Re: Aryan invasion theory and race

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Koenraad Elst" <koenraad.elst@...> wrote:

> Hart [sees] success in a combination of innate intelligence
> and opportunity. In a cold climate, people were selected for
> intelligence but were also kept busy with sheer survival. This way,
> the great advances were made in moderate/warm zones, not near the
> equator but not in intelligence-kneading cold zones either. That is
> why the Germanic adopted writing from the more southerly Romans (or
> Etruscans), who had it from the Phoenicians, who may have had the
> idea of phoneic writing from the auxiliary phonetic script used
> alongside the more formal hieroglyphic script by the even more
> southerly Egyptians.
>
> Moreover, he insists on random variation as a key factor: before
> individuals of eccentrically high intelligence can be favoured by
> selection, they first have to be produced by random variation,
> which is more likely to happen in a large population, which in turn
> is more likely to exist in a moderate climate. This is how he
> explains the higher IQ apparently reported for Chinese than for
> Eskimoes: the former have by chance produced more, earlier and more
> exceptional individuals of high intelligence, and these were
> favoured (extra by China's meritocratic exam system) in the race
> for maximum procreation. Also, once harsh circumstances have
> selected for high intelligence, a population is unlikely to lapse
> back after migration to a pleasant-climate zone, because the
> intelligent members will continue to outshine the others with novel
> (including other than survival-oriented) activities and thus
> attract more and better partners for procreation.

This is entirely BS from A to Z. It reminds me of the claims about links between "race" (an intellectual construct or abstraction that doesn't correspond to anything determibable and measurable empirically) and intelligence made a few years ago by James D. Watson, one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA, by that time (2007) in his late seventies. See at

http://tinyurl.com/58zypp
<< Watson was... attributed as having written: "There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason
as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make
it so. >>

For some quick references on the wider contamporary debate on race and intelligence, see the (disputed) Wikipedia article at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence

> What struck me when reading [Hart's] book, is that while the rest
> of us have ignored racist thought as cranky for decades, a few
> people in that corner of the opinion spectrum have worked hard to
> get up-to-date and incorporate all the latest in genetics and
> psychometry into their worldview. It does not follow that they
> can't be refuted, only that it will now be a serious job to do so.
> That's the difference with Hindutva crackpots like Kalyanaraman,
> who don't bother to stay abreast of the progress made by their
> opponents and instead stay in a self-congratulatory and other-
> demonizing mood in perpetuity.

The last sentence is, once again, misleading. Kalyanaraman et al.'s real opponents aren't certainly some patently racist pseudo-scholars such as this Dr. Hart you have fished out of some obscure corner, but a lot of distinguished, genuine, and very mainstream scholars who would never dream of associating their sincere thoughts and well-argumented views on IE expansions in general, and on the supposed immigration of IA speakers into the Indian sub-continent in particular (since this is what really concerns you...) with absurd claims about a link between language, "race", and human intelligence.

I am sorry to say, Koenraad, that your insistence on this issue starts to be very suspect after four days spent in such debate. Aren't you trying to lump together scholars like Witzel (whom you have "casually" cited more than once in this series of posts of yours), viz. the *serious* supporters of what you continue to refer to as "AIT", with the above BS-producers? If you aren't, whyare you suggesting that said BS-producers are the (apparently most up-to-date) opponents of the Hindutva supporters of the OIT?

Perplexed,
Francesco