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Henry Harpending (1944-2016) died this past Sunday. He had a stroke a year ago, and then a second one three weeks ago, but apparently he died of a lung infection. This is one of the risks of getting older: you dodge one bullet only to get hit by another.
The cemeteries are full of people who die before their time, but this is one case where I really wish death had held off a while longer, so that he could see more of the fruits of his labors, particularly in the area of gene-culture coevolution.
No, he wasn’t the only academic to show that culture and genes have coevolved in our species. In fact, the idea probably originated with Claude Lévi-Strauss in the early 1970s:
When cultures specialize, they consolidate and favor other traits, like resistance to cold or heat for societies that have willingly or unwillingly had to adapt to extreme climates, like dispositions to aggressiveness or contemplation, like technical ingenuity, and so on. […] each culture selects for genetic aptitudes that, via a feedback loop, influence the culture that had initially helped to strengthen them. (Lévi-Strauss, 1971)
This idea of gene-culture coevolution became popular in the 1980s through papers by L.L. Cavalli-Sforza, Robert Boyd, Peter Richerson, and Pierre van den Berghe. It then fell out of fashion because … well, because. When Paul Ehrlich wrote Human Natures(2000), he returned to the conventional wisdom that cultural evolution had largely replaced genetic evolution in our species. As one became more important, the other became less so.
In 2007, Henry Harpending turned this thinking on its head with a study on changes to the human genome over the past 80,000 years. With four other researchers, he found that these changes actually sped up more than a hundred-fold some 10,000 years ago, when hunting and gathering gave way to farming, which in turn led to population growth and larger, more complex societies. Our ancestors were no longer adapting to relatively static natural environments but rather to faster-changing cultural ones of their own making. They created new ways of life, which in turn influenced who would survive and who wouldn’t.
As Henry and his co-authors pointed out, this estimate of a hundred-fold acceleration is actually conservative:
It is sometimes claimed that the pace of human evolution should have slowed as cultural adaptation supplanted genetic adaptation. The high empirical number of recent adaptive variants would seem sufficient to refute this claim. It is important to note that the peak ages of new selected variants in our data do not reflect the highest intensity of selection, but merely our ability to detect selection. Due to the recent acceleration, many more new adaptive mutations should exist than have yet been ascertained, occurring at a faster and faster rate during historic times. (Hawks et al., 2007)
Few ideas belong solely to one person, but Henry deserves credit for perseverance. Most of the others, like L.L. Cavalli-Sforza, eventually found it expedient to focus on other ideas. Henry pushed on, not only by co-writing a book with Greg Cochran, but also by continuing to do original research.
I would like to say that Henry was allowed to work in peace. That’s how things are in a free society, no? Unfortunately, he was repeatedly warned to stop, subtly at first and then not so subtly. Last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center added his name to its list of “extremists”—a list that, curiously, omits people whose skin is darker than peaches and cream.
In its “Extremist File” the SPLC describes him as follows:
Harpending is most famous for his book, co-authored with frequent collaborator Gregory Cochran, The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution, which argues that humans are evolving at an accelerating rate, and that this began when the ancestors of modern Europeans and Asians left Africa. Harpending believes that this accelerated evolution is most visible in differences between racial groups, which he claims are growing more distinct and different from one another. The evolution of these racial differences are, in Harpending’s account, the driving force behind all of modern human history. He is also a eugenicist who believes that medieval Europeans intuitively adopted eugenic policies, and that we should recognize the importance of eugenics in our own society. (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2015)
I would give that summary a D+.
– The book’s argument was that genetic evolution slowly accelerated as modern humans spread outward from a relatively small area in Africa, beginning some 80,000 years ago. Much later, this acceleration greatly increased when farming began to replace hunting and gathering some 10,000 years ago. The actual Out of Africa event—when modern humans spread out of Africa some 50,000 years ago—was tangential to this process of accelerating genetic evolution, yet the SPLC summary makes it seem pivotal (perhaps to show that Henry was obsessed with black people?).
– The book’s argument was that culture and genes coevolve: culture drives genetic evolution just as much as genes drive cultural evolution. And this process can take place within groups that are not normally thought to be “racial.”
– The last sentence is way off the mark. Yes, a culture will make it harder for some individuals to survive and reproduce, thereby removing certain predispositions and personality types from the gene pool, but this process is no more a “eugenic policy” than is natural selection itself. It’s silly to use words like “eugenics” and “policy” for something that happens unconsciously in any culture, even in small bands of hunter-gatherers.
I don’t mind people making unfounded criticisms. That’s par for the course in academia. But was the SPLC interested in academic debate when it listed Henry as an “extremist”?
Indeed, what’s the point of that list? Information gathering? Or is it more like incitement to extrajudicial punishment and, yes, extrajudicial violence? “Look folks, this is a BAD PERSON, so go and do what the justice system is too cowardly to do!” Isn’t that the point of the exercise? And isn’t that exactly what the KKK was condemned for doing?
A strange role reversal has taken place between the long-dead KKK and the SPLC. It’s now the latter that tries to enforce its notions of good behavior through intimidation, veiled threats, public shaming, and blacklisting. It’s now the SPLC that is conspiring, literally, to deny people their civil rights.
Anyway, Henry Harpending seemed unfazed by the SPLC’s blacklisting. He was apparently one of those rare tenured professors who put his tenure to good use and blissfully went on doing what he had always been doing. I wish he had lived longer. He was irreplaceable not so much because he knew more but because he was unafraid to say and act on what he knew. I will miss him.
Cochran, G. and H. Harpending. (2010). The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution, New York: Basic Books.
Ehrlich, P. (2000 ). Human Natures. Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect, Penguin.
Harpending, H., and G. Cochran. (2002). In our genes, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), 99, 10-12.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC117504/
Hawks, J., E.T. Wang, G.M. Cochran, H.C. Harpending, and R.K. Moyzis. (2007). Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), 104, 20753-20758.
http://harpending.humanevo.utah.edu/Documents/accel_pnas_submit.pdf
Lévi-Strauss, C. (1971). Race et culture, conférence de Lévi-Strauss à L’UNESCO le 22 mars 1971
http://politproductions.com/sites/default/files/art-%C2%ABrace_et_culture%C2%BB_levi-strauss_unesco_22_3_1971.pdf
Southern Poverty Law Center (2015). Henry Harpending, Extremist Files,
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/henry-harpending
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Yup. See also my earlier column on it:
Henry Harpending: Extremist – Says the Southern Poverty Law Center – The Unz Review
That said (as noted within above column):
—
Well, see also my other column:
The Donald Trump Phenomenon: Part 2: Binary Thinking – The Unz Review
And for that matter, see also M.G.’s latest:
Those Who Can See: When Progressives Get Religion
Good to see you back Peter! An excellent tribute to Henry Harpending, as well.
On p. 42 of Rushton’s abridged 2nd edition of Race, Evolution and Behavior, he states that ” Race differences in testacle size have also been measured ( Asians= 9 grams, Europeans= 21 grams.”
On the same page Rushton writes that this could mean that Whites produce twice as many sperm a day as do Orientals. He also states that so far we have no information on black testacles.
Asians have various measures of lower sexual experience/events than whites.
This is probably an example of coevolution of genes and culture. A while back at UR, a piece on Asian rice growing was compared to European wheat growing. The claim was made that because of the high degree of cooperation demanded by growing rice …rice paddies and so on, and on the other hand, the relative personal independence permitted by individualistic wheat growing farmers who did not need to cooperate much…that Individualism was fostered in Europe and Collectivism was fostered in Asia.
( With regard to the Fertile Crescent…it is worth considering…I dunno what was grown there but collectivism certainly emerged in the Arabs one way or the other. Of course, Arabs have much lower IQs than East Asians and Whites, so IQ may be a larger factor than just collectivism determined by rapid evolution of temperamental differences. The collectivism of Arabs would seem to be different qualitatively than the collectivism of Asians. )
So. It is conceivable that less aggressiveness is generally required by collectivisitic societies. The systematic weeding out of aggressive men, and women, might also reduce the size of testacles, since testosterone is related to aggression.
Today, wimpy Asian men make perfect collectivistic zombies who do what they are told.
White men today have certainly lost a lot of their balls, psychologically, but that is because they are no longer individualistic and independent farmers or small businessmen of any sort…more or less, mostly more, and have become Organization Men working on the Plantation, even if making big bucks. Get along, go along.
Big balls need to be constrained by big brains, which helps to explain why Whites have been able to control themselves and build the best societies in the world. Blacks are so stupid that they cannot control themselves anywhere, and they are neither individualistic nor collectivistic. They are just chaotic, and require absolute rule by a dictator. This is also true of Arabs, not nearly as stupid as blacks, but still pretty dumb…85 average in Richard Lynn. Arabs also need the dictator or despot to rule them.
It would be interesting to discover the relative weights of Arab and Turkic testacles and also the Africans’. Rushton has blacks possessing 10 to 20% more testosterone than whites, but has no data on Asians. Behavioral patterns of the 3 major races also reflects testosterone levels, or other hormones, etc. The quiet Asian child and adult vs. the blacks jumping around and the Whites in between. The ‘moderate’ or Goldilocks position seems to be best from the point of view of democratic republican government where elections are tolerated as the pragmatic way to solve problems.
This is not just biologism, it is arguably gene-culture coevolution.
Joe Webb
I just finished Victor Davis Hanson’s “The Other Greeks”. He argues that Greek democracy was rooted in the hillside cultivation of vines, fruit trees, and olives. Big landowners grew wheat on level and fertile land using lots of slaves, while the marginal land was farmed in small 10 to 20 acre plots by the landowner and one or two slaves. Over the generations, the carefully cultivated and irrigated hillsides became highly productive and the independent small landowners became the backbone of the polis, rather than the wealthy and highborn. The agriculture created the culture.
Peter, good to see you back. And, while missing your sagacious insights into the human condition, I’m now (thanks to you) on the trail of Henry Harpending’s work … which will inevitably lead to other thinkers who will collectively keep me busy and thinking for a very long time.
It is sad that the advocates of Neoliberalism have taken political correctness to a level of political, legal, and social oppression not seen since Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Throughout the West, the result has been that our previously world-class schools, universities, and media are increasingly relegated to propagandizing the pro-diversity analogs of “Proletarian Art”, “Proletarian Science”, “Proletarian Economics”, “Proletarian Politics” …. ad nauseam. New political commissars are in place to monitor and enforce compliance.
The saving grace is that there is also an equally new “samizdat” movement keeping the search for truth alive, lest we forget that the explosion of “samizdat” did much to destroy the Soviet system.
Natural selection is eugenic itself but immediatist or select short term and geographically specific quality.
Harpending now will do the last work of all scientists, what exist after life and other extremely deep mysteries of the existence.
I feel the death of all people, specially the virtuous ones, all of us must have solidarity with them.
Am I alone in thinking Jay’s constant promotion of his own blog is unseemly? His blog appears on this site so anyone reading Frost is already aware of it.
I’m glad to see Peter Frost here again even if the reason is sad.
I wanted to say that his comment that Canada was better when English Canadians were focused on maintaining English culture and institutions in Canada (and French Catholic Canadians were similarly focused on maintaining their traditions) hit home with me. It’s a simple observation that I’d never observed.
It’s true of the US too. Laugh at all the Shaker Heights Tudor-style houses and fake family crests, the families that commissioned them had their eyes fixed on preserving their history and culture.
A civilization without a sense of the eternal is not a civilization, at least not for long.
He was a great man. His book with Cochran – and their WestHunt blog – changed my thinking on genetics forever. Rest in Peace. He won’t be forgotten
rushton theories are mostly wrong.I seriously doubt that Arabs have larger gonads.
Am I alone in thinking Jay’s constant promotion of his own blog is unseemly?
He wants to stop doing it but he can’t; his GGG Grandfather won’t let him.
Let’s face some truths Peter Frost …..
“The cemeteries are full of people who die before their time.”
There are two secrets that the Creator didn’t reveal to the ‘human genius’ – birth and death. The timings of these two are pre-determined.
The “human evolution”, like “terrorism” has unlimited definitions. Darwin’s followers believe their ancestors were Apes. I believe my ancestors were ‘human’ since Adam.
“SPLC’s blacklisting” is usually based on how the Organized Jewry sees the organization’s victims.
On August 20, 2013, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the US-based Jewish civil liberty group, condemned former US Rep. Ron Paul for agreeing to be the keynote speaker at a conference sponsored by Canadian Fatima Center. The Catholic group, has long been designated by Jewish groups as “radical Christian” and “Jew-hater”. Incidently, Mel Gibson’s father Hutton Gibson is contacted with the group.
The conference is titled ‘Fatima: The Path to Peace’ – calling for the merger of the Church and State in the world government. The conference will be held Niagra Falls’ Scotiabank Convention Centre from September 8-13, 2013. In addition to Ron Paul, the other notable speakers will include Roberto Fiore, former EU member from Italy and John F. McManus, president of John Birch Society. McManus is linked to E. Michael Jones, editor of Culture Wars monthly Catholic magazine. All these three dudes are well-known “antisemites”, according to the SPLC.
https://rehmat1.com/2013/09/03/splc-ron-paul-mingles-with-canadian-jew-haters/
Ah, you’re funny. Did you mean that to look like a codon?
*******
RIP Henry, he once replied with warmth and intelligence to a comment of mine.
Peter what can we do to bring you back?
Ah, you’re funny. Did you mean that to look like a codon?
No, I’m not anywhere near that sharp. It took me a couple of minutes to decode your reference.
*******
RIP Henry, he once replied with warmth and intelligence to a comment of mine.
It is selfish of me to think it, but I am really disappointed that we won’t get Part II of the blog post When Public Policy Meets Elementary Biology.
well that is an interesting charge. Please explain. First, have you read the unabridged edition with its one thousand references? Are you foxy?
Joe Webb
interesting, I keep hearing good things about Hanson, who tries to survive academia I guess.
What else does Hanson say about the other Greeks? The standard views I have read say that Greeks had relatively few slaves, especially compared to the wholesale introduction of slavery into Rome after it went into empire mode. thanks
Joe Webb
I don’t think that’s selfish, I think it’s nice to talk about people’s achievements or what they were working on.
*****
Hey Joe (don’t get me down), I had a major (tiny) breakthrough in my one-woman campaign to end colour assignations this morning – a talk show was discussing inherent racism in the new Thomas the Tank production (trains from all over the world etc.) – the problem seems to be that engines in trouble churn out black smoke, so i phoned in and said “we should stop referring to people as colours and then there wouldn’t be a problem’. To which the broadcaster said ‘and what do you think about the train that was painted pink and then laughed at because it was male?’. And I said, ‘I think it’s OK for boys to wear pink but my point was…’. You see Joe, the Libtards do not want an end to colour assignation. Libtards do not want Europeans to embrace their ethnicity. And so, far white knights are playing right into the hands of far left Libtards.
You’re not alone.
people like sailer, unz, frost, or razib khan–intellectual dimwits unlike you–value his contributions. once you ad similar value you’re free to complain. till then, stfu.
he’s tooting his own horn quite a bit indeed–given that his blog is well worth reading i’ll forgive that little weakness easily. as you seem to tolerate a jewish host you might want to do that, too. jay’s relevant fault seems to be that he’s not lily white as you are, for which feat you deserve to be richly praised.
https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2014/08/16/i-cant-afford-to-think-about-that/
He will be missed.
One thing that separates the European and Africa peoples is the emotional ability to cooperate. Europeans make good team members. Cold weather requires both cooperation and individual intellectual prowess. Where as in traditional Africa emotional individualism and physical prowess succeed.
Questions:
Do most all humans have an inherent full complement of emotions both for cooperation and for individualism at birth.
And Africa is changing from hunter gather society to a cooperative intellectual society – is genetic evolution currently taking place?
Henry did not hide behind a pseudonym, and as a member of the National Academy of Sciences, no-one could doubt he was qualified to speak on Darwinian selection in humans. He also had something to say about credibility among scientists.
I am a bit confused by some of your comments.
I am unaware of the religious persuasion of R. Unz. If he is Jewish, I would not need to summon any toleration for myself.
I do not consider not being lily white as a fault. Anyway, my feet are pink and not a particular point of pride.
Intellectual dimwits. As opposed to regular dimwits?
I like the stock comedic grouch mentioned in Hansons’ “The Other Greeks” who, despite the small size of his farm, wishing not to be distracted by his work, reserved the ground along the road for throwing rocks at passers by. Of course you would need to experience growing fruit visible to the infantile public to sympathize with this. I posited “narrow ball to brain ratio’ in the mid 1980s to explain testosterone toxicity as a cause of overly macho behavior such as throwing rocks at strangers passing by. I found Hansons’ book on the discard table at a public library. Hanson claims that the intellectual flowering of Classic Athens was enabled by a cordon of curmudgeonly small farmers, sheep dipped as heavy infantry/militiamen.
You can’t be serious. What Africa are you looking at?
Please explain. Why say something such as that without backing your assertion?
Hey Homer
I wonder what Henry Harpending had to say about evolution and inbreeding in Muslim immigrant populations in the west.
Sherm
Hey Sharon….
I’m sure Henry Harpending had laud Muslims for becoming a nation of 2 billion within 1,400 years – while you Jews remain less than 13 million in 3,500 years.
Oops! I wonder if Henry Harpending would know that the reason for Jews decreasing population was – according to Talmud, Romans killed 4 billion Jews 2,100 years ago!!
It’s shrinking – not because of the so-called “anti-Semitism” or due to the fear of “future Holocaust” pinned on Iranian president Ahmadinejad – but because more and more born-Jews are leaving their religion as result of being disgusted by the water-down Judaism…..
https://rehmat1.com/2009/04/12/jewish-population-is-shrinking/
HBD Chick is your lady on that:
fbd cousin marriage and clans and tribes in iraq | hbd chick
The SPLC is an anti-white hate group
*
One of the risks of getting older and going into hospital.
One of my elderly relatives died that way recently – went ion with a physical injury (broken bone) picked up infection in hospital.
Avoid hospitals if you can afford it.
*
RIP Mr Harpending
I didn’t know about his earlier work; if western civilization survives the current crisis i hope he gets a statue somewhere along with iSteve and the other truth tellers.
A novice reader coming to this SPLC piece would realize that there must be something to this HBD thing, presuming they were not deterred by the SPLC’s God-like decree that this topic matter is evil and hence verboten.
Jayman,
Your second point shouldn’t be underestimated. The SPLC has much influence among nice, well-meaning, “salt of the earth” people. They see it as the voice of moral authority and dutifully fall into line. That single page has turned Henry Harpending into persona non grata.
I’ve search for other obituaries in the mainstream media and I can’t find any. The Salt Lake Tribune didn’t have one, even though Henry was a well-known professor at The University of Utah.
I will write to the SPLC, asking them to delete that page.
Darwin’s followers believe their ancestors were Apes. I believe my ancestors were ‘human’ since Adam.
Rehmat,
I’m sure you do, like my mother. This isn’t an Islam versus Christianity issue. It’s an issue as to whether one interprets sacred texts mechanically or with wisdom. The great Muslim thinker Ibn Khaldun (14th century) accepted the reality of evolution … long before Darwin:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muqaddimah#Natural_sciences
Peter what can we do to bring you back?
Helena,
Very little, unfortunately. When I stopped blogging in December I took on two major projects, which are now taking up almost all of my time. What little time is left over is reserved for writing and publishing academic articles.
There is also the issue of comment moderation. In my country (Canada) I can be held legally liable for anything that commenters write.
One thing that separates the European and Africa peoples is the emotional ability to cooperate. Europeans make good team members.
Art,
All humans have a strong desire to cooperate. The main difference is whom they wish to cooperate with. Usually, people want to cooperate with close kin, and even today, in most of the world, the most successful businesses tend to be family-run. Northwest Europeans are unusual in the sense that they have a long history, at least the past millennium and perhaps much longer, of weaker kinship ties and a stronger desire to cooperate on the basis of whether or not one belongs to the “moral community.” Among them, morality itself is less kin-based and more oriented to moral universalism and moral absolutism.
again show me the evidence for the bigger gonads in Arabs and turks.
how does r selection explain afamerican fertility rate of 2.0
What is…. Abortion? Talk to Margaret Sanger about that.
in my #2..”It would be interesting to discover the relative weights of Arab and Turkic testacles and also the Africans’. Rushton has blacks possessing 10 to 20% more testosterone…”
I thus did not claim any evidence but thought it would be interesting to find out since the aggression levels of these folks are pretty high, but ungoverned by high intelligence , like in Whites.
the fox is a numbskull. Rushton is totally reliable.
I note that in my many attempts to get numbskull liberals to read just a teen weeny little something…they refuse. You can lead a numbskull to water but you cannot make him think.
Joe Webb
It’s an issue as to whether one interprets sacred texts mechanically or with wisdom.
Yes, absolutely. As a person who tries to live a Christian life, and studies the New Testament, I had no problem getting a doctorate in a specialty that required knowledge of certain aspects of the evolution of the brain.
To quote from the Fourth Book of Milton’s Paradise Lost :
“Knowledge forbidden?
Suspicious, reasonless! Why should their Lord
Envy them that? Can it be sin to know?”
I think not.
I do miss new posts to “Evo and Proud.” I’ve read every one and learned much, though I’ve never commented. Reading them, you seemed not only to be a knowledgeable and intelligent man, but also a man with a sincere and good heart. Perhaps some day you can pick it up again.
A very nice eulogy for Prof. Harpending. He will be missed not only by his family and friends, but also by many of us who never met him yet considered him a blood-relation of the mind.
ONTH I think I could do bet6ter…maybe///??
no I canteventype too drunk at yhis timr
Y?
you have my vote Ron
and I will tellsomething something else too you are what I call a good Jew MR Ron Unz
Refusing to go to the hospital when you have a stroke is not a lifespan-enhancing strategy.
If moral absolutism is actually associated with moral universalism, then universalism is indeed a bug rather than a feature.
But is radical Islam, arising from a clannish culture, not highly absolutistic?
The question of Nazi Germany elicits different explanations from HBDers. Jayman thinks racism is associated with clannishness (while rejecting ethnic genetic interests); he sees anti-Semitism, for example, as having a prior history in Germany. You see Nazi racism as reflecting universalism. Karlin accepts genetic ethnic interests. Surely these differences are important- perhaps embarrassing for HBD.
I am not an expert in anthropology of any kind, so please consider this as just an unpretentious contribution based on what I have read along the years, in mostly texts aimed at laypersons such as myself. Before Islam, the Arab world was indeed a chaos of tribalism and fragmentation. Perhaps Islam was precisely the institution fit to that region’s particular history and geography, if one thinks in Hegelian (thesis, antithesis, synthesis) terms. As for National Socialism, maybe something analogous happened, with inverted signal? As I said, I am not an expert, so any rebuttals will only add to my knowledge and are thus welcome. A final caveat: the above does not imply in any way a moral assessment of either Islam or National Socialism. Best wishes for you,
Marcelo
Could you explain further, as I don’t follow what the signal is that’s inverted?
What I meant was:
Tribalism (Middle East) —> Universalism (Islam)
Universalism (Europe) —> Tribalism (National Socialism)
And I should have written “inverted sign” not “inverted signal”.
This is of course very schematic, and differences between historical and geographical contexts and institutions should be taken into account when performing a detailed analysis.
Best Wishes.
***he Salt Lake Tribune didn’t have one, even though Henry was a well-known professor at The University of Utah.***
That’s appalling. I wrote to the NY Times asking why they hadn’t written an obit for Arthur Jensen & also Professor James Flynn. Flynn ended up writing an obit that was published in the NY Times. I might write to the Tribune and see if I get a response.
Peter, I hope that once you have more time you do return to blogging. Your insights are greatly appreciated and always interesting. If moderating comments is too time-consuming maybe just turn the comments off in the meantime? I think people would rather have you back in some capacity than not at all.
The brutal forms of Greek slavery — with the exception of the Spartans, who appalled other Greeks by their mass slavery of fellow Greeks — were reserved for prisoners of war, criminals , and the like. These were sent to perform dangerous work in appalling conditions. The Parthenon was paid for with silver mined by slaves whose expectation of life on entering the mines was measured in a few tens of months. In a kharmic reversal, Syracuse sent the survivors of the Athenian attempt to conquer Sicily into their mines. Very few ever returned home.
forgive me if i have got this wrong. but didn’t the late scientist, stephen jay gould, propose an evolutionary process he called ‘punctuated equilibrium’, which means that evolution – not just human evolution – undergoes periods of rapid activity?
mr. harpending’s proposal makes perfect sense to me.
it seems unlikely that evolution proceeds at a steady, clockwork pace. more probable, is an uneven, herky-jerky, phenomenon induced by multiple or singular events.
cultures adapt to people and people adapt to cultures. to me, the dynamic nature of this system promotes rapid change. and that change can reasonably be expected to accelerate over time.
that is, until a catastrophic intervention resets reality.
“Africa” is pictured by you was pure place with one people who are just now ‘ changing from hunter gather society to a cooperative intellectual society – is genetic evolution currently taking place?” – the level of ignorance is very sad. Educate yourself: for starters, check out the following article in the Business Insider: “Here’s what it was like to be Mansa Musa, thought to be the richest person in history” written by Kathleen Elkins, Feb. 14, 2016.
Rest in peace, Henry.
***
Is SPLC still a heavily Jewish organization? Or, have they embraced diversity, in the years I’ve been ignoring them?
Perhaps to show that SPLC is obsessed with Black people?
Well said. Bravery, curiousity, honesty, and forthrightness are rarer and more precious than brilliant intellects.
I don’t get the same universalistic impression from Islam, that I do from, say, Christianity. Islam’s universalism seems more like a pose.
I don’t mind JayMan linking to his blog.
But be careful, JM; I don’t think you can censor comments to someone else’s blog.
I wonder why he thought Europeans came from Africa.
Recent finds show we’ve been in Europe for millions of years. And there’s no Neanderthal DNA in Africa, essentially a different species down there.
Puzzled by this blind acceptance of natural selection. While it seems logical that the fittest will survive to reproduce, just take a look at our species. Do the fittest have the most children? It seems to me that as people rise in place and income they are likely to have fewer children. Many accomplished people bypass child rearing altogether. This is true of our time but I think it was also true in ancient times. Romans slowed their reproduction in the peak years of empire.
What if the fittest, strongest and most agressive male of a species just happens to be homosexual and has no interest in the opposite sex? Less fit creatures, perhaps with some congenital defects, will have to carry on propagation of the species.
“Survival of the fittest” sounds satisfying and true but is there evidence it really works this way? We know first cousin marriages result in significantly more birth defects. We also know the history of all civilizations is full of these first cousin marriages. It is still legal in many US states. Einstein was said to be the product of a first cousin marriage. How many kids did he rear? Is “survival of the fittest” an empty one liner?
What about survival in cultural devolution? We do have to see (white) people covered grotesquely with tattoos or sporting rings in their noses, not to mention earlobe stretchers, as the wave of the future? Is it all onward and upward? Did Harpending deal with such current issues?
If the Hansonian view that“agriculture creates the culture” is true—along with the Jeffersonian view that the mentality of the independent farmer is necessary to sustain a Republican form of government—then the multi-racial North American population is evolving into a system of factional serf groups, including hordes of welfare-dependent immigrants who keep wages down for decades, serving the interests of a few big corporate entities that crowd out competition with the help of big government. But the so-called Southern Poverty Law Center does not care about the search for truth. Little independent thought is tolerated in this system, even from bonafide, credentialed academics in hardcore scientific subjects, with groups like the Non-Southern Poverty Law Center (NSPLC) just finding a way to capitalize on the factionalism that undergirds the current corporate feudalism, which ‘evolved’ from what was intended by the Founders to be a Republic. The Founders did not design a Republic to represent the interests of minority GROUPS as factional group entities that act as one collective mind with little variation within the group. They created mechanisms to protect individuals and states with small populations from being dominated by the mob rule of oppressive majorities, countering the defects of direct democracy. Groups like the NSPLC are cashing in on the Tammany Hall II factionalism, making money off of stirring it up by trying to ruin little, independent-thinking fish, even dead fish who can no longer defend themselves. It is not a clash of intellectual ideas or an attempt to impose morality on rouge thought-influencers who supposedly threaten minority groups. It is a baser thing: mere venality. The NSPLC needs manufactured villains to sell its product.
2 things:
1. Henry spoke at the “preserving western civilization” forum alongside Peter brimelow, the host of neo nazi VDARE website. Both men are racists.
2. The KKK indiscriminately murdered black people while burgling their homes and property. The SPLC has never acted like the KKK.
Thanks for proving you’ll accept any science that justifies your racism
The mentality of the independent farmer that owns 100 slaves?
Anthropologists report that hominid cranial capacity (brain size) increased steadily over the last million years but peaked with the Neanderthal 20 to 30 thousand years ago, and has actually been decreasing ever since. The obvious conclusion is that hominids are getting dumber, as a quick stroll through any walmart will confirm.
At this stage, the appearance is, molecular evolution proceeds at a constant pace while phyletic evolution (appearance of new forms or kinds) occurs in jumps. The current explanation for this is that new species arise as a result of change in the developmental program.
A concomitant argument is that new species arise largely due to neoteny, which the appearance of maturity and the ability to reproduce at an earlier stage of development. It may be the case that organisms which reach maturity at an earlier stage in development have a greater ability to rapidly evolve new body plans.
All of this is at least somewhat speculation on my part and on the part of other people who have entertained and promoted the same ideas.
I pretty much worked all of this out in the 1970s but my terminology was turgid and not very well developed.
Darwinism is one of those things (such as, for example, the flat tax) which seems to be one idea but actually is synthesis of two ideas. One of the ideas is the unity of life, meaning that all biological life on Earth exists in a great chain of descent from a single point of origin. The other idea is that transformation (speciation, the appearance of new kinds) occurs as a result of the accumulation of small changes over a long period time.
The first idea can be regarded as proven, or at least the idea of the molecular unity of life can be regarded as proven. The second idea is very seriously in dispute. Gradualism is the core idea of neo-Darwinism. No one disputes the ability of gradual evolution to develop new species within the boundaries of kind, for example, the eventual development of all modern horse species through a chain of descent from an original smaller equine progenitor. If the basic kinds developed through gradual processes, the proof of it (called intermediate forms or missing links) has yet to be found in the fossil record.
The new way is the high-tech lynching. You make it impossible for the person to exist except on a subsistence level. Take away their livelihood. Take away their ability to have a financial existence. Take away their ability to communicate and disseminate their ideas.
I just looked at the SPLC’s list of extremists. Some of them are scurrilous characters. Some of them are just conservative intellectuals. SPLC is manipulating the definition of the word “extremist” itself. If someone holds a position they think is evidence-based, well, sorry about that. You have to debate the evidence.
At a minimum, SPLC is trying to create guilt by association. That means, by representing innocent people as associated with disreputable people through the medium of putting them on a single list.
If the SPLC published separate lists one called “disreputable people” and the other called “people we don’t like,” there might be nothing to argue about. You’re allowed to not like people.
Interestingly, Einstein’s progeny turned out not particularly different from Nikita Khrushchev’s in their occupations or productivity even though these were very different people. I think Einstein does have more descendants though.
Khrushchev’s granddaughter Nina Khrushcheva is an American citizen and an academic scholar doing work in Russian studies. She apparently shares her grandfather’s bad temper but not his humanity. During his 1959 visit to the United States Khrushchev was the happiest and most content when he was standing in the middle of an Iowa cornfield. I am sure Iowa is nothing but flyover country to Khrushcheva.
Late to bed,
Early to rise,
Work like Hell,
and Advertise.
Nooooo. Last year a human being added to his or her list. And it was announced by another person in the “FrreeeePreesss”. That way, they an maintain personal anonymity.
Southern Poverty Law Center is simple a cover name for a group of like thinkers, probably financed by (((the usual suspects))). Without the money, nobody would have ever heard of them.