africa-affecting-iq/543753/1 "2010-06-19T05:18:22Z")
In short: (i will post more cites if needed) the theory is simple: Since the early man emigrating from Africa. People went “first” to Europe, then after a long period ended up in the East-Asia. The longer people migrated- the greater the challenge- the greater the natural sellection. Ergo: more challenged genes making it ways to East-Asia. Matching this theory today are the different SAT,IQ test being done (not-controversial) where Asian-Anglo/saxian-African place in said order. Thoughts? Political correctnes because of correctness is not interesting… Much more interesting dwelling in facts ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-wandering-from-africa-affecting-iq/543753/2 "2010-06-19T05:38:27Z")
I can’t say as I’ve heard this and it comes off as racist. Not that I don’t think the question is one of genuine curiosity, I’m just warning of what may come. There is a theory in biology that the further a group gets from its point of origin, the less variety there will be, and the closer to the point of origin, the more varied the varieties. I heard this in a college biology course that illustrated this with a few examples, such as citrus, which originated in the Indian sub-continent. India has an enormous variety of different citrus species. ---
**Author:** ![Valgard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/7feea3/32.png) [@Valgard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Valgard)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-wandering-from-africa-affecting-iq/543753/3 "2010-06-19T05:46:58Z")
I think you’ll need to post some reputable cites for this. I can see a lot of potential problems with the theory. For example, what evidence is there that traveling elsewhere exerts any kind of evolutionary pressure on intelligence and has this been going on long enough to actually make a difference? How are “they” measuring intelligence? IMHO, SAT scores don’t necessarily measure how smart you are, they measure how educated you are. ---
**Author:** ![scamartistry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@scamartistry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scamartistry)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-wandering-from-africa-affecting-iq/543753/4 "2010-06-19T05:47:48Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > I can’t say as I’ve heard this and it comes off as racist. Not that I don’t think the question is one of genuine curiosity, I’m just warning of what may come. > > There is a theory in biology that the further a group gets from its point of origin, the less variety there will be, and the closer to the point of origin, the more varied the varieties. I heard this in a college biology course that illustrated this with a few examples, such as citrus, which originated in the Indian sub-continent. India has an enormous variety of different citrus species. I can assure you I am not writing this as an Asian Supremacist. I do not see how this theory being racist, either it has validity or it does not. Read about this in a book the other day and found the theory intresting Lets not destroy original thoughts with pre-concieved notions.. ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-wandering-from-africa-affecting-iq/543753/5 "2010-06-19T05:49:17Z")
The southern US is farther from England than the North East. I rest my case. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-wandering-from-africa-affecting-iq/543753/6 "2010-06-19T06:25:19Z")
> [@scamartistry](#): > > the theory is simple: > > Since the early man emigrating from Africa. > > People went “first” to Europe, then after a long period ended up in the East-Asia. > The longer people migrated- the greater the challenge- the greater the natural sellection. Ergo: more challenged genes making it ways to East-Asia.s Surviving in harsh colder climates could have an impact over time. > **[Did an ice age boost human brain size?](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327194-000-did-an-ice-age-boost-human-brain-size/)** > > Letting off some steam IT IS one of the biggest mysteries in human evolution. Why did we humans evolve such big brains, making us the unrivalled rulers of the world? Some 2.5 million years ago, our ancestors' brains expanded from a mere 600 cubic... Also, changes in social organisation as populations expanded may have lead to different selection pressures. Have you read ‘The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution’? > [@](#): > > A third group of selected genes affects brain function. The role of these genes is unknown, but they could have changed in response to the social transition as people moved from small hunter-gatherer groups a hundred strong to villages and towns inhabited by several thousand, Dr. Laland said. “It’s highly plausible that some of these changes are a response to aggregation, to living in larger communities,” he said. [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/science/02evo.html?pagewanted=2](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/science/02evo.html?pagewanted=2) ---
**Author:** ![Camus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ba8739/32.png) [@Camus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Camus)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-wandering-from-africa-affecting-iq/543753/7 "2010-06-19T06:28:37Z")
> [@scamartistry](#): > > People went “first” to Europe, then after a long period ended up in the East-Asia. > The longer people migrated- the greater the challenge- the greater the natural sellection. Ergo: more challenged genes making it ways to East-Asia. > > \ > > Political correctnes because of correctness is not interesting.. Much more interesting dwelling in facts Here is a fact: it would be a much farther distance and much more difficult journey from Africa to Oceania or the Americas, given the primitive methods of travel available thousands of years ago, than it would be to East Asia and Europe. ---
**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:** [June 19, 2010, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-wandering-from-africa-affecting-iq/543753/8 "2010-06-19T06:30:55Z")
By that theory, South Americans should be the brightest. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-wandering-from-africa-affecting-iq/543753/9 "2010-06-19T06:37:44Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > By that theory, South Americans should be the brightest. Nope, Antarticans. And guess what? They are nearly all PhD’s. I think the OP may be on to something. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-wandering-from-africa-affecting-iq/543753/10 "2010-06-19T07:04:53Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > There is a theory in biology that the further a group gets from its point of origin, the less variety there will be, and the closer to the point of origin, the more varied the varieties. I’ve always heard that that’s true of humans; that Africans have the greatest level of genetic variation among humans. Which still isn’t too much, humans are less genetically varied than most species I understand. A combination of passing though a genetic bottleneck, then a population explosion. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-wandering-from-africa-affecting-iq/543753/11 "2010-06-19T07:18:29Z")
Perhaps we should tell them all the monkeys we sent into space came back superintelligent… ---
**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:** [June 19, 2010, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-wandering-from-africa-affecting-iq/543753/12 "2010-06-19T07:31:38Z")
> [@scamartistry](#): > > Much more interesting dwelling in facts I don’t want to be insulting, but you’ve started a number of threads recently that indicate you have been dwelling in opinions instead of facts. This thread is based on obvious racist concepts and no factual basis we’ve seen. You did not deny being a racist either when responding to The Second Stone. You argue that racism has nothing to do with it, the theory is either valid, or it is not. It clearly is not even a hypothesis until you supply evidence to support the existence of phenomena you are trying to explain. I will be presumptious and ask for your motivations. If it is simply curiousity, there seems to be a selective nature to it. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-wandering-from-africa-affecting-iq/543753/13 "2010-06-19T07:52:58Z")
There simply is not the kind of testing necessary to determine cross-cultural IQ and then correct for other possible causes. It is going to devolve into generalizations. I’m not saying that this isn’t a potentially interesting line of inquiry from a scientific point of view, but the hypothesis is essentially that people further from Africa in their ethnic origin are going to have higher IQ scores. Well, IQ tests are designed by people far from Africa in their ethnic origin to measure educational skills for local cultures. Are some people smarter based on geographical origin of ethnicity? Hard to say. However, we can say this, anthropologists have used brain case size in human ancestors to ballpark intellectual capacity, and the extinct Neanderthals had much larger brain cases than modern Homo sapiens. Why is that? ---
**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:** [June 19, 2010, 8:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-wandering-from-africa-affecting-iq/543753/14 "2010-06-19T08:05:18Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > Are some people smarter based on geographical origin of ethnicity? Hard to say. However, we can say this, anthropologists have used brain case size in human ancestors to ballpark intellectual capacity, and the extinct Neanderthals had much larger brain cases than modern Homo sapiens. Why is that? Because we are not extinct, and we are smarter and better looking than humans. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-wandering-from-africa-affecting-iq/543753/15 "2010-06-19T08:11:39Z")
> [@](#): > > Well, IQ tests are designed by people far from Africa in their ethnic origin to measure educational skills for local cultures. There is a discussion of cross cultural testing here: > [@](#): > > In cross-cultural studies of IQ such as ours, general information and verbal comprehension tests typically are omitted because it is almost impossible to develop tests of general knowledge that have comparable meaning across cultures (e.g., not knowing why the year 1066 is important means something different if one is from New Guinea rather than from Great Britain). Considerable effort has gone into producing nonverbal IQ tests that can be used in any culture. > > These “culture-fair” or “culture-reduced” IQ tests have been shown to predict important life-outcomes with validity coefficients comparable to traditional IQ tests designed for specific populations (Court, 1991; Kendall, Verster, & Von Mollendorf, 1988, Rushton, Skuy, & Bons, 2004). > > Unlike traditional IQ tests that measure a very diverse set of cognitive abilities, culture-reduced IQ tests necessarily measure a much smaller number of abilities, focusing on nonverbal reasoning and novel problem-solving. Fortunately, the types of tests that lend themselves to cross-cultural research correlate very highly with the overall scores from traditional IQ tests (Jensen, 1987). Indeed, reasoning and the ability to deal effectively with unfamiliar situations is at the core of most theorists’ definitions of intelligence (Gottfredson, 1997). Thus, although many of the IQ tests in the dataset we use lack the breadth and diversity of traditional IQ tests, they focus on perhaps the most important facets of cognitive ability. > **[Jonespaper.pdf](https://www.mcgill.ca/files/economics/Jonespaper.pdf)** In relation to neanderthals, the shape of their larynx may have reduced their potential for communication. Humans may have picked up useful alleles from them nonetheless. > [@](#): > > They noted that this D allele is very common in Europe, where Neanderthals lived, and more rare in Africa, where they did not. Lahn said it is not yet clear what advantage the D allele gives the human brain. > > “The D alleles may not even change brain size; they may only make the brain a bit more efficient if it indeed affects brain function,” Lahn said. > > Now his team is looking for evidence of Neanderthal origin for other human genes. [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15611031/](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15611031/) [http://news.softpedia.com/news/Neanderthals-were-too-smart-to-survive-15264.shtml](http://news.softpedia.com/news/Neanderthals-were-too-smart-to-survive-15264.shtml) ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-wandering-from-africa-affecting-iq/543753/16 "2010-06-19T08:18:25Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > [QUOTE=The Second Stone] > However, we can say this, anthropologists have used brain case size in human ancestors to ballpark intellectual capacity, and the extinct Neanderthals had much larger brain cases than modern Homo sapiens. Why is that? Because we are not extinct, and we are smarter and better looking than humans. [/QUOTE] So, you are claiming to be a sort of…Nietzschean Neanderthal? ---
**Author:** ![Ruminator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Ruminator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruminator)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 10:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-wandering-from-africa-affecting-iq/543753/17 "2010-06-19T10:30:35Z")
> [@Valgard](#): > > IMHO, SAT scores don’t necessarily measure how smart you are, they measure how educated you are. This is incorrect. The designers of the SAT (psychologists at College Board) deliberately construct the test questions so that amount of education doesn’t matter. They deliberately design the test so that it is “uncoachable.” In many ways, the SAT test is a proxy for IQ tests. IQ tests are also “uncoachable.” Whether the SAT successfully tests for “smarts” (whatever that means) is up for debate but it definitely does not test for level of education. ---
**Author:** ![Ruminator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Ruminator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruminator)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 10:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-wandering-from-africa-affecting-iq/543753/18 "2010-06-19T10:41:49Z")
To be more accurate in previous post, I should have written Educational Testing Service (ETS) instead of “College Board.” ---
**Author:** ![StrangeBird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e480ec/32.png) [@StrangeBird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StrangeBird)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-wandering-from-africa-affecting-iq/543753/19 "2010-06-19T11:16:22Z")
> [@Ruminator](#): > > Whether the SAT successfully tests for “smarts” (whatever that means) is up for debate but it definitely does not test for level of education. It may not test for specific content for your education, but IQ is positively correlated with years of education, so if its a proxy for IQ part of what it is measuring is education. [QUOTE=Bryan Ekers] Perhaps we should tell them all the monkeys we sent into space came back superintelligent… [/QUOTE] No, I don’t think we be telling them _that._ ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-wandering-from-africa-affecting-iq/543753/20 "2010-06-19T12:09:34Z")
> [@scamartistry](#): > > In short: (i will post more cites if needed) > > the theory is simple: > > Since the early man emigrating from Africa. > > People went “first” to Europe, then after a long period ended up in the East-Asia. > The longer people migrated- the greater the challenge- the greater the natural sellection. Ergo: more challenged genes making it ways to East-Asia. > > Matching this theory today are the different SAT,IQ test being done (not-controversial) > where Asian-Anglo/saxian-African place in said order. > > Thoughts? Let us see some of these alleged citations. Humans headed toward Asia before they populated Europe. The people who populated Europe did not then move toward Asia, but tended to settle in Europe, (with a later backflow of a certain number of Asians migrating back into Europe). If your thesis was correct, then the most brilliant group of humans should be South Americans and Pacific Islanders, neither of which group tends to be discussed much in the literature of intelligence measuring. (The whole Asians/Europeans/Africans ranking of intelligence is actually very suspect–and “Anglo-Saxons” is hardly an equivalent term for Europeans.) Basically, you have some sort of garbled version of a one unclear claim mixed with some historical ignorance. Without some genuine facts, this is a pointless exercise. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-wandering-from-africa-affecting-iq/543753.md?page=2)