I spent a few days looking into it . I am an idiot. I am imbecilic in the assessment of evidence. I feel like crying. She is innocent.

Wolves look much the same the world over, dog breeds are very different. Wolves are selected for function. Dog breeds for appearance (though sometimes for ‘functional’ appearance as with German Shepherds' resemblance to a wolf).

Aleutian Islands rats have evolved complex novel behaviours like snacking on the brain and eyes of auklets and stockpiling the rest in a den for winter. These rats’ adaptation to their peculiar environment makes them not noticeably different in appearance to other rats.

Why are humans so similar to rats and wolves in their adaptability but so similar to dog breeds in their radically different appearance ?

Darwin thought the races were the result of sexual selection rather than adaptation to environmental conditions. He pointed out that white women were universally thought beautiful by men of non white native races all over the world. Kanazawa confirms that is still true and points out that that black men are more physically attractive (net of IQ) than men of other races.

One of iSteves' most interesting posts was the one about good looks being largely gender specific and handed down to the wrong sex offspring a positive disadvantage.
The Huston (John and daughter Angelica) family was discussed as an example as was the data from the Isle of Rum Red Deer project.

The breed was created with a 1/4 wolf cross. Adaptive introgression ? No, unless you count looks, the breed success came from it's resemblance to wolf looks.

A guy tried to make a stronger wolf cross

"In 1921, Dutch breeder Leendert Saarloos started crossbreeding a German Shepherd Dog male to a female Mackenzie Valley Wolf (Canis lupus occidentalis). He aimed for an improved version of the German Shepherd Dog which would be immune to distemper, and succeeded insofar that the Saarlooswolfdog we know is a strong imposing dog, but it kept its wolflike characteristics; it is cautious, reserved and lacks the ferocity to attack; it is not the dog that Leendert Saarloos hoped to get. His theory was also proven wrong, as nearly all the first generation hybrids succumbed to distemper. "

Re. inbreeding, many breeders favor the bitch/ grand sire cross.

Steve's Great White Defendant paradigm is good one but it is a generalization and it can't apply to every case.

Here is something to think about: If the black Rudy Guede was a lone burglar who managed to overpower and kill Meredith why did he wait until his successful appeal to accuse Knox and her boyfiend of committing the crime?

At his original trial (where he claimed to have broken off a consensual petting session to rush to the toilet and returned to find Meredith dead, tried to help her then panicked and fled) it was in his interest to say that he had seen Knox and Sollecito coming out out of the room. But he didn't even though the investigation was clearly targeting Knox and Sollecito. He could have so easily finessed his story to implicate Knox and Sollecito while helping his own case, if he was a lone burglar/murderer. A lone burglar/murderer surely would have said just that facing a murder conviction.

The answer is perfectly clear: his was the dilemma that faces a prisoner with accomplices who could retaliate to his testifying against them not a lone burglar/murderer who could implicate innocent people. There is no other explaination.

"Certainly Rudy knows what happened and hasn't said it," (Judge) Hellmann said. "Perhaps the other two defendants also know, because, I repeat, our decision to acquit was the result of truth determined by the trial."[...]The law says that a small doubt, as long as it is reasonable, is enough to acquit," he told La Stampa. "And we were coherent with our convictions.""

S. Brady, Derbyshire lived in China and is married to a Chinese woman. He's just like Myers – tendentiously suggesting that E. Asians have fascist tendencies.

John. Absolutely right China would not permit North Korea to be conquered by an US-SK counter invasion. But the US knows that from the last time, they wouldn't try it again. Furthermore, North Korea would have usable nukes before trying anything.

The British declassified the plans for their obsolete Magnox reactors and the North Koreans built one !

That suggests to me that North Korea lacks advanced technology. And they are half the size of the south.

They would need to run a series of huge maneuvers to cloak their preparations and stockpiling, Once the South was used to mobilizations, they'd do it for real. Even with the element of surprise they would need a period of very bad weather to stand any chance.

There is a sexual selection angle to this.
"Pyongyang criticizes the intermarriage between South Koreans and foreigners, especially American foreigners"

Myers has a dog in the fight, he is married to a South Korean woman. Going by the talk on YouTube he argues that the Japanese colonialists co-opted Korea by implanting the idea of a pure race.Like the commenter said last week deep down S.Koreans don't like Americans scooping up their scarce females.

"In Korea in 1993 there were 115.6 boys born for each 100 girl babies. (The normal ratio is about 105 males to 100 females.) In 1995 only 47.9% of primary school children were female, which meant an extra 200,000 6-to-11-year-old boys. Local sources estimate that by 2010 there will be 128 men to every 100 women in the 27-to-30 year cohort.".

Myers is keeping a South Korean man from reproducing. So he rationalizes it by claiming that the South Koreans who object to 'yellow fever' are sympathizers of North Korea.

Back to the post, Peter said "North Koreans seem to be waiting for a certain set of circumstances>

Economic ? Defaults are on the way according to Kyle Bass(from 3.00 on)

The Case for a Sovereign Debt Default in Japan.

The population is aging but the Japanese depression has given them more political traction. The economic motive for immigration is greatest during growth.

The Japanese are uniquely resistant to foreign influences – never a colony and the only non European country to industrialize. They also defeated the massive Mongol invasions. OK, they had typhoons to thank but the economic climate may be a new version of the 'Divine Wind'. I

I have to admit that in the Japanese case cultural independence of America is a crucial factor.

Anonymous, Native Americans are the only ones who of whom can be said 'America was their country'. Their way of life was not a bad way of life while it lasted but they didn't organize to prevent immigration from changing things.

How is that working out for them ?

Interesting that just like the case of the surprisingly good looking and well educated Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, the actor playing Knox in the film of the case (I doubt Knox did the cutting as implied here) is not as good looking as the actual person Amanda Knox vs Hayden Panettiere She is more feminine though.

2007: Murder victim Meredith Kercher's DNA was found on a kitchen knife because suspect Raffaele Sollecito had once "pricked" her with it while cooking, he has claimed in his leaked prison diary..

"Raffaele Sollecito has written a prison diary in which he says the DNA of Meredith Kercher was only on his knife because they had cooked together

In one entry Sollecito referred to the eight-inch black handled knife, which was found in his apartment, with DNA from Meredith on the tip and Knox's near the handle.

He wrote: "The fact there is Meredith's DNA on the kitchen knife is because once when we were all cooking together I accidentally pricked her hand. I apologised immediately and she said it was not a problem."

However police have spoken to several of Meredith's friends who have all told detectives that Meredith, from Coulsdon, Surrey, had never been to Sollecito's house."

Raffaele Sollecito's DNA should be dangling from a long piece of rope.

Charles Lindbergh commented on Hauptman's eyes but thought Bruno Hauptmann was guilty for a number of reasons none of which had anything to do with his unusualy eyes.

I think Knox was an accessory to Sollecito in killing Meredith for reasons that have nothing to do with the way she looks.

However, humans are mammmals. You look at a dogs eyes and then look at the eyes of a wolf/dog cross (small and slanted) and then tell me which looks more dangerous. Humans have been selected for detecting a untrustworthy looking person. Sollecito's facebook photos with knife and bleach should have been taken as a warning. And DNA doesn't survive bleach

Sollecito killed her he didn't want to have sex with her he wanted to see Meredith with the black. You go ahead and give them the benefit of the doubt if you wish.

How Sollecito's eyes look

This is a case of good looking white murderer syndrome like the Jeffery MacDonald case.

The BBC WS reported that Knox was attractive and her victim was 'equally attractive'. That was because Knox is white in my opinion.

Knox has unfeminine looks (what do I know I think it's obvious Sarah Palin has quite a bit of Native American ancestry) she also has small deep set eyes. You know Charles Lindbergh said that Bruno Hauptmann was magnificently built but had eyes like a wild boar.
Anyway,soon after she arrived in Italy Knox approached a black man (not any of the ones in the case), asked for a date and punched the air when he said yes.

Her Italiano boyfriend has a knife fetish and habitually carried one.
Telegraph: Who is Raffaele Sollecito?
"Raffaele liked carrying and collecting knives – he was carrying one when he was first questioned by police.
He also appeared to have a taste for the macabre – he posted photographs online of himself posing as a cross between a mummy and a mad doctor, with a meat cleaver in one hand and a bottle of bleach in the other; and he was a fan of Japanese manga comics, known for their extreme violence and rape fantasies."

Check out the photos he posted of himself. He was the one who did it, he blew up and killed Meredith probably because she would not join in some kind of group sex activity, maybe he wanted to watch her with the black, it's a common fetish.

Knox went along with him. They tried to clean the place up and made a complete hash of it (unsurprisingly as Meredeth complained Knox didn't flush the toilet and left used sanitary products in the bowl.)

Telegraph: Amanda Knox: Guilty or innocent, five reasons why
"Sollecito claimed he used his computer to download and watch cartoons and Amelie. But computer experts told the court that there was no activity on his laptop between 9.10pm on Nov 1, and 5.32am the next morning — the time frame in which the murder took place.
Knox and Sollecito turned off their mobile phones on the night of the murder, from around 8.40pm, and turned them back on at around 6am, inviting further suspicion."

The BBC WS made the very telling point that this was the only time Knox switched off her mobile phone during her time in Italy.

Why have they been acquitted ? Well the Italian legal system is chaotic and highly politicized. The investigating magistrate in the Knox case is notorious as the one who made a pigs breakfast of the Monster of Florence investigation and put an innocent man away for the killings.

"Sollecito's family are from Giovinazzo near the southern city of Bari, on Italy's Adriatic coast, where his father is a successful and well-respected urologist. His wealth enabled him to hire a team of top defence lawyers, including Giulia Bongiorno, who is also an MP in Silvio Berlusconi's government."

Supply and demand, the proportion of of young only has to fall slightly for there to be competition among employers to recruit them thus driving up wages. (Just like relatively little immigration is capable of driving up house prices).

I think that the birthrate falling causes the economic motive and weakens the ability of the population to combat the business class (because old populations lack the masses of young men necessary for a sucessful radical nationalist movements).

The business class' mercenary motive to import labor has always been present to a certain extent Wages have always been high in western countries. What stopped them was nationalism among the populations, until recently all populations included lots of young people.

The baby boomers generation was something less than a youth bulge and mass immigration only got going once they had aged.

While it is correct that youth bulges can lead to radical political movements of the right or left the presence of excess young men (all clamoring for jobs and status) would make it impossible for a government to import foreigners.

Moreover there would be no economic motive for the importation of labor if the country was teeming with jobless young people. A youth deficit creates the economic motive for importing foreigners and means the population is unable to politically mobilize against it.

I think the alterations in birthrate are the key factor. Look at the Arab Spring, in countries with a high proportion of young the government can't control the radical nationalism of the population.

It seems to be a law that economic success leads to a falling birthrate. Once that happens all kinds of interest groups come out the woodwork to preach economic globalism, multiculturalism and process theology. Their motives range from mercenary-economic to considerably more nefarious ethnic strategizing but, they can only influence societies in the circumstances of a 'youth deficit' so those deconstructing national feeling are 'piling on' taking advantage of the situation but they didn't bring it about. It was the superior qualities of the nation group that brought about economic success and the consequent demographic implosion.

The populations in advanced countries are quite helpless to halt the dismantling of their nations, they don't have the high proportion of young that are required for the kind of radical mass movement which would be required to stop the ideological termites.

Given that the future is a function of the birthrate, aren't the new 'cultural norms' (in which the indigenous population have negative rights), just rationalizing an inevitable consequence of the developments in advanced countries ?

I'll admit encouraging immigration is a long term strategy for increasing potential power (ie the size of the economy and population) and maybe not a motive.

A rethink: You're basically right but the military angle is important for why the Koreans pay so much attention to America. The special situation that South Korea is in (which you yourself have adumbrated) makes it likely that the correlation of forces in Korea has something to do with it. Else how explain why S. Korea and not Japan ?

The South requires the continued military support of the US to minimize the chance of a North Korean attack. The South Korean leadership are no doubt extremely concerned to have that continued military support made clear to the North Koreans at all times. Many people think that "Acheson's speech on January 12, 1950, before the National Press Club not mentioning the Korea Peninsula as part of the all-important "defense perimeter" of the United States made Pyongyang read the runes as very favourable for an invasion of the South.

So the South Koreans are no doubt willing to do whatever it takes to keep the United States happy. If the United States ambassador to South Korea was to openly make statements like the US ambassador to Finland did recently – "U.S. ambassador Bruce Oreck warns Finland of turning inwards [...] 'It is understandable, but one can not return to the past. Isolation from the rest of the world and the closure of borders would be a bad thing to Finland as well as for the world at large', Oreck said.[...]
According to Oreck, turning inward would hinder the spreading of on new ideas to Finland, and hinder trade."

That might well be seen in the North as a sign that the South's alliance with America is weakening and there is no telling what actions Pyongyang could take as a result.

So yes it is all down to the American influence.

JimBo, In the cases of the state abandoning the nation it's survival of the state that is at issue. It's called realism and it is applicable to any situation where there is no higher authority In his 'The Tragedy of Great Power Politics', Professor Mearsheimer cites 'The Code of the Street' as an example of realism.

"Many of the forms that dissing can take might seem petty to middle-class people (maintaining eye contact for too long, for example), but to those invested in the street code, these actions become serious indications of the other person's intentions. Consequently, such people become very sensitive to advances and slights, which could well serve as warnings of imminent physical confrontation."
So appearing weak will make it likely that you will be attacked. Here is another example of realism from a guide to surviving in prison.
"9. Don’t become obese or you’ll be perceived as unhealthy and weak, to be preyed upon. In prison, more people work out than in any other society.

10. Learn prison slang. Beware of becoming a "torpedo" – usually a youngster manipulated to smash (beat up) someone so that the manipulator doesn’t get his hands dirty. Beware of someone doing an "okey-doke" on you – for example, an inmate lying to you about being called a punk, so that you will fight his enemy. Beware of becoming a "trick-bag" – being manipulated into saying something offensive to another, not realising that you were being insulting."

So even convicts are are quite aware of the danger of being manipulated into doing something against their own interests.

"The business community has emancipated itself from the nation state"

I see things slightly differently, South Korea is unique because of the threat which it faces from North Korea; the leadership of South Korea believe that North Korea might attack them.

Hence the Korean leadership (ie the Korean state) has been forced to abandon the concept of the Korean nation by a falling birthrate. States are machines for surviving in a anarchic world and that is the most likely motive for them taking drastic action which increases their military potential. It doesn't hurt that it is in accordance with US thinking on economic and egalitarian principles, but I don't think those things would be enough by themselves in Korea.

Look at France, which has a long history of being the country where political tendencies and social trends first arise. It faced a threat from Germany. Between 1800 and 1900 the population of France increased from 25 million to 41 million. In the same period Germany's population went from 25 million to 56 million.

I think the fall in relative power was what was behind the French state allowing massive immigration into France. I'll admit it's difficult to separate out the causative factors in the French case.

Alain DeBenoist: "France, as we know, starting with the 19th century, massively reached out to foreign immigrants. The immigrating population was already 800,000 in 1876, only to reach 1.2 million in 1911. French industry was the prime center of attraction for Italian and Belgian immigrants, followed by Polish, Spanish and Portuguese immigrants. {..] In 1931 there were 2.7 million foreigners in France, that is, 6.6 % of the total population. At that time France displayed the highest level of immigration in the world (515 persons on 100,000 inhabitants)"

I think the motive was fear that the low birthrate would make them vulnerable to attack. And indeed in 1940 Germany outnumbered the French in the call up class of 19 and 20 year olds by almost 2 to 1.

So the Korean elite don't have much choice, immigration or resign themselves to a loss of power relative to the North Koreans thereby greatly increasing the likelihood of a N. Korean attack.

.

Replacement Migration’, or why everyone’s going to have to live in Korea: A Fable for Our Times from the United Nations the author is Professor in Demography at Oxford University.

"Some of the ‘necessary’ increases are merely large, others gigantic. To keep population constant to 2050 the European Union (population 377 million) is told that it will ‘need’ almost l million additional immigrants per year; 47 million by 2050. To maintain the working-age population will require 1.4 million per year, or 80 million by 2050. To keep the support ratio constant will require 1.3 million immigrants per year (almost half the population of Canada) or 701 million by 2050, by which time 75% of the EU population would be of post-1995 immigrant descent. For South Korea, the most exciting example, 94 million immigrants per year would be needed, almost twice its current population, adding up to 5.1 billion by 2050 (that is, 5/6ths of today’s world population). Even the United Nations decided that might be ‘extreme’."

"It’s interesting that we have varying degrees of archaic admixture. But what does it all mean? Did these different admixtures make us different in different ways?"

One interperetation could be that Europeans are purer (ie relatively speaking). Melanesians have the most archiac admixture found so far and (IMO) all that admixture hasn't noticably helped or hindered them. So that leaves the challenge presented by the conditions of life as the key factor in driving evolution.

Maybe the cherry picked genes have altered so that they are difficult to identify as Neanderthal.

The geneticists say the mtDNA of today's Europeans is totally different from Ice age North Europeans, conclusive proof that the Ice age people of Europe died out and were replaced by ME farmers. Well so much the worse for the geneticists! I know that they're wrong about that. And if mtDNA (which is said to not be subject to natural selection) can evolve over time in that way nuclear DNA certainly can too.

———————————–
Why were Neanderthals red haired, something to do with Vitamin D right ? No they were woodland ambush predators so evolved a furry camouflage suit . "Orangutans are greatly camouflaged in rainforests because of the little sunlight that filters through the dense canopy reflects green light and absorbs the red-orange light that is similar to the color of the Orangutan's coat"

GC & HH ' purely hypothetical' example of a mental faculty of Neanderthals which could have been useful in moderns is anticipating the movements of a prey animal so as to avoid getting stomped or gored.

I think Neanderthals lay in ambush and popped up to surround their prey. So if the Neanderthals possessed a special form of spatial awareness/(TOM) it would be to let them anticipate the escape route of the prey in order to deliberately get in the way of the animal in such a way so that the animal would run onto the Neanderthal's stabbing spear.
A Russian site (Here) claims that – The ancient hunter could have crawled towards an animal as close as possible, and then had run as fast as he could, throwing a javelin, while running. However, a heavy spear is much more effective at small distances, than a light javelin. Calculations show that Neanderthal men had been able to cover 15-20 meters within 1-2 seconds, which is enough for a unexpected and successful attack. This means that Homo neanderthalensis were fast and accurate hunters, not clumsy snails as some may think.

I think that is nonsense, even if the animals did not hear or smell the hunters approach. The final rush would immediately startle the prey into flight., No human could cover 15-20 meters fast enough to catch a wild animal stationary (if he could catch it at all, which I doubt). The lumbering Neanderthals certainly couldn't as they lacked the inner ear structure indecative of that kind of agility. An attempt to rush at and spear an animal which would be moving away from the hunter would result in a the spear strike with very little actual velocity.

The pattern of injuries in Neanderthals is support for the Neanderthals strategy having been to lurk around the game trails in wait for a prey animal to walk into a prepared ambush, then popping up to surround their prey and spear it as it tried to burst through the cordon.

The technological complexity of the steppe-tundra inhabitants, was it a big step up from previous human achievement ?

Chris Stringer was on BBC radio talking about the 13,000-year-old Iwo Eleru skull this morning. He did his Phd on it, now it has suddenly become apparent that it looks primitive.

It all depends how common hybridization was. A modern human who resorted to mating with an archaic would be one rejected as a mate by other modern humans and be of poor genetic quality. So the hybrid would have a lot stacked up against it. But if the dice were thrown often enough..

Re. "sexual dimorphism of African Americans for weight, chest size, arm girth, and leg girth"

But not height ? In unarmed combat height is probably a substantial advantage (Though not to the extent modern heavyweight boxing suggests because steroids allow the bulking up of naturally gangling physiques).

Height is surely an advantage when fighting with clubs or stabbing spears so why are west Africans not very much taller than other people? I think it's because there was selection for avoiding projectile weapons in single combat or tribal warfare and the explosive speed required for leaping out of the path of a projectile is hindered by size beyond a certain point. Also, being big means presenting a bigger target.

What about disease being responsible for removing men from the societies of West Africa ? Men are more vulnerable to many diseases acording to J. Manning and the coastal regions of West Africa were the unheathiest places in the world. And if melanin protects against infections as Manning suggests the unheathiness of W. Africa could also explain why West Africans are so much darker than East Africans.

Re. "A high level of male-male competition for females is suggested by the increased sexual dimorphism of African Americans".

Yes, but the slaveholders bred African Americans for size and strength by using selected African males to impregnate their female slaves, black and white. (see 'To hell or Barbados: the ethnic cleansing of Ireland', Sean O'Callaghan – 2000)

Man's evolution: an introduction to physical anthropology, C Loring Brace, Ashley Montagu – 1965

Quote:
"In considering that there is a rough correlation between brain size and learning ability, it is obvious why cranial capacity increased during the greater part of the Pleistocene. Eventually a level was reached where the efficiency of the cultural adaptive mechanism was such that it benefited even those who were not able to completely master it. At such a point, individuals who could manage with the necessary minimum requirements of a culture could have just as good prospects for survival as those who could master their culture with ease…

One might even speculate that if any differences in intelligence are discovered in the future they will be in inverse proportion to the efficiency of the cultural adaptive mechanism of the group concerned. In highly effective cultures even the dull witted can survive and reproduce, provided they can master at least the rudiments of their language and the mechanics of their social system."

Lactose tolerance is not a mental faculty. As I understand it, Tooby is indeed denying evolution of mental faculties by genetic change in the last 35,000 years. That's his paradigm. If I remember rightly, Kuhn said that new ideas get accepted as the old scientists die off but Tooby's ideas seem to endure because those who openly dissent are culled.

Chris Crawford, The paridigm of Tooby does not allow that it is possible for any evolution of mental faculties to happen as quickly as it would need to have happened for northern climes (N. Europe was reached only 27,000 years ago) or agriculture to effect even minor changes.

Tooby is saying that evolution stopped 35,000 years ago and that the the early Cromagnons were at least as intelligent as any people today. In fact I think it's pretty clear that Tooby's argument implies that stone age man was cleverer than people today as the kind of selection present in the EEA must have been relaxed with the coming of agriculture.

"Pitchfork-wielding rubes' ? Hardly, the ones opposing a new paridigm are doing so because they know it's true, they've always known.

Mucked that first link up, here is a better one The unitary hypothesis: A common neural circuitry for novel manipulations, language, plan-ahead, and throwing?

It seems to me that Tooby is implying that Cromagnons were as smart or smarter than people today.

But early Cromagnons used stabbing spears possibly because they couldn't throw William Calvin's take on the difficulty of throwing

( Re. Clarke and the homicide rate in England in the 13th century. According to a TV programe Edward I passed laws which required every man to carry a dagger and the murder rate skyrocketed. I don't doubt that Clark is basically correct though.)

I see this as a case of multilevel group selection. Selfless individual evolutionists do objective science and their paradigm wins out eventually, but the individuals responsible for the new paradigm are inexorably eliminated from paying jobs in academia by self-interested bullshit merchants.

"they had to convince potential employers or funding agencies that they had no secret interest in psychological differences among human populations."

Not quite, what they actually had to do was convince potential employers or funding agencies that they had the correct interest in psychological differences (ie an interest in ensuring the differences were kept secret).

Sexual selection reduced the size of the facial bones in Europeans, would that lack of facial bones not mean that that, in Europeans, eyes would have to be set deeper in the skull.

To me it seems that black Africans' eyes are both larger and set further forward in the skull.

If Stephen Jay Gould had never been discredited Dunbar would still have come out with that paper? Implicit in Dunbar's hypothesis is that Gould was basically correct about cranial capacity being no guide to mental functioning. How does he show that?; by using whopping great crania – from NW Europe!

I don't like the sound of the overcast skies hypothesis, it's too like Carlton Coon's argument that blue eyes are an adaptation which helps eysight in low light or foggy conditions.

It is frightening that someone as eminent as Dunbar would put his name to that paper.

Dunbar has a theory that verbal communication is not for exchanging factual information but for the kind of small talk which functions as 'social grooming' to form alliances.

Maybe his ideas about ambient light are the scientific equivalent of small talk; intended to show he is the 'right sort of chap'.

The image says it all.

" Mesoamerican civilizations reached milestones in cultural development at a faster rate than did civilizations in the Middle East. The Zapotecs developed calendar and writing systems barely 1,000 years after their first permanent farming villages. In the Middle East, the time span was over 5,000 years."

That is a very telling point

I wonder if you are thinking of the development of the Québécois being stifled by the English 'other' incomers.

If you're right about innovation almost everybody else is wrong and the US is going to be eclipsed.

If you are wondering about the relationship between brain size and head size then go HERE. It shows that the low correlation of head size and brain size makes it rather far fetched to imply that brain tissue would be isometrically scaled up with head size or that brain would be metabolically cheaper than skull thickness.

The link also discusses an amazing autopsy study of brain size and intelligence. Witelson (2006)

African animals like lions and elephants are amenable enough to be used in circuses. Europe's large animals were domesticated out of existence (ie are still around in domesticated form).

Neanderthals were hunting Europe's wild animals for how long ?

Neanderthals could not throw spears and were slow and clumsy runners. If they speared prey by running at them the final rush would immediately startle the prey into flight, Neanderthals couldn't have covered the last 10-15 meters fast enough to catch a animal stationary (if he could catch it at all, which I doubt). It would certainly be moving away from the hunter and so the spear strike would have very little actual velocity.

Neanderthals were pretty clumsy and what they probably did was lurk around woodland game trails and wait for the prey animals to walk into a prepared ambush then pop up to surround them and hence the animal would be speared as it tried to break through the cordon.

So, European animals had surely evolved to fear 'humans' by the time modern humans arrived in Europe

CroMags were were able to prey on European animals much more effectively because they had invented new projectile technology such as spear throwers.

Re G.Cochran's comment

If the Cro-Magnons' big brains (15-20% larger) were the side effect of an advanced stage of cold adaptation why were the CroMagnons so tall and long legged ? That's in contravention of Allen's rule ?

G.Cochran seems to be arguing (à la Stephen Jay Gould /Richard Lewontin) that the huge brain of Cro-Magnon man was a spandrel.
Surely bigger brains are too metabolically expensive for that.

"most rapidly during the last ten thousand years"

Is that true everywhere or just in Europe ?

The skeletal changes could have been the result of sexual selection skewing European physiques toward the feminine. I believe Europeans are not just smaller but also less robust than the Cromagnons. Furthermore why did Europeans develop such fine facial features in the steppe tundra era. Magdelenian girl( 13000 to 15000 years ago) has the first known case of impacted wisdom teeth. Impacted teeth are a result of smaller face and jaws. It's difficult to see any advantage of that trait except where there was sexual selection of women

"most rapidly during the last ten thousand years"

Is that true everywhere or just in Europe ?

The skeletal changes could have been the result of sexual selection skewing European physiques toward the feminine. I believe Europeans are not just smaller but also less robust than the Cromagnons. Furthermore why did Europeans develop such fine facial features in the steppe tundra era. Magdelenian girl( 13000 to 15000 years ago) has the first known case of impacted wisdom teeth. Impacted teeth are a result of smaller face and jaws. It's difficult to see any advantage of that trait except where there was sexual selection of women

Cromagnons were powerfully built and they had bigger brains than people around today. I very much doubt they were cleverer than modern people.

What about Lapps ? For their body size they have big brains (see 'Race' by John Baker)

It is difficult to believe that Inuit are not any more intelligent than equatorial Amerindians given the challenges posed by their environment. Those challenges would not select for verbal IQ though and The lives of the brain: human evolution and the organ of mind By John Scott Allen quotes a study which says that the IQ brain size correlation is much stronger for verbal IQ. Inuit do quite well some aspects of IQ.

Level I and Level II Intelligence in Inuit and White Children from Similar Environments

The committee member was not trying to be relevant, he mentioned Stephen Jay Gould by way of a shibboleth.

People like Gould become public intellectuals because the criterion for a evolutionary theorist being hyped into a public intellectual is that they support the political implications of the dominant political worldview in respect of human biology. (John Gray on why the left is in flight from 'human nature'.)

As that worldview is quite wrong about human nature(s) the work they choose to promote is necessarily quite unscientific. Hence the heavily promoted part of Gould's work is impervious to scientific falsification, it exists now as part of the first principles with which the dominant worldview of the West constructs its picture of reality.

Academia will likely enter a long and painful process of “de-Gouldization.” Long, because many other academics were in on the collective lying. Painful, because the lies were far from trivial.

Like it did with the lies of Boas?

"Indeed, being restricted to trades such as finance would facilitate mobility and horizontal transmission."

It's completely unclear what that means, JimBo never spells it out.

Anyway, the occupations of Jews did alter radically in the 16th century when 'Village Jews' appeared and the subsequent Jewish population explosion must have primarily resulted from the phenonomen Peter has identified:- "…specifically in the 1600s when large numbers of Jewish craftsmen and craftswomen began to enter the "proto-industrial" niche, i.e., family-based cottage industries that produced on contract for urban merchants and that served relatively large and volatile markets"

Saints, scholars, and schizophrenics: mental illness in rural Ireland By Nancy Scheper-Hughes; as the link shows schizophrenia was about 3 times more common in Eire than in England. Ireland is very rural country.

Even within Britain there would be a considerable difference between the EEA's until the mid 18th century. The Highlands were completely lawless until then.

"So, if poverty was one keynote of Highland life, war and violence was another. It is what made the Highlander admired, and feared.

Daniel Defoe watched them walk the
streets of Edinburgh. They are formidable fellows, all gentlemen, will take no affront from any man, and insolent to the last degree. But he also noted the incongruity of one of these proud men with his weapons and tartan (another myth: genuine Highlanders wore plaids in any color that pleased them, regardless of their clan) walking as upright and haughty as if he were a lord, while driving a cow in front of him. Duels, murder, and feuding were constants in the Highlands, as was scorning, or taking food and shelter by force from tenants of other clans when a feud was under way."

Re Ben 10's comment: " 'They didn't select for a smarter fox but for a nice fox, says Hare. But they ended up getting a smart fox.'

For humans to select on themselves for pedomorphic traits in postglacial Europe, while staying fit at the same time, some of these traits must have given them a selective advantage. Peharps being smarter "

I think you're on to something there but you've got a bit confused, the morphic traits (including light coat colors) were a unexpected side effect in the in the Russian fox taming experiment.

As I understand it Peter is saying that hair skin and eye color along with face shape were the focus of sexual selection of females. So being cute and cuddly would not have been selected for, at least not directly. The data about blue eyes preventing masculinization dovetails with the fox taming resuts I think.

The realy interesting question to my mind is whether selection for light eyes hair and skin contributed toward creating a potential for humans to become nicer and smarter.

"Jewish marital practices, cannot explain the differences in mean IQ we see between Ashkenazim and Sephardim."

I think that line of argument requires the Sephardim to never have been much smarter than gentiles and never have suffered a collective setback to their way of life that could account for the loss of that superiority.

The Sephardi did suffer a setback to their development but up until their expulsion from Spain they were clearly superior in IQ to gentiles and quite possibly every bit as clever as the Ashkenazim of that time. ( The success of the Conversos leaves no doubt about their genetic superiority (see Here p.180-82

success on that exam was key to entry into good-paying jobs and a number of other tangible benefits. A prospective father-in-law does not have the same leeway as the Chinese Empire to mobilize resources for family formation

An Ashkenazi noted as a scholar would not be be poor for long. He would received a range of valuable emoluments.

1. A wealthy man's daughter as wife.

2. Extremely high status in the community of a kind which brought economic benefits For example a ruling granted business monopolies on trade with gentiles to eminent scholars.

3. Gifts, even if a scholar was well-off.

4.Protection from anyone speaking against him. This was enforced by bans and fines.

Bull. More or less all resistance movements got off the ground by being backed by intelligence services. A captain in Irish army intelligence(James Kelly) virtually created the Provisional IRA as a armed organisation and Eire allowed wanted PIRA killers to live there. But Eire did not control the PIRA in any meaningful sense.

History shows that although intelligence services can, in effect, create movements by giving key support at a initial stage, resistance movements tend to get control. It's a fact that the (CIA predecessor) OSS's "support for the Viet Minh played a significant symbolic role in helping them fill the power vacuum left in the wake of Japan’s surrender".

The CIA supported some Islamic radicals in the past that is no reason to see Al Qaeda as their stooge or cats paw. Israel supported Hamas in the early days does that mean it does today ?
No, Mossad and the CIA are not ten feet tall. They have went from failure to failure often – as I pointed out above – bringing into being the very forces that have caused them so much trouble.

ISI do not control Al Qaeda at all. They'll have links to the Taliban, however I very much doubt they could destroy the Afghan Taliban even if they wanted to and the ISI's lack of influence is shown by what happened when a journalist took the most famous Taliban connected ISI man along as protection when he contacted the taliban

"According to sources, it was confirmed that Col.Imam’s body had been found on the corner of a street near Mir Ali in North Waziristan. Tehreek-e-Taliban has claimed responsibility for killing the former ISI official.

Colonel Imam had gone missing on March 25 last year along with another former ISI official, Khalid Khwaja, and a British journalist of Pakistan origin, Asad Qureshi, while they were going from Kohat to North Waziristan.

He was believed to have played a key role in the growth of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan."

ISI surely has lines of communication the Taliban and through that indirect communication to wanted Al Qaeda suspects. But, if ISI knew where top Al Qaeda men were you can bet they would be making themselves look good. They would have 'found' Bin Laden for example.

"Before the 20th century, it was common practice to enquire about the family background of a prospective son-in-law or daughter-in-law. I'm not convinced that this was a specifically Jewish culture trait."

The prospective Ashkenazi father-in-law gave his future son-in -law an actual examination –
APTSDA.

I think your post on Asian IQ is consistant with Talmudic study being responsible for some of the Jewish superiority. (If it worked for the Imperial Mandrins why not Ashkenazim ?). ASPM and scribes too. It seems not unlikely to me that Jews have such a high verbal IQ because of selection for success in Talmudic scholarship and disputation.(There is a book called "What is Talmud?: the art of disagreement") Successful cottage industry entrepreneurship does not select for verbal ability or else the English would be also have IQs skewed to the verbal.

I don't doubt that demographic expansion due to a change in the value of child labor in family-run workshops is responsible for much of the IQ advantage, but I think the Ashkenazi intellect was was filtered through Jewish culture and further refined.

"Did people back then understand the genetic nature of Tay Sach's?"

According to 'A People That Shall Dwell Alone' Jewish people back then did understand that a family with several members suffering from a disease was not a family to be marrying into. Moreover the qualities of the brothers of a prospective bride were paid attention to (sex linked factors). A case of mental illness in the family was profoundly damaging to the marriage prospects of all family members.

"the main check on family size was the age of marriage. Men tended to marry once they had the means to support a family. If a young man came from an economically successful family, he could marry earlier and hence have a larger family."

The supreme resource for obtaining a good marriage was having scholars in the family tree (yikhus) which many could trace back six generations A good scholar could marry very young to the daughter of a successful businessman and be supported with free room and board (kest) as well as a large dowry.'Is my mother-in-law paralyzed that I should have to earn a living' Scholarship was more highly regarded than business success and although the two often went together businessmen supported the most eminent scholars to such an extent that many became wealthy in their own right.

I think there is something in the Talmudic scholarship theory of Ashkenazi intelligence.

As I understand it you're saying that over enough generations ordinary populations can supply genetically capable people who can fill the intellectually demanding occupations without the drawbacks of Tay Sach’s style alleles.

By my way of thinking Ashkenazim having a lot of these TS style alleles rather weighs against Ashkenazi genetic disease/IQ-associated alleles having been under selection for the extended period that Cochran and Harpending suggest. Bearing in mind what Cochran says about natural selection optimizing function; why would sub optimal quick fixes still be around a millenium later ?

(Of course the countervailing veiw would be that the Ashkenazim were in cutthroat competition with each other and needed all the edge they could get )

The homozygotes for disease/IQ alleles among the Ashkenazim must have been remarkably common, given their consanguineous marriages. Could this have caused parents to have extra children to compensate for the sickly homozygote children ?

Beauce County "Selection thus had more leeway to favor individuals who had the necessary aptitudes while not suffering the costs that lysosomal storage illnesses impose on homozygotes. [...] Beauce County, a region south of Quebec City that covers the Chaudière valley up to the American border."

One aspect of Beauce County that may have been significant is its location, handy for the Loyalists who were kicked out of the US after 1776. Here is an interesting one with Beauce connections George Pozer

Silly to think they are worried about getting caught at that age.

It's good for a young crook's rep to do time.

No way in hell would anyone want a crime partner who had never done serious time. That would be like having "informer" tattooed on his forehead

Look at the averaged face of brown-eyed male subjects, notice anything about the lips ? By my way of thinking the expression is a half smile. The blue eyed face has no trace of a similar expression.

Second to fourth digit ratio and face shape. Look at figure 2.

Notice anything about lips on the male low 2D:4D face?

The expression is a wolfish smirk, a considerable contrast to the high digit ratio face.

Discrimination of facial beauty in peripheral vision

To what extent is hue a part of beauty? For women a 'peaches and cream' complexion is often held up as ideal rather that than being very light skinned or ' pale'

I could understand the skepticism about sexual selection for something like dry earwax, but blue eyes ? Google blue contact lenses, the market is 99% female.

Ben 10, I think there is something in what you say. If we consider the information about blue eyed men having reduced dominance and possibly masculinity then yes, under certain circumstances blue eyes would be selected against.

However I believe that would not apply to the steppe tundra environment when blue eyes originated. The steppe tundra inhabitant physiques did become much weaker than their massively built CroMagnon ancestors.

But remember it was long reconnaissance trips on foot to locate game that killed off men from exhaustion and starvation. In those circumstances being huge and muscular would be a serious liability (endurance athletes for example). If stamina was at a premium the more gracile physique of the blue eyed men could have paid off handsomely.

That may explain why blue eyes are so common; in the right environment there are positive advantages to being less 'tough'. The kind of selection Gregory Clark talks about could have easily resulted in selection for blue eyed men.

"This sex difference suggests that blue eyes somehow interfere with the masculinization of facial features"

Wow !

Peter, Thanks for the responses to my convoluted and constantly shifting line of argument. Here is yet another rejoinder.

How could a bug increase the man's reproductive fitness while increasing the chance he will be cuckolded ? It couldn't.

"Bug-host co-evolution could work because the pathogen's damage to the host is often incidental"

The man gets infected and the more the bug brings about cuckold envy in that man the more it damages the reproductive fitness of that man. So in a sense the bug could be very very nasty indeed and the man would not suffer any obvious ill effects. By my way of thinking that kind of 'damage' is most certainly not incidental it is inherent to the mode of tranmission you ae hypothesizing (ie manipulation of the man for enhanced tranmission through his female partner).

I think the issue is whether the man is 'the host' or the woman is.

"I'm leaning towards the idea (expressed by several commenters) that there was a long process of co-evolution between this hypothetical pathogen and its host population in sub-Saharan Africa. Over time, the host population would have become more insensitive to this neural manipulation".

An alternative interpretation: it was the bug that evolved not the host population. Once in a non-promiscuous society the hypothetical pathogen evolved to cope with a new situation.

After all, it is the capacity for extremely rapid evolution which allows parasites to evolve manipulation. Considering that yeast evolves several orders of magnitude faster than humans it is difficult to see how co-evolution could work.

During WW1 lots of young men were crowded into barracks where a bug could spread easily. Lo and behold an incredibly virulent strain of flu emerged. A strain that killed young healthy people at a higher rate than oldsters.

So, the easier it is for a bug to spread the nastier it will be. Conversely if it becomes more difficult for a bug to spread the bug will become less dangerous to health. For example cholera, Ewald's case study is the 1991 cholera epidemic in South America.

"The dots on Saunders's graphs made it plain that cholera strains are virulent in Guatemala, where the water is bad, and mild in Chile, where water quality is good. "The Chilean data show how quickly it can become mild in response to different selective pressures,"

In Africa a sexually transmitted bug would have a relatively easy time of it, hence it would be rather nasty.

But what would happen if that bug found its way to a society where it could not spread so easily. presumably it would become less nasty and more manipulative.

Now, at this point (a strain from a promiscuous society arriving in a largely monogamous society) is where I think the bug would come under strong selection for ways to increase its spread.

The ability to rewire the brain and weaken mate guarding would have been there already. The selection pressure for bugs which took that a step further and produced cuckold envy would not exist to the same extent in a society where promiscuousness is common.

Parasite manipulation for cuckold envy was a late adaptation, it evolved in a monogamous society.

"I'm leaning towards the idea (expressed by several commenters) that there was a long process of coevolution between this hypothetical pathogen and its host population in sub-Saharan Africa."

Hmmm, if I follow Prof. Ewald's argument correctly, a sexually transmitted pathogen in a society where there was a lot of sleeping around would evolve towards being more damaging to health. (Quite possibly lethal) Lethal yeast infections ? Not in healthy people.

Candida albicans only kills in late AIDs sufferers (as does Toxo I believe). Nobody really knows where AIDs came from.

Q)Taller is better for men so why are not men today not taller than CroMagnons ?

A)There are certain advantages to being short. Audie Murphy was 5'5'' 1/2.

Are the hybrids less viable in the wild ?

When Leendert Saarloos tried crossing wolves with Alsatians he got a breed of dog which is totally useless. Neanderthal hybrids would be more viable than modern humans ?

What they really looked like.

"Indeed, an argument can be made that sexually transmitted diseases are most likely to develop in high-polygny societies, such as exist among the ‘female-farming’ peoples of sub-Saharan Africa"

Yes, but there would be far less need for a pathogen to alter behavior in a polygynous society as the large amount of illicit sex (described by Pierre van den Berghe) in such societies would make it really easy for the bug to spread by sexual transmission.

However, when the bug arrived in a society where monogamy was the rule there would be a need for it to manipulate host behavior so as to produce more opportunities for sexual transmission.

I think cuckold envy is a kink of whites, especially professionals with intellectual leanings (see Here).

Whites have high digit ratios and the more educated whites have the highest digit ratios of all. So the pathogen tends to be responsible for cuckold envy in males with low testosteronization.

As the less testosteronized males are found in monogamous societies, in order to spead through a monogamous society a pathogen needs to be adapted to promote cuckold envy in the least testosteronized males (i.e. those who would be expected to be in the most stable relationships). And in fact it does.

So the bug came from a polygynous society and altered to produce cuckold envy once it found inself in the monogamous society of 16th century England.

Syphilis is hypothesised to be a New World mutation of yaws.

Strains of Candida albicans that cause the strongly maladaptive cuckold envy may be a specifically New World mutation.

The early slave plantations in the West Indies must have been population sinks for the slaves so the cuckold envy strain of Candida albicans may have died out everwhere but England.

I can't see how a sexually transmitted parasite could fail to spread like wildfire in the highly polygynous society of Africa. But then the behavior caused by the parasite would be easy to spot as it would be widely reflected in the culture.

How about the Caribs as the original source of strains of Candida albicans that cause cuckold envy?
They had a long period of isolation and are said to have had unusual immune system characteristics – being particularly well adapted to resist parasites. (10,000 Year Explosion)

Once it got into the African slaves on the sugar plantations of the West Indies strains of Candida albicans could have altered somewhat. Possibly because Africans are particularly vulnerable to parasitic infections.

(Partially due to Africans greater degree of testosteronization – Manning)

Traditional African wife sharing

Hmmm, as I read it JB, you're (or were originally) talking about the homogeneous fringe of humanity being susceptible to cuckoldry for genetic reasons, not being manipulated by a actual bug (the references to bugs were by way of anology I think).

Since Africans have evolved in a tropical climate which naturally hosts many various parasites, they've co-evolved with parasites that they are host to

Certain ants should have evolved effective defences to Zombie-Ant Fungus by now, as 'Fungus has been invading carpenter ants for 48 million years'.

JB has some funny ideas about white men being cuckolded by Africans. Whatever he means, sexual transmission by African women to slaveholders is consistent with the time frame and more plausible than (presumably non-sexual) transmission by a nonhuman species.

Obviously a man with cuckold envy has a psychological disorder but infections may well be a major cause of psychological disorders.

I dare say there are parasites which get into a human and produce a behavioral change but do not benefit from the behavior in terms of their reproductive fitness. T. gondii is adapted for influencing the behavior of rats so as to enable itself to reproduce. When T. gondii happens to infect a human it can alter the humans behavior in a way which is maladaptive for the human without helping T. gondii at all. Paraphilias may be caused by all kinds of infections including non parasite ones.

A big part of mate guarding in humans would be the fear of future retaliation by a cuckolded male so if a man was not really bothered about being cuckolded that would make it more likely to happen. Also, according to Robin Dunbar when there is actual violence by a cuckolded man it's usually directed at his woman rather than his rival (because male-male violence is too risky).

So the bug could be seen as protecting its main host by reducing the male's direct mate guarding and his subsequent aggressive response to being cuckolded.

Finding it genuinely arousing may be a secondary effect of disabling mate guarding which occurs in a minority of men.

The popularity of interracial porn is probably due to more than just cuckold envy as most interracial does not have an overt cuckold angle to it. (One thing which is remarkable about porn today is the amount of anal sex in it, sometimes to the exclusion of vaginal)

Extreme mate guarding is still found in the the Islamic world.

1) Female transmits C. albicans to male partner

2) Infection with C albicans causes the male's behavior to alter in a way which leads to his woman becoming dissatisfied with their relationship. [One possible mechanism is that the man loses interest in vaginal sex and becomes obsessed with oral and anal, consequently he spends a lot of time watching porn/mastrubating (modern porn centres around oral and anal)]

3) Woman's vaginal equilibrium is upset by partner having vaginal sex after oral or anal (partner's penis has bugs on it from the mouth or rectum) and she gets Vulvovaginal candidiasis (VVC), infection.

4)Woman becomes dissatisfied with partner and has sex with another man.

A predilection in Candida albicans infected men for a sexual repertoire which includes (necessarily non-procreational) heterosexual sex would be more convincing evidence for C. albicans being the cause of that behavior than just having a lot of procreational sex. I don't think exclusive homosexuality would offer a bug an advantage over bisexual promiscuity though; a hole is a hole from the bug's perspective.

T. gondii is adapted to infuence the behavior of rats in a very specific way. "The infection is highly precise, as it does not affect a rat's other fears such as the fear of open spaces or of unfamiliar smelling food."

In men T. gondii does not seem to be adapted to alter behavior so as to facilitate sexual transmission of Toxo; a scruffy accident prone loner is not going to get much is he ?

However in women Toxo seems to have an effect on behavior that may be consistent with sexual transmission (which may be possible with Toxo)

I was thinking out loud and musing about psuedo-adaptation; Candida albicans may affect sexual behavor but is that a real adaptation to influence a human male to spread the infection or just a side effect?

As men are already inclined to want sex with random women C. albicans would have to produce a change in their their sexual behavior which would be maladaptive for the man. The example that springs to mind is a propensity for infected men to indulge in non-procreative sexual behavior.

Toxo makes men more prone to have accidents not likely to take risks.
There is a difference.

The changes should we expect if it is adapted to both sexes in humans ought to be ones that make the infected man more attractive to women.

T. gondii is adapted to rats but there is evidence can be sexually transmitted (in domestic dogs at least).Toxo affects the personality of humans but while it is said to make women more flirtatious it turns infected men into scruffy loners.

It may be that it is difficult to affect the sexual behavior of both men and women. I'd expect that the easiest tweak for a bug to make is to disable a women's innate choosiness and faithfulness.

Lets face it men are optimized for the winning of women and quite opportunistic as far as illicit sex is concerned. A bug is unlikely to be able to make them much more charming or unfaithful

The easiest tweak to increase a males sexual success would be to make them more extroverted.

Couldn't high testosteronization and consequent lower immunity and high sex drive explain the associations with increased sexual repertoire in men and women?

I'm not sure if casual sex (especially the non-vaginal acts) were common enough to spread the bug very much up until recently. From what I've read, before the 1950's hardly anyone would admit to doing things like that.

If Candida albicans is adapted to sexual transmission its prevalence must surely have increased geometrically in the last 40 years.

The three greatest scientists – Newton, Einstein and James Clerk Maxwell – show little sigh of being particularly masculine. If anything there is a tendency to schizophrenia spectrum disorders in the most brilliant scientists

"Newton's character and life was one made of long flashes of brilliance and followed by unexplainable eccentric behavior". Newton never married and he spent a lot of time studying the bible in order to predict the future (which was also George Price's obsession).

Maxwell was peculiarly shy (classmates called him 'daftie') and intensely religious, he married a woman several years older (pretty unusual in those days) and never fathered a child.

Einstein was more normal but he fathered a schizophrenic son (as did James Watson).

Some people (John Manning) have suggested that insensitive androgen receptors increase neural speed and that schizophrenia spectrum disorders are connected with the balance of, and sensitivity to, sex hormones.

Retention of mental plasticity would be the overall trend in the human lineage. But an complementary or alternative explanation for group differences emerging over time might be puberty. (There are group differences in age of onset.)

"Inuit Greenlanders … have fewer alleles of the sort that increase androgen receptor activity or facilitate testosterone to DHT conversion."

From what I have read about the Inuit they are the most intelligent of all hunter gatherer peoples

Is it true that neoteny was first suggested by Ashley Montagu and Steven J Gould? There is genetic evidence for the retained plasticity theory but I think humans are, as John Manning says, oestrogenized rather than neotenic.

Women are less robust than men and the evolutionary trend is towards less robustness. Women have better verbal intelligence and language is surely a huge part of the human intellectual evolution towards learning and retaining knowledge in adulthood.

Bushmen/Khoisans have infantile physical characteristics to a greater extent than other humans (J.Baker in his weighty tome Race goes into quite a lot of detail about that) Their mental characteristics could be seen as childlike too.

If we are looking at major races the East Asians are the most like children in that they have reduced sexual dimorphism. Europeans do not. Bearing their overall achievements in mind have Europeans lagged behind East Asians. If neotony is the main determinant of mental plasticity and creativity we ought to expect East Asians to be more creative than anyone.

I think that, for all their IQ and mental stamina, East Asians are more rigid in their thinking than Europeans. Europeans are obviously oestrogenized; their colour, face shape and finger ratios leave no doubt about that.

In individuals I would say that there is a tendency for intelligent men to be less masculine.

The process Clark documents is no longer at work. In the modern world what Harpending and Cochran call cad dads can do quite well reproductively but they can not increase their socio economic status.

So within Europeans for example the 'differences that make a difference' may be causing the classes to diverge even further genetically.

The differences that make a difference (genetic propensities for 'non-violence, deferment of pleasure, and other future-oriented behavior') may make the elite (upper-middle class people) of all races more similar to each other than the ordinary people of their own races.

That would explain a lot!

mtDNA would (more or less) have to be under selection for your ideas about the origin of Europeans to be right

The last comment was by me.

In Senegal men prefer to marry their maternal uncle's daughter.

Eugene, about what you put in quotation marks. Peter said no such thing and you don't deserve a response to comments like that.

The figure usually given for the population of Nigeria is said to be a considerable underestimate. There are political implications for tribal/regional/political or religious groupings in reducing their fertility so no government is likely to seriously try and reduce the fertility of that part of the population which is their own power base.

However, masses of young men with no position in society are a social time-bomb so the African governments will increasingly encourage the emigration of their surplus young men to Europe.

Women don't seem to have much choice about things in Africa. I am not sure they are working for children or because they were born into a culture where they are expected to make their (gallous)man rich. I think what they get out of it is gallous sons who are going to be reproductively successful. As females all get mated it doesn't much matter what daughters are like. In polygyny the sons face intense competition between men but a son also has the possibility of hitting a reproductive jackpot. A caring sharing man would probably father sons who were relatively unsuccessful in that environment.

The curse of 'juju' that drives sex slaves to Europe ""I know it will be a better place for me," she says when we meet for the last time. I tell her about the women I saw at the roadside outside Milan, about the cold, the beatings, and the €50,000 debt that Rita is still paying off, five years on. "I don't think so. Mine won't be like that," Vivian frowns. "If you are hard-working, you won't suffer. I know how to plait hair. There are lots of things I know how to do," she insists. Then she pauses. "I've made up my mind that I will go there, and I must go there. I chose it."

Europe's trafficking statistics are made up of Edo women like Vivian who do not conform to the stereotype of passive "victims". It is the most determined and driven who fall prey to Nigeria's traffickers – those without dreams to exploit are left alone. No matter how strong these women might be, the juju oath leaves them manipulated, abused and utterly trapped. Without faith in ancient, traditional beliefs, this modern form of slavery would not exist. And without a thriving market for their services, no Nigerian woman would be trafficked to Europe in the first place."

Draper's article- "It is likely that a major cause of the failure of contemporary Africans to respond in ways that It is likely that a major cause of the failure of contemporary Africans to respond in ways that Western analysts perceive to be rational is that African social systems share a recent historical background of unimpeded expansion into regions well suited for expanding immigrant groups. It would not be surprising to
find that many of their social institutions were or are adapted to actual resource
abundance."

It's perfectly rational to stick with the expansionist strategy as there are areas well suited for immigrant groups which are being opened up: the West. The population pressure in Africa (and elsewhere) is going to be relieved by mass migration.

These children of polygyny are going to be part of a non-white majority in the West in a few generations. Nothing can stop that now but it's interesting to know what is causing it.

"Hunting and warfare, usually the activities of men, could in contrast produce either a big windfall or nothing at all in terms of male production. […] Therefore, in a very simplistic way, it can be argued that female labor was the necessary labor—the labor from which surplus could be derived—whereas male labor could produce the luxury items, the status items. (Saidi, 2010, p. 15)"

Yes but hunters of meat are obtaining something which is of great practical value for people on a diet of cereal grain crops which in sunny Nigeria cause nutritional rickets
"Nutritional rickets has long been considered a disease caused by vitamin D deficiency, but recent data indicate that inadequate dietary calcium intake is an important cause of rickets, particularly in tropical countries.When given vitamin D, children with rickets have a marked increase in 1,25(OH)(2) D concentrations without any change in fractional calcium absorption. No positive relationship was found between fractional calcium absorption and serum 25(OH)D concentrations in [Nigerian] children on low-calcium diets."

Please note that meat has value not because "there is plenty of vitamin D in meat" but because :- Meat consumption reduces the risk of nutritional rickets and osteomalacia by a mechanism [...] which appears independent of revised estimates of meat vitamin D content."

So this does not support the idea that agriculture caused European skin to lighten

And here is another line of evidence which casts doubt on the skin lightening for increased vitamin D synthesis in early agriculturists. Extremely brief exposure to European levels of sun results in a rise in vitamin D levels that would require the consumption of an incredibly large amount of meat.

Bogh (2011) "Vitamin D can be produced by only a few minutes of sun exposure [assuming the UV index (UVI) is three in the middle of a clear sky day] on ?24% of the body surface area. In addition, our results support the guidelines given by public health campaigns, which recommend a few short sun exposures in a week during the summer. Accordingly, our study shows (Table 3) that given the same baseline 25(OH)D level (31·4 nmol L?1) and a UVI of 3, a sufficient level of vitamin D (> 50 nmol L?1) would be reached by four exposures of either 15 min sun exposure (0·75 SED) to ?24% of the body surface area or 30 min sun exposure (1·5 SED) to only ?6% of the body surface area. "

I like Manning's ideas about oestrogenization. The Russian fox taming experiment produced lighter coats (Cochran and Harpending remark on this in their book).

The cave paintings from Grotte Chauvet are by all accounts incredibily good. By my way of thinking it's not obvious how such artistic ability relates to stable monogamous relationships, hunting, or foresight in provisioning. Maybe Europeans had been oestrogenized by 30,000 years ago ?

"Discrimination is no longer supposed to exercise its crippling effects through generations of enslavement and Jim Crow. After all, we see these effects in people who’ve just arrived.".

A Mayan from Rios Montt's Guatemala is no stranger to discrimination.

Non white immigrants suffer less discrimination from whites in the US than they do from the ruling elite in their homeland.

To be clear, I think indirect reciprocity (a type of altruistic punishment IMO) is relevant to this post because in a high trust society those who abuse that trust could prosper unless there is a social mechanism to deter them.

Was the Church influential in opposing torture? I think secular liberals were – I've read that Voltaire and Montesquieu were the first to call for torture to be banned.

(Dragon Horse, Isn't proselytizing banned in Singapore

Martin Nowak: a helping hand for evolution.
"In humans, that co-operation took a giant leap forward with the development of brains, and even more so with the invention of language. In the mathematical mechanisms for the evolution of co-operation created by Nowak and others, two key strategies for intelligent co-operation are "direct reciprocity" (I treat you according to how you have treated me) and "indirect reciprocity" (I treat you according to your reputation). Direct reciprocity is widespread in the animal kingdom, but indirect reciprocity is far rarer. Nowak has a simple explanation: "You can say it beautifully in one sentence, like my colleague David Haig at Harvard has done: 'For direct reciprocity you need a face; for indirect reciprocity you need a name.' For efficient indirect reciprocity, you need to be able to tell a story: 'Yesterday, when I had the following interaction with a certain person, this happened. So don't trust that person.' " It is humanity's ability to engage in this story-telling that led Nowak to give our species the title "super-cooperators". "

In the current New Scientist artlce Nowak doubts whether punishment is ever altruistic but saying bad things about someome is altruistic in my opinion because they are likely to try and get back at you in some way.

Re. empathy:-

"Baron-Cohen's theory is that the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy, and that the male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems."

High digit ratio (Danes) = greater empathy ?

The Wade link mentions Denmark:-
Of the European powers, only England and Denmark, in Dr. Fukuyama’s view, developed the three essential institutions of a strong state, the rule of law, and mechanisms to hold the ruler accountable.

Willets mentioned Denmark as well. A lot of the English are descended from Danes,(makes me wonder about submissiveness, trust and digit ratios).

"England became a high-trust society, people no longer had to depend as much on their kin relations".

Hmmm, in many parts of the world kin are in fact far more related that they are in England. Cousins in the east are often very much more related than in England, being the result of umpteen generations of consanguineous marriage.(I'm not sure how polygyny affects this).

Trusting your cousin in England is a very different thing to trusting your cousin in Saudi Arabia. Furthermore in the East your cousin might also be your brother in law.

It was the the Church which forbade consanguineous marriage, (2nd cousin marriage was banned in the 6th century,by the 11th century there was a ban on 6th cousins marrying).This also promoted non- arranged marriages.