The Economist On Evolution: Survival Of The Unfit To Print
The
centerpiece of
The Economist magazine`s year-end double issue
(Dec. 24, 2005 to Jan. 6, 2006) is a 12 page survey
entitled “The
story of man.” The
cover cartoon showing human evolution from the
knuckle-dragging ape to the apparent
ultimate in human perfection—which the magazine`s
artist seems to conceive of as starlet
Scarlett Johanson in a little
black New Year`s Eve party dress holding a champagne
flute. (I can`t say I disagree…)
But when he turns to race in his
otherwise well-done essay, The Economist`s
science editor Geoffrey Carr can`t keep his story
straight even on the same page.
Thus at the
bottom of p. 11 of the survey, Carr commends the
theory of how the high average intelligence of
Ashkenazi Jews might have evolved over just the last
millennium, which was
published in 2005 by
Gregory Cochran (Carr compares him to
Darwin!) and
Henry Harpending.
Carr explains:
“Until
a century or two ago, the Ashkenazim—the Jews of
Europe—were often restricted by local laws to
professions such as banking, which happened to require
high intelligence. This is the sort of culturally
created pressure that might drive one of Dr.
[Terrence] Deacon`s feedback loops for mental
abilities … If Ashkenazi Jews need to be more
intelligent than others, such genes will spread, even if
they sometimes cause disease.”
(Bear in mind that this theory
hasn`t been proven—Cochran and Harpending have proposed
an empirical test for it, but it hasn`t been carried out
yet. Scientifically, though, it`s at least possible for
important traits like intelligence to evolve that fast,
as the celebrated Harvard cognitive scientist
Steven Pinker has recently
acknowledged.)
Yet, earlier on the same
page, Carr enunciates one of the sillier versions of
the “Race Is Only Skin Deep”
smokescreen that I`ve seen recently:
“…
geneticists have failed to find anything in humans
that would pass muster as geographical races in any
other species….The only `racial` difference that has a
well-established function is skin color. … As to other
physical differences, they may be the result of founder
effects [i.e., caused by random variation among the
handful of progenitors of a group] or possibly of
sexual selection, which can sometimes pick up and
amplify arbitrary features.”
This is absurd. It`s obviously
contradictory for Carr to write both that
- During just 1,200 years,
natural selection may well have brought about higher
mean IQs among Jews than among their
gentile neighbors in Central Europe.
- But during more than 50,000
years, natural selection probably didn`t lead to any
differences, other than in skin color, among
races of different continents!
And it`s also simply not true, as
John Goodrum`s “Race
FAQ“ has exhaustively shown.
You would think that some editor
would notice this glaring conflict and ask his writer to
resolve it. But the topic of race routinely induces
Brain Shutdown Mode even among smart journalists.
In his Economist essay, Carr
says:
“In
fact, one of the striking things about Homo sapiens
compared with, say, the chimpanzee is the genetic
uniformity of the species.”
Here, The Economist appears
to be falling prey to the
common confusion between neutral (a.k.a., “junk”)
genes that don`t do anything and functional genes.
Chimpanzees are much older as a species than modern
humans. So they`ve had millions of years to accumulate
random mutations of DNA that serve little purpose.
But humans in fact show an
extraordinary range of physical diversity for a single
species—probably due to our colonizing so many different
continents. Prominent Berkeley molecular anthropologist
Vincent Sarich
concludes:
“I am
not aware of any other mammalian species where the
constituent races are as strongly marked as they are in
ours… except those few races heavily modified by recent
human selection; in particular,
dogs.”
Embarrassingly for The Economist,
two days before Christmas came a landmark paper by
Robert Moyzis, Eric Wang, et al. entitled “Global
landscape of recent inferred Darwinian selection for
Homo sapiens” [PDF]. It lists 1,800 genes that
have been under varying selection pressure in
Africa,
Europe, or
East Asia over no more than the last 50,000 years.
University of Wisconsin
anthropologist John Hawks
writes in his blog:
“It
would be hard for me to overstate how important this
paper is… it brings home the vast importance of
adaptive change during the most recent parts of human
evolution.”
Bob Holmes writes in Britain`s
New Scientist (December 19):
“A
detailed look at human DNA has shown that a significant
percentage of our genes have been shaped by natural
selection in the past 50,000 years, probably in response
to aspects of modern human culture such as the emergence
of agriculture and the shift towards living in densely
populated settlements…
“This
analysis suggested that around 1800 genes, or roughly 7%
of the total in the human genome, have changed under the
influence of natural selection within the past 50,000
years… That is roughly the same proportion of genes that
were altered in maize [corn] when humans
domesticated it from its wild ancestors. Moyzis
speculates that we may have similarly `domesticated`
ourselves with the emergence of modern civilization.
“`One
of the major things that has happened in the last 50,000
years is the development of culture,` he says. By so
radically and rapidly changing our environment through
our culture, we`ve put new kinds of selection
[pressures] on ourselves.`”
The classic example of these
“new kinds of selection pressures”: the cultural
practice of milking domesticated animals resulted over
the
last ten thousand years in a selection for lactose
tolerance in adults. This drove the frequency of the
gene variant for the ability to digest milk from close
to zero to over 90 percent in Northern Europe—versus no
more than ten percent in modern
East Asia. In turn, this new genetic capability had
a big impact on Northern Europe`s cultural traits,
including
population density, economy, lifestyle, and
cuisine.
The New Scientist`s Holmes
explains:
“Genes
that aid protein metabolism—perhaps related to a change
in diet with the dawn of agriculture—turn up unusually
often in Moyzis`s list of recently selected genes. So do
genes involved in resisting infections, which would be
important in a species settling into more densely
populated villages where diseases would spread more
easily. Other selected genes include those involved in
brain function, which could be important in the
development of culture.”
Greg Cochran, who has been
reviewing Moyzis`s database, tells me that right now we
only have a vague idea what most of these 1,800 genes
do. It will take years to figure out the uses of each
one.
But, he notes, there is certainly
no reason to assume that the varying demands of natural
selection in
different parts of the world have ignored genes that
impact cognition and personality.
Cochran also says this list of
1,800 genes is just the start. More refined
methodologies should uncover more in the future.
The conventional wisdom on
virtually all sides of the political spectrum demonizes
anyone who tries to talk about the new DNA research. The
reigning intellectuals fear that their ideologies will
be shattered by the new knowledge—with catastrophic
results, certainly for
their own careers, but
possibly for all humanity.
And yet, is this scientific
knowledge truly as terrifying as the conventional wisdom
assumes? Don`t we already know that both people and
peoples
tend to be somewhat different? And don`t we deal
with these realities every day, generally in a
constructive manner?
For example, if you have
more than one child, you`ve no doubt noticed that
they are surprisingly different genetically. And yet
that doesn`t plunge you into despair. (Well, sure,
sometimes your kids` squabbles over their different
tastes get on your nerves, but you survive.)
Meanwhile, other families might
notice common characteristics shared among you and your
children that they themselves don`t possess.
But that doesn`t mean your family
and their families are doomed to a war of annihilation.
The same is true for racial groups,
which are simply
extended families that have attained some degree of
coherence due to partial inbreeding.
And, while this virulent campaign
in favor of ignorance can slow
scientific research, it can`t make it go away.
Even more importantly, it can`t
make the underlying reality of
human diversity disappear.
What the human race needs is a new
perspective that assimilates the latest genetic
discoveries into a sensible, humane, practical-minded,
and realistically optimistic whole.
But we`re not going to get that
from the purveyors of the conventional wisdom—which, for
all its merits, here includes The Economist,
not for the first time.
[Steve Sailer [email
him] is founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute and
movie critic for
The American Conservative.
His website
www.iSteve.blogspot.com features his daily
blog.]


