NileValleyPeoples

Social philosophy of Thomas Sowell

2011-07-04T11:35:00.023-04:00

Opening comments:

There are a number of points where I disagree with Sowell on the details. In his 1983 Economics and Politics of Race (pg 226) for example, he looks at the record of imperialism, noting that it is a mixed one, but that the imperialists introduced new technology as one positive benefit. This is reasonable, but he fails to qualify his argument when he references one book to say that "almost no community" in "sub-Saharan" Africa harnessed animals to pull the plough, until the coming of Europeans in the 19th and 20th century. His reference on the facts (Gann and Guignan 1981- Africa South of the Sahara) is uncertain, and Sowell does not really qualify the technology examples. Ethiopia for example, is in "sub Saharan" Africa and used the plough, as did farmers in parts of the Nilotic basin of the Sudan. Both of these areas are in the tropical climatic zone, as is part of southern Egypt, which of course was using the plough for millennia.

Furthermore, tropical Africans have long resided above the the line of the current Sahara which is a moving target historically. The earliest example of mummification in Africa for example is that of a so-called "negroid" child in Muhuggiag, Libya (Wendorf 2001, Lovell 1999). The rock art of the Sahara during the so-called "chariot period" show the same "negroid" peoples using such vehicles with skeletal remains resembling Upper Egyptians (themselves resembling so called "sub-Saharan" types Keita 2005, Lovell 1999, and M. Fentress, The Berbers, 1997). Ancient Egypt was populated fundamentally in the pre-dynastic and earlier dynastic eras by tropical Africans, and the closest people ethnically to the ancient Egyptians are Nubians (Yurco 1989, Lovell 1999, Redford 2001, Morkot 2005, Godde 2009, Kemp 2006, Raxter and Ruff 2008). Claims about so-called "sub-Saharan Africans" and technology too often overlook these facts.

The Sahara is a fluctuating natural element, indeed once a lush greenbelt that alternated between greenery and desert, and is not a convenient "racial" dividing line. In addition "North Africa" is more than the coastal strip of Algeria, Morocco, etc, but in several physical geographic books includes the Sudan, Mali, Niger, Chad etc. (See graphic bottom) Claims about "North Africa" all too conveniently overlook this, as do claims about "sub Saharan" Africa that all too often overlook the fact that so-called "Sub-Saharan Africans" range widely throughout Africa, and are not, and never were sitting conveniently behind the Sahara.

Many parts of Africa have suffered comparative isolation due to natural barriers of soil, geography, disease and climate, (compare to the broad highway enjoyed by Mediterranean peoples, or the favorable East-West climatic axis between Asia and Europe facilitating land movement of ideas, animals, crops and technology for example), but just as the Sahara was not static over the span of history, neither have the peoples of tropical Africa been static entities, huddled behind some sort of natural "apartheid" line. Where able to mobilize or have access to wider venues and opportunities for trade and/or communication networks and exchange internal to Africa and without, (the Nile Valley, the Saharan kingdoms such as Mali or other various areas for example), tropical Africans have done well, relative to their environment, over the span of human history. Where isolated in small tribes they have shown a pattern typical of other non-Africans worldwide- see Europeans in Ireland or parts of the Balkans for example. Where able to access wider networks and better resources, tropical Africans have likewise shown more elaborate and sophisticated cultures, just as the once obscure English for example, were able to expand their culture via initial association with the wider networks of the Roman Empire (see: Sowell 1999, Conquests and Cultures).

As to the plough in more southerly Africa beyond the Sudan, the implement made limited sense because the tse-tse fly destroyed draft animals, or was of limited use in heavy forested jungle. In other words there is a practical reason people were not rushing to use ploughs. Gann and Guignan do note animal diseases limiting use of the plough. Questions of practicality are nothing unusual in other regions. In Europe, the Irish masses overall, as an indigenous pattern, made little use of animal drawn ploughs, and relied instead on the loy, a type of spade that made sense in rocky, hilly areas, or on small farms where expensive horses, trappings and equipment could not be afforded. The loy was used up until the 1960s in poorer land, and trenches formed by turning in the sods provided drainage. It also allowed the growing of potatoes in bogs as well as on mountain slopes where no other cultivation could take place. The small spade-like loy was thus fine for tending the potato crop, giving sustenance to millions of Irish. Significant deployment of the plough was a product of English and Scottish origin (Hawkes and Dalaman 1985, The history and social influence of the potato). Thus the deployment of technology, in Europe as well as Africa, depends on a trade-off of costs and benefits in the environment at hand. Such trade-offs are a fundamental consideration in Sowell's writings, as we shall see.

Sowell also claims that literacy was unknown in Africa outside Ethiopia, again referencing Gann and Guignan. This too is in error. In fact, numerous "sub Saharan" African societies possessed literacy, as the learning centers of Mali testify. And the indigenous tropical Africans of Egypt, a nation that happens to be in Africa, had writing for millennia before Europe, and played a part in development of the modern alphabet (See: David Sacks 2003. Language Visible). Indeed Europe did not invent writing or the plough either, but had to wait for it to be introduced from someplace else. It should also be noted that numerous "European" introductions to Africa, are themselves derived not from Europe but from Asia and the sub-tropical "Middle East" - things like the compass, printing, gunpowder, the key plant and animal domesticates of the Neolithic, advanced metallurgy, powered machinery via windmills, and the alphabet. None of these critical technologies and advances were invented or developed initially in Europe.

Indeed as Joseph Needham's monumental series Science and Civilisation in China (1986) shows, China was technologically well ahead of Europe until around the 1400s. Indeed some West African kingdoms and cities, such as the Mali of the famous Mansa Musa, or Timbuktu, surpassed several contemporary Northern European kingdoms in wealth during medieval times - the 1300s (Africa south of the Sahara: a geographical interpretation. Robert F. Stock, 2004).

Despite these errors, Sowell's overall point holds. Europeans themselves are beneficiaries of technologies brought by conquerors of European territories. He does qualify overall by saying: "Not all parts of the colonized world were primitive, nor did the coming of Western Civilization always represent progress in all aspects of life." (Sowell, 1983:226) It should also be noted that anthropology, archaeology and African history research since the 1980s has furnished more detailed information that makes old assumptions re "sub-Saharan" Africans or Africa obsolete. In general, Sowell is correct in noting how the movement of peoples, idea and technologies have played in part in human cultures and civilizations, including Europe, beneficiary of much developed elsewhere.

See Egypt post for more details and references.

Now let's get down to bidniss...
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Social philosophy of Thomas Sowell
copyright Enrique Cardova, 2010

The major themes and philosophies of Sowell’s writing range from social policy on race, ethnic groups, education and decision-making, to classical and Marxist economics, to the problems of children perceived as having disabilities. Sowell has also extended his research from the United States to the international sphere, finding supporting data and patterns from several cultures and nations. He has demonstrated that similar incentives and constraints often result in similar outcomes among very different peoples and cultures.
Five themes in his work cut across specific topics:

The importance of empirical evidence, not only in a narrow technical sense but as reflected in the broad record of history.
The competing basic visions of policy makers, and their role in the interactions of elites versus the ordinary masses.
An importance of trade-offs, constraints and incentives in human decision making.
The significance of human capital—attitudes, skills, and work.
The importance of systemic (orderly, structured) processes for decision-making—from free markets to the rule of law.

These five keys place the economist’s writings in the greater context of historical synthesis and human decision-making, rather than being simply those of a conservative pundit or “race” writer on particular contemporary social issues. Sowell’s work is also a significant answer to critiques of economics arguing that the discipline has failed to come to grips with real world problems and is occupied too much with technical models and details, while paying little attention to historical processes.^[19]

Importance of empirical evidence

Empirical evidence and objective analysis of relevant factors is sorely lacking in claims surrounding race, culture and society

In his writings Sowell has repeatedly emphasized the need for empirical evidence and objective assessments of data, as opposed to the sweeping generalizations, wishful thinking, and distorted or false evidence provided by numerous writers in the field of social policy and economics. Sowell contends that in no field are these distortions greater than when the topic of race is discussed. Sowell maintains that common assumptions and stirring rhetoric about poverty, slavery, discrimination, economic progress or education do not hold up when measured against hard data.^[20]

What counts in assessing a social or economic policy is not the stated intentions of promoters, but the incentives created and the actual end results produced

In his book Marxism: Philosophy and Economics Sowell shows that this was the outlook of Marx. He applies this bottom-line approach to other social policies, ranging from IQ Tests to affirmative action. In numerous cases, he demonstrates that the stated aims of promoters had little relation to the actual results produced. Regarding affirmative action, for example, the goals of proponents—that it was a temporary measure, that it helped those categories of minorities less fortunate, that it would promote social harmony, et cetera—have not been satisfied when the empirical evidence is analyzed. Sowell contends that too often, social policy is made on the basis of sweeping assumptions, arbitrarily selected statistical data, and ideological dogma, without sufficient evidence.^[21]

Numerous factors determine income and education levels among American ethnic groups, and between genders, not the overgeneralized, “all-purpose” explanations of racism, or sexism

In books such as Markets and Minorities, Ethnic America, and Race and Culture, Sowell demonstrates the importance of geography, degree of urbanization, cultural structures, field of work, and other factors more relevant than racism. He believes that those who make charges of racism seldom present credible empirical evidence. As for the pay gap between men and women, for example, Sowell’s book Civil Rights argues that most of this gap is based on marital status, not glass-ceiling discrimination: Earnings for men and women of the same basic description (education, jobs, hours worked, marital status) were essentially equal. That result would not be predicted under explanatory theories of sexism.^[22]

Internationally, empirical evidence shows that colonialism, imperialism, and claims of genetic superiority are all theories failing to explain technological or economic differences among nations

Sowell’s trilogy Race and Culture, Migrations and Culture, and Conquests and Cultures exemplifies his broad analytical approach to historical processes, cutting across centuries of history, and many different peoples. He compares nations and minority groups within nations, particularly migrants. On an international scale, cultural factors are very important. Some countries heavily subjected to imperialism and colonialism are themselves among the most prosperous. For example, he notes that once backward Britain survived centuries of Roman colonialism and imperialism, it emerged centuries later as the most powerful empire on earth.
Sowell maintains that trendy explanations of racism and imperialism, or their reverse—simplistic claims of genetic superiority—are often used to explain significant historical patterns, when mundane factors such as geography can be much more relevant and useful in understanding an issue. The presence of navigable rivers, good harbors favorable for transportation and trade, mountain ranges that capture water for later irrigation, fertile land, climate patterns that facilitate the movement of productive plants and animals, and other like factors all heavily influenced nations’ or people’s successes over the span of history. Western tropical Africa for example, suffers a number of such geographic disadvantages. Sowell shows that for centuries, non-white nations like China were more advanced than those of Europe until comparatively recently. He also argues that the European West borrowed and adapted freely from other nations and regions—from the writing systems and domesticates of Southwest Asia to the numerous inventions and innovations of China (gunpowder, compass, etc.) and various other strands in-between. Within national settings, students of East Asian origin in the West frequently outperform their white counterparts and score higher on IQ tests. These patterns undercut simplistic white supremacist theories of inherent genetic superiority. In 1983’s Economics and Politics of Race Sowell predicts that the long cycles of history may yet again reshuffle the success of nations and peoples.

On race and intelligence (as measured by IQ), whole groups and nations have raised their IQ scores over time, undermining various theories of intelligence related to minorities such as Jews and blacks

In Intelligence and Ethnicity, Sowell demonstrates how IQ scores have risen among many groups (see: Flynn effect). He notes that a number of white ethnic groups tallied poor scores as they began entry into the American urban economy. Jews, for example, scored dismally on Army intelligence tests during WWI, leading to assumptions that they were second-rate citizens. Jewish IQ scores have risen steadily, and now they rank near the top. Similarly, IQ scores of East Asians were unimpressive in early measurements, but they rank high today. Sowell shows that black IQ progress has been concealed by the practice of statistical redefinitions, or norming, of beginning measurement baselines. Thus an IQ score that might have been considered normal or average in 1960, is today considered below par. By recalculating from the original baselines, he demonstrates that not only blacks but entire nations have shown significant rises in IQ over time. He notes that the roughly 15-point gap in contemporary black–white IQ scores is similar to that between the national average and the scores of particular ethnic white groups in years past. Indeed similar gaps have been reported within white populations, such as Northern Europeans versus Southern Europeans. Sowell references some of these points in his criticism of the book The Bell Curve.^[23]
In short, Sowell argues, IQ gaps are hardly startling or unusual between, or within, ethnic groups. What is distressing, he claims, is the sometimes hysterical response to the very fact that IQ research is being done, and movements to ban testing in the name of self-esteem or fighting racism. He argues that few would have known of black IQ progress if scholars like James Flynn had not undertaken allegedly racist research.^[24]

What some portray as authentic black culture is actually a carryover from a highly dysfunctional white southern redneck culture

According to Sowell, in his 2005 Black Rednecks and White Liberals, what many see as pathologies of contemporary black culture actually derive from a dysfunctional historical white-southern “cracker” culture.

What the [white] rednecks or crackers brought with them across the ocean was a whole constellation of attitudes, values, and behavior patterns that might have made sense in the world in which they had lived for centuries, but which would prove to be counterproductive in the world to which they were going — and counterproductive to the blacks who would live in their midst for centuries before emerging into freedom and migrating to the great urban centers of the United States, taking with them similar values.

The cultural values and social patterns prevalent among Southern whites included an aversion to work, proneness to violence, neglect of education, sexual promiscuity, improvidence, drunkenness, lack of entrepreneurship, reckless searches for excitement, a lively music and dance, and a style of religious oratory marked by strident rhetoric, unbridled emotions, and flamboyant imagery. This oratorical style carried over into the political oratory of the region in both the Jim Crow era and the civil rights era, and has continued on into our own times among black politicians, preachers, and activists. Touchy pride, vanity, and boastful self-dramatization were also part of this redneck culture among people from regions of Britain where the civilization was the least developed.^[25]

Several scholars support Sowell’s observations. Grady McWhiney’s Cracker Culture (1988) is a thorough historical study of the values and behavioral patterns of white Southerners, and is backed by many other scholarly studies which have turned up very similar patterns even when they differed in some ways as to the causes. Scholar Hackett Fischer’s Albions Seed,(1989) for example, eschews the Celtic theory advanced by McWhiney, but shows many of the same cultural patterns for the whites, both in Britain and the American South.^[26]
What is different about the current era, Sowell claims, is that better educated, more productive whites are no longer as willing to challenge or condemn the counterproductive behaviors deriving from the holdovers of white cracker culture among blacks. This stands in sharp contrast to the white northern educators that went to educate ex-slaves in the post-Civil War South, who insisted on strong discipline and work, and helped lay the foundations for black education.^[27] Instead, Sowell contends, today’s white liberals too often justify, glorify, and subsidize these negatives as the “authentic expression” and behavior of the black masses. Sowell holds that the backward behavior pattern of southern whites has carried over to a generation of negative “blacknecks” who are in no way representative of the authenticity of the black community over its long, difficult climb from slavery and discrimination to freedom and equality in the United States.^[28]

Competing visions and intellectuals

Many modern ideological struggles can be traced to two visions: the vision of the anointed and the vision of the constrained realist

Sowell lays out these concepts in his A Conflict of Visions and The Vision of the Anointed. These two visions encompass a range of ideas and theories. The vision of the anointed relies heavily on sweepingly optimistic assumptions about human nature, distrust of decentralized processes like the free market, impatience with systemic processes that constrain human action, and absent or distorted empirical evidence. The constrained or tragic vision relies heavily on a reduced view of the goodness of human nature, and prefers the systematic processes of the free market, and the systematic processes of the rule of law and constitutional government. It distrusts sweeping theories and grand assumptions in favor of heavy reliance on solid empirical evidence and on time-tested structures and processes.^[29]

Intellectuals are “idea” workers, who often presume special wisdom and insight outside their area of expertise to guide others, while being unaccountable for results

In his 2009 book Intellectuals and Society, (Basic Books: 2009) Sowell argues that intellectuals, defined as people whose occupations deal primarily with ideas (writers, historians, academics, etc.) usually consider themselves as anointed, endowed by superior intellect or insight to guide power-brokers and the masses. This makes them different from other highly educated, cerebral workers in applied occupations such as engineering, medicine, or military service. Sowell claims that modern society needs a healthy skepticism of intellectuals, because not only are many of their theories wrong if judged empirically, but also intellectuals are often unaccountable for results, and thus are more reckless in their claims and more dangerous in their influence. They pay little penalty if they are wrong, unlike for example applied knowledge workers like surgeons or military officers. Thus peace intellectuals helped create a climate that dangerously weakened the resolve and armed strength of many major democracies prior to WWII. On balance, Sowell argues, these unaccountable idea workers have made the world a worse place in the 20th century. Several features mark such intellectuals, Sowell maintains, sometimes cutting across stereotypical categories like left or right.^[30]

Preference for control of third parties and imposition of their preferences over the decision-making and preferences of the broad masses
Claimed or assumed leadership or special insight by themselves- a sense of their own specialness.
Lack of real world accountability for the actual outcomes and results of their theories and notions.
Special knowledge within narrow areas but ignorance without
Creation of political and social climates that can cause disaster or hinder beneficial action
Verbal virtuosity and clever phrasing substituting for evidence or logic.
Ego-involvement and personalization of issues, leading to demonization of opponents, self-congratulation and self-flattery as a basis for social policy.

Trade-offs, constraints and incentives

Ordinary citizens might benefit from analyzing issues and public policies in terms of costs, benefits and trade-offs, where scarce resources have alternative uses, rather than rely on lofty rhetoric from political leaders, activists and special interests

In Basic Economics^[31] and Applied Economics,^[32] Sowell lays out the fundamentals of the discipline so that the layman can understand them, as well as his essential way or model for approaching problems. There are no free lunches, Sowell emphasizes, only trade-offs at various levels. This transactional approach to social and economic policy is one of the hallmarks of Sowell’s writings:

Lofty talk about “non-economic values” too often amounts to very selfish attempts to impose one’s own values, without having to weigh them against other people’s values. Taxing away what other people have earned, in order to finance one’s own fantasy ventures, is often depicted as a humanitarian endeavor, while allowing others the same freedom and dignity as oneself, so they can make their own choices with their own earnings, is considered to be pandering to “greed.” Greed for power is more dangerous than greed for money and has shed far more blood in the process. Political authorities have often had “revolutionary values” that were devastating to the general population.^[33]

Government action is too often perceived as beneficial, just and noble, when in fact it often hurts those it is purportedly trying to help

As far back as 1975’s Race and Economics^[34] and continuing through his Affirmative Action Around The World and Basic and Applied Economics series, Sowell repeatedly shows that much government action in the social and economic domains has not only failed to achieve desired or claimed results but in many cases has created worse conditions than those previously existing.^[35] Examples given to bolster Sowell’s arguments range from rent control (which decreases the supply of housing) to busing for racial balance (schools in some areas under busing are just as segregated or worse than before) and crime control, zoning laws, and education.
Sowell also takes strong issue with the notion of government as a helper or savior of minorities, arguing that the historical record shows quite the opposite—from the lower level Jim Crow laws created and enforced by state and local regimes, to welfare subsidies at the federal level that have promoted family dependency and breakdown. The Montgomery Bus Company of the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott in the 1950s, for example, had originally pleaded with local segregationist officials not to impose Jim Crow on the bus lines. Before, such lines served both black and white customers with little problem. This plea was rejected, and the hand of government once again interfered with and hindered free markets that mutually benefited customers of all races.^[36] Unlike the free market, where the dollars held by blacks and whites have equal value, the governmental sphere in a massive number of historical instances imposed unequal values—with black votes having less value than white ones—and so Jim Crow expanded. Sowell maintains that, time and time again, the hand of government has negatively intervened to snuff out mutually desirable free market transactions between blacks and whites, raising business costs, dampening profits, and creating huge inefficiencies to local economies. The wasteful duplication of facilities and customer-service areas in the name of segregation are but one example of the waste and inefficiency imposed by government, reputed benefactor of minorities.^[37] Sowell draws upon a mass of historical data to question both the priorities and logic of those who call for even more government intervention and spending to “solve” the problems of minorities.^[38]

On several measures, black progress was much more positive prior to the significant rise of the welfare state, and prior to the era of affirmative action

Another of Sowell’s themes is to show the painful but steady rise of blacks in the US against heavy odds before massive intervention by government programs, a rise that contradicts some popular assumptions.

Social problems

In Affirmative Action Around the World (2004)^[39] and Civil Rights^[40] Sowell demonstrates that on several measures, black progress was actually better before the era of the expanding welfare state and affirmative action era of the 1970s, and even the Civil Rights Act of 1964, than in the contemporary era. In the decades immediately after the Civil War for example, blacks posted higher employment rates and lower divorce rates than whites. As regards family stability and out-of-wedlock births, black rates prior to WWII were hardly perfect, (19% in 1940 and 22% in 1960) but were still far lower than the 70% out-of-wedlock births afflicting the black community at the beginning of the 21st century. In every census between 1890 and 1940, blacks posted higher marriage rates than whites.^[41] Sowell also shows that numerous other European groups showed patterns of high dysfunction as they migrated to urban areas. He argues that this historical record undermines claims about hopelessly deficient black family patterns due to an alleged legacy of slavery or genetic handicaps, and maintains that the dependency induced by the welfare state undermined much that was stable and commendable about black family and community life, above and beyond the difficulties of rural to urban migration.^[42] The weakening of crime controls by judges and political elites during the 1960s fostered an atmosphere of lawlessness in the black community that also contributed to a negative harvest of social problems. As regards murder, for example, a crime that is not much influenced by fluctuations in victim reporting, rates doubled in the 1960s as plea bargaining, lighter sentences, “revolving door” early releases, restrictions on police procedures and probations increased. Although the weakening of controls was sometimes undertaken in the name of fairness for minorities, no community was harder hit by such rising rates than the black community.^[43]

Education

Black education was badly hurt by Jim Crow laws and practices; nevertheless Sowell demonstrates in Inside American Education (1993) and Black Education: Myths and Tragedies (1972) that even on this measure, blacks often showed progress that would be almost inconceivable in many of today’s inner city schools. While black education lagged heavily behind that of whites in the segregation era, several black schools were to emerge that produced excellent performances. All-black Dunbar High School in Washington D.C. prior to the 1960s, for example, achieved performance levels equal to or exceeding that of surrounding white schools. The average IQ at Dunbar was 111 in 1939, and again in 1950, and attendance records in some years showed lower levels of absenteeism than that of surrounding white schools in the District of Columbia. Dunbar also produced a impressive number of black firsts in many fields from naval officers, to the first black federal judge, military general, and cabinet member, and with alumni ranging from jazzman Duke Ellington to the black pioneer in the use of blood plasma.^[44] Nor could this be due to creaming of the crop to create a tiny elite of black students, Sowell contends. Attendance records suggest Dunbar’s student body was quite representative of the black community it served, and fully one-third of all black students in D.C. passed through its doors in some decades.^[44]
Dunbar is not the only example. A record of achievement is documented in several schools across the country. In several New York schools (Harlem) before WWII, black student test scores achieved basic parity with comparable working class white schools on the lower East side—sometimes higher, sometimes lower, but never miles behind as is the case in numerous ghetto schools of the contemporary era. Nor are such patterns necessarily a recent phenomenon. As far back as WWI, black soldiers from various Northern States like New York, Pennsylvania, etc. scored higher on Army intelligence tests than southern whites from various southern states like Mississippi, Alabama and others.^[45]
In his 1986 Education: Assumptions versus History, Sowell discusses several all-black public and private schools that achieved high performance standards like Dunbar. Ironically, some of these high-performing black schools declined after the Brown desegregation. Dunbar for example was torn down and rebuilt as a neighborhood school in a neighborhood that had descended into crime, poverty and decay. Similar patterns occurred with many other once thriving black institutions. Schools that once boasted high test scores, numerous academic awards, service to the community, and the development of black professionals became marked by low test scores, locations in decaying neighborhoods, lack of parental support and discipline problems. Policies such as busing for racial balance did little to stem this decline.^[46] There is little interest in such past achievements, Sowell argues, because the historical record would call into question prevailing policies and dogmas focused on racial headcounts, trendy black English, diversity, bigger budgets and more spending. The record also highlights counterproductive cultural attitudes towards education among some of today’s blacks as demonstrated by various research on the anti-intellectual “acting white” phenomenon,^[47] Sowell claims. Today’s Dunbar, he notes, has much finer physical facilities than the old school before its decline in the 1960s, but produces much more dismal academic results. More students went on to college from Dunbar during the Great Depression than they do in the contemporary ghetto school of today.^[44]

Long-standing trend of black progress

Sowell also challenges the notion that black progress is due to progressive government programs or policies. In The Economics and Politics of Race, (1983), Ethnic America (1981), Affirmative Action (2004), and other books, Sowell shows that in the five years prior to the 1964 Civil Rights Act black gains in employment and education were actually higher than in the five years after. Black progress in employment and education was a long-standing trend from the WWII era, almost two decades before the 1964 law, and before the era of affirmative action in the mid 1970s. Black gains in education and employment after 1964, Sowell maintains, continued this upward movement in the booming postwar economy. The passage of the race-neutral Civil Rights Act of 1964 complemented this upward swing and, by removing unjust legal barriers, provided significant equal opportunity. Sowell sharply contrasts equal opportunity (fair treatment across the board regardless of race) with the disguised or open race quotas and headcounts of affirmative action.
Long-standing advance in reducing poverty is also a hallmark of black effort, Sowell maintains, contradicting assorted claims of black inability. Prior to the 1964 Act, when few welfare or transfer payment programs as such were in place, a majority of blacks had actually pulled themselves above the poverty line despite open hostility from many whites and open segregation and discrimination in job and housing markets. On several other measures, from youth employment to crime, blacks posted a much better showing prior to the expansion of the welfare state, or the affirmative action era, than after.

White ethnic groups show many of the same problems historically

Sowell also argues that many problems identified with blacks in modern society are hardly unique in terms of American ethnic groups, nor in terms of a rural proletariat swept by disruption as it became urbanized. Heavy patterns of pathology are for example seen in the white peasant migrants to the dismal urban slums that sprung up during the Industrial Revolution in Britain and elsewhere.^[48] He maintains that US blacks only became a largely urban people after WWII, when the booming war economy produced a third great migration north, allowing millions of blacks to escape the harsh, oppressive conditions of the South. While southern cities also saw some migration, it was this massive wartime move north that was much more significant, and the arrival of the rural black proletariat into difficult urban conditions broke down many of the social mores and community controls that had maintained its stability in the past.
Sowell notes that social problems occurring after such migrations are nothing new with other white ethnic groups, who had the advantage of entering, acculturating and adjusting to the urban economy in toto several decades earlier than blacks.^[49] The black migrants faced race discrimination above and beyond other ethnic groups but fundamentally experienced the same social pathologies others did in becoming urbanized. Difficulties with crime, schooling, substance abuse etc. are thus not uniquely "black" problems but are well represented in other urbanizing groups from peasant background. In Ethnic America, (1981) for example, Sowell shows that white ethnic groups like the Irish were marked by many of the same patterns as blacks who migrated from rural backgrounds to the big urban centers, including high levels of violence and substance abuse. As regards out-of-wedlock births, the rate in some New York areas with heavy white Irish settlement was over 50%, comparable to what would develop in later black ghettos in the same city.^[50]
Sowell sums of some of these claims in his Pink and Brown People and Other Controversial Essays (1981), warning against what he calls the fallacy of presentism:^[51]

"Those who cannot swallow pseudo-biology can turn to pseudo-history as the basis for classification. Unique cultural characteristics are now supposed to neatly divide the population. In this more modern version, the ghetto today is a unique social phenomenon.. American ghettos have always had crime, violence, overcrowding, filth, drunkenness, bad school teaching, and worse learning. Nor are blacks historically unique even in the degree of these things. Crime and violence were much worse in the nineteenth-century slums, which were almost all white. The murder rate in Boston in the middle of the nineteenth century was about three times what it was in the middle of the twentieth century. All the black riots of the 1960s put together did not kill half as many people as were killed in one white riot in 1863.. Squalor, dirt, disease? Historically, blacks are neither the first nor last in any of these categories. There were far more immigrants packed into the slums (per room or per square mile) than is the case with blacks today - not to mention the ten thousand to thirty thousand children with no home at all in the nineteenth-century New York...

Even in the area where many people get most emotional- educational and IQ test results- blacks are doing nothing that various European minorities did not do before them. As of about 1920, any number of European ethnic groups had I.Q.'s the same or lower than the I.Q.'s of blacks today. As recently as 1940, there were schools on the Lower East Side of New York with academic performances lower than those of schools in Harlem. Much of the paranoia that we talk ourselves into about race is a result of provincialism about our own time as compared to other periods in history."

The true beneficiaries of affirmative action are not the less fortunate but those already advantaged

In his 2004 Affirmative Action Around the World Sowell holds that affirmative action covers most of the American population, particularly women, and has long since ceased to be directed towards blacks, although blacks are often invoked as primary beneficiaries, and that the main beneficiaries are not the less fortunate but those already able to well help themselves:

As in other countries, however, these policies spread far beyond the initial beneficiaries. Blacks are just 12 percent of the American population, but affirmative action programs have expanded over the years to include not only other racial or ethnic groups, but also women, so that such such policies now apply to a substantial majority of the American population...

...the top 20 percent of black income earners had their income share rising at about the same rate as that of their white counterparts, while the bottom 20 percent of black income earners had their income share fall at more than double the rate of the bottom 20 percent of white income earners. In short, the affirmative action era in the United States saw the more fortunate blacks benefit while the least fortunate lost ground in terms of their share of incomes. Neither the gains nor the losses can be arbitrarily attributed to affirmative action but neither can affirmative action claim to have advanced lower-income blacks when in fact those fell behind."^[52]

Sowell shows that immigrants suffering no past discrimination in the United States have also sometimes been classified as “approved minorities” and have also benefited from Affirmative Action. The affluent Fanjul family from Cuba for example, with a fortune exceeding $500 million, received contracts set aside for minority businesses. European businessmen from Portugal received the bulk of the money paid to minority owned construction firms between 1986 and 1990 in Washington D.C. Asian businessmen immigrating to the United States have also received preferential access to government contracts. Sowell also argues that while affirmative action began as a program primarily intended to benefit blacks, a huge majority of minority- and female-owned businesses are in fact owned by groups other than blacks, including Asians, Hispanics, and women.^[53]
In addition, the vast majority of minority firms appear to gain little from government set-asides. In Cincinnati, for example, 682 minority forms appeared on the city’s approved list but 13% of these companies received 62% of preferential access and 83% of the money. Nationally, one-fourth of one percent of minority-owned enterprises are certified to receive preferences under the Small Business Administration, but even within this tiny number, 2% of the firms received 40% of the money.^[53]
The history of black achievement prior to the affirmative action era is too often lost and overlooked, Sowell holds, and contradicts some right-wing claims that blacks have not pulled themselves up, or that seek to tar black progress as a function of affirmative action. The same history also contradicts some liberal claims that government programs like race quotas are responsible for black progress, when the facts show that the main beneficiaries of such programs are often non-blacks, and that there has been a long-standing trend of black advance before such programs.

Human capital

Human capital is the most durable, most precious of all, trumping both physical and financial capital, and overcoming the most adverse circumstances

Over and over again in Sowell’s works the theme of human capital appears. Human capital is the sum total of values, attitudes, skills, work effort and cultural inheritance and patterns, often extending back for centuries. Human capital can be individual—education, self-discipline, savings, hard work—but more important to Sowell’s work, it is also mass capital, the combined product of millions, not the select preserve of a few.

Human capital and oppressed minorities

Human capital has permitted ethnic minorities to bounce back and triumph over the harshest, most brutal treatment by majorities. Sowell’s works (Economics and Politics of Race (1993), Ethnic America(1981), Affirmative Action around the World (2004), and Race and Culture (1994). etc.) are laced with such illustrations, across several nations of the world, and across several centuries. Jews in Europe or the Middle East, for example, often harshly persecuted for centuries and denied a basis in agriculture, used their skills in urban economies to not only survive, but to ultimately end-run their enemies. Overseas Chinese are another such group, enduring harsh treatment from the colonial and modern era of Southeast Asia to the mining towns of 19th Century California, where rampaging white mobs did not give them “a Chinaman’s chance.”^[54] Today their native born descendants as a group surpass the US white average on a number of counts, from income and education to IQ and academic test results. Japanese-Americans show a similar pattern despite such obstacles as racist land laws designed to freeze them out of farming occupations or the internment camps of WWII.

Human capital in patterns reaching back centuries

In several works, Sowell traces the triumph of human capital and the human spirit across nations and historical periods. Industrious German farmers who took over wasteland scorned by others and turned it into productive farms did so not only in the United States, but in places as far afield as Russia and Argentina. Japanese farming skill and discipline repeated itself from the produce fields of California to Brazil. Italian stone and vineyard workers dominated certain related trades from the streets of New York to the fields of distant Argentina. None of this is by accident, but reflects human capital earned the hard way across the span of centuries, in multiple nations, across multiple generations. The importance of human capital—mass capital attained by ordinary men and women through generations of experience and sacrifice—is, for Sowell, much more important to human well-being than the theories of racial supremacists or utopian activists. Such capital is the foundation of human liberty and civilization. Some critics claim that the sharp, sometimes sarcastic tone found in some of Sowell’s works such as Inside American Education reflects his exasperation and frustration at the waste of human capital occurring in many minority, particularly black communities.^[55]

Systemic processes

Systemic processes mated to the common wisdom and practical action of the ordinary people are superior to the grandiose presumptions of intellectual, political and bureaucratic elites

In several works—his Knowledge and Decisions, A Conflict of Visions, and The Economics and Politics of Race among them—Sowell stresses the importance of systemic processes like free markets, the rule of law, and constitutional government. Such systemic processes are orderly, structured, and sequential. They are not perfect, nor can they be, since humans themselves are flawed. Instead, on the balance, they provide the best framework whereby imperfect humans can achieve large measures of freedom in not only the political sphere but the economic one as well. Such processes are continually refined and improved incrementally over time. Improvements over time to common law judicial systems like that of the United States, for example, did not quickly come about by sweeping decrees from those with allegedly superior wisdom, but rather by a long, painful process extending back to the Magna Carta and beyond. Likewise US blacks pulled themselves from poverty not because of government programs or policies, but often in spite of government, largely using the processes of free markets. Blacks broke segregation in many white neighborhoods, for example, not because of the goodness of the government or the goodwill of whites, but because their combined dollars outbid or induced even racist whites to sell them property in reserved areas.
On balance, Sowell maintains, systemic processes are superior to the dictates or condescension of those on high who presume to know better than ordinary people. A product of the hard-scrabble streets himself, Sowell also stresses the practical action and wisdom of the broad masses within those methodical frameworks, versus the presumptions, confiscations and social engineering of elites. The ordinary masses deserve freedom as much as “their betters.” Such elites, he argues, are only too ready to claim freedom for their own trendy notions and self-aggrandizing profit, while denying similar freedom to the small man on the street to manage his own resources and make his own decisions. A deep skepticism towards intellectual and bureaucratic elites runs through much of Sowell’s work. This is perhaps summed up best at the end of Knowledge and Decisions (1983):

Historically, freedom is a rare and tragic thing. It has emerged out of the stalemates of would-be oppressors. Freedom has cost the blood of millions in obscure places and historic sites ranging from Gettysburg to the Gulag Archipelago. That something that cost so much in human lives should be surrendered piecemeal in exchange for [trendy] visions or rhetoric seems grotesque. Freedom is not simply the right of intellectuals to circulate their merchandise. It is, above all, the right of ordinary people to find elbow room for themselves and a refuge from the rampaging presumptions of their “betters.”^[56]

==========================

References

19	.	^ Graeme Donald Snooks, Historical Analysis in Economics (Routledge 1993)
20	.	^ Sowell, Thomas (1981). Knowledge and Decisions
21	.	^ Sowell, Thomas (2004). Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study, Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-10199-6
22	.	^ Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality, Thomas Sowell, 1984. Markets and Minorities, Thomas Sowell, 1981
23	.	^ Sowell, Thomas. “The Bell Curve Wars,” Chapter 6 in Ethnicity and IQ, pg 70-80
24	.	^ Thomas Sowell, Affirmative Action: An International Perspective, op. cit.; Web: “Race and IQ” column for townhall.com
25	.	^ Thomas Sowell (2005). Black Rednecks and White Liberals. Encounter Books, p. 6).
26	.	^ Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals. p. 6
27	.	^ Sowell, Ethnic America, p. 202-204
28	.	^ Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals. p. 4-60
29	.	^ For helpful discussion of Sowell’s dualistic ideological model, see Joseph G. Conti and Brad Stetson, Challenging the Civil Rights Establishment: Profiles of a New Black Vanguard, (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1993, pp. 85--122).
30	.	^ Sowell, T. (2009). Intellectuals and Society. Basic Books. pp. 4-116; 281-319
31	.	^ Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics: A Citizens Guide to the Economy, (Basic Books: 2003)
32	.	^ Thomas Sowell, Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One, (Basic Books, 2003)
33	.	^ Basic Economics, Thomas Sowell, p. 308
34	.	^ Race and Economics, 1975
35	.	^ Basic Economics, op. cit
36	.	^ Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals.
37	.	^ Sowell, The Economics and Politics of Race, p. 145–206;
38	.	^ Race and Economics, 1975, op. cit.
39	.	^ Affirmative action. op. cit
40	.	^ Civil Rights, op. cit
41	.	^ Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals. pg. 161
42	.	^ Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals. pp. 160-165
43	.	^ Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions, pp. 268-288
44	.	^ ^a ^b ^c Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals. pp. 203-245
45	.	^ Thomas Sowell, Inside American Education (Basic Books: 1993)
46	.	^ Sowell, T. Education: Assumptions versus History, (Hoover Institution: 1986)
47	.	^ John U. Ogbu, Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003)
48	.	^ Sowell, Ethnic America, 120-207.
49	.	^ Sowell, Ethnic America, p. 120-207
50	.	^ Sowell, Ethnic America, Basic Books: 1981, p. 120-207)
51	.	^ Sowell, Thomas, Pink and Brown People and Other Controversial Essays. 1981. Hoover Institution Press. Quoted in William Vesterman, 1994. Reading and Writing Short Arguments. pp. 167-169
52	.	^ Sowell, 2004. Affirmative Action Around the World, pp 115-147
53	.	^ ^a ^b Sowell, 2004. Affirmative Action Around the World, pp 115-147
54	.	^ Sowell, Ethnic America, op. cit.
55	.	^ Robert J. Nash “A Neo-essentialist Diatribe Against American Education,” Journal of Teacher Education, March–April 1995, Vol 46, no 2, pp. 150-155
56	.	^ Knowledge and Decisions, p. 383

....
..

Ancient Egypt: an advanced civilization created by tropical peoples

2011-04-08T20:42:00.012-04:00

1) Southern Egypt, from which the genesis of Ancient Egypt civilization sprang, lies in the tropical zone, from the Tropics of Cancer to Capricorn with the Tropic of cancer bisecting Southern Egypt at 23°26'N 25°0'E. The rest of Egypt is very similar, and is placed by scholars in the immediately adjacent subtropical or arid tropic zone, NOT the cold-climate zones of Europe or Asia.(Thompson and Perry, 1997; Griffiths, 1976, Troll and Pfaffen 1964, Koppen-Geiger classification 2006)

2) The peoples of ancient Egypt, in the aforementioned tropical and semi-tropical/arid tropic zones, show the clear limb proportion characteristics of tropically adapted people, and MORE closely resemble other tropically adapted Africans on the continent, than Europeans or Middle Easterners.(Raxter and Ruff 2008, Zakrewski 2003, 2007; Holliday et al, 2003, Kemp, 2005)

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3) Undermining claims of cold-climate or skin color primacy for civilization, the great ancient Nile Valley civilization arose from the 'darker' more tropical south, NOT the cold climate or cool climate Mediterranean, Europe or Asia.(Clark, 1982; Shaw 1976, 2003; Bard, 2004; Vogel, 1997; Kemp 2005)

4) The ancient Egyptians in their tropical and sub-tropical/arid tropic environment, did not need cold climate people to develop their distinct culture. Several strands of culture from religion to material living put the Egyptians closer to nearby Africans than to cold-climate Mediterraneans, Europeans or Asiatics.(Keita, 1996, 2004; Yurco 1989, 1996; Williams, 1980; Britannia 1984; Wilkinson 1999; Wendorf, 2001)
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5) European/Asiatic cold climate or light skin inspiration was unneeded by the tropically adapted Africans of ancient Egypt. They peopled the Nile Valley from the Sahara and the Sudan, and ancient Egypt is part of a tropical African lineage. Indigenous development sprang from a long tradition going back deep into the Sahara and the Sudan.(Lovell, 1999; Lefkowitz, 1993, 1996; Keita 1993, Irish 2006)

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6) European/Asiatic cold climate or light skin inspiration was unneeded by the tropically adapted Africans of ancient Egypt. DNA studies show the Egyptians link with other Africans via Haplogroup "E" to a much greater extent than cold climate Mediterraneans, Europeans or Middle easterners.(Keita 2004, 2008; Richards 2003; Battaglia, 2008; Cruciani 2007; Lucotte 2003; Stevanovitch et al 2004)

7) African people have a range of physical variation and don't need any inspiration or mixes from cold-climate/light skinned Europeans or Asiatics to explain why. Features like narrow noses, thin lips, height etc are all indigenous to Africa. Africa has both the highest phenotypic diversity and the highest genetic diversity in the world and don’t need cold-climate/light skin inspiration for that established fact. All cold-climate/light skinned Europeans and Asiatics are SUBSETS of original African diversity. Modern DNA studies find even though some African peoples look different, they are genetically related through the PN2 transition clade of the Y-chromosome. Thus light-skinned African Libyans and dark-skinned Zulus are all genetically related Africans, even though they don't look exactly the same.(Keita 2004; Tishkoff 2002, Ely et al, 2006, Stevanovitch 2004)

8) African peoples are the most diverse in the world whether analyzed by DNA or skeletal or cranial methods. The peoples of the Nile Valley vary but they are still related. The people most related ethnically to the ancient Egyptians are other Africans like Nubians not cold-climate/light skinned Europeans or Asiatics.(Keita 1996; Rethelford, 2001; Bianchi 2004, Yurco 1989; Godde 2009)

9) Not needing cold-climate/slight-skinned inspiration, the peoples of ancient Egypt are more closely linked with fellow tropical Africans in terms of cranial studies than with Europeans or Asiatics. Analysis of skeletal and cranial remains reveals that the ancient Egyptians of the early Dynastic and pre-Dynastic phases, link closer to nearby Saharan, Sudanic and East African populations than Mediterranean and Middle Eastern peoples. Greeks, Romans, Hyskos, Arabs and others were to appear later in Egyptian history. Craniometric studies generally place ancient Upper Egyptian populations closer to the range of tropical Africans in the Nile Valley and East Africa than to Mediterraneans, or Middle Easterners.(Keita 1990, 1993, 1996, 2004; Hiernaux 1975; Froment 2002; Kemp 2005)

10) Comparatively recent (in evolutionary terms) Europeans and Asiatics LOOKED LIKE tropical Africans with dark skin and other features, before cold-climate adaptation changed them. Light skin color is a RECENT development for Europeans and Asiatics. The foundations of civilization in terms of key animal and plant domesticates, and associated technology in Europe and Asia were thus laid by these dark-skinned migrants from Africa, who resembled today's Africans, undermining claims of the efficacy of white skin in laying the basic foundations or in building advanced civilizations such as that built by the tropically adapted peoples of the Nile Valley.(Jablonski 2000; Brace 2005; Hanihara 1996; Rethelford 2000)

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DETAILS
1) Fact#1: Southern Egypt, from which the genesis of Ancient Egypt civilization sprang, lies in the tropical zone, from the Tropics of Cancer to Capricorn. The rest of Egypt lies in the subtropical or arid tropic zone, NOT the cold-climate zones of Europe or Asia.
The subtropics are the geographical and climatic zone of the Earth immediately north and south of the tropical zone, which is bounded by the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, at latitudes 23.5°N and 23.5°S. The term "subtropical" describes the climatic region found adjacent to the tropics, usually between 20 and 40 degrees of latitude in both hemispheres. Egypt is also assigned to the subtropics or the arid tropics by modern climatologists. (See: Russell D. Thompson, Allen Howard Perry (1997) Applied climatology: principles and practice. Routhledge: pg 179.; See also Applied Climatology: An Introduction by John F. Griffiths. Oxford University Press. 1976 pg 22)

2) Fact#2: The peoples of ancient Egypt, in the aforementioned tropical and semi-tropical/arid tropic zones show clear limb proportion characteristics of tropically adapted people, and MORE closely resemble other tropically adapted Africans on the continent, than Europeans or Middle Easterners.

In short, the ancient Egyptians have tropically adapted body plans not the body plans of cold adapted Europeans or Asiatics. Quotes by credible mainstream scholars:

----- The very distinctive tropical adaptation of the Egyptians - termed 'super negroid' because of its clarity:
[quote]
"The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the “super-Negroid” body plan described by Robins (1983).. This pattern is supported by Figure 7 (a plot of population mean femoral and tibial lengths; data from Ruff, 1994), which indicates that the Egyptians generally have tropical body plans. Of the Egyptian samples, only the Badarian and Early Dynastic period populations have shorter tibiae than predicted from femoral length. Despite these differences, all samples lie relatively clustered together as compared to the other populations."
--(Zakrzewski, S.R. (2003). "Variation in ancient Egyptian stature and body proportions". American Journal of Physical Anthropology 121 (3): 219-229.
------- Northern Egypt near the Mediterranean shows the same pattern- limb length data puts its peoples closer to tropically adapted Africans that cold climate Europeans
"..sample populations available from northern Egypt from before the 1st Dynasty (Merimda, Maadi and Wadi Digla) turn out to be significantly different from sample populations from early Palestine and Byblos, suggesting a lack of common ancestors over a long time. If there was a south-north cline variation along the Nile valley it did not, from this limited evidence, continue smoothly on into southern Palestine. The limb-length proportions of males from the Egyptian sites group them with Africans rather than with Europeans." (Barry Kemp, "Ancient Egypt Anatomy of a Civilisation. (2005) Routledge. p. 52-60)
------- Comparisons of ancient Egyptians, US blacks and us whites put the Egyptians closer to blacks because of the tropical adaptations
[quote]
"Intralimb (crural and brachial) indices are significantly higher in ancient Egyptians than in American Whites (except crural index among females), i.e., Egyptians have relatively longer distal segments (Table 4). Intralimb indices are not significantly different between Egyptians and American Blacks... Many of those who have studied ancient Egyptians have commented on their characteristically ‘‘tropical’’ or ‘‘African’’ body plan (Warren, 1897; Masali, 1972; Robins, 1983; Robins and Shute, 1983, 1984, 1986; Zakrzewski, 2003). Egyptians also fall within the range of modern African populations (Ruff and Walker, 1993).. brachial indices are definitely more ‘‘African’’).. In terms of femoral and tibial length to total skeletal height proportions, we found that ancient Egyptians are significantly different from US Blacks, although still closer to Blacks than to Whites.
Comparisons of linear body proportions of Old Kingdom and non-Old Kingdom period individuals, and workers and high officials in our sample found no statistically significant differences among them. Zakrzewski (2003) also found little evidence for differences in linear body proportions of Egyptians over a wider temporal range. In general, recent studies of skeletal variation among ancient Egyptians support scenarios of biological continuity through time. Irish (2006) analyzed quantitative and qualitative dental traits of 996 Egyptians from Neolithic through Roman periods, reporting the presence of a few outliers but concluding that the dental samples appear to be largely homogeneous and that the affinities observed indicate overall biological uniformity and continuity from Predynastic through Dynastic and Post dynastic periods.
Zakrzewski (2007) provided a comprehensive summary of previous Egyptian craniometric studies and examined Egyptian crania from six time periods. She found that the earlier samples were relatively more homogeneous in comparison to the later groups. However, overall results indicated genetic continuity over the Egyptian Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods, albeit with a high level of genetic diversity within the population, suggesting an indigenous process of state formation. "
("Stature estimation in ancient Egyptians: A new technique based on anatomical reconstruction of stature." Michelle H. Raxter, Christopher B. Ruff, Ayman Azab, Moushira Erfan, Muhammad Soliman, Aly El-Sawaf, (Am J Phys Anthropol. 2008, Jun;136(2):147-55
------- Older limb studies find the same- tropically adapted Blacks are closer to ancient Egyptians than whites:
[quote]
"An attempt has been made to estimate male and female Egyptian stature from long bone length using Trotter & Gleser negro stature formulae, previous work by the authors having shown that these rather than white formulae give more consistent results with male dynastic material... When consistency has been achieved in this way, Predynastic proportions are founded to be such that distal segments of the limbs are even longer in relation to the proximal segments than they are in modern negroes. Such proportions are termed "super-negroid"...
Robins (1983) and Robins & Shute (1983) have shown that more consistent results are obtained from ancient Egyptian male skeletons if Trotter & Gleser formulae for negro are used, rather than those for whites which have always been applied in the past. .. their physical proportions were more like modern negroes than those of modern whites, with limbs that were relatively long compared with the trunk, and distal segments that were long compared with the proximal segments. If ancient Egyptian males had what may be termed negroid proportions, it seems reasonable that females did likewise."
(Robins G, Shute CCD. 1986. Predynastic Egyptian stature and physical proportions. Hum Evol 1:313–324. Ruff CB. 1994.)
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[img]http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/raxterrufftrinkhauscombo.jpg[/img]
Egyptians have tropical body plans as expected for groups evolving/living in tropical environments. these tropical body plans put them closer to fellow Africans than cold-climate Mediterraneans, Europeans or Asiatics.

3) Fact#3: Undermining claims of cold-climate or skin color primacy for civilization, the great ancient Nile Valley civilization arose from the 'darker' more tropical south, NOT the cold climate or cool climate Mediterranean, Europe or Asia.

Quotes by credible mainstream scholars:
~~~~~
"While communities such as Ma'adi appear to have played an important role in entrepots through which goods and ideas form south-west Asia filtered into the Nile Valley in later prehistoric times, the main cultural and political tradition that gave rise to the cultural pattern of Early Dynastic Egypt is to be found not in the north but in the south.":
The Cambridge History of Africa: Volume 1, From the Earliest Times to c. 500 BC, (Cambridge University Press: 1982), Edited by J. Desmond Clark pp. 500-509
~~~~~
"..the early cultures of Merimde, the Fayum, Badari Naqada I and II are essentially African and early African social customs and religious beliefs were the root and foundation of the ancient Egyptian way of life."
(Source: Shaw, Thurston (1976) Changes in African Archaeology in the Last Forty Years in African Studies since 1945. p. 156-68. London.)
"What is truly unique about this state is the integration of rule over an extensive geographic region, in contrast to other contemporaneous Near Easter polities in Nubia, Mesopotamia, Palestine and the Levant. Present evidence suggests that the state which emerged by the First Dynasty had its roots in the Nagada culture of Upper Egypt, where grave types, pottery and artifacts demonstrate an evolution of form from the Predynastic to the First Dynasty, This cannot be demonstrated for the material culture of Lower Egypt, which was eventually displaced by that which originated in Upper Egypt. Hierarchical society with much social and economic differentiation, as symbolized in the Nagada II cemeteries of Upper Egypt, does not seem to have been present, then, in Lower Egypt, a fact which supports an Upper Egyptian origin for the unified state. Thus archaeological evidence cannot support earlier theories that the founders of Egyptian civilization were an invading Dynastic race from the east.."
"Egyptian contact in the 4th millennium B.C. with SW Asia is undeniable, but the effect of this contact on state formation is Egypt is less clear... The unified state which emerged in Egypt in the 3rd millennium B.C. however, was unlike the polities in Mesopotamia, the Levant, northern Syria, or Early Bronze Age Palestine- in sociopolitical organization, material culture, and belief system. There was undoubtedly heightened commercial contact with SW Asia in the 4th millennium B.C., but the Early Dynastic state which emerged in Egypt is unique and religious in character."
(Bard, Kathryn A. 1994 The Egyptian Predynastic: A Review of the Evidence. Journal of Field Archaeology 21(3):265-288.)
~~~~
"From Petrie onwards, it was regularly suggested that despite the evidence of Predynastic cultures, Egyptian civilization of the 1st Dynasty appeared suddenly and must therefore have been introduced by an invading foreign 'race'. Since the 1970s however, excavations at Abydos and Hierakonpolis have clearly demonstrated the indigenous, Upper Egyptian roots of early civilization in Egypt."
(Ian Shaw ed. (2003) The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt By Ian Shaw. Oxford University Press, page 40-63)
~~~~~~~
"..sample populations available from northern Egypt from before the 1st Dynasty (Merimda, Maadi and Wadi Digla) turn out to be significantly different from sample populations from early Palestine and Byblos, suggesting a lack of common ancestors over a long time. If there was a south-north cline variation along the Nile valley it did not, from this limited evidence, continue smoothly on into southern Palestine. The limb-length proportions of males from the Egyptian sites group them with Africans rather than with Europeans."
(Barry Kemp, "Ancient Egypt Anatomy of a Civilisation. (2005) Routledge. p. 52-60)
~~~~~
"Populations and cultures now found south of the desert roamed far to the north. The culture of Upper Egypt, which became dynastic Egyptian civilization, could fairly be called a Sudanese transplant."(Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa: Their Interaction. Encyclopedia of Pre-colonial Africa, by Joseph O. Vogel, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California (1997), pp. 465-472 )

http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/forgottenoriginals1.jpg
Genesis of ancient Egyptian civilization in the 'darker' tropical south.

[img]http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/nilevalleytimeline2.jpg[/img]
The genesis of Egyptian civilization was in the 'darker' topical south not the north, the Mediterranean, Europe or Asia
4) Fact#4: The ancient Egyptians in their tropical and sub-tropical/arid tropic environment, did not need cold climate people to develop their distinct culture. Several strands of culture from religion to material living put the ancient Egyptians closer to nearby Africans than to cold-climate Mediterraneans, Europeans or Asiatics.
A 1996 collection of art and material culture for example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, also highlights several cultural links between the Nile Valley peoples, and demonstrates that they were part of a larger indigenous African context, with local variation. The exhibit suggests 8 common areas of interchange, similarity and linkage, grouping artifacts according to such themes as: Mother and child figures, Headrests, Depictions of humans, Ancestor worship and divine kingship, Animal Deities and symbols, Masking, Body art and Circumcision and male initiation (Egypt in Africa, 1996, Theodore Celenko (ed), Curator, Indianapolis Museum of Art). Other detailed studies confirm the same pattern of indigenous African development, as shown below.
[quotes from credible scholars]
------- Ancient Egyptian religion closer to the religion of African regions than to Mesopotamia, Europe or the Middle East
QUOTE(s):
Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 6: "Egyptian Religion" , pg 506-508
"A large number of gods go back to prehistoric times. The images of a cow and star goddess (Hathor), the falcon (Horus), and the human-shaped figures of the fertility god (Min) can be traced back to that period. Some rites, such as the "running of the Apis-bull," the "hoeing of the ground," and other fertility and hunting rites (e.g., the hippopotamus hunt) presumably date from early times.. Connections with the religions in southwest Asia cannot be traced with certainty."
"It is doubtful whether Osiris can be regarded as equal to Tammuz or Adonis, or whether Hathor is related to the "Great Mother." There are closer relations with northeast African religions. The numerous animal cults (especially bovine cults and panther gods) and details of ritual dresses (animal tails, masks, grass aprons, etc) probably are of African origin. The kinship in particular shows some African elements, such as the king as the head ritualist (i.e., medicine man), the limitations and renewal of the reign (jubilees, regicide), and the position of the king's mother (a matriarchal element). Some of them can be found among the Ethiopians in Napata and Meroe, others among the Prenilotic tribes (Shilluk)."
(Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 6: "Egyptian Religion" , pg 506-508)
------- Credible scholarship shows cultural similarities between ancient Egypt and the rest of Africa, contradicting claims of Middle Eastern inspiration.
* Specific central African tool designs found at the well known Naqada, Badari and Fayum archaeological sites in Egypt (de Heinzelin 1962, Arkell and Ucko, 1956 et al). Shaw (1976) states that "the early cultures of Merimde, the Fayum, Badari Naqada I and II are essentially African and early African social customs and religious beliefs were the root and foundation of the ancient Egyptian way of life."
* Pottery evidence first seen in the Saharan Highlands then spreading to the Nile Valley (Flight 1973).
Art motifs of Saharan rock paintings showing similarities to those in pharaonic art. A number of scholars suggest that these earlier artistic styles influenced later pharaonic art via Saharans leaving drier areas and moving into the Nile Valley taking their art styles with them (Mori 1964, Blanc 1964, et al)
* Earlier pioneering mummification outside Egypt. The oldest mummy in Africa is of a black Saharan child (Donadoni 1964, Blanc 1964) Frankfort (1956) suggests that it is thus possible to understand the pharaonic worldview by reference to the religious beliefs of these earlier African precursors. Attempts to suggest the root of such practices are due to Caucasoid civilizers from elsewhere are thus contradicted by the data on the ground.
* Several cultural practices of Egypt show strong similarities to an African totemic clan base. Childe (1969, 1978), Aldred (1978) and Strouhal (1971) demonstrate linkages with several African practices such as divine kingship and the king as divine rainmaker.
* Physical similarities of the early Nile valley populations with that of tropical Africans. Such connections are demonstrated in the work of numerous scholars such as Thompson and Randall Mclver 1905, Falkenburger 1947, and Strouhal 1971. The distance diagrams of Mukherjee, Rao and Trevor (1955) place the ancient Badarians genetically near 'black' tribes such as the Ashanti and the Taita. See also the "Issues of lumping under Mediterranean clusters" section above for similar older analyses.
* Serological (blood) evidence of genetic linkages. Paoli 1972 for example found a significant resemblance between ABO frequencies of dynastic Egyptians and the black northern Haratin who are held to be the probable descendants of the original Saharans (Hiernaux, 1975).
* Language similarities which include several hundred roots ascribable to African elements (UNESCO 1974)
* Ancient Egyptian origin stories ascribing origins of the gods and their ancestors to African locations to the south and west of Egypt (Davidson 1959, White 1970).
quote: "It may be noted that the ancient Egyptians themselves appear to have been convinced that their place of origin was African rather than Asian. They made continued reference to the land of Punt as their homeland." --(White, Jon Manchip., Ancient Egypt: Its Culture and History (Dover Publications; New Ed edition, June 1, 1970), p. 141.
* Advanced state building and political unity in Nubia, including writing, administrative apparatus and insignia some 300 years before dynastic Egypt, and the long demonstrated interchange between Nubia and Egypt (Williams 1980)
* Newer studies (Wendorf 2001, Wilkinson 1999, et al.) confirm these older analyses. Excavations from Nabta Playa, located about 100km west of Abu Simbel for example, suggest that the Neolithic inhabitants of the region were migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa, based on cultural similarities and social complexity which is thought to be reflective of Egypt's Old Kingdom
* Other scholars (Wilkinson 1999) present similar material and cultural evidence- including similarities between Predynastic Egypt and traditional African cattle-culture, typical of Southern Sudanese and East African pastoralists of today, and various cultural and artistic data such as iconography on rock art found in both Egypt and in the Sudan.

[img]http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/egyotinafrica1.jpg[/img]
Several strands of culture from religion to material living put the ancient Egyptians closer to nearby Africans than to cold-climate Mediterraneans, Europeans or Asiatics.

5) Fact#5. European/Asiatic cold climate or light skin inspiration was unneeded by the tropically adapted Africans of ancient Egypt. They peopled the Nile Valley from the Sahara, and ancient Egypt is part of a tropical African lineage. Indigenous development sprang from a long tradition going back deep into the Sahara and the Sudan.
[quotes by credible mainstream scholars, including Mary Lefkowitz:]
------- The tropical African lineage of ancient Egyptians
"There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa.. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas."
and
"[research] must be placed in the context of hypotheses informed by archaeological, linguistic, geographic and other data. In such contexts, the physical anthropological evidence indicates that early Nile Valley populations can be identified as part of an African lineage, but exhibiting local variation.
--("Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999). pp 328-332)
----- Afrocentric critic Mary Lefkowitz says the Egypt was peopled by people from sub-Saharan Africa, not cold-climate Europeans or Middle Easterners.
"Recent work on skeletons and DNA suggests that the people who settled in the Nile valley, like all of humankind, came from somewhere south of the Sahara; they were not (as some nineteenth-century scholars had supposed) invaders from the North. See Bruce G. Trigger, "The Rise of Civilization in Egypt," Cambridge History of Africa (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982), vol I, pp 489-90; S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54."
(Mary Lefkowitz (1997). Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History. Basic Books. pg 242)
------- In Black Athena Revisited, Lefkowitz finds similarity between Egyptians and Sudanics and recommends the work of conservative anthropologist Nancy Lovell for more research on the subject.
Quote:
"not surprisingly, the Egyptian skulls were not very distance from the Jebel Moya [a Neolithic site in the southern Sudan] skulls, but were much more distance from all others, including those from West Africa. Such a study suggests a closer genetic affinity between peoples in Egypt and the northern Sudan, which were close geographically and are known to have had considerable cultural contact throughout prehistory and pharaonic history... Clearly more analyses of the physical remains of ancient Egyptians need to be done using current techniques, such as those of Nancy Lovell at the University of Alberta is using in her work.."
(- Mary Lefkowitz, "Black Athena Revisited. pp. 105-106)
------- Lefkowitz cites Keita 1993 in Not Out of Africa. Here is Keita on the Jebel Moya studies:
"Overall, when the Egyptian crania are evaluated in a Near Eastern (Lachish) versus African (Kerma, Jebel Moya, Ashanti) context) the affinity is with the Africans. The Sudan and Palestine are the most appropriate comparative regions which would have 'donated' people, along with the Sahara and Maghreb. Archaeology validates looking to these regions for population flow (see Hassan 1988)... Egyptian groups showed less overall affinity to Palestinian and Byzantine remains than to other African series, especially Sudanese."
S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54
------- Here is the work of the anthropologist so strongly recommended by Lefkowitz, Nancy Lovell:
"There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa.. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas."
and
"[research] must be placed in the context of hypotheses informed by archaeological, linguistic, geographic and other data. In such contexts, the physical anthropological evidence indicates that early Nile Valley populations can be identified as part of an African lineage, but exhibiting local variation.
-- ("Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999). pp 328-332)
The same Nancy Lovell recommended by Lefkowitz studied dental traits among some high status persons of the key Egyptian Naqada group and found that they resembled the peoples of Nubia.
"A biological affinities study based on frequencies of cranial nonmetric traits in skeletal samples from three cemeteries at Predynastic Naqada, Egypt, confirms the results of a recent nonmetric dental morphological analysis. Both cranial and dental traits analyses indicate that the individuals buried in a cemetery characterized archaeologically as high status are significantly different from individuals buried in two other, apparently non-elite cemeteries and that the non-elite samples are not significantly different from each other. A comparison with neighboring Nile Valley skeletal samples suggests that the high status cemetery represents an endogamous ruling or elite segment of the local population at Naqada, which is more closely related to populations in northern Nubia than to neighboring populations in southern Egypt."
(T. Prowse, and N. Lovell "Concordance of cranial and dental morphological traits and evidence for endogamy in ancient Egypt". American journal of physical anthropology. 1996, vol. 101, no2, pp. 237-246 (2 p.1/4)
[img]http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/lefkowitzdebunk.jpg[/img]
6) Fact#6: European/Asiatic cold climate or light skin inspiration was unneeded by the tropically adapted Africans of ancient Egypt. DNA studies show the Egyptians link with other Africans via Haplogroup "E" to a much greater extent than cold climate Mediterraneans, Europeans or Middle easterners.
[img]http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/keita2008m35[/img]
Most studies of Egyptian Y-DNA find lineages closer to African populations than Europe or the Middle East.
[img]http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/hapelight[/img]
Haplogroup E- uniting numerous African peoples
[img]http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/richards2003hape[/img]
Other studies show that DNA Haplogroup 'E' links overwhelmingly links Ethiopians, West Africans and South Africans together
[img]http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/em78distrib2[/img]
The predominant Haplogroup in Egypt is 'E" - which has the highest frequency in Africa
[img]http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/ychromoegypt1[/img]
Y-chromosome data in Egypt, linking more with African groups than Europeans or Middle Easterners
7) Fact #7: African people have a range of physical variation and don't need any inspiration or mixes from cold-climate/light skinned Europeans or Asiatics to explain why. Features like narrow noses, thin lips, height etc are all indigenous to Africa. Africa has both the highest phenotypic diversity and the highest genetic diversity in the world and don’t need cold-climate/light skin inspiration for that established fact. All cold-climate/light skinned Europeans and Asiatics are SUBSETS of original African diversity. Modern DNA studies find even though some African peoples look different, they are genetically related through the PN2 transition clade of the Y-chromosome. Thus light-skinned African Libyans and dark-skinned Zulus are all genetically related Africans, even though they don't look exactly the same.
"But the Y-chromosome clade defined by the PN2 transition (PN2/M35, PN2/M2) shatters the boundaries of phenotypically defined races and true breeding populations across a great geographical expanse. African peoples with a range of skin colors, hair forms and physiognomies have substantial percentages of males whose Y chromosomes form closely related clades with each other, but not with others who are phenotypically similar. The individuals in the morphologically or geographically defined 'races' are not characterized by 'private' distinct lineages restricted to each of them." (S O Y Keita, R A Kittles, et al. "Conceptualizing human variation," Nature Genetics 36, S17 - S20 (2004)
"Recall that the Horn–Nile Valley crania show, as a group, the largest overlap with other regions. A review of the recent literature indicates that there are male lineage ties between African peoples who have been traditionally labeled as being ‘‘racially’’ different, with ‘‘racially’’ implying an ontologically deep divide. The PN2 transition, a Y chromosome marker, defines a lineage (within the YAPþ derived haplogroup E or III) that emerged in Africa probably before the last glacial maximum, but after the migration of modern humans from Africa (see Semino et al., 2004). This mutation forms a clade that has two daughter subclades (defined by the biallelic markers M35/215 (or 215/M35) and M2) that unites numerous phenotypically variant African populations from the supra-Saharan, Saharan, and sub-Saharan regions.."
(S.O.Y Keita. Exploring northeast African metric craniofacial variation at the individual level: A comparative study using principal component analysis. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 16:679–689, 2004.)
"Africa contains tremendous cultural, linguistic and genetic diversity, and has more than 2,000 distinct ethnic groups and languages.. Studies using mitochondrial (mt)DNA and nuclear DNA markers consistently indicate that Africa is the most genetically diverse region of the world." (Tishkoff SA, Williams SM., Genetic analysis of African populations: human evolution and complex disease. Nature Reviews Genetics. 2002 Aug (8):611-21.)
------- DNA of some modern Egyptians found a genetic ancestral heritage to East Africa:
"The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) diversity of 58 individuals from Upper Egypt, more than half (34 individuals) from Gurna, whose population has an ancient cultural history, were studied by sequencing the control-region and screening diagnostic RFLP markers. This sedentary population presented similarities to the Ethiopian population by the L1 and L2 macrohaplogroup frequency (20.6%), by the West Eurasian component (defined by haplogroups H to K and T to X) and particularly by a high frequency (17.6%) of haplogroup M1. We statistically and phylogenetically analysed and compared the Gurna population with other Egyptian, Near East and sub-Saharan Africa populations; AMOVA and Minimum Spanning Network analysis showed that the Gurna population was not isolated from neighbouring populations. Our results suggest that the Gurna population has conserved the trace of an ancestral genetic structure from an ancestral East African population, characterized by a high M1 haplogroup frequency. The current structure of the Egyptian population may be the result of further influence of neighbouring populations on this ancestral population."
(Stevanovitch A, Gilles A, Bouzaid E, et al. (2004) Mitochondrial DNA sequence diversity in a sedentary population from Egypt.Ann Hum Genet. 68(Pt 1):23-39.)
------- Tishkoff et al- Africa has highest genetic diversity
"Africa contains tremendous cultural, linguistic and genetic diversity, and has more than 2,000 distinct ethnic groups and languages (see online link to Ethnologue). Studies using mitochondrial (mt)DNA and nuclear DNA markers consistently indicate that Africa is the most genetically diverse region of the world(TABLE 1).However, most studies report only a few markers in divergent African populations, which makes it difficult to draw general conclusions about the levels and patterns of genetic diversity in these populations (FIG. 1). Because genetic studies have been biased towards more economically developed African countries that have key research or medical centres, populations from more underdeveloped or politically unstable regions of Africa remain under sampled (FIG. 1). Historically, human population genetic studies have relied on one or two African populations as being representative of African diversity, but recent studies show extensive genetic variation among even geographically close African populations, which indicates that there is not a single ‘representative’ African population."
-- Tishkoff NATURE REVIEWS | GENETICS VOLUME 3 | AUGUST 2002
------- Bogus "racial split" theories debunked
"Genetic studies that attempt to recover the biological history of the species have generally found that there is a split between their restricted African samples and "the rest of the world." These approaches conceptualize human population history as a series of bifurcations with each node being relatively uniform. The "Africans" usually used are either the short statured Aka or Mbuti, Khoisan speakers, or West African stereotype s, in keeping with a socially, not scientifically constructed concept of African. Studies using individuals as the unit of analysis evince a different pattern. A select subset of Africans called the "group of 49" forms a unit versus the rest of humankind. However the latter individuals ("rest of humankind") also includes non-East African sub-Saharans. Hence there is no "racial" split. As has been stated, the idea that human variation can be described as being structured by subspecies(races) that are treated as lineages is fundamentally false. In actuality, also, although averages are used, the gene studies usually give us histories that are not necessarily the same as population histories."
Writing African History Chapter 4, Physical Anthropology and African History, Shomarka Keita University of Rochester Press p.134
------- Continent wide African DNA linkages
"The most extensive pan-African haplotype (16189 16192 16223 16278 16294 16309 16390) is in the L2a1 haplogroup. This sequence is observed in West Africa among the Malinke, Wolof, and others; in North Africa among the Maure, Hausa, Fulbe, and others; in Central Africa among the Bamileke, Fali, and others; in South Africa among the Khoisan family including the Khwe and Bantu speakers; and in East Africa among the Kikuyu. Closely related variants are observed among the Tuareg in North and West Africa and among the East African Dinka and Somali."
(-- Bert Ely , Jamie Lee Wilson , Fatimah Jackson and Bruce A Jackson. (2006). African-American mitochondrial DNAs often match mtDNAs found in multiple African ethnic groups. BMC Biology 2006, 4:34)
-------- The PN2 transition:
"It is of interest that the M35 and M2 lineages are united by a mutation – the PN2 transition. This PN2 defined clade originated in East Africa, where various populations have a notable frequency of its underived state. This would suggest that an ancient population in East Africa, or more correctly its males, form the basis of the ancestors of all African upper Paleolithic populations – and their subsequent descendants in the present day."
(--Bengtson, John D. (ed.), In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory: Essays in the four fields of anthropology. 2008. John Benjamins Publishing: pp. 3–16)

8) Fact #8: African peoples are the most diverse in the world whether analyzed by DNA or skeletal or cranial methods. The peoples of the Nile Valley vary but they are still related. The people most related ethnically to the ancient Egyptians are other Africans like Nubians not cold-climate/light skinned Europeans or Asiatics.

------- African people, particularly SUB-SAHARAN Africans, vary the most in how they look, more so than any other population in the world.
"Estimates of genetic diversity in major geographic regions are frequently made by pooling all individuals into regional aggregates. This method can potentially bias results if there are differences in population substructure within regions, since increased variation among local populations could inflate regional diversity. A preferred method of estimating regional diversity is to compute the mean diversity within local populations. Both methods are applied to a global sample of craniometric data consisting of 57 measurements taken on 1734 crania from 18 local populations in six geographic regions: sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, East Asia, Australasia, Polynesia, and the Americas. Each region is represented by three local populations. Both methods for estimating regional diversity show sub-Saharan Africa to have the highest levels of phenotypic variation, consistent with many genetic studies."
(Relethford, John "Global Analysis of Regional Differences in Craniometric Diversity and Population Substructure". Human Biology - Volume 73, Number 5, October 2001, pp. 629-636)
"The living peoples of the African continent are diverse in facial characteristics, stature, skin color, hair form, genetics, and other characteristics. No one set of characteristics is more African than another. Variability is also found in "sub-Saharan" Africa, to which the word "Africa" is sometimes erroneously restricted. There is a problem with definitions. Sometimes Africa is defined using cultural factors, like language, that exclude developments that clearly arose in Africa. For example, sometimes even the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea) is excluded because of geography and language and the fact that some of its peoples have narrow noses and faces.
However, the Horn is at the same latitude as Nigeria, and its languages are African. The latitude of 15 degree passes through Timbuktu, surely in "sub-Saharan Africa," as well as Khartoum in Sudan; both are north of the Horn. Another false idea is that supra-Saharan and Saharan Africa were peopled after the emergence of "Europeans" or Near Easterners by populations coming from outside Africa. Hence, the ancient Egyptians in some writings have been de-Africanized. These ideas, which limit the definition of Africa and Africans, are rooted in racism and earlier, erroneous "scientific" approaches." (S. Keita, "The Diversity of Indigenous Africans," in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Clenko, Editor (1996), pp. 104-105. [10])

[img]http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/nubianegyptianlinks.jpg[/img]
Nubian - Egyptian links. Debunking "racial conflict" claims about the 2 peoples. Nubians were the closest people ethnically to the ancient Egyptians, sharing a common culture, intermarrying and having the same pharaonic structure. All this was millennia BEFORE the 25th Dynasty.
[img]http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/godde2009nubianstudy.jpg[/img]
New study finds Nubians the closest people ethnically to the Egyptians

9) Fact #9: Not needing cold-climate/slight-skinned inspiration, the peoples of ancient Egypt are more closely linked with fellow tropical Africans in terms of cranial studies than with Europeans or Asiatics. Analysis of skeletal and cranial remains reveals that the ancient Egyptians of the early Dynastic and pre-Dynastic phases, link closer to nearby Saharan, Sudanic and East African populations than Mediterranean and Middle Eastern peoples. Greeks, Romans, Hyskos, Arabs and others were to appear later in Egyptian history. Craniometric studies generally place ancient Upper Egyptian populations closer to the range of tropical Africans in the Nile Valley and East Africa than to Mediterraneans, or Middle Easterners.

QUOTE(s):
S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54
"Overall, when the Egyptian crania are evaluated in a Near Eastern (Lachish) versus African (Kerma, Kebel Moya, Ashanti) context) the affinity is with the Africans. The Sudan and Palestine are the most appropriate comparative regions which would have 'donated' people, along with the Sahara and Maghreb. Archaeology validates looking to these regions for population flow (see Hassan 1988)... Egyptian groups showed less overall affinity to Palestinian and Byzantine remains than to other African series, especially Sudanese." (Keita 1993)
"When the unlikely relationships [Indian matches] and eliminated, the Egyptian series are more similar overall to other African series than to European or Near Eastern (Byzantine or Palestinian) series." (Keita 1993)
"Populations and cultures now found south of the desert roamed far to the north. The culture of Upper Egypt, which became dynastic Egyptian civilization, could fairly be called a Sudanese transplant."(Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa: Their Interaction. Encyclopedia of Pre-colonial Africa, by Joseph O. Vogel, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California (1997), pp. 465-472 )
"Analysis of crania is the traditional approach to assessing ancient population origins, relationships, and diversity. In studies based on anatomical traits and measurements of crania, similarities have been found between Nile Valley crania from 30,000, 20,000 and 12,000 years ago and various African remains from more recent times (see Thoma 1984; Brauer and Rimbach 1990; Angel and Kelley 1986; Keita 1993). Studies of crania from southern Predynastic Egypt, from the formative period (4000-3100 B.C.), show them usually to be more similar to the crania of ancient Nubians, Kushites, Saharans, or modern groups from the Horn of Africa than to those of dynastic northern Egyptians or ancient or modern southern Europeans."
(S. O. Y and A.J. Boyce, "The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians", in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed), Indiana University Press, 1996, pp. 20-33)
"There is no archaeological, linguistic, or historical data which indicate a European or Asiatic invasion of, or migration to, the Nile Valley during First Dynasty times. Previous concepts about the origin of the First Dynasty Egyptians as being somehow external to the Nile Valley or less native are not supported by archaeology... In summary, the Abydos First Dynasty royal tomb contents reveal a notable craniometric heterogeneity. Southerners predominate. (Kieta, S. (1992) Further Studies of Crania From Ancient Northern Africa: An Analysis of Crania From First Dynasty Egyptian Tombs, Using Multiple Discriminant Functions. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 87:245-254)"
"The predominant craniometric pattern in the Abydos royal tombs is 'southern' (tropical African variant), and this is consistent with what would be expected based on the literature and other results (Keita, 1990). This pattern is seen in both group and unknown analyses... Archaeology and history seem to provide the most parsimonious explanation for the variation in the royal tombs at Abydos.. Tomb design suggests the presence of northerners in the south in late Nakada times (Hoffman, 1988) when the unification probably took place. Delta names are attached to some of the tombs at Abydos (Gardiner, 1961; Yurco, 1990, personal communication), thus perhaps supporting Petrie's (1939) and Gardiner's contention that north-south marriages were undertaken to legitimize the hegemony of the south. The courtiers of northern elites would have accompanied them.
Given all of the above, it is probably not possible to view the Abydos royal tomb sample as representative of the general southern Upper Egyptian population of the time. Southern elites and/or their descendants eventually came to be buried in the north (Hoffman, 1988). Hence early Second Dynasty kings and Djoser (Dynasty 111) (Hayes, 1953) and his descendants are not buried in Abydos. Petrie (1939) states that the Third Dynasty, buried in the north, was of Sudanese origin, but southern Egypt is equally likely. This perhaps explains Harris and Weeks' (1973) suggested findings of southern morphologies in some Old Kingdom Giza remains, also verified in portraiture (Drake, 1987). Further study would be required to ascertain trends in the general population of both regions. The strong Sudanese affinity noted in the unknown analyses may reflect the Nubian interactions with upper Egypt in Predynastic times prior to Egyptian unification (Williams, 1980,1986)..."
(S. Keita (1992) Further Studies of Crania From Ancient Northern Africa: An Analysis of Crania From First Dynasty Egyptian Tombs, Using Multiple Discriminant Functions. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 87:245-254)
------- Early Dynastic Periods.
"When the Elephantine results were added to a broader pooling of the physical characteristics drawn from a wide geographic region which includes Africa, the Mediterranean and the Near East quite strong affinities emerge between Elephantine and populations from Nubia, supporting a strong south-north cline."
(Barry Kemp. (2006) Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization. p. 54)
Gene flow into the Nubian area during the Neolithic was not from reputed "wandering Caucasoids" but from tropical, Sub-Saharan types.
"Prior to the Neolithic, populations of the Nile Valley in Nubia are very robust, and, because of a gap in the fossil record, it is difficult to connect them to later populations. Some have postulated a local evolution, due to diet change, while others postulated migrations, especially from the Sahara area. But between 5000 and 1000 BC, many cemeteries have supplied a large amount of skeletons, and the anatomical characters of Nubian populations are easier to follow-up. Twenty-seven archaeological samples (4 at 5000 BC, 5 at 4000 BC, 10 at 3000 BC, 3 at 2000 BC, 5 at 1000 BC), and 10 craniofacial measurements, have been considered. While cerebral skull is fairly stable, facial skull displays several regular modifications, and specially a reduction of facial and nasal heights, a broadening of the nose, and an increase of prognathism, while bizygomatic breadth is unchanged. These features illustrate a trend towards a growing resemblance with populations of Sub-Saharan Africa living in wet environments. However, paleoclimatological studies show that Nubia experienced an increasing aridification during that period. It is then unlikely that such a morphological change could be related to any local adaptive evolution to environment. Random drift is also unlikely, because the anatomical trend is relatively uniform during these millennia. It then seems more plausible that these changes correspond to the increasing presence of Southern populations migrating northward."
-- Froment, A. (2002) Morphological micro-evolution of Nubian Populations from, A-Group to Christian Epochs: gene flow, not local adaptation. Am J Phys Anthropol [Suppl] 34:72.
[img]http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/cranialcoldclimatedebunk.jpg[/img]
Numerous cranial studies put ancient Egyptians closer to other Africans like Nubians than cold-climate/light-skinned Europeans or Asiatics.

10) Fact#10: Comparatively recent (in evolutionary terms) Europeans and Asiatics LOOKED LIKE tropical Africans with dark skin and other features before cold-climate adaptation changed them. Light skin color is a recent development for Europeans and Asiatics. The key foundations of civilization in terms of key animal and plant domesticates and associated technoloigy in Europe and Asia were thus laid by these dark-skinned migrants from Africa, undermining claims of the efficiacy of white skin in laying the basic foundations or in building advanced civilizations such as that built by the tropically adapted peoples of the Nile Valley.

Early West Asians for example, as recently as the Iranian Bronze Age looked like Africans (Hanihara 1996). Civilizations built around this period was by these dark-skinned tropically adapted types who looked like Africans not the much touted white Nordics or high yellow East Asians. Early European Neolithics migrated from Africa via the Mideast and also looked like tropical Africans, again undermining claims of the "need" for the much touted white Nordics or high yellow East Asians. Brace 2005 shows ancient Egyptians link with Africans such as Nubians and Somalians first. Older Europeans look like Africans hence they tend to resemble various Africans studied in Africa. Nevertheless Europe owes a debt to these African migrants via the Middle East that brought key technologies, animal and plant domesticates. The Natufians of the Mideast, the Israel area in particular show some sub-Saharan African elements and are key transmitters of Neolithic technology.

Human skin color also varies in Africa as part of the INDIGENOUS makeup without the "need" for the touted white Nordics or high-yeller Asiatics. [quote]
Human skin color diversity is highest in sub-Saharan African populations.
[quote:]
"Previous studies of genetic and craniometric traits have found higher levels of within-population diversity in sub-Saharan Africa compared to other geographic regions. This study examines regional differences in within-population diversity of human skin color. Published data on skin reflectance were collected for 98 male samples from eight geographic regions: sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, Europe, West Asia, Southwest Asia, South Asia, Australasia, and the New World. Regional differences in local within-population diversity were examined using two measures of variability: the sample variance and the sample coefficient of variation. For both measures, the average level of within-population diversity is higher in sub-Saharan Africa than in other geographic regions. This difference persists even after adjusting for a correlation between within-population diversity and distance from the equator. Though affected by natural selection, skin color variation shows the same pattern of higher African diversity as found with other traits."
-- Relethford JH.(2000). Human skin color diversity is highest in sub-Saharan African populations. Hum Biol. 2000 Oct;72(5):773-80.)
---Afrocentric critic Brace debunks "Caucasoid race mix" claims for Horn of Africa peoples and notes tropically adapted peoples are usually dark-skinned and with limb elongation.
"In this regard it is interesting to note that limb proportions of Predynastic Naqada people in Upper Egypt are reported to be "Super-Negroid," meaning that the distal segments are elongated in the fashion of tropical Africans.....skin color intensification and distal limb elongation are apparent wherever people have been long-term residents of the tropics."
"An earlier generation of anthropologists tried to explain face form in the Horn of Africa as the result of admixture from hypothetical “wandering Caucasoids,” (Adams, 1967, 1979; MacGaffey, 1966; Seligman, 1913, 1915, 1934), but that explanation founders on the paradox of why that supposedly potent “Caucasoid” people contributed a dominant quantity of genes for nose and face form but none for skin color or limb proportions. It makes far better sense to regard the adaptively significant features seen in the Horn of Africa as solely an in situ response on the part of separate adaptive traits to the selective forces present in the hot dry tropics of eastern Africa. From the observation that 12,000 years was not a long enough period of time to produce any noticeable variation in pigment by latitude in the New World and that 50,000 years has been barely long enough to produce the beginnings of a gradation in Australia (Brace, 1993a), one would have to argue that the inhabitants of the Upper Nile and the East Horn of Africa have been equatorial for many tens of thousands of years."
(-- C.L. Brace, 1993. Clines and clusters..")
------- Modern studies show diversity in how people look is heavily based on distance from sub-Saharan Africa, not merely climate. In genetically diverse Africa, broad-nosed people live on the cool or cold mountain slopes of East Africa or the hot, dry Sahara, and narrow-nosed peoples like many Fulani like in the wet tropics of West Africa. Yellowish-skinned San tribes live in the hot zones of Southern Africa.
"The relative importance of ancient demography and climate in determining worldwide patterns of human within-population phenotypic diversity is still open to debate. Several morphometric traits have been argued to be under selection by climatic factors, but it is unclear whether climate affects the global decline in morphological diversity with increasing geographical distance from sub-Saharan Africa. Using a large database of male and female skull measurements, we apply an explicit framework to quantify the relative role of climate and distance from Africa. We show that distance from sub-Saharan Africa is the sole determinant of human within-population phenotypic diversity, while climate plays no role. By selecting the most informative set of traits, it was possible to explain over half of the worldwide variation in phenotypic diversity. These results mirror those previously obtained for genetic markers and show that ‘bones and molecules’ are in perfect agreement for humans." (Distance from Africa, not climate, explains within-population phenotypic diversity in humans. (2008) by: Lia Betti, François Balloux, William Amos, Tsunehiko Hanihara, Andrea Manica, Proceedings B: Biological Sciences, 2008/12/02)
-------Early West Asians looked like Africans. Thus any migrants from West Asia to Africa in thos period would be by people who look like Africans to begin with. Brace 2005 shows this as to Europeans. Hanihara 1996, demonstrates this below as to West Asians (i.e. 'Middle easterners'). quote:
"Distance analysis and factor analysis, based on Q-mode correlation coefficients, were applied to 23 craniofacial measurements in 1,802 recent and prehistoric crania from major geographical areas of the Old World. The major findings are as follows: 1) Australians show closer similarities to African populations than to Melanesians. 2) Recent Europeans align with East Asians, and early West Asians resemble Africans. 3) The Asian population complex with regional difference between northern and southern members is manifest. 4) Clinal variations of craniofacial features can be detected in the Afro-European region on the one hand, and Australasian and East Asian region on the other hand. 5) The craniofacial variations of major geographical groups are not necessarily consistent with their geographical distribution pattern. This may be a sign that the evolutionary divergence in craniofacial shape among recent populations of different geographical areas is of a highly limited degree. Taking all of these into account, a single origin for anatomically modern humans is the most parsimonious interpretation of the craniofacial variations presented in this study."
(Hanihara T. Comparison of craniofacial features of major human groups. Am J Phys Anthropol. 1996 Mar;99(3):389-412.)

LINKS

http://nilevalleypeoples.blogspot.com/2009/11/dna-shows-egyptians-group-with-african.html

http://nilevalleypeoples.blogspot.com/2009/11/2009-study-finds-nubians-were.html

------------------------------------------

Link to research papers and articles: (http://wysinger.homestead.com/keita.html)

Link to current African DNA research: (http://exploring-africa.blogspot.com/)

Google Search- other data
http://knol.google.com/k/mainstream-academic-research/peopling-of-the-nile-valley/3q8x30897t2cs/2#

End-finis

Can Khadaffi win? The mobile warfare approach, counterpunching, urban defence and other considerations

2011-03-31T23:55:00.035-04:00

Postscript- August 2011:
Since the original post, Ghadaffi's forces have folded quickly, without much of a fight, - a far cry from the hard-nosed NVA and VC regulars, and guerrilla auxiliaries that defeated the US in Vietnam. In the movie "Apocalypse Now" - Marlon Brando, playing the renegade Colonel Kurtz asserted that if only he had 10 divisions of NVA, he could more than hold his own and achieve victory in his war. Ghadaffi did not have such hard-nosed men willing to fight, but they too, did not have hard-nosed leaders on the order of Vo Nguyen Giap, Pham van Dong or Ho Chi Minh. And so it goes.

PAVN: Masters of the art...

I shed no tears for Libyan dictator Muamar Ghadaffi. His regime has long been associated with terrorism, brutality and interference in the affairs of other African countries. Over the years, numerous African leaders have been opposed to him and his expansionist agenda. In the 1980s, he received his just desserts. His modern force of almost 20,000 troops, well equipped with fighter jets and bombers, tanks, artillery, etc was ignominiously routed by the lightly-armed tribal fighters of Chad. You could say he has a long, bloody history. But some on the web seem to think he can be deposed in a quickie 3 week campaign. I have seen almost a euphoria on certain military enthusiast websites, captivated by high tech smart bombs and Tomahawk missiles, usually predicting quick victory over the architect of Lockerbie. This post shows however that such euphoria is misguided. If resolute enough Ghadaffi can drag out his end game for a much longer time than the projected "shake and bake" victory.

Mobile warfare across a wide front can certainly help Khadaffi and his loyalist forces. One blog gives a good summary of Mao's mobile warfare approach as applying to the Libyan loyalist effort. See Colonel Ghadaffi goes Mao. But there is an additional element needed if the loyalists are to stay in business. Moammar's forces cannot simply fight mobile warfare all the time, because the Coalition may be putting additional Special Forces on the ground to more closely coordinate air strikes - forces that will have their own assets on call like attack helicopters. Despite the UN resolution which orders an arms embargo to Libya, the Coalition is already arming and organizing the rebels to serve as a proxy ground force, and supplying free logistical support, and flying artillery. The game will be Coalition proxies fingering loyalist targets, then pulling back and letting air power pound them, before moving forward to mop up.

The Colonel's loyalist forces will thus need to prepare for detailed urban warfare as well, using dense urban areas to provide shelter in defence. Resolute urban defense can stymie the coalition assault not only because of the risk of civilian casualties, but built-up areas, including multistory buildings will provide much needed defensive strongpoints, and pivots for counterattacks. Strong urban positions will also allow rebel attacks to be seen off.

Thus while mobile warfare might take precedence, urban defense will be needed as well. The two work together in integrated fashion.

The vigorous counterattacking style is still relevant

Six possible elements of combat and organization

With hard-hitting mobile counterattacks, smaller formations, wide-area defense in built-up civilian/urban areas, increased manpower, and resolution by Khadaffi, his sons, or hand-picked successors, it is possible that the Colonel can hold out a long time. He of course may decide to exit, but he has enough resources in place to fight on for quite a while, IF willing to pay the price. It could take regular Western ground forces to make any real headway if loyalists dig in for a long fight, and use effective methods. More effective rebel proxies are another option- if they begin to deploy heavy weapons like tanks and towed/self-propelled artillery, if supplemented by support teams of Western Special Forces troops and/or mercenaries directing air strikes at ground level, or helping to operate the heavy iron. Against this reconfiguration of foes, there are six elements to a possible"long march" strategy for Khadaffi:

1) Lighten heavy units: Khadaffi's forces were in the beginning too heavy, with long logistical tails for fuel, food and munitions, that made for easy air targets. There is some evidence that this shortcoming is being addressed. They need to be lightened further and become more self-sufficient. The rebels will try to pin them in place with peripheral engagements, then pull back and wait for Coalition planes to clean up. The Colonel needs to lighten and disperse his forces more and stay mobile. Heavy weapons like tanks need to be dispersed and concealed, and used for quick strikes. Task and raiding forces need to be formed - specific material, equipment and manpower packages depending on the mission. Ambush squads groups for example can be deployed to delay or even rout rebel advances on open ground. There is no need for lumbering companies or battalions to be exposed.

2) Continually attack the rebels using small task forces that can get close, strike quickly then disperse, not massed formation with vulnerable logistics. The rebels should not be allowed time to consolidate, but attacked over a wide area. Their standard tactic will be to identify loyalist targets then pull back and call in Coalition airstrikes. Moammar's troops need to follow them closely, "hanging on the belt" like PAVN as noted above. In open desert terrain such tactics would be suicidal. But in built-up urban areas, they are more feasible. Loyalist troops must also counterattack wherever possible as swiftly as possible rather than massing for easy aerial decimation. Rommel's Infantry Attacks is another classic statement of this "counter-punching" approach. PAVN in Vietnam is more recent. "Hugging" tactics do not necessarily mean always rushing out to force the desired degree of proximity. 'Hugging" can also be achieved by patiently waiting in ambush.

Use small, mobile, agile task forces, infiltrating forward in civilian guise if needed, that can hit hard then disperse to reform. PAVN used the usual raiding parties and also sapper formations to do this, especially after Tet. Such smaller formations will be less vulnerable to airpower and create continual chaos in the ranks of the coalition proxies. The "hugging" tactics mentioned above will help reduce the effectiveness of US/European airpower. Continual attack does not mean stereotyped set pieces, or reckless commitments in the open field that draw crushing airpower, but a mix of flexible planned actions when the mix of advantages are right. It also means that the rebels will be constantly calling for Coalition "bailout" help, at the time and place of the loyalists' own choosing, tying up airpower in unimportant places. Small task forces, in civilian guise if needed will also be essential to hunting down Special Forces troops assisting the rebels. Such troops are a mortal danger to regime forces because of their capability of calling in air strikes and in training regime opponents. No sane military commander would let them operate unmolested. In Laos during the Vietnam War, PAVN did not play when such troops were in an area, and pulled out all the stops to neutralize or liquidate them.

NVA sapper at work.. smaller formations, hard hitting effect

3) Shelter in dense urban areas but use them as a maneuver base, not a static strong-point easily destroyed from the air. Embed deep in urban landscape, and always look to counterattack soon, when conditions are favorable: The Coalition proxies generally avoid combat in built up urban areas, preferring to "set up" air strikes. Nevertheless, to avoid the full brunt of that air power, the Colonel's troops will need to embed deep at times in strategic urban areas. Defenses in multistory and other civilian structures for example will be needed when gunships deploy, and will provide the necessary temporary shelter. Hardened bunkers and strong-points must also be constructed as needed. Once the opportunity presents itself, counterattack. If Coalition air strikes are heavy, again embed over a wide urban area in civilian structures to take advantage of their shelter while planning counterattacks. The urban base is a pivot, not a static point- a base for shifting men and material from to building, and built up area to built up area. Not all positions warrant the same investment of effort, and some positions may need to be abandoned as they become untenable, but they can always be re-infiltrated again as the pressure eases. Prioritization is obvious. It makes little sense to invest in a distant small town versus a medium sized city near or with an oil port.

4) Bait coalition aircraft into hazardous and/or time-consuming decoy attacks on constantly shifting, low value targets. In fighting airpower from the urban base, mobility and deception in defense will be essential. The Colonel's forces lack good anti-aircraft weapons in quantity-- like the man-portable SA-7 'Strela' that menaced so many gunships and helicopters in Vietnam, not to mention the heavier direct fire AA weapons. Still, any credible defense would not let the gunships operate unmolested. They need to be engaged with heavy small arms fire from a widely spaced variety of dug in urban positions, forcing them to fly higher, and buying time for additional tactical movement, such as the "hugging" tactics against enemy troops. This will reduce their effectiveness. In a properly layered AA defense, heavy weapons or missiles would take over at higher altitudes. Lacking these, the ground troops must pull another page from the PAVN book and set up up flak ambushes - baiting the aircraft close, concealing heavy machine guns and other assets until the very last minute, and until the bait is taken, blasting away full bore, and then relocating men and weapons to the next strongpoint to enhance survival. Infrared technology will foil some of these flak traps, and the armored A-10 'Warthog' jet will make for a short life for some defenders. But properly deployed over a wide area, they can bring some air assets down, or at the very least, decoy them on multiple wild goose chases. Over 1,800 US aircraft were lost in Vietnam combat. Over eighty (80%) of these combat losses were from heavy automatic weapons gunfire and AA cannon. Now you know why attack helicopters and A-10s, for all their gee-whiz technology, are so heavily armored. People on the ground are not playing.

Just as an infantry squad can pin down a much larger force with the proper defensive disposition, so too the gunships and helicopters can be pinned down for substantial periods on relatively low value targets. Million dollar gunships, A-10s and helicopters chasing 2-3 man teams armed with $70 rifles will have a positive diversionary effect for the loyalists over a wide area, though the 2-3 man cell may sometimes face a short-life span. In Vietnam, small groups of VC or NVA occupied large time, firepower and asset allocations, as helicopters, gunships, and air strikes "piled on" to eliminate a few men in an unimportant bunker, some of whom slipped away after all. And the loyalists will always have the option of melting away to reinfiltrate later at a more opportune time. While gunships are baited and tied up for hours clearing one city block of constantly shifting fighters, more important and more lethal strategic work can be done by loyalist forces elsewhere.

5) Blend with the masses, people's war style, refraining from counterattacks just for the sake of counterattacking. Withdraw if needed into ambushes or better tactical situations, or disperse to other urban shelter networks among the masses, and return as needed to counterpunch: Blending with the masses may seem shocking to some, but this is precisely what the rebels in Libya are doing to escape attack by regime troops. Does anyone think the Colonel's forces, likewise facing fierce attack (from the air), will angelically refrain from this option? Pious proclamations by Western leaders about "human shield tactics" also apply to their own favored rebel proxies, who are doing the exact same thing, although this is hardly pointed out by the mainstream media. The losers are civilians, as in any war.

Blending also goes hand in hand with withdrawing and returning. In Vietnam, ousting PAVN troops from one area often meant little. They bided their time and returned. A combined rebel/Coalition operation to take a town for example is not the end of the world. Defensive elements left behind can make life hazardous for Coalition ground proxies, and counterattacks by agile tasks forces can retake ground. It is not necessary for example to retake a city "officially" - just make it contested and untenable for the rebels, who will need to again call in Coalition airpower to start over from scratch with each setback. Counterattacks will depend on the tactical situation. Loyalist forces should not simply counterattack for its own sake. If for example, a street is under attack by C-130s, with nearby rebels waiting to mop up, prospects of a hugging counterattack must be weighed. If the rebels can be routed or engaged close so as to stymie air power with a fair chance of success, then loyalist forces would proceed. But if withdrawal through built-up civilian structures and rubble to another layer of urban defense is more feasible, then use this option. It may be also be better to lay low until gunships and helicopters depart while waiting in ambush for coalition proxies to emerge, before engaging them full bore. This will bring a return of air power, but the cycle can again be repeated, with opposing proxies making little overall headway despite air support on station. The picture thus is of a constantly shifting, see-saw pattern, a mix of deep defensive embedding, tactical withdrawals, counter-punches, and flexibility.

6) Seriously mobilize: Kadaffi also needs to bolster his manpower. Currently he is relying on (according to one source) about 10,000 faithful tribesmen as a core force, but this hardly seems enough. The mobile counter-attacks, wide area urban defense and enemies like C-130s will incur an increasing number of casualties. His 10,000 core fighters are backed by perhaps double that number of militia, but still more is needed. The Colonel needs to introduce conscription to create a manpower surge for the grim tasks ahead. Most of the lesser trained troops can be deployed in broad defense or extended range guerrilla activity, while the core regulars are husbanded for pivotal strong points or hard hitting counterattacks. Kadaffi also needs to mobilize whatever "fraternal assistance" he can get from other civilian nations, smuggling as much men and material as possible in under civilian guise. Just as Ho Chi Minh did not take the Americans at their word that they were exercising restraint and began total mobilization, Kadaffi too must undertake a serious mobilization of all available resources if he wants to stay in the field.

End game

Ideally, civilians are better served if local ceasefires are negotiated. But exactly how "ceasefires" will be negotiated when the 'coalition' is egging on insurgents in the civil war, and providing them with massive air support to attack beggars the imagination. It seems a very curious way to be "protecting" civilians for "humanitarian" purposes, when you are arming one set of civilians and sending them forth to kill other civilians, or conduct attacks that will get other civilians killed. In Sirte for example, there are numerous civilians that support Kadaffi. do they count for "protection" or is it only the anointed proxies of the Euro/US mission? It is clear that rebel forces have attacked, and will continue to attack and/or coerce and intimidate fellow Libyans who do not share their goals. So how does this jibe with "humanitarian" intervention? It sounds more like intervention in another civil war with "the West" backing its chosen side. The "Coalition" claim to be concerned about "making Khadaffi stop attacking civilians" is laced with sheer hypocrisy, since the Coalition is arming one set of civilians to attack another set civilians in an internal civil war.

Supposed terrorist-fighting America supporting Islamist terrorists in Libya? Then there is the well documented presence of Al Qaeda and Islamists in rebel ranks. Ghadaffi
in earlier years actually put down revolts by such Islamists in Benghazi. Now here they are at it again, in the mix. Ghadaffi has a legitimate security interest in preventing the resurgence of such Islamists. And in Iraq, Libyans were the second most represented nationality attacking Americans, and the single most represented nationality who state a desire to be suicide bombers. So we have the contradictory picture of an American president who claims he is fighting Islamic terrorism, yet is supporting Islamists with free arms, training, supplies and air support, Islamists documented as American killers, and who would like nothing better than to continue to kill Americans elsewhere. Can anyone say confusion? I knew you could...
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/0330/Qaddafi-claims-Al-Qaeda-could-overrun-Libya.-Could-it

Plenty of weaknesses plus internal defection threats, but does this mean the Colonel will fold quickly? On the negative side, Kadaffi, lacks troops of PAVN's hard-nosed quality and organization, the flat desert terrain is working against him, he has little diplomatic support, relatively limited manpower, and he does not have fresh resources flowing in from generous outside allies. He is handicapped too in being forbidden from negotiating his own reform and concession package on the ground with his own people, by the Coalition. Already an old man, Moammar may find it all a bit too much and throw in the towel. In the short run he can hold off the Coalition and its ground proxies for years, assuming the proxies continue in their current weak state and his ruling clique does not buckle under pressure and defect or attempt an internal coup. Personally for Kadaffi, an extended horizon in the political sense may be problematic because all European and US prestige is on the line for his overthrow. And it would be feasible for defectors or an internal coup to split his forces and bring him down. So at some medium term or short-term point, he will exit. A mass murderer, and long-lived dictator, some may well say, good riddance. But it is by no means clear that the Euro/US coalition can force him
to go quickly. With patient tactics he can hang on a long time.

Hollow "victory" even if the Colonel leaves? 'Victory' can be gained in Obama's War on the Colonel's exit, or will it? The 'Coalition' may find victory a bitter taste. A Khadaffi exit may be merely an opening stage. A guerrilla insurgency as in Iraq may well develop, sucking the US into yet another costly Mid East venture. 'Humanitarian objectives" may be nothing of the sort as continued fighting in years to come causes a much larger number of civilian casualties than if the Colonel was allowed to put down his internal rebellion. And Al Qaeda will have gained fresh supplies, arms and manpower and a better base in Libya to attack Americans thanks to the "Coalition". Naturally, terrorists will be seeking revenge on Western targets too in the years to come, bringing fresh attacks to America and Europe. The Libyan intervention may well set off a chain of unpredictable and unpleasant events in the future. Some such as commentator Frank Gaffney, argues that it serves as a future template for the liquidation of Israel, with the Arab League and European Union engineering a "solution" to Middle East problems. Gaffney speculates all this happening under an Obama Administration- a highly dubious notion, but in 30-40 years, his scenario may be on target. Who knows? That though, is another story altogether.

BOTTOM LINE: based on prior performance, Libyan troops do not inspire confidence. They were routed in Chad by lightly armed tribal fighters despite possessing the only jet fighters, tanks and heavy artillery on the field of battle. This post summarizes elements that MIGHT be used to improve that performance. Whether it will come to pass remains unknown.

Nose shape heavily determined by climate according to scientists

2011-03-31T00:06:00.027-04:00

Tropical climates are extremely diverse – from humid rainforest, to higher altitude cold zones, to arid deserts with sharply dropping night temperatures. Scientists find that nose width is correlated with climate – with narrower noses seen in dry, conditions such as desert areas in eastern parts of Africa.

QUOTE: "Tropical climates range from oppressively hot and humid lowlands to cold, snow-covered mountains, from hot, dry deserts to cold, dry deserts, from extreme seasonal variability of precipitation to nearly constant year-round conditions."
--Huston. M. (1994) Biological diversity: the coexistence of species on changing landscapes Cambridge university Press. p 498

QUOTE: "An important function of the nose is to warm and moisten inspired air. When air is exhaled, some heat and moisture are lost to the surroundings. The longer the nasal passage, the more efficient the nose is for warming and moistening incoming air and also the less heat and moisture are lost on exhalation. A narrow, high nose gives a longer nasal passage than a low, broad nose. Therefore, in cold or dry conditions, a high, narrow nose is preferable for warming and moistening air before it reaches the lings, and for reducing loss of heat and moisture in expired air. In hot, humid conditions a low, broad nose serves to dissipate heat (Wolpoff 1968; Franciscis and Long 1991)... The pattern of variation in nasal index corresponds very broadly to that expected if nasal form is indeed an adaptation to regional climate. The highest nasal index values, representing broad, low noses, tend to be those of populations in humid tropical regions of Africa and south-east Asia. Populations with low mean nasal indices (high, narrow noses) tend to be found in the cold, northern latitudes, and also in arid regions, such as the desert areas of east Africa and the Arabian peninsula.
..Davies found the nasal index taken in the living was closely correlated with skeletal nasal index. This suggests that there should likewise be an association between skeletal nasal index and climatic zone, and indeed other workers have found this to be the case.“
-- Mays. S. (2010). The Archaeology of Human Bones. Pg 100-101

2011 study finds significant correlation between nasal shape and climate. Dry areas are common in tropical zone micro-climates such as deserts.

QUOTE: “"The nasal cavity is essential for humidifying and warming the air before it reaches the sensitive lungs. Because humans inhabit environments that can be seen as extreme from the perspective of respiratory function, nasal cavity shape is expected to show climatic adaptation.. We report significant correlations between nasal cavity shape and climatic variables of both temperature and humidity. Variation in nasal cavity shape is correlated with a cline from cold-dry climates to hot-humid climates, with a separate temperature and vapor pressure effect. "
-- Noback, M. et al. (2011) Climate-related variation of the human nasal cavity. AJPA, 145: 4. 599-614

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2011-03-31T00:06:00.001-04:00

Bogus ancient "race wars" in the Nile Valley

2011-03-30T23:56:00.009-04:00

Applying a consistent 'race' model that interprets war between Egyptians and Nubians as 'racial' the Egyptians also pursued 'racial' wars against whites from the Middle East.

THE DISCOURSE OF AMEN-RA, LORD OF THRONES on defeating the "whites".

Thou hast struck off the heads of the Asiatics, and their children cannot escape from thee. Every land illuminated by thy diadem is encircled by thy might; and in all the zone of the heavens there is not a rebel to rise up against thee. The enemy bring in their tribute on their backs, prostrating themselves before thee, their limbs trembling and their hearts burned up within them."

Campaign against "white" Mittani in parts of Lebanon:

"He is a king valiant ... Naharin which its lord had deserted out of fear ... I hacked up its towns and villages and I set fire to them ... I carried off their inhabitants ... also their herds of cattle ... I felled all their plantations and their fruit trees ...I had many vessels ... built on the mountains of God's Land in the neighborhood of the Lady of Byblos ... then on that mountain of Naharin, my Majesty erected my stela, carved out of the mountain on the western side of the Euphrates.."

Conquest against and tribute from "white" Palestine:

"Tribute of the princes of Retenu, who came to do obeisance ... to the souls of his majesty... Now every harbor at which his majesty arrived was supplied with loaves and with assorted loaves, with oil, incense, wine, f[ruit] ---- abundant were they beyond everything ...

Tribute from 'white' Lebanon:

The chieftains, lord of Lebanon, construct the royal ships in order that people may sail south in them to bring all the marvels of the "Garden" to the palace. LPH. ... The chieftains of Retjenu (Retenu) who drag the flagpoles by means of oxen to the shore, it is they who come with their dues to the place where his majesty is, to the Residence in ...... bearing all the fine products brought as marvels of the south and being taxed for tribute annually as (with) all bondsmen of his Majesty."

Operations against more 'white' 'Troglodytes':

"Then my Majesty made them take their oaths of allegiance as follows: never again shall we do anything evil against Menkheperre (another name for Thutmose III), may he live forever ...
Then my Majesty had them set free on the road to their cities*). They went off on donkeys for I had seized their chariotry. I captured their inhabitants for Egypt and their property likewise." [W. Helck transl. by B. Cummings (1982), `Urkunden der 18. Dynastie', `Egyptian Historical Records of the Later 18th Dynasty']

"His majesty proceeded northward, to overthrow the Asiatics (Mntyw-Stt). His majesty arrived at a district, Sekmem (Skmm) was its name. His majesty led the good way in proceeding to the palace of `Life, Prosperity, and Health (L.P.H.,' when Sekmen had fallen, together with Retenu (Rtnw) the wretched, while I was acting as rearguard." [Breasted, `Records', Vol. I, Sec. 680]
Time of Seti the Great - Presentation of Syrian Prisoners and Precious Vessels to Amon

"Smiting the Troglodytes, beating down the Asiatics (Mn·t·yw), making his boundary as far as the `Horns of the Earth', as far as the marshes of Naharin (N-h-r-n)." [Ibid., Vol. III, Sec. 118;]

"Slaying of the Asiatic Troglodytes (Ynw-Mn·t·yw [Menate, Manasseh]), all inaccessible countries, all lands, the Fenkhu of the marshes of Asia, the Great Bend of the sea (w'd-wr)."

Booty seized from "white" Caananites:

".... 340 living prisoners; 83 hands; 2,401 mares; 191 foals; 6 stallions; ... young ...; a chariot, wrought with gold, (its) pole of gold, belonging to the chief of `M-k-ty' (as the land around Jerusalem was called); .... 892 chariots of his wretched army; total, 924 (chariots); a beautiful suit of bronze armor, belonging to the chief of Jerusalem; .... 200 suits of armor, belonging to his wretched army; 502 bows; 7 poles of (mry) wood, wrought with silver, belonging to the tent of that foe. Behold, the army of his majesty took ...., 297 ...., 1,929 large cattle, 2,000 small cattle, 20500 white small cattle." [JBRE, `Records', Vol. II, Sec. 435; See also the following sections.]

Tribute from "white" Assur/Assyria
"The tribute of the chief of Assur (Ys-sw-r): genuine lapis lazuli, a large block, making 20 deben, 9 kidet; genuine lapis lazuli, 2 blocks; total, 3; and pieces, [making] 30 deben; total, 50 deben and 9 kidet; fine lapis lazuli from Babylon (Bb-r); vessels of Assur of hrrt- stone in colors, ---- very many." "Tribute of the chief of Assur: horses ---. A ---- of skin of the M-h-w as the [protection] of a chariot, of the finest of --- wood; 190(+x) wagons --- --- wood, nhb wood, 343 pieces, carob wood, 50 pieces; nby and k'nk wood, 206 pieces; olive oil, ------.." [BREASTED, Vol. II, Sec. 446, 449]

"Whites" put to slave labor in Egypt.

from Project Guttenberg full text of:
A HISTORY OF EGYPT FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PERSIAN CONQUEST
BY JAMES HENRY BREASTED,
II, 760-1, 773. 2 II, 761.

Inscription
"the Asiatics of all countries came with bowed head, doing obeisance to the fame of his majesty."

book text:

"Thutmose's war-galleys moored in the harbour of the town; but at this time not merely the iceaUh of Asia was unloaded from the ships; the Asiatics themselves, bound one to another in long lines, were led down the gang planks to begin a life of slave- labour for the Pharaoh (Fig. 119). They wore long matted beards, an abomination to the Egyptians ; their hair hung in heavy black masses upon their shoulders, and they were clad in gaily coloured woolen stuffs, such as the Egyptian, spotless in his white linen robe, would never put on his body.

Their arms were pinioned behind them at the elbows or crossed over their heads and lashed together ; or, again, their hands were thrust through odd pointed ovals of wood, which served as hand-cuffs. The women carried their children slung in a fold of the mantle over their shoulders. With their strange speech and uncouth postures the poor wretches were the subject of jibe and merriment on the part of the multitude ; while the artists of the time could never forbear caricaturing them. Many of them found their way into the houses of the Pharaoh's favourites, and his generals were liberally rewarded with gifts of such slaves; but the larger number were immediately employed on the temple estates, the Pharaoh's domains, or in the construction of his great monuments and buildings."

------------
Ancient Egyptians warn against cowardly, treacherous "whites" comparing them to destructive thieves and reptiles.

"The Instruction for King, Merikare takes a similar tone for peoples in the north (Lichtheim 1973: 10404):

Lo the miserable Asiatic (white),
He is wretched because of the place he's in:
Short of water, bare of wood,
Its paths are many and painful because of mountains.
He does not dwell in one place,
Food propels his legs,
He fights since the time of Horus..
He does not announce the day of combat,
Like a thief who darts about a group.."

"Asiatics (whites) are both cowardly and pitiful, leading a marginal existence, constantly fighting but with nothing ever settled. They are also sly and ultimately treacherous, attacking without warning. This passage characterizes Asiatics as both primitive and threatening.. In this case, the passage reflects Egypt's combination of colonial domination and outright military conflict.."

Merikare goes on (Lichtheim 1976: 103-104)

"The Asiatic is a crocodile on its shore
It snatches from a lonely road,
It cannot seize a populous town."

"Along the same lines, the Prophecy of Neferti (c. 1950 BC) portrays Asiatic immigrants as a flock of rapacious birds descending on Egypt, taking advantage of civil wars of the First Intermediate Period (c. 2150 - 2050 BC) to infiltrate parts of the rich Egyptian delta (Lichtheim 1973: 141):

A strange bird will breed in the delta marsh,
having made its nest besides the people..
All happiness is vanished,
The land is bowed down in distress,
Owing to those feeders,
Asiatics who roam the land..

--Stuart Tyson Smith. (2003) Wretched Kush: ethnic identities and boundaries in Egypt's Nubian empire. Routledge, pp. 28-31

RAMESES II. SLAYING THE "whites" BEFORE RA, THE TUTELARY DEITY OF THE GREAT TEMPLE OF ABÛ-SIMBEL..

Related pages:
Egypt- a tropical civilization
http://knol.google.com/k/mainstream-academic-research/tropical-peoples-developed-one-of-the/3q8x30897t2cs/30#

Mesopotamia- an arid tropic civilization
http://knol.google.com/k/mainstream-academic-research/mesopotamia-a-tropical-arid-tropics/3q8x30897t2cs/31#

Bogus "race" wars
http://knol.google.com/k/mainstream-academic-research/-/3q8x30897t2cs/35#view

Ancient Egypt: one of the world's most advanced civilizations- created by tropical peoples

2010-09-06T23:55:00.004-04:00

1) Fact#1: Southern Egypt, from which the genesis of Ancient Egypt civilization sprang, lies in the tropical zone, from the Tropics of Cancer to Capricorn. The rest of Egypt lies in the subtropical or arid tropic zone, NOT the cold-climate zones of Europe or Asia.

The subtropics are the geographical and climatic zone of the Earth immediately north and south of the tropical zone, which is bounded by the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, at latitudes 23.5°N and 23.5°S. The term "subtropical" describes the climatic region found adjacent to the tropics, usually between 20 and 40 degrees of latitude in both hemispheres. Egypt is also assigned to the subtropics or the arid tropics by modern climatologists. (See: Russell D. Thompson, Allen Howard Perry (1997) Applied climatology: principles and practice. Routhledge: pg 179.; See also Applied Climatology: An Introduction by John F. Griffiths. Oxford University Press. 1976 pg 22)

2) Fact#2: The peoples of ancient Egypt, in the aforementioned tropical and semi-tropical/arid tropic zones show clear limb proportion characteristics of tropically adapted people, and MORE closely resemble other tropically adapted Africans on the continent, than Europeans or Middle Easterners.

In short, the ancient Egyptians have tropically adapted body plans not the body plans of cold adapted Europeans or Asiatics. Quotes by credible mainstream scholars:

----- The very distinctive tropical adaptation of the Egyptians - termed 'super negroid' because of its clarity:

[quote]

"The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the “super-Negroid” body plan described by Robins (1983).. This pattern is supported by Figure 7 (a plot of population mean femoral and tibial lengths; data from Ruff, 1994), which indicates that the Egyptians generally have tropical body plans. Of the Egyptian samples, only the Badarian and Early Dynastic period populations have shorter tibiae than predicted from femoral length. Despite these differences, all samples lie relatively clustered together as compared to the other populations."

--(Zakrzewski, S.R. (2003). "Variation in ancient Egyptian stature and body proportions". American Journal of Physical Anthropology 121 (3): 219-229.

------- Northern Egypt near the Mediterranean shows the same pattern- limb length data puts its peoples closer to tropically adapted Africans that cold climate Europeans

"..sample populations available from northern Egypt from before the 1st Dynasty (Merimda, Maadi and Wadi Digla) turn out to be significantly different from sample populations from early Palestine and Byblos, suggesting a lack of common ancestors over a long time. If there was a south-north cline variation along the Nile valley it did not, from this limited evidence, continue smoothly on into southern Palestine. The limb-length proportions of males from the Egyptian sites group them with Africans rather than with Europeans." (Barry Kemp, "Ancient Egypt Anatomy of a Civilisation. (2005) Routledge. p. 52-60)

------- Comparisons of ancient Egyptians, US blacks and us whites put the Egyptians closer to blacks because of the tropical adaptations

[quote]

"Intralimb (crural and brachial) indices are significantly higher in ancient Egyptians than in American Whites (except crural index among females), i.e., Egyptians have relatively longer distal segments (Table 4). Intralimb indices are not significantly different between Egyptians and American Blacks... Many of those who have studied ancient Egyptians have commented on their characteristically ‘‘tropical’’ or ‘‘African’’ body plan (Warren, 1897; Masali, 1972; Robins, 1983; Robins and Shute, 1983, 1984, 1986; Zakrzewski, 2003). Egyptians also fall within the range of modern African populations (Ruff and Walker, 1993).. brachial indices are definitely more ‘‘African’’).. In terms of femoral and tibial length to total skeletal height proportions, we found that ancient Egyptians are significantly different from US Blacks, although still closer to Blacks than to Whites.

Comparisons of linear body proportions of Old Kingdom and non-Old Kingdom period individuals, and workers and high officials in our sample found no statistically significant differences among them. Zakrzewski (2003) also found little evidence for differences in linear body proportions of Egyptians over a wider temporal range. In general, recent studies of skeletal variation among ancient Egyptians support scenarios of biological continuity through time. Irish (2006) analyzed quantitative and qualitative dental traits of 996 Egyptians from Neolithic through Roman periods, reporting the presence of a few outliers but concluding that the dental samples appear to be largely homogeneous and that the affinities observed indicate overall biological uniformity and continuity from Predynastic through Dynastic and Post dynastic periods.

Zakrzewski (2007) provided a comprehensive summary of previous Egyptian craniometric studies and examined Egyptian crania from six time periods. She found that the earlier samples were relatively more homogeneous in comparison to the later groups. However, overall results indicated genetic continuity over the Egyptian Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods, albeit with a high level of genetic diversity within the population, suggesting an indigenous process of state formation. "

("Stature estimation in ancient Egyptians: A new technique based on anatomical reconstruction of stature." Michelle H. Raxter, Christopher B. Ruff, Ayman Azab, Moushira Erfan, Muhammad Soliman, Aly El-Sawaf, (Am J Phys Anthropol. 2008, Jun;136(2):147-55

------- Older limb studies find the same- tropically adapted Blacks are closer to ancient Egyptians than whites:

[quote]

"An attempt has been made to estimate male and female Egyptian stature from long bone length using Trotter & Gleser negro stature formulae, previous work by the authors having shown that these rather than white formulae give more consistent results with male dynastic material... When consistency has been achieved in this way, Predynastic proportions are founded to be such that distal segments of the limbs are even longer in relation to the proximal segments than they are in modern negroes. Such proportions are termed "super-negroid"...

Robins (1983) and Robins & Shute (1983) have shown that more consistent results are obtained from ancient Egyptian male skeletons if Trotter & Gleser formulae for negro are used, rather than those for whites which have always been applied in the past. .. their physical proportions were more like modern negroes than those of modern whites, with limbs that were relatively long compared with the trunk, and distal segments that were long compared with the proximal segments. If ancient Egyptian males had what may be termed negroid proportions, it seems reasonable that females did likewise."

(Robins G, Shute CCD. 1986. Predynastic Egyptian stature and physical proportions. Hum Evol 1:313–324. Ruff CB. 1994.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[img]http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/raxterrufftrinkhauscombo.jpg[/img]

Egyptians have tropical body plans as expected for groups evolving/living in tropical environments. these tropical body plans put them closer to fellow Africans than cold-climate Mediterraneans, Europeans or Asiatics.

3) Fact#3: Undermining claims of cold-climate or skin color primacy for civilization, the great ancient Nile Valley civilization arose from the 'darker' more tropical south, NOT the cold climate or cool climate Mediterranean, Europe or Asia.

Quotes by credible mainstream scholars:

~~~~~

"While communities such as Ma'adi appear to have played an important role in entrepots through which goods and ideas form south-west Asia filtered into the Nile Valley in later prehistoric times, the main cultural and political tradition that gave rise to the cultural pattern of Early Dynastic Egypt is to be found not in the north but in the south.":

The Cambridge History of Africa: Volume 1, From the Earliest Times to c. 500 BC, (Cambridge University Press: 1982), Edited by J. Desmond Clark pp. 500-509

~~~~~

"..the early cultures of Merimde, the Fayum, Badari Naqada I and II are essentially African and early African social customs and religious beliefs were the root and foundation of the ancient Egyptian way of life."

(Source: Shaw, Thurston (1976) Changes in African Archaeology in the Last Forty Years in African Studies since 1945. p. 156-68. London.)

"What is truly unique about this state is the integration of rule over an extensive geographic region, in contrast to other contemporaneous Near Easter polities in Nubia, Mesopotamia, Palestine and the Levant. Present evidence suggests that the state which emerged by the First Dynasty had its roots in the Nagada culture of Upper Egypt, where grave types, pottery and artifacts demonstrate an evolution of form from the Predynastic to the First Dynasty, This cannot be demonstrated for the material culture of Lower Egypt, which was eventually displaced by that which originated in Upper Egypt. Hierarchical society with much social and economic differentiation, as symbolized in the Nagada II cemeteries of Upper Egypt, does not seem to have been present, then, in Lower Egypt, a fact which supports an Upper Egyptian origin for the unified state. Thus archaeological evidence cannot support earlier theories that the founders of Egyptian civilization were an invading Dynastic race from the east.."

"Egyptian contact in the 4th millennium B.C. with SW Asia is undeniable, but the effect of this contact on state formation is Egypt is less clear... The unified state which emerged in Egypt in the 3rd millennium B.C. however, was unlike the polities in Mesopotamia, the Levant, northern Syria, or Early Bronze Age Palestine- in sociopolitical organization, material culture, and belief system. There was undoubtedly heightened commercial contact with SW Asia in the 4th millennium B.C., but the Early Dynastic state which emerged in Egypt is unique and religious in character."

(Bard, Kathryn A. 1994 The Egyptian Predynastic: A Review of the Evidence. Journal of Field Archaeology 21(3):265-288.)

~~~~

"From Petrie onwards, it was regularly suggested that despite the evidence of Predynastic cultures, Egyptian civilization of the 1st Dynasty appeared suddenly and must therefore have been introduced by an invading foreign 'race'. Since the 1970s however, excavations at Abydos and Hierakonpolis have clearly demonstrated the indigenous, Upper Egyptian roots of early civilization in Egypt."

(Ian Shaw ed. (2003) The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt By Ian Shaw. Oxford University Press, page 40-63)

~~~~~~~

(Barry Kemp, "Ancient Egypt Anatomy of a Civilisation. (2005) Routledge. p. 52-60)

~~~~~

"Populations and cultures now found south of the desert roamed far to the north. The culture of Upper Egypt, which became dynastic Egyptian civilization, could fairly be called a Sudanese transplant."(Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa: Their Interaction. Encyclopedia of Pre-colonial Africa, by Joseph O. Vogel, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California (1997), pp. 465-472 )

http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/forgottenoriginals1.jpg
Genesis of ancient Egyptian civilization in the 'darker' tropical south.

[img]http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/nilevalleytimeline2.jpg[/img]
The genesis of Egyptian civilization was in the 'darker' topical south not the north, the Mediterranean, Europe or Asia

4) Fact#4: The ancient Egyptians in their tropical and sub-tropical/arid tropic environment, did not need cold climate people to develop their distinct culture. Several strands of culture from religion to material living put the ancient Egyptians closer to nearby Africans than to cold-climate Mediterraneans, Europeans or Asiatics.

A 1996 collection of art and material culture for example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, also highlights several cultural links between the Nile Valley peoples, and demonstrates that they were part of a larger indigenous African context, with local variation. The exhibit suggests 8 common areas of interchange, similarity and linkage, grouping artifacts according to such themes as: Mother and child figures, Headrests, Depictions of humans, Ancestor worship and divine kingship, Animal Deities and symbols, Masking, Body art and Circumcision and male initiation (Egypt in Africa, 1996, Theodore Celenko (ed), Curator, Indianapolis Museum of Art). Other detailed studies confirm the same pattern of indigenous African development, as shown below.

[quotes from credible scholars]

------- Ancient Egyptian religion closer to the religion of African regions than to Mesopotamia, Europe or the Middle East

QUOTE(s):

Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 6: "Egyptian Religion" , pg 506-508

"A large number of gods go back to prehistoric times. The images of a cow and star goddess (Hathor), the falcon (Horus), and the human-shaped figures of the fertility god (Min) can be traced back to that period. Some rites, such as the "running of the Apis-bull," the "hoeing of the ground," and other fertility and hunting rites (e.g., the hippopotamus hunt) presumably date from early times.. Connections with the religions in southwest Asia cannot be traced with certainty."

"It is doubtful whether Osiris can be regarded as equal to Tammuz or Adonis, or whether Hathor is related to the "Great Mother." There are closer relations with northeast African religions. The numerous animal cults (especially bovine cults and panther gods) and details of ritual dresses (animal tails, masks, grass aprons, etc) probably are of African origin. The kinship in particular shows some African elements, such as the king as the head ritualist (i.e., medicine man), the limitations and renewal of the reign (jubilees, regicide), and the position of the king's mother (a matriarchal element). Some of them can be found among the Ethiopians in Napata and Meroe, others among the Prenilotic tribes (Shilluk)."

(Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 6: "Egyptian Religion" , pg 506-508)

------- Credible scholarship shows cultural similarities between ancient Egypt and the rest of Africa, contradicting claims of Middle Eastern inspiration.

* Specific central African tool designs found at the well known Naqada, Badari and Fayum archaeological sites in Egypt (de Heinzelin 1962, Arkell and Ucko, 1956 et al). Shaw (1976) states that "the early cultures of Merimde, the Fayum, Badari Naqada I and II are essentially African and early African social customs and religious beliefs were the root and foundation of the ancient Egyptian way of life."

* Pottery evidence first seen in the Saharan Highlands then spreading to the Nile Valley (Flight 1973).

Art motifs of Saharan rock paintings showing similarities to those in pharaonic art. A number of scholars suggest that these earlier artistic styles influenced later pharaonic art via Saharans leaving drier areas and moving into the Nile Valley taking their art styles with them (Mori 1964, Blanc 1964, et al)

* Earlier pioneering mummification outside Egypt. The oldest mummy in Africa is of a black Saharan child (Donadoni 1964, Blanc 1964) Frankfort (1956) suggests that it is thus possible to understand the pharaonic worldview by reference to the religious beliefs of these earlier African precursors. Attempts to suggest the root of such practices are due to Caucasoid civilizers from elsewhere are thus contradicted by the data on the ground.

* Several cultural practices of Egypt show strong similarities to an African totemic clan base. Childe (1969, 1978), Aldred (1978) and Strouhal (1971) demonstrate linkages with several African practices such as divine kingship and the king as divine rainmaker.

* Physical similarities of the early Nile valley populations with that of tropical Africans. Such connections are demonstrated in the work of numerous scholars such as Thompson and Randall Mclver 1905, Falkenburger 1947, and Strouhal 1971. The distance diagrams of Mukherjee, Rao and Trevor (1955) place the ancient Badarians genetically near 'black' tribes such as the Ashanti and the Taita. See also the "Issues of lumping under Mediterranean clusters" section above for similar older analyses.

* Serological (blood) evidence of genetic linkages. Paoli 1972 for example found a significant resemblance between ABO frequencies of dynastic Egyptians and the black northern Haratin who are held to be the probable descendants of the original Saharans (Hiernaux, 1975).

* Language similarities which include several hundred roots ascribable to African elements (UNESCO 1974)

* Ancient Egyptian origin stories ascribing origins of the gods and their ancestors to African locations to the south and west of Egypt (Davidson 1959, White 1970).

quote: "It may be noted that the ancient Egyptians themselves appear to have been convinced that their place of origin was African rather than Asian. They made continued reference to the land of Punt as their homeland." --(White, Jon Manchip., Ancient Egypt: Its Culture and History (Dover Publications; New Ed edition, June 1, 1970), p. 141.

* Advanced state building and political unity in Nubia, including writing, administrative apparatus and insignia some 300 years before dynastic Egypt, and the long demonstrated interchange between Nubia and Egypt (Williams 1980)

* Newer studies (Wendorf 2001, Wilkinson 1999, et al.) confirm these older analyses. Excavations from Nabta Playa, located about 100km west of Abu Simbel for example, suggest that the Neolithic inhabitants of the region were migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa, based on cultural similarities and social complexity which is thought to be reflective of Egypt's Old Kingdom

* Other scholars (Wilkinson 1999) present similar material and cultural evidence- including similarities between Predynastic Egypt and traditional African cattle-culture, typical of Southern Sudanese and East African pastoralists of today, and various cultural and artistic data such as iconography on rock art found in both Egypt and in the Sudan.

[img]http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/egyotinafrica1.jpg[/img]

Several strands of culture from religion to material living put the ancient Egyptians closer to nearby Africans than to cold-climate Mediterraneans, Europeans or Asiatics.

5) Fact#5. European/Asiatic cold climate or light skin inspiration was unneeded by the tropically adapted Africans of ancient Egypt. They peopled the Nile Valley from the Sahara, and ancient Egypt is part of a tropical African lineage. Indigenous development sprang from a long tradition going back deep into the Sahara and the Sudan.

[quotes by credible mainstream scholars, including Mary Lefkowitz:]

------- The tropical African lineage of ancient Egyptians

"There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa.. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas."

and

"[research] must be placed in the context of hypotheses informed by archaeological, linguistic, geographic and other data. In such contexts, the physical anthropological evidence indicates that early Nile Valley populations can be identified as part of an African lineage, but exhibiting local variation.

--("Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999). pp 328-332)

----- Afrocentric critic Mary Lefkowitz says the Egypt was peopled by people from sub-Saharan Africa, not cold-climate Europeans or Middle Easterners.

"Recent work on skeletons and DNA suggests that the people who settled in the Nile valley, like all of humankind, came from somewhere south of the Sahara; they were not (as some nineteenth-century scholars had supposed) invaders from the North. See Bruce G. Trigger, "The Rise of Civilization in Egypt," Cambridge History of Africa (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982), vol I, pp 489-90; S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54."

(Mary Lefkowitz (1997). Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History. Basic Books. pg 242)

------- In Black Athena Revisited, Lefkowitz finds similarity between Egyptians and Sudanics and recommends the work of conservative anthropologist Nancy Lovell for more research on the subject.

Quote:

"not surprisingly, the Egyptian skulls were not very distance from the Jebel Moya [a Neolithic site in the southern Sudan] skulls, but were much more distance from all others, including those from West Africa. Such a study suggests a closer genetic affinity between peoples in Egypt and the northern Sudan, which were close geographically and are known to have had considerable cultural contact throughout prehistory and pharaonic history... Clearly more analyses of the physical remains of ancient Egyptians need to be done using current techniques, such as those of Nancy Lovell at the University of Alberta is using in her work.."

(- Mary Lefkowitz, "Black Athena Revisited. pp. 105-106)

------- Lefkowitz cites Keita 1993 in Not Out of Africa. Here is Keita on the Jebel Moya studies:

"Overall, when the Egyptian crania are evaluated in a Near Eastern (Lachish) versus African (Kerma, Jebel Moya, Ashanti) context) the affinity is with the Africans. The Sudan and Palestine are the most appropriate comparative regions which would have 'donated' people, along with the Sahara and Maghreb. Archaeology validates looking to these regions for population flow (see Hassan 1988)... Egyptian groups showed less overall affinity to Palestinian and Byzantine remains than to other African series, especially Sudanese."

S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54

------- Here is the work of the anthropologist so strongly recommended by Lefkowitz, Nancy Lovell:

and

-- ("Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999). pp 328-332)

The same Nancy Lovell recommended by Lefkowitz studied dental traits among some high status persons of the key Egyptian Naqada group and found that they resembled the peoples of Nubia.

"A biological affinities study based on frequencies of cranial nonmetric traits in skeletal samples from three cemeteries at Predynastic Naqada, Egypt, confirms the results of a recent nonmetric dental morphological analysis. Both cranial and dental traits analyses indicate that the individuals buried in a cemetery characterized archaeologically as high status are significantly different from individuals buried in two other, apparently non-elite cemeteries and that the non-elite samples are not significantly different from each other. A comparison with neighboring Nile Valley skeletal samples suggests that the high status cemetery represents an endogamous ruling or elite segment of the local population at Naqada, which is more closely related to populations in northern Nubia than to neighboring populations in southern Egypt."

(T. Prowse, and N. Lovell "Concordance of cranial and dental morphological traits and evidence for endogamy in ancient Egypt". American journal of physical anthropology. 1996, vol. 101, no2, pp. 237-246 (2 p.1/4)

[img]http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/lefkowitzdebunk.jpg[/img]

6) Fact#6: European/Asiatic cold climate or light skin inspiration was unneeded by the tropically adapted Africans of ancient Egypt. DNA studies show the Egyptians link with other Africans via Haplogroup "E" to a much greater extent than cold climate Mediterraneans, Europeans or Middle easterners.

[img]http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/keita2008m35[/img]

Most studies of Egyptian Y-DNA find lineages closer to African populations than Europe or the Middle East.

[img]http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/hapelight[/img]

Haplogroup E- uniting numerous African peoples

[img]http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/richards2003hape[/img]

Other studies show that DNA Haplogroup 'E' links overwhelmingly links Ethiopians, West Africans and South Africans together

[img]http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/em78distrib2[/img]

The predominant Haplogroup in Egypt is 'E" - which has the highest frequency in Africa

[img]http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/ychromoegypt1[/img]

Y-chromosome data in Egypt, linking more with African groups than Europeans or Middle Easterners

7) Fact #7: African people have a range of physical variation and don't need any inspiration or mixes from cold-climate/light skinned Europeans or Asiatics to explain why. Features like narrow noses, thin lips, height etc are all indigenous to Africa. Africa has both the highest phenotypic diversity and the highest genetic diversity in the world and don’t need cold-climate/light skin inspiration for that established fact. All cold-climate/light skinned Europeans and Asiatics are SUBSETS of original African diversity. Modern DNA studies find even though some African peoples look different, they are genetically related through the PN2 transition clade of the Y-chromosome. Thus light-skinned African Libyans and dark-skinned Zulus are all genetically related Africans, even though they don't look exactly the same.

"But the Y-chromosome clade defined by the PN2 transition (PN2/M35, PN2/M2) shatters the boundaries of phenotypically defined races and true breeding populations across a great geographical expanse. African peoples with a range of skin colors, hair forms and physiognomies have substantial percentages of males whose Y chromosomes form closely related clades with each other, but not with others who are phenotypically similar. The individuals in the morphologically or geographically defined 'races' are not characterized by 'private' distinct lineages restricted to each of them." (S O Y Keita, R A Kittles, et al. "Conceptualizing human variation," Nature Genetics 36, S17 - S20 (2004)

"Recall that the Horn–Nile Valley crania show, as a group, the largest overlap with other regions. A review of the recent literature indicates that there are male lineage ties between African peoples who have been traditionally labeled as being ‘‘racially’’ different, with ‘‘racially’’ implying an ontologically deep divide. The PN2 transition, a Y chromosome marker, defines a lineage (within the YAPþ derived haplogroup E or III) that emerged in Africa probably before the last glacial maximum, but after the migration of modern humans from Africa (see Semino et al., 2004). This mutation forms a clade that has two daughter subclades (defined by the biallelic markers M35/215 (or 215/M35) and M2) that unites numerous phenotypically variant African populations from the supra-Saharan, Saharan, and sub-Saharan regions.."

(S.O.Y Keita. Exploring northeast African metric craniofacial variation at the individual level: A comparative study using principal component analysis. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 16:679–689, 2004.)

"Africa contains tremendous cultural, linguistic and genetic diversity, and has more than 2,000 distinct ethnic groups and languages.. Studies using mitochondrial (mt)DNA and nuclear DNA markers consistently indicate that Africa is the most genetically diverse region of the world." (Tishkoff SA, Williams SM., Genetic analysis of African populations: human evolution and complex disease. Nature Reviews Genetics. 2002 Aug (8):611-21.)

------- DNA of some modern Egyptians found a genetic ancestral heritage to East Africa:

"The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) diversity of 58 individuals from Upper Egypt, more than half (34 individuals) from Gurna, whose population has an ancient cultural history, were studied by sequencing the control-region and screening diagnostic RFLP markers. This sedentary population presented similarities to the Ethiopian population by the L1 and L2 macrohaplogroup frequency (20.6%), by the West Eurasian component (defined by haplogroups H to K and T to X) and particularly by a high frequency (17.6%) of haplogroup M1. We statistically and phylogenetically analysed and compared the Gurna population with other Egyptian, Near East and sub-Saharan Africa populations; AMOVA and Minimum Spanning Network analysis showed that the Gurna population was not isolated from neighbouring populations. Our results suggest that the Gurna population has conserved the trace of an ancestral genetic structure from an ancestral East African population, characterized by a high M1 haplogroup frequency. The current structure of the Egyptian population may be the result of further influence of neighbouring populations on this ancestral population."

(Stevanovitch A, Gilles A, Bouzaid E, et al. (2004) Mitochondrial DNA sequence diversity in a sedentary population from Egypt.Ann Hum Genet. 68(Pt 1):23-39.)

------- Tishkoff et al- Africa has highest genetic diversity

"Africa contains tremendous cultural, linguistic and genetic diversity, and has more than 2,000 distinct ethnic groups and languages (see online link to Ethnologue). Studies using mitochondrial (mt)DNA and nuclear DNA markers consistently indicate that Africa is the most genetically diverse region of the world(TABLE 1).However, most studies report only a few markers in divergent African populations, which makes it difficult to draw general conclusions about the levels and patterns of genetic diversity in these populations (FIG. 1). Because genetic studies have been biased towards more economically developed African countries that have key research or medical centres, populations from more underdeveloped or politically unstable regions of Africa remain under sampled (FIG. 1). Historically, human population genetic studies have relied on one or two African populations as being representative of African diversity, but recent studies show extensive genetic variation among even geographically close African populations, which indicates that there is not a single ‘representative’ African population."

-- Tishkoff NATURE REVIEWS | GENETICS VOLUME 3 | AUGUST 2002

------- Bogus "racial split" theories debunked

"Genetic studies that attempt to recover the biological history of the species have generally found that there is a split between their restricted African samples and "the rest of the world." These approaches conceptualize human population history as a series of bifurcations with each node being relatively uniform. The "Africans" usually used are either the short statured Aka or Mbuti, Khoisan speakers, or West African stereotype s, in keeping with a socially, not scientifically constructed concept of African. Studies using individuals as the unit of analysis evince a different pattern. A select subset of Africans called the "group of 49" forms a unit versus the rest of humankind. However the latter individuals ("rest of humankind") also includes non-East African sub-Saharans. Hence there is no "racial" split. As has been stated, the idea that human variation can be described as being structured by subspecies(races) that are treated as lineages is fundamentally false. In actuality, also, although averages are used, the gene studies usually give us histories that are not necessarily the same as population histories."

Writing African History Chapter 4, Physical Anthropology and African History, Shomarka Keita University of Rochester Press p.134

------- Continent wide African DNA linkages

"The most extensive pan-African haplotype (16189 16192 16223 16278 16294 16309 16390) is in the L2a1 haplogroup. This sequence is observed in West Africa among the Malinke, Wolof, and others; in North Africa among the Maure, Hausa, Fulbe, and others; in Central Africa among the Bamileke, Fali, and others; in South Africa among the Khoisan family including the Khwe and Bantu speakers; and in East Africa among the Kikuyu. Closely related variants are observed among the Tuareg in North and West Africa and among the East African Dinka and Somali."

(-- Bert Ely , Jamie Lee Wilson , Fatimah Jackson and Bruce A Jackson. (2006). African-American mitochondrial DNAs often match mtDNAs found in multiple African ethnic groups. BMC Biology 2006, 4:34)

-------- The PN2 transition:

"It is of interest that the M35 and M2 lineages are united by a mutation – the PN2 transition. This PN2 defined clade originated in East Africa, where various populations have a notable frequency of its underived state. This would suggest that an ancient population in East Africa, or more correctly its males, form the basis of the ancestors of all African upper Paleolithic populations – and their subsequent descendants in the present day."

(--Bengtson, John D. (ed.), In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory: Essays in the four fields of anthropology. 2008. John Benjamins Publishing: pp. 3–16)

8) Fact #8: African peoples are the most diverse in the world whether analyzed by DNA or skeletal or cranial methods. The peoples of the Nile Valley vary but they are still related. The people most related ethnically to the ancient Egyptians are other Africans like Nubians not cold-climate/light skinned Europeans or Asiatics.

------- African people, particularly SUB-SAHARAN Africans, vary the most in how they look, more so than any other population in the world.

"Estimates of genetic diversity in major geographic regions are frequently made by pooling all individuals into regional aggregates. This method can potentially bias results if there are differences in population substructure within regions, since increased variation among local populations could inflate regional diversity. A preferred method of estimating regional diversity is to compute the mean diversity within local populations. Both methods are applied to a global sample of craniometric data consisting of 57 measurements taken on 1734 crania from 18 local populations in six geographic regions: sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, East Asia, Australasia, Polynesia, and the Americas. Each region is represented by three local populations. Both methods for estimating regional diversity show sub-Saharan Africa to have the highest levels of phenotypic variation, consistent with many genetic studies."

(Relethford, John "Global Analysis of Regional Differences in Craniometric Diversity and Population Substructure". Human Biology - Volume 73, Number 5, October 2001, pp. 629-636)

"The living peoples of the African continent are diverse in facial characteristics, stature, skin color, hair form, genetics, and other characteristics. No one set of characteristics is more African than another. Variability is also found in "sub-Saharan" Africa, to which the word "Africa" is sometimes erroneously restricted. There is a problem with definitions. Sometimes Africa is defined using cultural factors, like language, that exclude developments that clearly arose in Africa. For example, sometimes even the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea) is excluded because of geography and language and the fact that some of its peoples have narrow noses and faces.

However, the Horn is at the same latitude as Nigeria, and its languages are African. The latitude of 15 degree passes through Timbuktu, surely in "sub-Saharan Africa," as well as Khartoum in Sudan; both are north of the Horn. Another false idea is that supra-Saharan and Saharan Africa were peopled after the emergence of "Europeans" or Near Easterners by populations coming from outside Africa. Hence, the ancient Egyptians in some writings have been de-Africanized. These ideas, which limit the definition of Africa and Africans, are rooted in racism and earlier, erroneous "scientific" approaches." (S. Keita, "The Diversity of Indigenous Africans," in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Clenko, Editor (1996), pp. 104-105. [10])

[img]http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/nubianegyptianlinks.jpg[/img]
Nubian - Egyptian links. Debunking "racial conflict" claims about the 2 peoples. Nubians were the closest people ethnically to the ancient Egyptians, sharing a common culture, intermarrying and having the same pharaonic structure. All this was millennia BEFORE the 25th Dynasty.

[img]http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/godde2009nubianstudy.jpg[/img]

New study finds Nubians the closest people ethnically to the Egyptians

9) Fact #9: Not needing cold-climate/slight-skinned inspiration, the peoples of ancient Egypt are more closely linked with fellow tropical Africans in terms of cranial studies than with Europeans or Asiatics. Analysis of skeletal and cranial remains reveals that the ancient Egyptians of the early Dynastic and pre-Dynastic phases, link closer to nearby Saharan, Sudanic and East African populations than Mediterranean and Middle Eastern peoples. Greeks, Romans, Hyskos, Arabs and others were to appear later in Egyptian history. Craniometric studies generally place ancient Upper Egyptian populations closer to the range of tropical Africans in the Nile Valley and East Africa than to Mediterraneans, or Middle Easterners.

QUOTE(s):

S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54

"Overall, when the Egyptian crania are evaluated in a Near Eastern (Lachish) versus African (Kerma, Kebel Moya, Ashanti) context) the affinity is with the Africans. The Sudan and Palestine are the most appropriate comparative regions which would have 'donated' people, along with the Sahara and Maghreb. Archaeology validates looking to these regions for population flow (see Hassan 1988)... Egyptian groups showed less overall affinity to Palestinian and Byzantine remains than to other African series, especially Sudanese." (Keita 1993)

"When the unlikely relationships [Indian matches] and eliminated, the Egyptian series are more similar overall to other African series than to European or Near Eastern (Byzantine or Palestinian) series." (Keita 1993)

"Analysis of crania is the traditional approach to assessing ancient population origins, relationships, and diversity. In studies based on anatomical traits and measurements of crania, similarities have been found between Nile Valley crania from 30,000, 20,000 and 12,000 years ago and various African remains from more recent times (see Thoma 1984; Brauer and Rimbach 1990; Angel and Kelley 1986; Keita 1993). Studies of crania from southern Predynastic Egypt, from the formative period (4000-3100 B.C.), show them usually to be more similar to the crania of ancient Nubians, Kushites, Saharans, or modern groups from the Horn of Africa than to those of dynastic northern Egyptians or ancient or modern southern Europeans."

(S. O. Y and A.J. Boyce, "The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians", in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed), Indiana University Press, 1996, pp. 20-33)

"There is no archaeological, linguistic, or historical data which indicate a European or Asiatic invasion of, or migration to, the Nile Valley during First Dynasty times. Previous concepts about the origin of the First Dynasty Egyptians as being somehow external to the Nile Valley or less native are not supported by archaeology... In summary, the Abydos First Dynasty royal tomb contents reveal a notable craniometric heterogeneity. Southerners predominate. (Kieta, S. (1992) Further Studies of Crania From Ancient Northern Africa: An Analysis of Crania From First Dynasty Egyptian Tombs, Using Multiple Discriminant Functions. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 87:245-254)"

"The predominant craniometric pattern in the Abydos royal tombs is 'southern' (tropical African variant), and this is consistent with what would be expected based on the literature and other results (Keita, 1990). This pattern is seen in both group and unknown analyses... Archaeology and history seem to provide the most parsimonious explanation for the variation in the royal tombs at Abydos.. Tomb design suggests the presence of northerners in the south in late Nakada times (Hoffman, 1988) when the unification probably took place. Delta names are attached to some of the tombs at Abydos (Gardiner, 1961; Yurco, 1990, personal communication), thus perhaps supporting Petrie's (1939) and Gardiner's contention that north-south marriages were undertaken to legitimize the hegemony of the south. The courtiers of northern elites would have accompanied them.

Given all of the above, it is probably not possible to view the Abydos royal tomb sample as representative of the general southern Upper Egyptian population of the time. Southern elites and/or their descendants eventually came to be buried in the north (Hoffman, 1988). Hence early Second Dynasty kings and Djoser (Dynasty 111) (Hayes, 1953) and his descendants are not buried in Abydos. Petrie (1939) states that the Third Dynasty, buried in the north, was of Sudanese origin, but southern Egypt is equally likely. This perhaps explains Harris and Weeks' (1973) suggested findings of southern morphologies in some Old Kingdom Giza remains, also verified in portraiture (Drake, 1987). Further study would be required to ascertain trends in the general population of both regions. The strong Sudanese affinity noted in the unknown analyses may reflect the Nubian interactions with upper Egypt in Predynastic times prior to Egyptian unification (Williams, 1980,1986)..."

(S. Keita (1992) Further Studies of Crania From Ancient Northern Africa: An Analysis of Crania From First Dynasty Egyptian Tombs, Using Multiple Discriminant Functions. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 87:245-254)

------- Early Dynastic Periods.

"When the Elephantine results were added to a broader pooling of the physical characteristics drawn from a wide geographic region which includes Africa, the Mediterranean and the Near East quite strong affinities emerge between Elephantine and populations from Nubia, supporting a strong south-north cline."

(Barry Kemp. (2006) Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization. p. 54)

Gene flow into the Nubian area during the Neolithic was not from reputed "wandering Caucasoids" but from tropical, Sub-Saharan types.

"Prior to the Neolithic, populations of the Nile Valley in Nubia are very robust, and, because of a gap in the fossil record, it is difficult to connect them to later populations. Some have postulated a local evolution, due to diet change, while others postulated migrations, especially from the Sahara area. But between 5000 and 1000 BC, many cemeteries have supplied a large amount of skeletons, and the anatomical characters of Nubian populations are easier to follow-up. Twenty-seven archaeological samples (4 at 5000 BC, 5 at 4000 BC, 10 at 3000 BC, 3 at 2000 BC, 5 at 1000 BC), and 10 craniofacial measurements, have been considered. While cerebral skull is fairly stable, facial skull displays several regular modifications, and specially a reduction of facial and nasal heights, a broadening of the nose, and an increase of prognathism, while bizygomatic breadth is unchanged. These features illustrate a trend towards a growing resemblance with populations of Sub-Saharan Africa living in wet environments. However, paleoclimatological studies show that Nubia experienced an increasing aridification during that period. It is then unlikely that such a morphological change could be related to any local adaptive evolution to environment. Random drift is also unlikely, because the anatomical trend is relatively uniform during these millennia. It then seems more plausible that these changes correspond to the increasing presence of Southern populations migrating northward."

-- Froment, A. (2002) Morphological micro-evolution of Nubian Populations from, A-Group to Christian Epochs: gene flow, not local adaptation. Am J Phys Anthropol [Suppl] 34:72.

[img]http://africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/cranialcoldclimatedebunk.jpg[/img]

Numerous cranial studies put ancient Egyptians closer to other Africans like Nubians than cold-climate/light-skinned Europeans or Asiatics.

10) Fact#10: Comparatively recent (in evolutionary terms) Europeans and Asiatics LOOKED LIKE tropical Africans with dark skin and other features before cold-climate adaptation changed them. Light skin color is a recent development for Europeans and Asiatics. The key foundations of civilization in terms of key animal and plant domesticates and associated technoloigy in Europe and Asia were thus laid by these dark-skinned migrants from Africa, undermining claims of the efficiacy of white skin in laying the basic foundations or in building advanced civilizations such as that built by the tropically adapted peoples of the Nile Valley.

Early West Asians for example, as recently as the Iranian Bronze Age looked like Africans (Hanihara 1996). Civilizations built around this period was by these dark-skinned tropically adapted types who looked like Africans not the much touted white Nordics or high yellow East Asians. Early European Neolithics migrated from Africa via the Mideast and also looked like tropical Africans, again undermining claims of the "need" for the much touted white Nordics or high yellow East Asians. Brace 2005 shows ancient Egyptians link with Africans such as Nubians and Somalians first. Older Europeans look like Africans hence they tend to resemble various Africans studied in Africa. Nevertheless Europe owes a debt to these African migrants via the Middle East that brought key technologies, animal and plant domesticates. The Natufians of the Mideast, the Israel area in particular show some sub-Saharan African elements and are key transmitters of Neolithic technology.

Human skin color also varies in Africa as part of the INDIGENOUS makeup without the "need" for the touted white Nordics or high-yeller Asiatics. [quote]

Human skin color diversity is highest in sub-Saharan African populations.

[quote:]

"Previous studies of genetic and craniometric traits have found higher levels of within-population diversity in sub-Saharan Africa compared to other geographic regions. This study examines regional differences in within-population diversity of human skin color. Published data on skin reflectance were collected for 98 male samples from eight geographic regions: sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, Europe, West Asia, Southwest Asia, South Asia, Australasia, and the New World. Regional differences in local within-population diversity were examined using two measures of variability: the sample variance and the sample coefficient of variation. For both measures, the average level of within-population diversity is higher in sub-Saharan Africa than in other geographic regions. This difference persists even after adjusting for a correlation between within-population diversity and distance from the equator. Though affected by natural selection, skin color variation shows the same pattern of higher African diversity as found with other traits."

-- Relethford JH.(2000). Human skin color diversity is highest in sub-Saharan African populations. Hum Biol. 2000 Oct;72(5):773-80.)

---Afrocentric critic Brace debunks "Caucasoid race mix" claims for Horn of Africa peoples and notes tropically adapted peoples are usually dark-skinned and with limb elongation.

"In this regard it is interesting to note that limb proportions of Predynastic Naqada people in Upper Egypt are reported to be "Super-Negroid," meaning that the distal segments are elongated in the fashion of tropical Africans.....skin color intensification and distal limb elongation are apparent wherever people have been long-term residents of the tropics."

"An earlier generation of anthropologists tried to explain face form in the Horn of Africa as the result of admixture from hypothetical “wandering Caucasoids,” (Adams, 1967, 1979; MacGaffey, 1966; Seligman, 1913, 1915, 1934), but that explanation founders on the paradox of why that supposedly potent “Caucasoid” people contributed a dominant quantity of genes for nose and face form but none for skin color or limb proportions. It makes far better sense to regard the adaptively significant features seen in the Horn of Africa as solely an in situ response on the part of separate adaptive traits to the selective forces present in the hot dry tropics of eastern Africa. From the observation that 12,000 years was not a long enough period of time to produce any noticeable variation in pigment by latitude in the New World and that 50,000 years has been barely long enough to produce the beginnings of a gradation in Australia (Brace, 1993a), one would have to argue that the inhabitants of the Upper Nile and the East Horn of Africa have been equatorial for many tens of thousands of years."

(-- C.L. Brace, 1993. Clines and clusters..")

------- Modern studies show diversity in how people look is heavily based on distance from sub-Saharan Africa, not merely climate. In genetically diverse Africa, broad-nosed people live on the cool or cold mountain slopes of East Africa or the hot, dry Sahara, and narrow-nosed peoples like many Fulani like in the wet tropics of West Africa. Yellowish-skinned San tribes live in the hot zones of Southern Africa.

"The relative importance of ancient demography and climate in determining worldwide patterns of human within-population phenotypic diversity is still open to debate. Several morphometric traits have been argued to be under selection by climatic factors, but it is unclear whether climate affects the global decline in morphological diversity with increasing geographical distance from sub-Saharan Africa. Using a large database of male and female skull measurements, we apply an explicit framework to quantify the relative role of climate and distance from Africa. We show that distance from sub-Saharan Africa is the sole determinant of human within-population phenotypic diversity, while climate plays no role. By selecting the most informative set of traits, it was possible to explain over half of the worldwide variation in phenotypic diversity. These results mirror those previously obtained for genetic markers and show that ‘bones and molecules’ are in perfect agreement for humans." (Distance from Africa, not climate, explains within-population phenotypic diversity in humans. (2008) by: Lia Betti, François Balloux, William Amos, Tsunehiko Hanihara, Andrea Manica, Proceedings B: Biological Sciences, 2008/12/02)

-------Early West Asians looked like Africans. Thus any migrants from West Asia to Africa in thos period would be by people who look like Africans to begin with. Brace 2005 shows this as to Europeans. Hanihara 1996, demonstrates this below as to West Asians (i.e. 'Middle easterners'). quote:

"Distance analysis and factor analysis, based on Q-mode correlation coefficients, were applied to 23 craniofacial measurements in 1,802 recent and prehistoric crania from major geographical areas of the Old World. The major findings are as follows: 1) Australians show closer similarities to African populations than to Melanesians. 2) Recent Europeans align with East Asians, and early West Asians resemble Africans. 3) The Asian population complex with regional difference between northern and southern members is manifest. 4) Clinal variations of craniofacial features can be detected in the Afro-European region on the one hand, and Australasian and East Asian region on the other hand. 5) The craniofacial variations of major geographical groups are not necessarily consistent with their geographical distribution pattern. This may be a sign that the evolutionary divergence in craniofacial shape among recent populations of different geographical areas is of a highly limited degree. Taking all of these into account, a single origin for anatomically modern humans is the most parsimonious interpretation of the craniofacial variations presented in this study."

(Hanihara T. Comparison of craniofacial features of major human groups. Am J Phys Anthropol. 1996 Mar;99(3):389-412.)

LINKS

http://nilevalleypeoples.blogspot.com/2009/11/dna-shows-egyptians-group-with-african.html

http://nilevalleypeoples.blogspot.com/2009/11/2009-study-finds-nubians-were.html

------------------------------------------

Link to research papers and articles: (http://wysinger.homestead.com/keita.html)

Link to current African DNA research: (http://exploring-africa.blogspot.com/)

Google Search- other data
http://knol.google.com/k/mainstream-academic-research/peopling-of-the-nile-valley/3q8x30897t2cs/2#

End-finis

Bogus "biodiversity" theories of Kanazawa, Ruston, Lynn debunked

2010-09-06T23:54:00.006-04:00

EXCERPT-------------------------------

Wicherts, J. M., et al. Evolution, brain size, and the national IQ of peoples around 3000 years B.C. Personality and Individual Differences (2009), SCIENCE (in press 2009)

[b]ABSTRACT
In this rejoinder, we respond to comments by Lynn, Rushton, and Templer on our previous paper in which we criticized the use of national IQs in studies of evolutionary theories of race differences in intelligence. We reiterate that because of the Flynn Effect and psychometric issues, national IQs cannot be taken to reflect populations’ levels of g as fixed since the last ice age. We argue that the socio-cultural achievements of peoples of Mesopotamia and Egypt in 3000 B.C. stand in stark contrast to the current low level of national IQ of peoples of Iraq and Egypt and that these ancient achievements appear to contradict evolutionary accounts of differences in national IQ. We argue that race differences in brain size, even if these were entirely of genetic origin, leave unexplained 91–95% of the black-white IQ gap. We highlight additional problems with hypotheses raised by Rushton and Templer. National IQs cannot be viewed solely in evolutionary terms but should be considered in light of global differences in socio-economic development, the causes of which are unknown.
[/b]

1. Introduction
In our previous paper (this issue), we criticized Kanazawa (2008), Templer (2008), and Templer and Arikawa (2006) on the basis of the fact that these studies were concerned with evolution but ignored changes over the course of evolution in the variables of interest. Our central point was that the use of national IQs in studies of the evolution of intelligence is problematic because national IQs have not been constant over the course of the twentieth century (Flynn, 2007) and so cannot be taken simply to reflect the level of general intelligence or g of peoples that lived thousands of years ago. We showed that current-day national IQs are strongly confounded with the developmental status of countries and argued that it is rather likely that the Flynn Effect is not at the same level of development across the globe. We are delighted to have a chance to discuss our work with Drs. Lynn, Rushton, and Templer and thank them for their comments.

Lynn (this issue) dismissed the Flynn Effect as relevant for the study of the evolution of race differences in intelligence and asserted that these differences have been constant over the course of millennia. Rushton (this issue) discussed neither the Flynn Effect nor any potential trends in life-history traits, but rather raised the possibility that race differences in brain size may explain global differences in IQ and development. Templer (this issue) claimed that we failed to appreciate the big picture of evolution painted by Lynn and Rushton. In light of space limitations, we discuss here neither the validity of Lynn and Vanhanen’s national IQ estimates (see Wicherts, Dolan, & van der Maas, in press) nor several additional lines of evidence discussed by the commentators.

It is noteworthy that the commentators have expressed hardly any arguments against our main assertion that national IQs cannot be used to test evolutionary theories without a consideration of relevant confounds. The use of national IQs in the study of evolution assumes that the level of g of peoples are constant over time, which they do not appear to be... ...((snip))

2. IQ avant la lettre
We doubt strongly whether western IQ tests have the same substantive meaning across the globe. Templer claimed that the construct validity of national IQs is supported by their correlation with means in national scholastic achievement surveys. However, such ecological correlations do not warrant conclusions concerning the measurement invariance of IQ tests across national groups. For instance, national IQs also correlate about |.85| with fertility rate, but this does not mean that IQs can be taken to measure the number of offspring of individuals. It is completely unclear whether national IQs reflect differences between contemporary populations in terms of the average level of g (Wicherts et al., in press). Because the Flynn Effect does not appear to be explainable in terms of g (Rushton, 2000; Wicherts et al., 2004), it is even doubtful whether the current-day IQ levels of populations reflect the average level of g of these populations a couple of decades ago.

Because the content of IQ tests is typically from the twentieth century, it is even more doubtful that national IQs can be projected back to our ancestors who lived 5000 years ago. Lynn and Vanhanen’s (2006) data may suggest that the Dutch currently outperform the Egyptians by 19 IQ points (100 versus 81) and the Iraqi by 16 points, but this cannot be taken as evidence for the claim that the peoples who populated areas close to the Netherlands in 3000 B.C. were more intelligent than the peoples who constructed the Pyramids of Cheops or who developed the first civilizations in Mesopotamia. On the contrary: suppose that the average IQ ‘‘avant la lettre” of ancient populations can be gauged by the ability to build buildings that last for millennia, to develop scripture, arithmetic, astronomy, and art, and to successfully administrate an empire. In terms of these indicators of IQ ‘‘avant la lettre” of peoples, the average intelligence of peoples living in areas corresponding to present European countries in 3000 B.C., will turn out to be relatively low (i.e., these peoples did not evidence many of these abilities), while the average intelligence of Egyptian and Mesopotamian peoples will turn out high.

This appears to contradict the evolutionary theories by Lynn, Rushton, and Kanazawa, because Egypt and Mesopotamia are relatively warm and quite close to the ancestral environment. Lynn (this issue) asserts that present Africans have hardly satisfied Baker’s (1974) criteria for a civilization, but this applies equally to inhabitants of present day Europe around 3000 B.C. More importantly, the ancestors of the peoples who laid much of the groundwork for western civilization now have average IQs around 82 (Lynn & Vanhanen, 2006). Contemporary Africans average IQs around the same level (Wicherts et al., in press), so the supposed low level of IQ of Africans should not be cause for concern that they lack the necessary intelligence to do so. ...((snip))

3. Brain size
Rushton (this issue) claims that global differences in IQ and development can be explained in terms of (race) differences in brain size. Rushton (2000) has gone to great lengths to show that race groups differ on average in terms of brain size, with Whites averaging 1347 cm3 and Blacks averaging 1267 cm3. The mean difference may appear impressive, but it is virtually meaningless without knowledge of the typical spread of brain size within populations, which is around SD = 130 cm3. So the Black-White difference in brain size is approximately 80/130 .6 SD units. Rushton’s figures are based not on contemporary MRI measurements of white and gray matter volume, but rather on outdated external or postmortem cranial measurements. Given the correlation between cranial capacity as measured externally and intelligence of around .20 (Rushton & Ankney, 2009), the Black-White gap in brain size cannot explain much of the IQ gap. Even if cranial capacity had a causal effect on g, then the Black-White gap in brain size cannot explain more than: .6*.2*15 = 1.8 IQ points. If we were to believe that the IQ gap between Africans and European Whites is 33 IQ points (Lynn & Vanhanen, 2006), then the brain size gap could explain a staggering 1.8/33 = 5% of the IQ gap. Thus, even under these terms, 95% of the IQ gap is left unexplained by brain size.

With a correlation of .33 between brain volume and IQ as based on modern techniques (McDaniel, 2005), the gap in brain size can explain only 2.98 IQ points or 9% of the IQ gap. However, we are not familiar with studies that used modern methods to measure brain size in both European Whites and Africans, and we are not familiar with any studies of the heritability of IQ and/or brain size among Africans. Although race differences in brain size are in line with Rushton’s hypothesis, his hypothesis fails to impress us. The gap in brain size is much too small to explain the IQ gap, there is no indication of whether the (genetic) relation between brain size and IQ holds for African Americans or Africans, the causal relation itself is a matter of opinion and further research, and there is no reason to suppose that the race gap is environmentally insensitive, as Rushton and Ankney (2009) acknowledge. Another problem with the brain size hypothesis lies with the fact that sex differences in brain size are larger than race differences, yet studies involving representative samples, broad cognitive test batteries, and sound statistical methods consistently fail to show a clear sex difference in g (Dolan et al., 2006; Keith, Reynolds, Patel, & Ridley, 2008; Van der Sluis et al., 2006). ...((snip))

4. The Big picture
Templer (this issue) asserts that we fail to see the ‘‘big picture [. . .] that Blacks average a lower IQ and all that goes with it and are prone to HIV/AIDS”. According to Templer, this may be due to higher levels of testosterone among Blacks. Testosterone is hypothesized to affect many r-K characteristics and to underlie sex differences in longevity. This is an interesting hypothesis, but it does not appear to fit empirical data. For instance, on average males have higher levels of testosterone than females, yet they have larger brain sizes (Rushton & Ankney, 2009) and they do not live longer than females. Also, we are not familiar with empirical support of a link between 2D:4D ratio and total IQ.

Templer stresses the conceptual similarities between theories by Lynn, Rushton, and Kanazawa. This is an interesting assertion because Kanazawa and Rushton have opposing views on why Africans have evolved lower intelligence. Kanazawa (2004) explains the low intelligence of Africans by claiming that the ancestral environment of subtropical savannahs was very stable and predictable and hence required little intelligence to survive in. Rushton (2000), however, reasoned that ‘‘predictable environments are an ecological precondition for K-selection [and that] subtropical savannahs [. . .] are generally less predictable” (p. 231). Kanazawa’s (2008) study is flawed because it claimed support for two opposing accounts. Templer claims that the ‘‘potential of national IQs as explanatory variables” is demonstrated by correlations of national IQ with variables like GDP, adult literacy, and life expectancy. A glance at the correlation matrix in our primary paper shows that other variables associated with development have the same explanatory power as national IQ.

For instance, the correlations reported by Templer (2008) are easily replicated by replacing national IQ with Proteins g/day/capita, child mortality rate, or secondary school attendance. This means that these variables have just as much explanatory power as does national IQ. Templer claims that we fail to see the forest for the trees, but he appears to be staring only at global differences in IQ and development from the perspective of the evolutionary accounts to which he subscribes. Evolutionary accounts of race differences in intelligence are easy to formulate. The plausibility of such accounts depends on the empirical support for specific predictions, and the exclusion of competing accounts. The ecological correlations involving national IQ are open to many interpretations. Templer’s big picture strikes us as a one-sided view on the nature of global differences in IQ, health, and development. ...((snip))

5. Conclusion
Templer and Rushton hardly discussed the relevance of temporal changes in the variables of interest, although Templer did express his doubt that the Flynn Effect is possible in Africa. Lynn claims that the Flynn Effect matters little because of global differences in brain size and the development of civilization. Rushton claims that differences in brain size underlie global differences in development and IQ. We are not impressed by their arguments.

References
...((snip))

2010 Berber mtDNA study finds Berber roots foundational in Africa - Frigi 2010

2010-05-11T13:18:00.019-04:00

Ancient Local Evolution of African mtDNA Haplogroups in Tunisian Berber Populations

Frigi et al.

Human Biology (August 2010 (82:4)

Abstract

Our objective is to highlight the age of sub-Saharan gene flows in North Africa and particularly in Tunisia. Therefore we analyzed in a broad phylogeographic context sub-Saharan mtDNA haplogroups of Tunisian Berber populations considered representative of ancient settlement. More than 2,000 sequences were collected from the literature, and networks were constructed. The results show that the most ancient haplogroup is L3*, which would have been introduced to North Africa from eastern sub-Saharan populations around 20,000 years ago. Our results also point to a less ancient western sub-Saharan gene flow to Tunisia, including haplogroups L2a and L3b. This conclusion points to an ancient African gene flow to Tunisia before 20,000 years BP. These findings parallel the more recent findings of both archaeology and linguistics on the prehistory of Africa. The present work suggests that sub-Saharan contributions to North Africa have experienced several complex population processes after the occupation of the region by anatomically modern humans. Our results reveal that Berber speakers have a foundational biogeographic root in Africa and that deep African lineages have continued to evolve in supra-Saharan Africa.

=============================================================

Ancient Local Evolution of African mtDNA Haplogroups in Tunisian Berber Populations

Frigi et al.

Human Biology

August 2010 (82:4)

Discussion
In this study we attempted to better elucidate the ancient African genetic
background in the northwest African area, particularly in Tunisia. To this aim, we
focused our study on Berber populations that are considered representative of the
ancient North African populations that probably derived from Neolithic Capsians.
During historic times, Berbers experienced a long and complicated history with
many invasions, conquests, and migrations by Phoenicians, Romans, Vandals,
Byzantines, Arabs, Bedouins, Spanish, Turks, Andalusians, sub-Saharans (communities
settled in Jerba and Gabes in the 16th–19th centuries), and French (Brett
and Fentress 1996). During these invasions, Berbers were forced back to the mountains
and to certain villages in southern Tunisia (Fadhlaoui-Zid et al. 2004).
At present, they are restricted to some isolates in the south who maintain the Berber
language and to some populations in the north who lack an origin language.
Many genetic studies on Tunisian Berber populations demonstrate the heterogeneity
of Berbers with respect to European and sub-Saharan African contributions
and the mosaic structure of Tunisian Berber populations with an absence of ethnic,
linguistic, and geographic effects (Cherni et al. 2010).

In the present work, mtDNA data show a diversified distribution of African
haplogroups. However, a question remains concerning the date of the sub-Saharan
African inputs. Our results demonstrate an ancient local evolution in Tunisia of
some African haplogroups (L2a, L3*, and L3b). The most ancient haplogroup is
L3*, which would have been introduced from eastern sub-Saharan populations to
North Africa about 20,000 years ago. The Siwa oasis sample studied by Coudray
et al. (2009) contains sub-Saharan haplogroups L0a1, L3i, L4*, and L4b2, which
are different from our Tunisian samples, in agreement with the heterogeneity of
Berbers already shown in Tunisia.

Stevanovitch et al. (2004) suggested that the Gurna population in Egypt has
conserved the trace of an ancestral genetic structure from an ancestral East African
population characterized by a high haplogroup M1 frequency. This haplogroup is
also present in three Berber populations (Kesra, Matmata, and Sned) with variable
frequencies. In each of these populations, haplogroup L3* is also present.
The association of both eastern African haplogroups in the Berber populations is
a strong argument in favor of eastern African gene flow in Berbers. Other genetic
and archaeological studies confirmed the crucial idea that an ancient population in
East Africa constituted the basis of the ancestors of all African Upper Paleolithic
populations—and their subsequent present-day descendants (Bengtson 2008; Keita
2004; Relethford 2000; Zakrzewski 2003, 2007).

Moreover, Berber languages spoken exclusively by North African populations
belong to the Afro-Asiatic language. Diakonoff (1998) showed an exclusively
African origin (Diakonoff, 1981, 1988) for the family. He explicitly described
proto-Afro-Asiatic vocabulary as consistent with non-food-producing vocabulary
and linked it to pre-Neolithic cultures in the Levant and in Africa south of Egypt.
Moreover, Ehret. (2003) suggested that early Afro-Asiatic languages were spread
by Mesolithic foragers from Africa into the Levant. On the contrary, Diamond
and Bellwood (2003) suggested that food production and the Afro-Asiatic
language family were brought simultaneously from the Near East to Africa by demic
diffusion—in other words, by a migration of food-producing peoples. The evidence
presented by Wetterstrom (1993) does not support this latter suggestion,
however, and indicates that early African farmers in the Fayum initially incorporated
Near Eastern domesticates into an existing indigenous foraging strategy and
only over time developed a dependence on horticulture.

In conclusion, the crucial linguistic finding is that the three deepest clades
of the Afro-Asiatic family are localized in Eritrea and Ethiopia. All the other languages
of the family outside that region belong to subclades of just one of those
deep clades. This kind of cladistic distribution is a basic criterion of the
genetic argument for the genetic lineage origins well understood by geneticists. It applies
to linguistic history as well.

Our results also point to a less ancient western African gene flow to Tunisia
involving haplogroups L2a and L3b. Thus the sub-Saharan contribution to northern
Africa starting from the east would have taken place before the Neolithic. The
western African contribution to North Africa should have occurred before the Sahara’s
formation (15,000 years BP). It seems likely that an expansion would have
taken place in the Sahel zone starting about the time of a gradual climatic return
to wetter conditions, when the Senegal River cut through the dunes (Burke et al.
1971). For subhaplogroup L2a1 (data not shown) we found some haplotypes that
the Tunisian Berbers shared with Mauritanians and western sub-Saharan populations
speaking a Niger-Congo language (studied by Salas et al. 2002).

This suggests that the people who brought these markers to the Berber populations most
likely came from West African populations that spoke languages belonging to the
Niger-Congo family when the Sahara became drier. However, this contribution
of West African haplotypes and of other haplotypes, such as those belonging to
haplogroup L1b1, could have been introduced to North Africa more recently.

Indeed, this West African contribution was difficult to date, because few
haplotypes belonging to western African haplogroups have been observed, most
of them being divergent. This result can be interpreted in different ways. Ancient
western African mtDNA contributions could have disappeared from North Africa
as a result of recent flows, or the situation observed now could be the result of a
strong drift effect on ancient western African lineages, particularly those belonging
to haplogroups L2a and L3b. A strong Iberian gene flow may have contributed
to the decrease in African haplogroups. Indeed, most of the older hypotheses
about North African population settlement used to suppose an Iberian or an eastern
origin. The dates for subhaplogroups H1 and H3 (13,000 and 10,000 years,
respectively) in Iberian and North African populations allow for this possibility.
Kefi et al.’s (2005) data on ancient DNA could be viewed as being in agreement
with such a presence in North Africa in ancient times (about 15,000–6,000 years
ago) and with the fact that the North African populations are considered by most
scholars as having their closest relations with European and Asian populations
(Cherni et al. 2008; Ennafaa et al. 2009; Kefi et al. 2005; Rando et al. 1998).

However, considering the general understanding nowadays that human settlement of
the rest of the world emerged from eastern northern Africa less than 50,000 years
ago, a better explanation of these haplogroups might be that their frequencies reflect
the original modern human population of these parts of Africa as much as or
more than intrusions from outside the continent. The ways that gene frequencies
may increase or decrease based on adaptive selection, gene flow, and/or social
processes is under study and would benefit from the results of studies on autosomal
and Y-chromosome markers.

Since the end of the extreme Saharan desiccation, lasting from before
25,000 years ago up to about 15,000 years ago, the Sahara has had post- and pre-
Holocene cyclical climatic changes (Street and Grove 1976), and corresponding increases
and decreases in population are probable. Wetter phases with better habitats
perhaps allowed for increased colonization and gene and cultural exchange.
Desiccation would have encouraged the emigration and segmentation of populations,
with resultant genetic consequences secondary to drift producing more
variation. During the last glacial period, the Sahara was even bigger than it is
today, extending south beyond its current boundaries (Ehret 2002). About 13,000
years ago, large parts of the Sahara were as dry as the desert is now (White and
Mattingly 2006). The end of the glacial period brought more rain to the Sahara,
especially from about 8500 to 6000 BC (Fezzan Project 2006). By around 3400
BC, the monsoon retreated south to approximately where it is today, leading to the
gradual desertification of the region (Kröpelin 2008). Thus the Sahara, through its
cyclical environmental changes, might be seen as a microevolutionary “processor”
and/or “pump” of African people that “ejected” groups to the circum-Saharan
regions in times of increasing aridity.

Indeed, it must be noted that the high frequencies of cDe, P, and V antigens
and low frequencies of FY antigens in some Berber-speaking groups (Chamla
1980; Mourant et al. 1976) indicate affinities with tropical Africans. These data
may indicate recent or ancient gene flow from sub-Saharan Africa, a common immediate
pre-Holocene ancestral group, or chance resemblance.

Our findings are in accordance with other studies on Y-chromosome markers
that have shown that the predominant Y-chromosome lineage in Berber communities
is the subhaplogroup E1b1b1b (E-M81), which emerged in Africa, is
specific to North African populations, and is almost absent in Europe, except in
Iberia (Spain and Portugal) and Sicily. Molecular studies on the Y chromosome in
North Africa are interpreted as indicating that the southern part of Africa, namely,
the Horn/East Africa, was a major source of population in the Nile Valley and
northwest Africa after the Last Glacial Maximum, with some migration into the
Near East and southern Europe (Bosch et al. 2001; Underhill et al. 2001).
Hence, contrary to the suggestion that mtDNA haplogroups were introduced
mostly from Iberia, it seems that Y-chromosome markers have an eastern
African origin with an ancient local evolution in North Africa. These observations
are in agreement with the proposal that the ancient communities ancestral
in language to more recent Berber communities absorbed a lot of females from
the existing pre-Holocene populations. This would indicate that the North African
populations arose from admixture rather than from local evolution, leading
to an intermediate genetic structure between eastern sub-Saharan Africans and
Eurasians. Rock paintings in North Africa that show people of different phenotypes
living together are a strong argument for our hypothesis (Hachid 1982,
1992, 1998).

In conclusion, our findings parallel the more recent findings of both archaeology
and linguistics on the prehistory of Africa. The present study suggests that
sub-Saharan contributions to North Africa have experienced several complex population
processes after the occupation of the region by anatomically modern humans.
Our results reveal that Berber speakers have a foundational biogeographic root in
Africa and that deep African lineages have continued to evolve in supra-Saharan Africa.

==================================================================

Biocultural Emergence of the Amazigh in Africa: Comment on Frigi et al. (2010)
S. O. Y. Keita. Human Biology (August 2010) (82:4)

Frigi et al. [2010 (this issue)] present some new findings on a population of
Amazigh—Berber speakers in Tunisia. Although their study is not exhaustive,
they provide an outline of human population history in the Maghreb and a general
discussion of its mtDNA diversity. Their work is important in inviting researchers
to think about the concepts of continuity and change in biology, culture, language,
and identity in a geographic space. Their presentation helps in understanding the
complexity of examining the ancestry and emergence of Berber origins in Africa
as a local process and encourages the consideration of many questions about how
the human biology and culture of a known population or ethnolinguistic group can
be conceptualized through space and time.

Berber- (Tamazight-) speaking communities are thought to represent the
clearest known descendants of the ancient indigenous populations of Africa west
of the northern Nile valley in the supra-Saharan and northern Saharan regions
(Brett and Fentress 1996; Camps 1982; Desanges 1981). “Indigenous” here can
refer only to those whom we can perceive as having had the longest tenure on
the land, using available historical evidence. However, there are questions. What
constitutes “historical evidence” for earlier periods? Should it include archaeology,
paleontology, historical linguistics, skeletal biology, and genetics, as broadly
advocated by a historical anthropological approach (e.g., Kirch and Green 2001;
Mace et al. 2005)? Or is it only to be based on the interpretation of texts from
the ancient Egyptian, Greco-Roman, or Islamic periods [e.g., see comments by
Brett and Fentress (1996), Desanges (1981), Norris 1982, and Snowden (1971)]?

How is the varied evidence to be ranked in importance, reconciled when it seems
to be in contradiction, and analyzed synthetically? A simplistic positivism has to
be avoided in discussions of any facet of human history because various pathways
could lead to similar results. What is the role of evolutionary mechanisms—adaptive
selection, gene flow, drift, sexual selection—in explaining the biology of
some of the ancestors of Berber speakers at the deepest time levels and of living
Amazigh as well? Frigi et al. (2010) do not address all these questions directly,
but their work implicitly acknowledges their importance and provides a new framework
for investigation.

Braudel’s (1980) concept of different levels of history can be adapted and
adopted in a modified form as levels of biocultural or bioethnic history, to further
consider Frigi and colleagues’ contribution, which implicitly acknowledges
the contingent and multidimensional character of population interactions through
time against an evolutionary background.

Another issue of some interest is the (mis)labeling of Berbers as “Eurasian”
migrants from the Near East: Did they arrive as a unit from Asia or Europe, as
a settler colonist “package” with a persistent identity analogous to Europeans in
South Africa, or did the biology, language, and culture of the Amazigh emerge
primarily from a set of interactions in Africa involving African peoples at base,
that is, as a part of authentic African historical and biological processes? There are
no ancient Berber communities outside Africa, and the idea of simple demic diffusion
of Berbers as a people to the Maghreb (e.g., Arredi et al. 2004) from the Near
East is not supported. It is of some interest that even Coon and Hunt (1965), using
a raciotypological paradigm now long discredited, postulated a massive invasion
of Africa by “Caucasians” in the Pleistocene and therefore thought that Berber
language and identity had entered the Maghreb from more southerly regions in
Africa. Frigi and colleagues suggest that several populations over time were involved
in the biological ancestry of the current Berber speakers, and this is consistent
with archaeological evidence of actual migration in the mid- to late Holocene
(Camps 1982) as well as historical documentation. Craniofacial diversity has been
documented in the region before Vandal and Arab migrations (Keita 1990).

It is important to remember that biology, language, and culture are not intrinsically
or obligatorily correlated, a principle established some time ago (Boas
1940). It is not particularly surprising that one can sometimes find markers that
will correlate across biology and culture at some levels—but the issue is how this
came to be and when, and what it represents historically and socially. There is
always the question of whether the correlation is an artifact of recent events or
of “primordial” ontology. A language or language family can be adopted slowly
or rapidly by nonnative speakers. The current biological profile of a region may
predate (or postdate) the language spoken there. Communities may adopt (nonlinguistic)
cultural practices from others without greatly changing language or
biology; or they may become primarily integrated linguistically and politically
but not biologically or exhibit other permutations of these variables, such as total
biocultural assimilation. The biology of a particular ethnolinguistic group or community
may change based on intermarriage if the social rules allow the offspring
to become group members. Such matings may have occurred long before the
recall of communal memory, whether in texts or oral tradition. Relatively nonethnocentric
polygamous societies or populations may have cultural descendants
who are genealogically heterogeneous when viewed over a millennium.

Frigi et al. (2010) suggest these possibilities as factors in their consideration
of the asymmetric assimilation of females of non-African origin into Berber-speaking
populations whose males currently have a predominance of lineages defined by
the African M35/81 biallelic marker. It is interesting that these “non-African”
mtDNA lineages are usually predominant while being diverse (Coudray et al.
2009; Fadhlaoui-Zid et al. 2004; Khodjet-el-Khil et al. 2008). The existence of
mtDNA lineages common to Saami and some Amazigh groups (Achilli et al.

2005) is likely to be explained by the migration of females bearing these lineages
from a region in northern Europe (perhaps in the ranks of the Vandals or far more
ancient back-migrations to Africa), whether they were ethnically Saami or not.
However, there may have been other locales where these lineages once existed.
Circular reasoning in syntheses involving multiple disciplines has to be
avoided. The criteria and methods for a given discipline usually have to be given
equal weight, and their results should be considered independently before an effort
at synthesis is made. For example, a hypothesis about the place of origin of
a language family or phylum must be based on linguistic evidence and methods,
not on DNA or craniofacial patterns. Likewise the place of origin of a particular
genetic variant or lineage has to be based on genetic data, principles, and models,
not on archaeological data. The locale of origin of a particular culture or
archaeological industry is subject to analyses based on methods and theory that
are specific to the relevant disciplines.

The only exception to these “rules” is if a
calculated date of origin of a genetic variant found in a given locale predates the
existence of people in that place. Although the notion of population ties together
both biology and culture broadly conceived, it cannot be claimed that continuity
in one necessarily means continuity in another. If the question is about physical
population migration, then the same conclusion reached from every discipline
independently would seem to best support the claim (Rouse 1986). However, it
cannot be said absolutely that there was no movement if all lines of evidence do
not point in the same direction. The idea of Occam’s razor may sometimes mean
accepting the reality of human complexity and an inability to reconcile evidence
with preconceived models.

Frigi et al. (2010) have provided a general temporal framework for Maghreb
population history, from the Paleolithic to French colonization. This is appropriate
given the evidence for early modern human behavior and life history in the
Maghreb (Bouzouggar et al. 2007; T. Smith et al. 2007), the diversity of various
epi-Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures in or near the region associated with climatic
changes (Lubell et al. 1984; Rahmani 2003, 2004; Sereno et al. 2008; Sheppard
and Lubell 1990), and the interactions with known “peoples” at later dates
(Bennett 1960; Brown 1968; Desanges 1981; Hirschberg 1960; Nebel 2002).

In reviewing data from multiple disciplines, Frigi and colleagues have given the region’s
populations a multidimensional existence. In providing evidence for the
ongoing microevolution in the Maghreb of ancient mtDNA lineages that emerged
in Africa and evidence of later gene flow from multiple directions, they have revealed
that this region has biological continuity with the deep past as well as change.

Frigi and colleagues may have inadvertently revealed peoples whose ancestors
had a level of cultural flexibility in accepting outsiders as mates. As noted,
the male and female histories of a population may be different in their sources
(Wilkins 2006), although they are now seen as part of a recognizable biocultural
entity with a categorically singular identity. How is the emergence of the Amazigh
peoples in the geographic range of their homeland to be understood in terms of
culture, language, and biology? In some sense the question is about origins, a
term that can be confusing because of its various meanings. It can be applied to
different aspects of a population—which can be disarticulated and can change as a
function of time. Ancestry must not be confused with explanation, or gene history
with population or culture history. Known ancestors and the “ancestors of one’s
genes” are not the same things necessarily (Weiss and Long 2009).

Can a narrative of “origins” be constructed on the basis of an internal perspective
of the dynamics of the human communities of northwestern Africa, considered
through time? Or is this region simply an appendage of other places?
Sometimes the Amazigh, by use of the term “Eurasian” in a categorical model of
analysis, are placed in a raciotypological model without reference to evolution
and their indigenous emergence in Africa. (It can be ventured that this is largely
based on nonevolutionary ideas about phenotype, notions of bounded unchanging
populations, problematic assumptions about language families, and certain old
attitudes and theories about Africa.)

Frigi and colleagues have documented the deep-time biological connections
of current Berber speakers to Africa. The migration of “Europeans” and “Asians”
is also discussed. There has been continuity and change in the population from
original settlement. It is important to remember that high levels of gene flow and
biocultural assimilation could lead to great biological heterogeneity in a population
whose language family or culture does not change. Frigi and colleagues address
the idea of the indigenous, although not explicitly, and lay the groundwork
for more nuanced future discussions. They suggest a complex biogeographic history
not reducible to raciotypological constructs or outdated simplistic theories
of colonization and migration. They provide a basis for a rich discussion by acknowledging
the interactions of known peoples in the Maghreb and unknown
actors of a deeper past. The issue of what is indigenous is seen to be one of definition,
turning on what aspect of a population or region is ranked as its “defining”
characteristic, and whether this may change or could have changed over time.
The term indigenous unfortunately is connected to a discourse about the West and
non-West and sometimes has a negative sensibility and hence may not be the best
word, but a discussion of this issue is beyond the scope of this presentation.
Of course “indigenous” is a relative term when the temporal scope of human
evolution and history is considered, and it even seems to depend to a degree on
what part of the world is under discussion. Europe can serve as a good example. If
it is asked who are the “indigenous” Europeans, there would probably be a request
to clarify the time depth, given that modern humans are not native to Europe and
arrived there from elsewhere.

(The next question therefore is at what point do they become “European” and what
precisely does this mean: current limb proportions,
skin color, genetic variation, language, the presence of Neanderthal DNA?) Does
“indigenousness” require residency back to the upper Paleolithic, the Neolithic,
and so on? Is it only a biological phenomenon requiring a “drop” of Neanderthal
blood or a linguistic phenomenon requiring the speaking of Indo-European languages?
Or if the question is who were the indigenous inhabitants of northern,
southern, western, eastern, or central Europe, the answers would necessarily take
on a different tone, based on other information.

Are the Basque speakers the indigenous inhabitants of Europe, if currently
spoken language phyla and families are used as “population markers,” a problematic
assumption? Basque predates Indo-European, and there is some indication
of some level of biological distinctiveness (Alonso et al. 2005). The fact that
historical linguists (e.g., Ehret 2002; Nichols 1997) can reconstruct the existence
of culture-linguistic units for a proto-language family (e.g., Adamawa) or phylum
(e.g., Niger-Congo), which may have migrated, does not mean that they are suggesting
that the people making up such entities connote genetic units or Mendelian
breeding populations. It also does not mean that the speakers of such proto-entities
had a common molecular or social genealogical origin at foundation, or that the
linguists are suggesting this.

Defining “origins” or “indigenous” becomes one of
perspective. How much “Basque ancestry” would a European population have to
have for the label of “indigenous European” to apply? If none, why not? (What is
the relationship between cultural and biological genealogy?) Can it be assumed
that the Basques of today biologically represent those of the past “accurately”?
The post-Paleolithic European assimilation of males from Africa and Asia bearing
younger genetic variants is documented (Cruciani et al. 2004, 2007): Are such
ancient admixed populations to be viewed as “less” European or non-European?
Are Nordics or the Basques the “standard” European? Is language, biology, culture,
geography, or something else the arbiter of European-ness? In practice, this
question seems to be little asked in studies of Europeans: All these groups and
nationalities are considered European with little question. Aegean peoples are not
presented as “hybrids.” The linguistic and genetic diversity is not a factor in the
designation of “indigenous” for Europe.

But in the case of Africa there seems to be a problem with diversity for
some scholars. The Indo-European language phylum, in the standard evidence-based
interpretation, did not originate in the European heartland (Ehret, personal
communication, 2010). Most people in Europe today speak Indo-European
languages—now considered as “indigenous” as Basque. What does it mean for
the concept of European if Europe’s major language phylum did not originate
in what is considered Europe proper? How much of the spread of early Indo-European
was due to outright settler colonization and how much to language
shift—these are questions that will likely be debated for some time. Are the
Finns, Saami, and Hungarians (or their “original” ancestors)—all non-Indo-
European-speaking—to be considered Europeans? Apparently so. Contrast this
with ideas held by some about Berbers as “Eurasians” who speak a language family
that belongs to a phylum whose proto-parent emerged in Africa using
standard historical linguistic criteria and whose major history and differentiation
occurred in Africa (Ehret 2002; Greenberg 1963; Nichols 1997). In discussions
about Europe, geography seems to be enough to define what is “indigenous”—
with the exception of the Turks. This contrast deserves review by students of the
sociology of knowledge.

The European example is relevant to the discussion of Berbers because of
the use of terms by some researchers that imply that Berbers are not an African
development, an African people, in their beginning and current state. Calling the
Amazigh “Eurasian” based primarily on skin color without a discussion of process
in history, language, evolution, and Y-chromosome variants can easily be
seen as problematic when literature about Europe is examined carefully. The possibility
of asymmetric gene flow with more Eurasian females being assimilated
into the ancient Maghreb—and their lineages simply differentially surviving in
greater frequencies—is addressed in a preliminary fashion by Frigi et al. (2010)
and further engages us in the history of social interactions that may influence
population biology.

Returning to the Amazigh, the findings and comments of Frigi et al. (2010)
on Tunisian Berbers, and Berbers in general, suggest a new way of looking at
the Maghreb region of Africa. Their review and analysis offer the opportunity to
begin to develop a new and nuanced narrative about the peopling of the region,
one that avoids the biases of past writings. Their findings of ongoing evolution
in the Maghreb of ancient mtDNA lineages that originated in Africa, synthesized
with the evidence of the assimilation of migrants (mainly female?) from Europe and
the Near East, the predominance of uniquely African Y-chromosome lineages, and
the observation that Berber is the only extant indigenous language in the region
suggest the workings of both biological and cultural processes. There are clearly
different levels of biological and cultural history. Except in situations of migrationist
settler colonialism associated with the annihilation or conquest of local
peoples, groups emerge from local elements and new additions—all influenced
by the social and physical environments. This view of populations as assemblages
and processes is different from a notion of them as essentialist primordial entities
with fixed traits having continuity over time. In any geographic space groups can
interact at various levels with various strictures; languages can be adopted partly
or fully, and social rules may allow the acceptance of offspring by foreign females
but not males, or vice versa. It is possible for a group to view itself as genealogically
homogeneous by memory but to evince a genetic heterogeneity of lineages
obtained in the remote past. “Admixture” in the late Pleistocene in the deep background
of a regional population is to be differentiated from gene flow between
known historical entities.

Frigi and colleagues’ suggestion that supra-Saharan Africans are an indigenous
development with a complex story is a corrective to past models. The settlement
of the coastal Maghreb in the Middle and Late Stone Age is a part of the
settlement of the world outside Saharo-tropical Africa. The early modern human presence
in the Maghreb suggests that that region played a role in modern human
developments (Bouzouggar et al. 2007). Even if whole communities later came
from outside Africa into the Maghreb (before the Phoenicians), which is not knowable,
they became thoroughly assimilated into the autochthonous population—
which adopted some of its culture (Camps 1982), and their descendants are a
part of the emergence of the much later Amazigh world. Less arid climatic conditions
in the early to mid-Holocene Sahara allowed for the interaction of various
peoples who no doubt contributed to the population history, as observed by Frigi
et al. (2010). Saharan developments likely help to explain the Berber emergence,
because, based on recent work [see Kuper and Kropelin (2006) and Sereno et al.
(2008)], the desert was likely the site of a metapopulation and cultural differentiation.
Whether the early Saharan rock paintings depict only Africans of varying
phenotypes or such Africans and Asians (as suggested by Frigi and colleagues)
can be debated, but the net result was assimilation into Amazigh communities,
because there are no Berbers in Europe or Asia. The light skin color of Mediterranean
Africa may be the result of adaptive evolution or drift, given the length of
time of modern people in Africa, including the Maghreb, or gene flow, but more
likely some combination.

The Maghreb has several Neolithic traditions (Camps 1982; Phillipson
2005), which might indicate different peoples or simply cultural adoption or adaptation
by heterogeneous populations who became unified under singular cultural
practices and one language family. The Neolithic Capsian tradition shows continuity
with previous cultures, with evidence of these accepting domesticated sheep
and goat into a local subsistence pattern, thus becoming Neolithicized with a pastoralist
economy (Rahmani, 2003, 2004; Sheppard and Lubell 1990). A. B. Smith
(2005) and McDonald (1998) indicate the importance of pastoralism in the Holocene
Sahara, and this economy may help in the understanding of Berber emergence.
In the coastal Maghreb various Neolithic and post-Neolithic interregional
interactions are in evidence, based on archaeology and the eventual settlements of
the Phoenicians, Romans, Vandals, and others (Camps 1982).

In aggregate, over time, these peoples, along with the later importation of Europeans
(Bennett 1960; Davis 2004), would seemingly have contributed far more to the current biological
picture than has been realized. The much later trans-Saharan trade in enslaved
individuals no doubt played a role in genetic contributions, but the egress from a
desiccating Sahara with subsequent population formations would explain some
of the younger “sub-Saharan” variation, be it from western or eastern Africa. The
“Eurasian” component seems to have come in over a longer period of time, as
noted earlier. A small amount of gene flow per generation into a population or
geographic region can drastically change its original gene frequencies in only a
few thousand years, as noted by Cavalli-Sforza (1991).

The development of a narrative of the population history of the Maghreb requires
careful analysis using several approaches. Frigi and colleagues have made
an important contribution to studies of African human biology and culture in suggesting
the complexity of Maghreban population history.

-----
Read more: http://egyptsearchreloaded.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=bag&action=display&thread=567#ixzz10bDy7F00

early Europeans and middle Easterners looked like Africans. Peoples returning or "backflowing" to Africa would already be looking like Africans

2010-05-11T13:18:00.016-04:00

Pale skin color of Europeans and Asiatics a recent event dating to only 6-12kya

Modern humans did not begin to lighten in skin color immediately after entering Europe some 35,000 years ago. In fact, these ancestral Europeans remained brown-skinned for tens of thousands of years. This is the conclusion now emerging from studies of skin color loci.

In 2005, a team of Japanese researchers found that the depigmentation of European skin was partly due to a relatively recent allele at the SLC45A2 (AIM1) gene. They dated the allele to c. 11,000 BP and concluded that it had rapidly supplanted the original allele through positive selection (Soejima et al., 2005).

Then last year, at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, a molecular anthropologist at the University of Arizona, Heather Norton, presented evidence that Europeans have a similarly recent allele at another skin color gene, SLC24A5. The new allele is dated to 12,000 – 3,000 BP. As she stated during her talk: "The [evolution of] light skin occurred long after the arrival of modern humans in Europe." (Norton & Hammer, 2007).

Either way, the implication is that our European ancestors were brown-skinned for tens of thousands of years--a suggestion made 30 years ago by Stanford University geneticist L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza. He argued that the early immigrants to Europe, who were hunter-gatherers, herders, and fishers, survived on ready-made sources of vitamin D in their diet. But when farming spread in the past 6000 years, he argued, Europeans had fewer sources of vitamin D in their food and needed to absorb more sunlight to produce the vitamin in their skin. Cultural factors such as heavier clothing might also have favored increased absorption of sunlight on the few exposed areas of skin, such as hands and faces, says paleoanthropologist Nina Jablonski of PSU in State College. (Gibbons, 2007)

From:
Gibbons, A. (2007). American Association Of Physical Anthropologists Meeting: European Skin Turned Pale Only Recently, Gene Suggests. Science 20 April 2007: 316. no. 5823, p. 364

and

Norton, H.L. & Hammer, M.F. (2007). Sequence variation in the pigmentation candidate gene SLC24A5 and evidence for independent evolution of light skin in European and East Asian populations. Program of the 77th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, p. 179.

Reconstruction of early European based
on scientific data about skin color, facial
and tropical features

First modern Europeans looked like Africans

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/romania/5273654/Scientists-reveal-face-of-the-first-European.html

Scientists reveal face of the first European
The face of the first European has been recreated from bone fragments by scientists.

By Urmee Khan, Digital and Media Correspondent
Published: 8:22PM BST 04 May 2009

The first modern European Forensic artist Richard Neave reconstructed the face based on skull fragments from 35000 years ago. The head was rebuilt in clay based on an incomplete skull and jawbone discovered in a cave in the south west of the Carpathian Mountains in Romania by potholers. Using radiocarbon analysis scientists say the man or woman, it is still not possible to determine the sex, lived between 34,000 and 36,000 years ago.

Europe was then occupied by both Neanderthal man, who had been in the region for thousands of years, and anatomically-modern humans – Homo sapiens. The skull appears very like humans today, but it also displays more archaic traits, such as very large molar teeth, which led some scientists to speculate the skull may belong to a hybrid between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals – an idea discounted by other experts.

Erik Trinkaus, professor of anthropology at Washington University in Missouri, said the jaw was the oldest, directly-dated modern human fossil. "Taken together, the material is the first that securely documents what modern humans looked like when they spread into Europe," he said.

The model was created by Richard Neave, a forensic artist, for a BBC programme about the origins of the human race and evolution.

Evolution shows that the original human skin color is dark and humans until quite recently had dark skin, until they migrated from the tropics.

"The evolution of a naked, darkly pigmented integument occurred early in the evolution of the genus Homo. A dark epidermis protected sweat glands from UV-induced injury, thus insuring the integrity of somatic thermoregulation. Of greater significance to individual reproductive success was that highly melanized skin protected against UV-induced photolysis of folate.. As hominids migrated outside of the tropics, varying degrees of depigmentation evolved in order to permit UVB-induced synthesis of previtamin D3. The lighter color of female skin may be required to permit synthesis of the relatively higher amounts of vitamin D3 necessary during pregnancy and lactation."
-- Jablonski, N (2000). The evolution of human skin coloration. Journal of Human Evolution 39, 57–106

"Humans skin is the most visible aspect of the human phenotype. It is distinguished mainly by its naked appearance, greatly enhanced abilities to dissipate body heat through sweating, and the great range of genetically determined skin colors present within a single species. Many aspects of the evolution of human skin and skin color can be reconstructed using comparative anatomy, physiology, and genomics. Enhancement of thermal sweating was a key innovation in human evolution that allowed maintenance of homeostasis (including constant brain temperature) during sustained physical activity in hot environments. Dark skin evolved pari passu with the loss of body hair and was the original state for the genus Homo. Melanin pigmentation is adaptive and has been maintained by natural selection."
-- Jablonski N (2004)THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN SKIN AND SKIN COLOR. Annual Review of Anthropology Vol. 33: 585-623

Early Europeans and Middle Easterners thus looked like Africans as shown by cranial, skin color and limb data. Any “backflow” or return to Africa, would be by people who already looked like Africans.

African genetic diversity
Kittles and Keita

Rick Kittles and S. O. Y. Keita

Interpreting African Genetic Diversity
African Archaeological Review, Vol. 16, No. 2, 1999

-----------------------------------------------------

Explanations of human biological variation in extant African populations have historically been shaped by a racial paradigm. In this paradigm deep genetic differences are assumed to exist between so-called "racial" groups or types, which are viewed as being composed of nearly uniform individuals and are taken as "natural" fundamental taxonomic units of Homo sapiens. These types were originally based on specific aspects of external morphology. Carleton Coon (1962), a physical anthropologist who contributed to this paradigm, proposed a theory of human evolution which postulated the independent emergence of five primordial races or subspecies from distinct, separate, Homo erectus ancestors. Two of these purported primordial races originated in Africa. They were called Congoid ("Pygmies") and Capoid (Khoisan or "Bushmen"). In Coon's conception other continental Africans, which exhibit a broad range of biological diversity, were considered to be primarily or only the result of various levels of admixture between these two groups with each other or with immigrants deemed to be of European or Asian origin and generally called "Caucasian." Although the causal aspects of Coon's theory have been rejected, racial thinking still persists today using Coon's categories and is quite evident in the methods and interpretation of genetic studies of African populations (Keita and Kittles, 1997).

Here we briefly discuss the implications of modern genetic studies of African and world populations for understanding African biohistory. We propose an evolutionary biogeographical model as an alternative to "racial" explanatory models of African biological diversity. A rational definition of African in a biological sense should be derived from biogeography and not be based on uninformed (and biased) traditions of practice.

Racial models, as traditionally presented, are static, and obligate one to postulate gene flow as the primary explanation for variation. The racial paradigm is manifested in the early writings on Africa by Seligman (1930) and Coon (1962,1965) and is still operationalized in varying degrees by anthropologists and geneticists, who otherwise reject Coon's thinking, to explain the vast biological diversity observed in the continent. While it is a formidable task to evaluate the extent of genetic diversity in Africa, it is quite evident that in many of these studies there is the lack of an evolutionary perspective. This is especially the case when northern Africa and the Horn are considered. The variation in these regions has generally been explained as being due primarily to admixture between "Africans" and "non-Africans." In fact, supra-Saharan African populations have frequently been conceptualized as being derived from "European" ancestors and, hence, non- African (see Seligman, 1930). The genetic profiles of supra-Saharan populations are indeed in a relative sense "intermediate" to those of various sub-Saharan groups (stereotypically defined) and "Eurasians" (see Guglielmino et al., 1987; Chibani et al., 1985; Tartaglia et al., 1996; Merghoub et al., 1997). But is this genetic "intermediateness" due primarily to supra-Saharan populations being foundationally an admixed group (the result of gene flow between two distinct "races")? Or is their biology reflective of factors acting on indigenous modern Homo sapien populations in Africa?

Invoking admixture to explain human variation is related to another polemic generally seen in many genetic studies of African populations. This is the persistence of the socially constructed normative view of the African as only the "Forest Negro" type, or the so-called "Pygmy" from Central Africa, in line with Coon's (1962, 1965) thinking. These populations are used as the representative African in many studies (see Bowcock et al., 1991, 1994; Cavalli-Sforza et al., 1994). Northern African populations are rarely used in research under the designation "African." Also, studies which utilize pooled samples of individuals from distinct African populations as a representative "race" are problematic. If modern humans evolved in Africa 150,000 to 200,000 years ago, and dispersed outside of Africa only about 100,000 years ago, why should it be assumed that those populations which remained in Africa became stagnant and homogeneous? While African populations share a common ancestry, they also have evolved separately for a long time. Evidence for isolation by distance operating in Africa is seen by genetic distinctions among eastern, western, northern, central, and southern Africa (Excoffier et al., 1987).

These genetic differences broadly correlate with geographic distances. Various populations in Africa have interacted via migrations during past history. One striking and most apparent signature of migration is the dramatic eastern-to-western Africa cline of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup L3a frequencies (Watson et al., 1997). Haplogroup L3a is closely related to a mtDNA haplotype common in European populations [the Cambridge Reference Sequence (Anderson et al., 1981)]. A subgroup of related mtDNA haplotypes appears to be East African specific and may represent a common ancestral sequence for most of Europe and Eurasia. In other words, the mtDNA diversity observed in non-African populations is a subset of African mtDNA variation. We note that while this group of mtDNA haplotypes is common in Eastern Africa, it represents only a subset of the total mtDNA diversity observed throughout the African continent. A similar pattern is observed for nuclear (Tishkoff et al., 1996, 1998) and Y chromosome (Passarino et al., 1998) variation in Eastern Africa. There are several implications for these observations. First, it provides evidence for an African (specifically, Eastern African) origin for Eurasians. Second it suggests that before major migrations occurred out of the continent, populations were diverging. These observations deconstruct racial thinking, especially the concept of "racial divergence."

The term racial divergence fails to describe the process responsible for producing the variation that exists as a continuum in the human species. So-called racial divergence dates reflect the times of differentiation of genes within populations used in a given analysis and should be interpreted as such. "Racial divergence" time estimates have been used to infer the age of the common ancestor between sampled groups, but this is definitely not the time of origin for the so-called "racial groups," which traditionally have been defined by morphology, nor is it the time of "origin" for the sampled populations. Time, geography, and other data help elucidate the larger meaning of genetic studies. A date of 156,000 years ago has been suggested by Goldstein etal. (1995) for the separation of African (stereotypically defined) and non-African populations. Given that there is no fossil evidence for modern humans anywhere at 150,000 years ago except in Africa, this does not represent an African/non-African "split." This date is actually an estimate of the initial genetic divergence that occurred within the continent of Africa among our modern human ancestors. After the expansion of modern humans out of Africa, subsets of the resultant genetic variation were distributed throughout the other continents. Most genetic variants observed outside of Africa are also found within Africa at various frequencies (and are of indigenous origin); this clearly indicates that "Africans" are not monomorphic. Northern African genetics, when this information is considered carefully with palaeontological data, would not seem to be explicable as simply "hybrids" or lost Eurasians. A different perspective, having more explanatory power and consistent with the available data, is that northern and Horn of Africa populations constitute gradients of differentiation largely reflective of African biohistorical processes.

The data of Tishkoff et al. (1996, 1998) are best interpreted as suggesting that a model of in situ evolutionary differentiation explains the bulk of variation in Africa (which includes supra-Saharan, Saharan, and sub-Saharan regions). Markers from mitochondrial DNA and the Y chromosome, which define maternal and paternal lineages, respectively, also reveal significant differentiation of ancestral African populations (Watson et al., 1996,1997; Passarino et al., 1998; Malaspina et al., 1998). Another likely example of internal differentiation within Africa is to be found in the "unusual" genetic makeup of the Khoisan, a southern African population with a high frequency of purported "Asian" alleles (Cavalli-Sforza et al., 1994). Some suggest admixture with Asians to explain the Khoisan genetic profile. However, the Khoisan speakers may be descendants of a generalized ancestral human population from which modern Asian and African populations were ultimately derived. The Khoisan have been shown to be less diverse than other African populations for a variety of genetic loci (Excoffier et al., 1987). This may be due to two reasons: historical isolation and a smaller effective population size. The Khoisan have historically remained relatively isolated from other African populations due to cultural and linguistic differences. Also, the smaller effective population size is likely the result of the hunter-gatherer culture of the Khoisan. These cultural and subsistence patterns could promote significant differentiation of the population.

The overall pattern of genetic variation that exists within and outside of Africa suggests an African origin of modern humans and a recent common origin of non- African populations. The pattern of human genetic diversity supportive of this position is observed in studies which examine genetic signatures left behind from population expansions and population bottlenecks (Rogers and Harpending, 1992; Harpending et al., 1993, 1998; Shriver et al., 1997; Reich and Goldstein, 1998; Kimmel etal., 1998; Jorde et al., 1997). These studies consistently reveal an initial population expansion within Africa prior to out-migration into other continents. What is actually a population expansion has been mistakenly termed "racial divergence," which implies morphological differentiation into the recognizable entities now labeled "races." In reality, it represents the early genetic divergence of ancestral Homo sapiens. From the genetic data we find evidence of in situ differentiation (or genetic divergence) of mid-Pleistocene populations in Africa and subsequent migrations out of Africa into Europe and Asia, with continued drift due to isolation by distance and founder effects, which abruptly end when expansion in population size and frequent migrations occurred. Also, numerous environmental zones exerted their own selective pressures on the populations. The populations remaining in Africa are the primary ancestors of present Africans. This model is more consistent with archaeological and molecular evidence and can be tested using various data sets. This biogeographical perspective better explains the main source of variation within Africa and obviates the need for racial thinking and its associated baggage.
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mtDNA DATA in North Africa and Egypt

Much North African and N.E. mtDNA (passed on from mother) is weighted towards Africa rather than Europe or the Near East. The L1, L2 and L3 groups, along with M1 are African derived. Others, such as U6, may represent a mutation of African L3 returning to Africa some scholars hold (Gonzalez 2007) while others see the original roots already being formed in Africa before migrating out (Kivisild 2003). Dating of movements is a matter of debate. Some scholars (Maca-Meyer et al 2003) argue that the U6 mutation returned to Africa from Eurasia in a range up to 66kya. However National Geographic’s 2010 Genographic project shows modern humans FIRST leaving Africa 50-60kya, AFTER the time of the supposed return or ‘backflow’. Whichever approach is used, the original African migrants looked like tropical Africans, and early peoples returning to Africa from Europe or West Asia, looked like today’s tropical Africans (Brace 2005, Hanihara 1996).
Map from -- Salas et al. (2002) The Making of the African mtDNA Landscape Am J Hum Genet. 71(5): 1082-1111.

Berber populations in Egypt more related to tropical Africans than Europeans or Middle Easterners based on mtDNA.

"The mitochondrial DNA variation of 295 Berber-speakers from Morocco (Asni, Bouhria and Figuig) and the Egyptian oasis of Siwa was evaluated.. A clear and significant genetic differentiation between the Berbers from Maghreb and Egyptian Berbers was also observed. The first are related to European populations as shown by haplogroup H1 and V frequencies, whereas the latter share more affinities with East African and Nile Valley populations as indicated by the high frequency of M1 and the presence of L0a1, L3i, L4*, and L4b2 lineages. Moreover, haplogroup U6 was not observed in Siwa. We conclude that the origins and maternal diversity of Berber populations are old and complex, and these communities bear genetic characteristics resulting from various events of gene flow with surrounding and migrating populations."
-- Coudray et al. (2008). The Complex and Diversified Mitochondrial Gene Pool of Berber Populations. Annals of Human Genetics. Volume 73 Issue 2, Pages 196 - 214

Even with much Arab admixture and Middle Eastern influx, a 2003 study of modern Egyptians still found strong African genetic influence. About half of the mtDNA’s in today’s Egypt is African based. The biggest single percentage found was African M1.

QUOTE: “Our results suggest that the Gurna population has conserved the trace of an ancestral genetic structure from an

ancestral East African population, characterized by a high M1 haplogroup frequency.”
--Stevanovich et al 2004. Mitochondrial DNA Sequence Diversity..

Mesopotamia- an arid tropic/subtropical civilization

2010-05-11T13:18:00.013-04:00

Mesopotamia - a tropic or arid tropic civilization linked to tropically adapted peoples - "Nordic" Mesopotamia debunked

Mesopotamia - a tropic or arid tropic civilization linked to tropically adapted peoples

Nordic Mesopotamia? Across the web Neo-Nazis and Human Biodiversity proponents (HBD) wage an arcane war of “racial science” built around claimed superiority of cold-climate “Nordic” peoples. Tropical areas it is claimed produced little civilization until the coming of cold-climate Asiatics and Europeans? But is this “the truth” as claimed? HBD proponents reference US anthropologist Carelton Coon heavily, a supporter of the southern segregationist cause during the 1960s (Caspari 2003). Coon and other of his ilk make 3 claims:

The Sumerians may have been vaguely "Mediterranean" but part Negroid
The Sumerians were identical to Englishmen
The Sumerians were of "Aryan" or "Nordic" stock

Natufians negroids who may be mediterraneans or quasi negroids claimed: As to the Palestinian area of Greater Mesopotamia, Coon (1939 ‘Races of Europe) held that skulls indicate a vague "Mediterranean type" with minor negro admixture, although contradictorily noting the prognathism of the specimens gives “a somewhat negroid cast to the face.”

"English" Sumerians and European' stock claimed in Mesopotamia: As to the Sumerians, Coon asserted that "Sumerians who lived over five thousand years ago in Mesopotamia are almost identical in skull and face form with living Englishmen."

Blue-eyed "Nordics" for the Mesopotamian Sumerians: L. A. Waddell (1930- Egyptian Civilization Its Sumerian Origin..) held that the Nile Valley civilization was due to the Sumerians and that t he first dynastic Pharaoh of Egypt, Menes, was identical to the son of Sargon the Great of Sumeria, and that a great empire extended from India in the east to Britain in the west and that it was ruled over by Sargon I and later by his son Manis Tusu, whom he equates with the Menes of the Egyptian kingdom. The actual Sumerians who controlled this world-girdling empire, Waddell maintained, were of blue-eyed Nordic Aryan stock. [quote:]
"The unity as regards type and source of the ancient civilizations of Sumerian Mesopotamia, India, Egypt is in keeping with the physique of the ruling people in all countries, which is shown by their portraits, sculptures and skeletal remains to have been of the long-headed, fair, grey or blue-eyed type recognized by moderns as marking the Aryan section of the caucasian race." (Waddell 1930)

The only thing wrong with the three approaches above is that they are nonsense. If anything the peoples of greater Mesopotamia more closely resemble the tropical variants of Africa than any reputed Europeans or "Nordics" as shown below..

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Debunking 1: Greater Mesopotamia (Palestine, Iraq, Syria, southwestern Iran) falls within the Subtropic/Tropic Arid Zone, NOT the cold-climate zones of Europe or Asia. The subtropics are the geographical and climatic zone of the Earth immediately north and south of the tropical zone, at latitudes 23.5°N and 23.5°S. The Greater Mesopotamian area is assigned to the subtropics or the arid tropics by modern climatologists. (See: Troll and Pfaffen, 1964. ‘Seasonal patterns of the earth and Thompson, A. (1997) Applied climatology: pg 179;

Debunking 2: Peoples of the Palestine area, and the Sumerians did NOT look like cold-clime “white Nordics” or Asiatics. Modern data shows a wide range with more links to African sub-Saharan elements.

Debunking 3: Even China had its own subtropical zone hosting key centers of civilization, contradicting the claim of civilization in China as an exclusively cold climate phenomenon. Even in places like China, important strands of early civilization developed in Arid Tropic/subtropic areas such as in the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River zone, and the humid subtropical area around Xian, in Shaanxi province, a key cradle of civilization area in Chinese history. Subtropical Xian is the location of the famous Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China.
;

Debunking 2: Peoples of the Palestine area, and the Sumerians did NOT look like cold-clime “white Nordics” or Asiatics. Modern data shows a wide range with more links to African sub-Saharan elements.

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DETAILS: THE NATUFIANS - early peoples of the Palestinian/israel area of ancient greater Mesopotamia

Modern scholars dismiss Coons “racial” analysis but confirm the sub-Saharan elements in the Natufians. [quote:]

“A late Pleistocene-early Holocene northward migration (from Africa to the Levant and to Anatolia) of these populations has been hypothesized from skeletal data (Angel 1972, 1973; Brace 2005) and from archaeological data, as indicated by the probable Nile Valley origin of the "Mesolithic" (epi-Paleolithic) Mushabi culture found in the Levant (Bar Yosef 1987). This migration finds some support in the presence in Mediterranean populations (Sicily, Greece, southern Turkey, etc.; Patrinos et al.; Schiliro et al. 1990) of the Benin sickle cell haplotype. This haplotype originated in West Africa and is probably associated with the spread of malaria to southern Europe through an eastern Mediterranean route (Salares et al. 2004) following the expansion of both human and mosquito populations brought about by the advent of the Neolithic transition (Hume et al 2003; Joy et al. 2003; Rich et al 1998).

"This northward migration of northeastern African populations carrying sub-Saharan biological elements is concordant with the morphological homogeneity of the Natufian populations (Bocquentin 2003), which present morphological affinity with sub-Saharan populations (Angel 1972; Brace et al. 2005). In addition, the Neolithic revolution was assumed to arise in the late Pleistocene Natufians and subsequently spread into Anatolia and Europe (Bar-Yosef 2002), and the first Anatolian farmers, Neolithic to Bronze Age Mediterraneans and to some degree other Neolithic-Bronze Age Europeans, show morphological affinities with the Natufians (and indirectly with sub-Saharan populations; Angel 1972; Brace et al 2005)..”
--F. X. Ricaut, M. Waelkens. (2008). Cranial Discrete Traits in a Byzantine Population and Eastern Mediterranean Population Movements Human Biology. 80:5, pp. 535-564

Other scholars on the Natufians:

Larry Angel (1972): "one can identify Negroid traits of nose and prognathism appearing in Natufian latest hunters.(McCown, 1939) and in Anatolian and Macedonian first farmers, probably from Nubia via the predecesors of the Badarians and Tasians..."

C.L. Brace (2005): "If the late Pleistocene Natufian sample from Israel is the source from which that Neolithic spread was derived, there was clearly a sub-Saharan African element present of almost equal importance as the Late Prehistoric Eurasian element."

DETAILS: THE SUMERIANS

The Sumerians had a range of physical variation with clear resemblance to tropical Africans on 4 counts:

Count 1- Linkages to other tropically adapted peoples and Upper Egypt: Sir Arthur Keith (1934 - Al-'Ybaid: 216,240) also held that the Sumerians were related to Englishmen. [Quote:]
"The Neolithic people of English long barrows are also related to them- perhaps distantly" Such resemblances between older tropically adapted Europeans and peoples outside Europe, such as in Africa, has been noted by Brace 2005 (The Questionable Contribution of the Neolithic) and by Hanihara (1996) as to the resemblance of other peoples in the greater Mesopotamian area to tropical Africans (Hanihara 1996- Comparison of craniofacial..') Keith speculates as to links between the Sumerians and Afghanistan and Baluchistan, but in actual comparison of data, Keith notes that Sumerian specimens he examined showed some resemblance to specimens from tropical Upper Egypt (described by researcher Dr. Fouquet in Vol II of Morgan's 'Sur les Origines de l'Egypt- 1896) but had no resemblance to other Egyptian specimens. [Quote:]
"They were akin to the predynastic people of Egypt described by Dr. Foquet, but differed from all other predynastic and dynastic Egyptians." (Keith 1934, in Al-'Ubaid, pp. 216,240)

Count 2- Dolichocephalic crania of the negroid "EurAfrican" type: Dolichocephalic crania in older analyses are often seen as a marker of "negroid" or African variants, not "Nordics." Buxton and Rice (1931- 'Excavations at Kish') examined 26 Sumerian crania and calculated 17 as Eurafrians, five Mediterraneans/Australoid, and four Armenoid, showing that long-headed people were the dominant element in Sumeria. Penniman (1923-33) excavated 14 crania at Kish, describing 2 as brachycephalic and eight dolichocephalic or EuraAfrican type adn 4 miscellaneous.

Dolichocephalic crania in older analyses are generally considered a marker of "negroid", mulatto or sub-Saharan variants. [quote:] "The peoples in north-western Europe.. are medium-headed, on the average.. Head shapes vary outside the "White Race" too. Most members of the "Black Race" are long or medium-headed and most members of the "Yellow-Brown Race' are short-headed." (Boyd, W. races and People. 1955).

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913- "Human Race") also notes dolichocephaly as a marker of "blacks", asserting as to "the Ethiopian race" that: "the skull is dolichocephalic, the forehead full, the cheek-bones prominent, the nostrils wide, the alveolar arch narrow and prominent, the jaws prognathous, and the lower jaw large and strong."

Count 3 - Sumerian specimens likened to Egyptians of the Western Desert. [quote by Penniman at Kish excavations:]
"First there is the Eurafrican.. In ancient times, this type is found in Mesopotamia and Egypt and may be compared with the Ombe Capelle skull. It is possibly identical with men who lived in the high desert west of the Nile in paleolithic times.." (-Penniman, T.K. "A Note on the Inhabitants of Kish.." Excavations at Kish, 1923-33 Vol 4. pp 65-72)

Comparison of Sumerians to people of the western Desert - One recent (2008) study notes:
"..the Qarunian (Faiyum) early Neolithic crania (Henneberg et al. 1989; Midant-Reynes 2000), and the Nabta specimen from the Neolithic Nabta Playa site in the western desert of Egypt (Henneberg et al. 1980) - show, with regard to the great African biological diversity, similarities with some of the sub-Saharan middle Paleolithic and modern sub-Saharan specimens.This affinity pattern between ancient Egyptians and sub-Saharans has also been noticed by several other investigators.."
--Ricaut and Walekens (2008) 'Cranial Discrete traits..' Human Biology, 80:5, pp. 535-564

Quote on Qarunian (Faiyum) desert area remains (c. 7000 BC)
"The body was that of a forty-year old woman with a height of about 1.6 meters, who was of a more modern racial type than the classic 'Mechtoid' of the Fakhurian culture (see pp. 65-6), being generally more gracile, having large teeth and thick jaws bearing some resemblance to the modern 'negroid' type." (Beatrix Midant-Reynes, Ian Shaw (2000). The Prehistory of Egypt. Wiley-Blackwell. pg. 82)

Count 4 - Link of Mesopotamian U'baid culture with tropical African phenotype: (quote)
"Another impression that arose on the first examination was that the Eridu skulls showed a marked prognathism .. Keith's interesting conclusions-that the skulls of the ancient Sumerians were relatively narrow, that they were dolichocephalic, a large-headed, large-brained people, approaching or exceeding in these respects the longer-headed races of Europe, and that the men's noses were long and wide-is applicable to some of the 'Ubaid dead of the latter half of the third and the beginning of the second millennium B.C." --Cambridge Ancient Hist, Vol 1, Part I, 1970, p. 348; 358.

The Sumerians called themselves "the black headed people." They had nothing do do with any blond "Nordics", as shown in their song: "Lament for Urim"

Quote:
"Sumerian literature itself refers more often to 'the Land' that it does to 'Sumer', and to its inhabitants as 'the black-headed people.' (Black, Cunningham and Robson, 2006. pg- 1)

Lament For Urim
"The scorching potsherds made the dust glow (?) -- the people groan. He swept the winds over the black-headed people -- the people groan. Sumer was overturned by a snare -- the people groan. It attacked (?) the Land and devoured it completely. Tears cannot influence the bitter storm -- the people groan.

The Land's judgment disappeared -- the people groan. The Land's counsel was swallowed by a swamp -- the people groan. The mother absconded before her child's eyes -- the people groan. The father turned away from his child -- the people groan. In the city the wife was abandoned, the child was abandoned, possessions were scattered about. The black-headed people were carried off from their strongholds. "
Forkm: --Jeremy Black, Graham Cunningham, Eleanor Robson. The Literature of Ancient Sumer. (2006) Oxford University Press. 250,12,309,

5) Modern research comparisons of Sumerians with Mediterraneans dismiss any close affinity.
Osteological remains from "48 local populations from Southern Europe and the Middle East, ranging in time from 3100 B.C. to 200 A.D.," disconfirms the two regions "as a single interbreeding group of populations. "
-- (Finkel D. 1978. Spatial and temporal dimensions of Middle Eastern skeletal populations. JR Hum Evo, 7:3. 217-229)

Keita 1992 also dismisses notions of a "Mediterranean race":
“Mediterranean,” connoting a “race,” “one interbreeding population,” at the craniometric level, is questionable as defining the “Middle East” during the Bronze Age (Finkel, 1974,1978), invalid as a term linking geography to a uniform external phenotype (see Snowden, 1970; MacGaffey, 1966; Keita, 1990), inaccurate as a metric taxon for many groups previously assigned to it (Rightmire, 1975a,b), and problematic as a bony craniofacial morphotype denoting a “race” or mendelian population because of its varied soft-part trait associations and wide geographical distribution (see “Hamitic” in Coon et al., 1950; Gabel, 1966; MacGaffey, 1966; Hiernaux, 1975; Rightmire, 1975a).

“Hamitic”, a label once used for some African groups (Fulani, Galla, Beja, southern ancient Egyptian), is seen by some as equivalent to “Mediterranean White” (e.g., Vercoutter, 1978), but Hiernaux (1975) points out that it is incorrect to view fossil and living groups once so designated as being “closely related to Caucasoids of Europe and western Asia.” The term “Hamitic” has been dropped by linguists and historians as well as by anthropologists because of its contradictions, its inadequacies, and the theory of race and race history to which it was attached (McGaffey, 1966; Sanders, 1969; Hiernaux, 1975).
Likewise “Brown Race” is sometimes used as a synonym for Mediterranean White, though this interpretation is historically somewhat inaccurate (MacGaffey, 1966). Sergi (1901), perhaps the father of the original Mediterranean Race concept (Angel, 1983, personal communication), saw this taxon as being “autonomous” in origin, not of the Black or White “races.” Physical anthropologists express divergent views on the characteristic bony craniofacial morphology which is to define the “Mediterranean type” (personal correspondence from the late J.L. Angel, M-C. Chamla, and A. Wiercinski)."

-- Keita S. 1992. Further Studies of ancient crania from North Africa. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 87:245-254 (1992)

6) Modern CAT SCAN analysis of early Iranians shows a population with dolichcephaly and broad noses.
"it has been suggested based on archeological data that the population of Mesopotamia began to be influenced by Persians after the Achaemenean domination.. this study depicts the dolichocranic population as tending to have a relatively lower orbit and broader (lower) nose, and vice versa in the brachycranic population."
-- Naomichi O, et al. 2009. Geometric morphometric study.. An Sci 117

Sumerian summary: While they were their own variant and not absolutely 100% identical to other tropicals, several excavations and analyses link the Sumerians with tropical much more than Europeans in terms of (a) resemblance to Upper Egypt predynastic specimens, (b) dolichocephalic features, and (c) resemblance to tropical peoples of the Western Desert, and (4) similarities of the Mesopotamian U'baid specimens to other tropicals in terms of prognathism. This is consistent with the pattern shown in items a, b and c above.

The Penniman excavation of Sumerians found 8 out of 14, or 57% to be dolichocephalic, suggesting again the range of variation in the ancient Sumerians including tropical African features. Buxton and Rice found 17 out of 26 crania or 65% to be a similar tropical variant. This links again with the observations of Keith and the resemblance between Sumerian skulls and those of tropical Upper Egypt. Modern reanalyses of the data find both the Rice-Buxton and the Peniman data falling within the range for Saharao-tropical variant Africans (Van Sertima and Rashidi, 1987, p.23), confirming the Upper Egyptian matches with the Upper Egypt data of Fouquet reported by Keith (1934), and Penniman's Egyptian linkage. Ricaut and Walekens show that data in the Western Desert points once again to linkages with an African tropical variant, and the Cambridge History shows the Mesopotamian U'baids, precurors of the Sumerians to have a similar tropical affinity.

GREATER MESOPOTAMIA - OTHER PLACES- IRAN- still show links to tropical Africans

In addition to the Palestinian data, data from Iran show that early West Asians looked like today’s sub-Saharan Africans.

quote:
"Distance analysis and factor analysis, based on Q-mode correlation coefficients, were applied to 23 craniofacial measurements in 1,802 recent and prehistoric crania from major geographical areas of the Old World. The major findings are as follows: 1) Australians show closer similarities to African populations than to Melanesians. 2) Recent Europeans align with East Asians, and early West Asians resemble Africans. 3) The Asian population complex with regional difference between northern and southern members is manifest. 4) Clinal variations of craniofacial features can be detected in the Afro-European region on the one hand, and Australasian and East Asian region on the other hand. 5) The craniofacial variations of major geographical groups are not necessarily consistent with their geographical distribution pattern. This may be a sign that the evolutionary divergence in craniofacial shape among recent populations of different geographical areas is of a highly limited degree. Taking all of these into account, a single origin for anatomically modern humans is the most parsimonious interpretation of the craniofacial variations presented in this study."
(Hanihara T. Comparison of craniofacial features of major human groups. Am J Phys Anthropol. 1996 Mar;99(3):389-412.)

.
Conclusion: The HBD claim is false. Tropical peoples did indeed develop advanced civilizations without needing cold-climate "role models". Mesopotamia is in the Arid tropic (subtropical) zone and developed advanced civilizations long before reputed European or Asiatic cold-climate “leaders”. The peoples who developed these ancient civilizations did NOT look like cold-climate “Nordics" or Eastern Asiatics. Instead, they show a range of variation, including clear resemblance on some counts to other tropically adapted peoples of Africa. Scholars who deny these findings are inconsistent - like Coon above. Resemblances between Sumerians and other tropical peoples covers (a) Upper Egyptians, (b) dolichocephalism, (c) high desert Egyptians, and (d) U'baid specimens showing prognathism and other features within the range of tropical variants.

4 peoples of Greater Mesopotamia all show
some link to tropical African variants

Nonsensical human "biodiversity" race evolution model debunked

2010-05-11T13:15:00.018-04:00

EXCERPT:

EXCERPT

J.P. RUSHTON AND HBD RACIAL "EVOLUTIONARY' CLAIMS DEBUNKED

Africanist archaeology and ancient IQ: racial science and cultural evolution in the twenty-first century
Scott MacEachern
World Archaeology. (2006). Vol. 38(1): 72-92 Race, Racism and Archaeology
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Abstract

Over the last two decades, a number of psychometric researchers have claimed that very substantial differences in intelligence exist among modern human racial groups, as these groups are traditionally defined. According to these researchers, African populations suffer severe cognitive deficits when compared to other modern humans. Philippe Rushton, particularly, places these claimed mental deficits in an evolutionary context, advancing environmental explanations for such deficits and asserting that such cognitive differences existed prehistorically as well. Such substantial cognitive differences should be evident in human behavioural patterns, and thus in the archaeological record. Archaeological data can thus be used to test these claims about human evolutionary development and modern human cognitive difference. Examination of the archaeological record does not support the claims made by these researchers. This suggests that regional differences in IQ test score results should not be ascribed to variations in human evolutionary development.

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EXCERPT

Behaviour, selection and African environments
There are three basic elements in Rushton’s theorization of human difference. First, he amasses a large amount of material on physical, behavioural and social differences between the groups that form the popularly accepted triptych of human races: ‘Negroids’, ‘Caucasoids’ and ‘Mongoloids’ (Rushton 2000: 17–183; see also Rushton and Bogaert 1987: 265–8). The scope of these topics is very wide: it includes material on brain size, IQ (and related) test scores, dental development, speed of sexual maturation, age of first intercourse, life span, number of sexual fantasies, penis size, number of multiple births, permissive attitudes toward sex, aggressiveness, law-abidingness, ‘mental durability’, AIDS rates, cultural achievements and much more. Most striking, and most relevant for this paper, is Rushton’s (2000: 133–7; see also Rushton and Skuy 2000) acceptance of Richard Lynn’s (1991b, 2003; Lynn and Vanhanen 2002: 197–225) claim that the average IQ test score of African populations is approximately IQ¼70. In the psychiatric literature, this correlates to a state of borderline mental retardation (American Psychiatric Association 1994), implying that the great majority of African people living today suffer some degree of cognitive deficit, ranging from mild to very severe. Rushton ranks the three races on the basis of these assembled characteristics (Rushton 2000: 5, 119, 148, 152, 162, 166, 168, 171, 214).

He has stated on many occasions that this is a straightforward scientific description of humanity, but it is clear that any taxonomy describing Africans, for example, as less intelligent, more promiscuous, less altruistic, more aggressive, less law abiding, investing less effort in child-rearing and less culturally developed than Europeans or Asians – as Rushton’s taxonomy does – is also a ranking of fundamental human worth. Rushton’s accumulation of these data and the uses that he makes of them have been very stringently critiqued (see, for example, Brace 1996; Czernovsky 1995; Graves 2002b; Lieberman 2001; Peters 1995), and that critique need not be repeated here. However, it should be noted that the sources, characteristics and quality of his data are diverse, and often of extremely low reliability. Rushton’s use of late Victorian travel pornography (‘French Army Surgeon’ 1896) as a central reference on human sexual characteristics and behaviours is perhaps the most egregious use of poor-quality data, but it is very far from being the only one. His data on racial differences in intelligence test scores is taken from wildly disparate sources ranging over the last century (Rushton 2000: 38–9, 135–7), including sources using techniques that even advocates of IQ testing have dismissed as ‘primitive’ and unreliable (Jensen 1988). Many of his demographic data – on longevity and reproductive rates, for example – have been subject to large-scale fluctuations even within populations and in relatively short periods of time, making it unlikely that such comparative measures have any evolutionary underpinnings.

The second element in Rushton’s theorization of racial differentiation involves accounting for the biological basis of the data accumulated. He hypothesizes that the ‘Mongoloid’, ‘Caucasoid’ and ‘Negroid’ racial groups have been subjected to different natural selection pressures over evolutionary timescales, and that because of this these racial groups have evolved different life-history strategies. This hypothesis makes use of the r-/K-selection schema, developed by MacArthur and Wilson (1967) as a method of modeling density-dependent natural selection. The consequences of these different reproductive strategies are, according to Rushton, to be found in the data on physical, behavioural and social differences between races amassed in earlier sections of the book.

In the formulation used by Rushton, r-selected species, adapted to unstable, rapidly fluctuating environments, evolve reproduction strategies with prolific production of offspring and relatively low parental investment in individual offspring, while K-selected species, adapted to more stable environments, produce relatively lower numbers of offspring but invest more care in each. Rushton (1987, 2000: 199–216; see also Rushton and Bogaert 1987) then claims that ‘Negroid’ populations, in particular, are more r-selected than are ‘Caucasoid’ populations, which are in turn more r-selected than ‘Mongoloid’ populations. In essence, Africans are held to invest bodily resources more heavily in sex and impulsiveness/aggression, while Europeans and Asians are supposed to invest such resources more heavily in intelligence, altruism and restraint. While Rushton does claim that ‘Negroids’ are only relatively r-selected, the data that he amasses give the impression of very substantial differences between these racial groups, an impression eagerly seized by racists around the world.

It might be objected that a concentration on ‘Negroid’ characteristics, vis-a`-vis those of the other major races, imputes an unfair racializing subtext to Rushton’s work, because he situates the three major races along an r- to K-selected continuum: ‘Negroids’ – ‘Caucasoids’ – ‘Mongoloids’. However, in practice (see below), ‘Caucasoids’ and ‘Mongoloids’ are lumped together as temperate-/cold-climate races against the tropically adapted ‘Negroids’ throughout this work (e.g. Rushton 2000: 199, 262). In other writings (Rushton and Horowitz 1999), Rushton speculates upon temperamental differences that might disadvantage ‘Orientals’ in scientific and cultural achievements vis-a`-vis ‘Whites’. In the theories of modern racial scientists, the higher IQ scores of ‘Mongoloids’ cannot be held to imply significant intellectual superiority over ‘Caucasoids’.

This element of Rushton’s work has also been strenuously critiqued (Anderson 1991; Graves 2002a, 2002b; Silverman 1990; Weizman et al. 1990). There are very serious doubts about the utility of the r-/K-selection model as an explanation for behavioural differences among and especially within animal species, especially when the concept is generalized far beyond its origins (Boyce 1984; Stearns 1992). There exist many cases in which the predictions of this theory do not hold (Graves 2002a: 66–7), and a number of characteristics of Rushton’s three racial groups – most notably body size – do not fit the model. The linkages between r-/K-selection and the characteristics that Rushton associates with those different forms of selection are quite unclear (Weizman et al. 1990: 4–5). Finally, Rushton has never satisfactorily established the environmental circumstances in which his different racial groups were exposed to these different selection pressures. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Rushton turned to an r-/K-selection model because of a fairly impressionistic resemblance between that model and his image of ‘racial’ variability, and that he then tuned the model to fit his assumptions.

It is at this point – when we begin to speak about the ancestors of modern humans as evolving populations in particular environments – that palaeoanthropology and archaeology become important to Rushton’s account. He claims that ‘Negroid’ populations differ from ‘Caucasoids’ and ‘Mongoloids’ because the former evolved only in tropical Africa, while the latter groups moved out of Africa into colder climates (Rushton 2000: 199, 217–33, 262–4). There are two components to this explanation: tropical African environments are less stable and less predictable than are temperate and cold environments (thus favouring r-selected strategies of prolific reproduction and low parental investment in offspring), and in addition temperate and cold climates posed cognitive demands upon ‘Caucasoid’ and ‘Mongoloid’ populations not experienced by those peoples living in balmier climes. It should be emphasized that only the first of these components involves r-/K-selection theory; the second derives in large part from speculations about the evolution of intelligence published by Richard Lynn (1987, 1991a). (Lynn (2003: 141), in fact, seems to be claiming that modern Africans are cognitively unchanged descendants of the hominids that occupied Africa 250,000 years ago.) This bipartite explanation is supplemented by archaeological data that Rushton claims support his thesis.

Less attention has been paid to this last component of Rushton’s model than to other elements of his work (but see Graves 2002a: 71–4; Lieberman 2001: 79), in part because there are so many other obvious targets for criticism in his work and in part because most of this critique has come from psychologists and biological anthropologists. It remains, however, central to Rushton’s accounting of difference between his three racial groups. He is concerned with producing an integrated explanation of the differences between those groups, and to do this using r-/K-selection theory he must account for the origins of these differences in an evolutionary context. This requires engagement with archaeological and palaeoanthropological data. There is also a long tradition of appeals to environmental differences in racialist descriptions of African peoples. In almost all such cases, Africans are held to be cognitively disadvantaged, either because African environments are so benevolent that they provide a reduced cognitive challenge to African populations (cf. Herder 1968: 297; Kant 1997 [1775]: 46), or because those environments are so hostile to humanity that they inhibit the intellectual development of those populations (cf. Cornelius de Pauw in Duchet 1969: 123). Rushton’s explanation uniquely combines elements of both of these models.

His approach shares another characteristic with many eighteenth-century accounts of human racial variation: it treats continental land-masses as undifferentiated geographical units, each characterized by a particular set of prevailing environmental conditions. Thus, African environments are collapsed to subtropical savannas, which are prone to unpredictable droughts and ‘devastating viral, bacterial, and parasitic diseases’ (Rushton 2000: 231), while Europe and Asia are similarly characterized as cold (but predictable) arid tundra and glacial landscapes.We are never told why all African savannas are supposed to be prone to unpredictable droughts or the reason for believing that tropical and subtropical plant foods are going to be available year-round (Rushton 2000: 228). We are not told why dispersed tropical foragers should be prone to devastating diseases that are now associated with higher-density, agricultural lifeways (see, for example, Armelagos et al. 1991; Barnes 2005; Tishkoff et al. 2001). We are never told why Rushton believes that ‘Mongoloids’ evolved in Siberia (Rushton 2000: 229), rather than further south in Asia. We are never told why environmental predictability is characteristic of temperate and Arctic climates, while unpredictability reigns in Africa. (Apparently, the only sort of seasonality that Rushton recognizes is that between summers and winters; the equally predictable and often very challenging cycling between wet and dry seasons in many areas of Africa is unknown to him.) Examples could be multiplied. Rushton simply asserts that racial evolution took place as he says, without providing evidence.

His archaeological and historical evidence is a similar mishmash of unsubstantiated assertions and obsolete ideas. At various points, Rushton claims: that natural brush fires would have been unknown in Eurasia during glacial periods, and because of this human production of fire would have been more challenging there than in Africa; that clothing and shelter were unnecessary for prehistoric African populations; that Middle Stone Age Africans could ‘barely’ be considered big game hunters because they lacked bows and arrows; that the greater numbers of known Cro-Magnon sites in Europe indicate that those people were more successful than those same MSA Africans; that ‘Mongoloid’ populations entered the New World between 40,000 and 24,000 years ago (as part of a classic evolutionary just-so story that purports to explain the lower IQ test scores of Native American peoples); and that Africans and south-east Asians never developed agriculture (Rushton 2000: 224–33). He further (Rushton 2000: 142) makes use of John Baker’s (1974) racist and unsystematic list of twenty-one ‘criteria for civilization’ – which begins to evaluate cultural advance by scoring the amount of clothing that people wear and ends with criteria like ‘some appreciation of the fine arts’ – in order to dismiss African and American cultural achievements. Again, examples can be multiplied.

In the early 1990s, as today, exposure to an introductory university course in world prehistory would equip an undergraduate to dismiss such a farrago of elementary errors and distortions. Rushton’s account of human cultural development is one that systematically valorizes cultural developments in Europe and (to a lesser extent) Asia, while denigrating such developments by peoples of Africa, the Americas and Australia, with no serious attention paid to the quality of his data. His sources for these claims derive only to a minor degree from archaeologists and palaeoanthropologists, but come rather from Richard Lynn and Edward Miller, respectively a psychologist and an economist, who share his views on race and the racial inferiority of Africans. It would be more surprising to see such claims promulgated in what is supposed to be a legitimate study of human behaviour if they were not so common in other parts of the book as well.

Race, reason and reality

Race, Evolution and Behavior makes use of an obsolescent, Eurocentric model of human cultural advance, one that assumes a ‘creative explosion’ particularly in Europe at approximately 35,000 years ago, simultaneous with the appearance of modern humans in that area and well before equivalent developments anywhere else on the globe (Rushton 2000: 225). There is no evidence that Rushton comprehends recent archaeological research in different areas of the world or the effects that differences in research intensity can have upon our understanding of cultural developments world-wide. However, his book has one very significant strength: the great claims made within it are testable archaeologically. Such testing does not merely involve disproving the archaeological claims to be found in his text. That is a trivial exercise, one that could be carried out with an up-to-date introductory textbook. Instead, we can use archaeological data – with which, after all, archaeologists claim to be able to speak authoritatively about the human past – in order to assemble an account of African history that can then be compared with the expectations generated by Rushton’s model.

One particular fact makes such testing possible: the magnitude of behavioural, intellectual and social differences claimed by Rushton to exist between the three racial groups is very great indeed. There is no great subtlety in the picture of human racial variation that he paints. This is probably most striking for IQ test scores, as noted above. If African IQ test scores indicate an average IQ¼70, as indeed they appear to (Lynn 1991b; Lynn and Vanhanen 2002), and if IQ test scores are an accurate reflection of the general intelligence of individuals and populations, then we would expect African populations to be characterized by various degrees of cognitive deficit, with borderline mental retardation compared to other human populations as the representative intellectual state on the continent. We would further expect that such significant inferiority in the average mental functioning of an entire continent’s population would have substantial social and cultural consequences, and that those consequences would be expressed in the material traces of the populations involved.

Rushton himself assumes that to be true. He frequently explains modern cases of poverty, conflict, social disruption and disease in Africa as the consequences of human evolutionary history on the continent, just as the late-twentieth century economic success of Japan and the Asian Tigers is supposed to be due to the evolutionary history of ‘Mongoloids’. Similarly high levels of difference are evident in the other measures he uses. Rushton makes use of r-/K-selection models that were, after all, originally developed to compare the reproductive strategies of different species, and his definition of ‘race’ appears to be more or less equivalent to ‘subspecies’ (Rushton 2000: 305). He is not especially forthcoming on what cultural characteristics we might expect of a population with an average IQ of 70. In an editorial, he notes that an IQ of 70 equates to a mental age of 11, and says that 11-years-olds can, with supervision, drive cars, work (as child labourers) in factories and (as child soldiers) go to war (Rushton 2004). However, presumably they cannot design those cars or factories, or plan the wars that they find themselves involved in. Gottfredson (2003) claims that people with IQ less than 100 are incapable of carrying out any sort of sophisticated managerial task, including acting as merchants or bureaucrats; this implies that such people capable of such tasks would be quite rare in African societies generally (comprising less than 3 per cent of the population) and essentially absent in some countries.

Some proponents of IQ tests, and of racial differences in intelligence, have noticed that the results of IQ testing in Africa (and in other areas of the world) actually pose a substantial challenge to the validity of those tests. The idea that the average intelligence of Africans is severely decreased relative to that of people in other parts of the world simply does not accord with the experience of people who have worked on or even visited that continent. It is as if Rushton, Lynn and their colleagues were claiming that all Africans were actually only four feet tall. If such a claim is made, and one is asked to choose between doubting the evidence of one’s own eyes in Africa and doubting the calibration of the ruler used in measurement, most people will doubt the ruler. The problem is even greater than this, in fact, because testing for some African countries gives average IQ scores of well under 70 (for example, Congo-Zaire¼65; Equatorial Guinea¼59; Ethiopia¼63; Sierra Leone¼64; Zimbabwe¼66) (Lynn and Vanhanen 2002: 202–4, 217, 225).

Psychometricians have proposed a number of ingenious explanations in order to get around this problem. Arthur Jensen (1998: 367–9), the dean of this research, claims that African-American individuals with low IQ scores tend to be more socially adept than Euroamericans with the same IQ scores (because retardation in the latter cases is more likely to derive from organic damage), so leading observers to overestimate the intellectual capabilities of the African-Americans in question. This has then been generalized to the African case: Africans are supposed to be cognitively disabled, but this fact is not apparent because of their social and verbal skills. This seems extremely unlikely: any substantial contact would presumably pierce that facade of verbal skill, and the fact that many such interactions take place in languages and cultural settings not native to one or both participants would seem to indicate that verbal/social skills cannot be determinative. In addition, this sort of post hoc explanation undercuts the relationship between IQ test scores and the general intelligence factor (g) that is supposed to be reflected in those scores: IQ test scores appear to mean something very different in terms of human functionality in Africa than in other parts of the world. In any case, consideration of archaeological data allows us to compare cultural achievements in Africa with other areas of the world, without the distortion supposedly inflicted by verbal/social skills and over evolutionarily significant time spans.

African history

To a degree, it seems grotesque that one must, at the beginning of the twentyfirst century, marshal evidence for African potential for cultural progress through time. Rushton’s model of race, behaviour and intelligence is a profoundly archaic intellectual construct, one that has more affinities with Victorian assumptions of the inferiority of the lesser breeds than with anything more recent. At the same time, Africanist archaeology itself for a long time shared many of those assumptions, particularly expressed by an unwillingness to accept evidence for indigenous African cultural advance (see the articles in Robertshaw 1990). Thus, the roots of various kinds of sophisticated behaviour – agriculture, iron-working and state formation are the best known – had to be sought beyond the continent. Over the decades in which Rushton and his colleagues were refurbishing old theories of African intellectual and cultural inferiority, archaeologists working on the continent were developing very different models of the continent’s history. These models do not require that African culture history exactly mirror historical developments in other areas of the world in some unilinear evolutionary progression (Fuglestad 1992; Neale 1986; Stahl 2005b), but they do indicate that African history is entirely comparable to that of other regions and other continents in terms of the human capabilities that it evokes.

Rushton (2000: 217–34) notes the palaeoanthropological debates about modern human origins, and accepts some form of an ‘Out of Africa’ model in his book. Such a model provides him with a well-defined, simple origin narrative for modern humans, as well as a mechanism for moving them beyond Africa to the cognitive challenges of the non-African world. He does not consider the evolutionary advantages that might allow modern humans to expand beyond the African continent into areas in many cases already occupied by other hominids. He does not explore in any detail the relationship between biological and behavioural evolution in moderns, saying only that blade technology appeared in Africa at 100,000 BP (itself an erroneous claim) but hastily adding that Africans at that time were not much advanced beyond their forebears (Rushton 2000: 225). As noted above, he accepts that significant behavioural advances among modern humans occurred especially in Europe, and to a lesser extent in Asia, around 35,000 years ago. Archaeological research over the last two decades provides a very different picture.

The linkage between such developments and occupation of Europe has been systematically broken down, as evidence for advanced behaviours among humans has been found in earlier sites and in sites well beyond that continent. Many of these data have been derived from African contexts (see Brooks and McBrearty 2000; d’Errico et al. 2003; Henshilwood and Marean 2003; Marean and Assefa 2005). Thus, we have a series of sophisticated bone harpoon points, presumably used in composite weapons, at Katanda in Zaire and dating to more than 75,000 years ago (Brooks et al. 1995; Yellen 1998); evidence for symbolic behaviour and advanced tool production – engraved bone and ochre, perforated shell beads, worked bone tools – at Blombos Cave in South Africa at c. 75,000 BP (d’Errico et al. 2001, 2005; Henshilwood et al. 2001, 2002); advanced composite tool technologies, long distance acquisition of raw materials and probable symbolic behaviour in southern African Howieson’s Poort assemblages, dated to c. 75,000–65,000 BP (Ambrose 2002; Deacon and Wurz 1996; Wurz 1999); and bead production at Enkapune ya Muto in Kenya at c. 41,000 BP (Ambrose 1998). It is likely that much of this behaviour has significantly earlier roots; for a more extensive discussion, see Brooks and McBrearty (2000) and d’Errico et al. (2003). Even figurative art, a phenomenon very frequently associated with late Pleistocene archaeological occurrences in Europe, occurs at Apollo 11 cave in Namibia, where it is dated to 25,000–27,000 BP – that is, contemporary with early European rock art (Vogelsang 1998).

It would be wrong to assume that the appearance of technologically sophisticated artefacts is necessarily coterminous with the appearance of complex behavioural, symbolic or conceptual systems, in Africa or elsewhere (Wadley 2001). Such systems may not manifest themselves in persistent material culture (or in any realms of material culture at all), and the cultural meanings of particular technological systems will quite probably vary drastically across space and time. The definition and detection of behavioural modernity among hominids is an extremely complex topic (Henshilwood and Marean 2003), and not one that can be treated in detail in this paper. However, the examples above very strongly indicate that Africa played a central and continuing role in the appearance of such behavioural modernity, a role at least as important as that played by temperate Eurasia.

Africa’s role as the birthplace of humanity is widely accepted today, by the general public as well as by archaeologists and palaeoanthropologists. However, this acceptance is often accompanied by the assumption that the continent has been a cultural backwater in more recent times. Thus, even an avowedly non-racialist account of human history (Diamond 1998: 98–101, 186–7) finds it necessary to provide an explanation of African cultural lag, especially in agricultural development. Diamond provides a rather deterministic explanation of plant and animal domestication based to a large extent upon the geographical orientation of the different continents. An east-to-west Eurasian transect of approximately 8900 kilometres, between Brussels and Shanghai, is paralleled by a similar transect across the African Sudanian and Sahelian zones, between Dakar and Djibouti, of about 6600km. Diamond’s model locates the early success and continuing influence of Near Eastern domesticates in the ease with which they could spread across the long reach of Eurasia, but does not explain why similar success did not attend Sudanian-Sahelian agricultural systems. (It seems unlikely that a 2300km difference in east–west distances actually produced the different Holocene continental histories that Diamond thinks exist.) Diamond tends to underestimate the diversity and sophistication of African agricultural systems, despite a much deeper understanding of African history than that possessed by Philippe Rushton.

Discussions of domestication processes in Africa suffer from the fragmentary nature of archaeological data – especially in the tropical forests of Central Africa – but the earliest firm evidence for sub-Saharan African plant domesticates dates to just after 4000 BP in both Africa and India (Neumann 2003). This implies African domestication of millet, sorghum and cowpea during the fifth millennium BP. This is certainly later than was the case in many other areas of the world. On the other hand, the variety of indigenous African plant domesticates is very striking indeed, comparable to that from earlier centres of domestication in the Near East and probably exceeding the diversity of plant domesticates in East Asia and the Americas (Harlan et al. 1976), and there is no evidence that the inspiration in their development came from beyond the continent. This parallels the situation in New Guinea, another tropical area often assumed to be a cultural backwater but that now appears to be a centre of domestication in its region (Denham et al. 2004).

Economies based in large part upon animal domesticates, especially cattle and caprines, seem to be significantly older in the Sahara and sub-Saharan West and Central Africa, dating to the eighth millennium BP and afterward (Gifford-Gonzalez 2005: 200; Marshall and Hildebrand 2002), and there is accumulating evidence that Saharan populations played a significant role in cattle domestication in the early-/mid-Holocene (Bradley et al. 1996; Grigson 1991; MacHugh et al. 1997). A stable and eminently successful pastoralist adaptation, based upon animal domesticates, the exploitation of wild plant and animal resources and eventually domesticated cereals, and capable of supporting populations of significant size and complexity, can hardly be dismissed as unsophisticated. African experiences with domestication seem entirely comparable to those of other areas in the world – and rather innovative compared with, say, the agricultural record of Europe.

The ability independently to develop state-level societies was another capability traditionally denied to Africans by European authors, who tended to look for inspiration beyond that continent and especially in the Mediterranean Basin and western Asia (Delafosse 1912, I: 207; Desplagnes 1906: 544–6; Murdock 1959; Palmer 1936). Probably the most developed example of this attitude was Charles Seligman’s (1957: 10, 43) ‘Hamitic hypothesis’, which traced virtually every cultural advance in sub-Saharan Africa to light-skinned immigrants from the north and north east, or to later contacts with Semitic populations.

Again, research across the continent over the last three decades decisively disproves this point of view. The literature on this topic is expanding rapidly: there is, however, no doubt that complex polities in the Nile Valley (O’Connor 1993; Welsby 1998), in West Africa (Gronenborn 2001; Holl 1985; MacEachern 2005; McIntosh 1991, 1999; McIntosh and McIntosh 1984), in North-east Africa (Curtis 2004; Fattovich 2000; Munro-Hay 1993), in East and Central Africa (de Maret 1999; Kusimba 1999; Schoenbrun 1999; Sutton 1993) and in south-eastern Africa (Huffman 1996; Pikirayi 2000; Sinclair et al. 1993) were indeed African, developing according to their own internal logics. The social and political hierarchies, the external relations and the economic and trading systems of these states were entirely comparable with those of similar polities on other continents, and were frequently recognized as such by European visitors before corrosively racist views of Africans had time to develop (cf. Brooks 1993; Northrup 2002). They did not appear in isolation – indeed, neither did states in other parts of the world, including Europe – and, again, they were not mirror-images of states in those other regions (cf. McIntosh 1999). The culture history of the continent is one of change and development comparable to that of Europe and Asia, one where particular cultural systems – the development of external symbolic systems, agriculture or states, for example – occur in particular areas, which in turn affect neighbouring regions in different ways. This paper provides only an extremely cursory survey of those data, on a limited number of topics, but more broad-based examination (cf. Stahl 2005a) would provide the same results. Such results provide no basis for the differentiation of homogeneous continental blocs of humanity, still less for the ranking of those blocs one against the other.

Interpretations

We are thus presented with a problem. The picture provided by African archaeological data is entirely incommensurate with claims by Rushton and his colleagues that African populations suffer severe cognitive deficits or other behavioural disadvantages when compared with human populations from Europe and Asia. There is no evidence in those data that Africans as a continental population suffer from the degree of mental retardation that would be indicated by an IQ of 70, or from any degree of mental retardation at all. Both of these data sets are internally consistent: IQ test scores for African populations do indeed yield an average IQ of roughly 70, while the archaeological (and historical) evidence indicates that Africans have the same cognitive and cultural abilities as people living in other regions of the world, over evolutionary time spans and today. How may we reconcile these results?

A number of possibilities present themselves. In the first place, one might claim that the most intelligent people in African societies (perhaps the 3 per cent of the population with IQ scores greater than 100, as indicated by Gottfredson (2003)) have acted as a tiny ‘cognitive elite’, themselves almost entirely responsible for African cultural advances. The existence of such an elite would lead to an overestimate of the cultural and behavioural similarities between Africa and other continental regions. This seems unlikely on a number of levels. It implies drastically different intellectual arrangements in African societies than in societies in other areas of the world, and there are no archaeological, ethnographic or other data indicating that such differences exist. It would also divorce IQ test scores from social and cultural consequences to an extent resisted by psychometricians on both theoretical and practical grounds. It should be noted that neither Rushton (2000) nor Lynn and Vanhanen (2002) accept this explanation, because they claim that there is a good correlation between IQ, behaviour and cultural indicators on both a continental and a national level.

In the second place, we must remember that the evidentiary basis for many of these IQ tests is extremely weak, and in some cases the data are presented quite selectively. Some of the tests, like the Army Beta administered in the 1920s to South Africans, are known to be severely culture-bound. Claims made by Lynn (1991b; Lynn and Vanhanen 2002) and Rushton (2000) about the intelligence of different groups of South Africans also ignore the very significant debates about mental testing in South Africa during the twentieth century (Dubow 1995: 197–245), and the fact that much of this debate involved the IQ test scores of (usually Afrikaans-speaking) ‘poor whites’. A sense of the quality of reporting of these tests comes from Lynn’s (1991b; see also Lynn and Vanhanen 2002: 219) description of tests administered by Owen (1989) on different ‘racial’ groups in South Africa as ‘[t]he best single study of the Negroid intelligence’. Owen himself (1989: 60, 62–8) indicated significant problems with these tests, many involving language difficulties experienced by the African test-takers, and did not assign IQ scores for the results. Similar kinds of problems, where authors’ cautions about test circumstances are ignored by Lynn and Vanhanen, exist in a number of the other African cases. At the same time, it is unlikely that straightforward bias could explain all of the test score results in question.

A third possibility also presents itself, one derived from another realm of debate about IQ test results. The African case is not the only circumstance in which unaccounted-for differences exist in IQ test scores across cultural boundaries. James Flynn (1984, 1987, 1998, 1999; see also Dickens and Flynn 2001) has documented a steady rise in IQ test scores from the late nineteenth century onward in countries where longitudinal data exist, an increase now widely known as the Flynn Effect. (Longitudinal data are unfortunately available almost exclusively from Western countries.) Depending upon the test, this rise varies from less than 10 points to as much as 20 points per generation, with the greatest increase in ‘culture-reduced’ tests like the Raven’s Progressive Matrices. This effect is both reliable and predictable: it also indicates significant gains in intelligence over a period too short for any evolutionary effects to come in to play. Explanations for the Flynn Effect vary and none appears completely satisfactory, but there seems little doubt that it is due to some combination of environmental and cultural factors at play in Western societies, factors that remain significant even on tests where cultural influences are supposed to be largely excluded.

Taken at face value, the Flynn Effect implies that the average North American adult living about a century ago would have had an IQ of approximately 75 in modern terms, a value closely comparable to that derived for twentieth-century African populations by Rushton, Lynn and their associates. Mid-nineteenth-century North Americans would have been even more deficient mentally. This is a nonsensical result, and is widely accepted as such; no North American believes that our great-grandparents were mentally deficient. As two enthusiasts for racial comparison in intelligence testing, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, said a decade ago in The Bell Curve:

"Whether one looks at the worlds of science, literature, politics, or the arts, one does not get the impression that the top of the IQ distribution is filled with more subtle, insightful or powerful intellects than it was in our grandparents’ day. . . . No one is suggesting, for example, that the IQ of the average American in 1776 was 30 or that it will be 150 a century from now.+ -(Herrnstein and Murray 1994: 308–9)

In this case, Herrnstein and Murray are absolutely right. Moreover, the evaluative criteria used by Herrnstein and Murray to judge this claim involve the examination of cultural accomplishment, as does the present paper. This is the only way to test such claims for societies before the invention of intelligence tests. The fact that similar nonsensical results concerning Africans are widely promulgated in the psychometric literature may indicate simple ignorance of African societies or a more pernicious readiness to place Africans below other human populations in a ranking of inherent human worth.

The Flynn Effect is a measure of IQ test performance across a substantial cultural divide, with biology held more or less constant. This divide exists in time: it looks from the early twenty-first century back toward the late nineteenth century. The IQ testing that has taken place in Africa since the 1920s has taken place across a comparable cultural divide, one from economically and politically dominant Western societies and test designers to African societies and individuals in almost all cases at significant economic, social, cultural and/or political disadvantage. In this case, the cultural divide exists both in time (because the tests have been administered since the 1920s) and in space. The parallels between time and race have been remarked upon by Flynn (1999: 14–15; see also Dickens and Flynn 2001). It may well be the case that depressed African IQ test score results are best explained by a combination of obvious test bias and the subtle and additive environmental differences that produce variation in even ‘culture-reduced’ tests like the Raven’s Progressive Matrices, in a geographic analogy to the Flynn Effect. The archaeological data would seem decisively to contradict the claim that these differences stem from reduced cognitive potentials in African populations.

Conclusions

This paper presents the juxtaposition of two data sets, one archaeological and one behavioural and psychometric. It is now a commonplace in the comparative psychometric literature to claim that low IQ test scores among African populations indicate severely diminished average intelligence among those populations. Rushton (2000) places these claims in a behavioural and evolutionary context, one paralleled by similar explanations applied to poor and relatively powerless populations in other parts of the world and supplemented by data of other kinds. Rushton’s model posits quite major behavioural differences among the different continental populations, and especially between tropical African populations and the inhabitants of temperate and Arctic Eurasia. The magnitude of these differences is such that they should be detectable archaeologically, and indeed Rushton presents archaeological evidence that he believes bolsters his case. His archaeological interpretations are for the most part obsolete and/or erroneous.

However, Rushton is probably correct in claiming that such a magnitude of racial differences should be demonstrable archaeologically. Archaeological data provide an independent test of his hypothesis, one not subject to the obscuring effects associated with modern mental testing and interpretation. Examination of archaeological data on the culture history of African populations, and comparison of those data with data from other parts of the world, yields no evidence for the behavioural and cognitive disparities claimed by Rushton. African cultural history is entirely comparable with that of other regions of the world, not in terms of lockstep evolutionary schema but rather in the evident sophistication with which African populations have met the challenges of their physical and social environments through time. To interpret the conflict between these two data sets, it may be useful to examine possible confounding factors in the behavioural and psychometric data. The behavioural data are quite variable and often of poor quality, but it is striking to note that the field of intelligence testing is grappling with a phenomenon analogous to continental differences in IQ test scores – the Flynn Effect. In both cases, testing across cultural boundaries yields results that systematically disadvantage populations culturally removed from our own, results that on their face defy logic. It is now up to intelligence researchers to identify the confounding effects in their tests, and let archaeologists and other researchers get back to looking at the Africa that actually exists today, and existed in the past."

http://knol.google.com/k/mainstream-acad....897t2cs/28#view
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EXCERPT:

On the Similarities of American Blacks and Whites: A Reply to J. P. Rushton
Author(s): Zack Z. Cernovsky
Source: Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 25, No. 6 (Jul., 1995), pp. 672-679

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The history of science teaches us that many ambitious racists attempted to manufacture scientific evidence for their beliefs. Sooner or later, their charlatan style methodology (e.g., the use of skull circumference measurement by Nazi "scientists" during the World War II) and logical inconsistencies resulted in their rejection by the scientific community. A contemporary example of this trend is the work of J. Philippe Rushton. He recently wrote a large number of repetitive articles in which he revived the old-fashioned Nazi method of skull circumference measurement and claimed that Blacks are genetically less intelligent, endowed with smaller brains, oversexed, and more prone to crime and mental disease than Whites. Only some of the numerous methodological flaws in his work are discussed in the present article.

Although Rushton (1988, 1990a, 1991) implied that Blacks are consistently found to have smaller brains than Whites, some of the studies listed in his reviews actually show opposite trends: North American Blacks were superior to American Whites in brain weight (see Tobias, 1970, p. 6: 1355 g vs. 1301 g) or were found to have cranial capacities favorably comparable to the average for various samples of Caucasians (see Herskovits, 1930) and number of excess neurons larger than many groups of Caucasoids, for exam- ple, the English and the French (see Tobias, 1970, p. 9). In general, skulls from people in countries with poverty and infant malnutrition are smaller regardless of race. This trend is apparent even in Rushton's (1990b) tabularly summary of Herskovits's review: Cau- casoids from Cairo had far smaller crania than North American Negroes (see more details in Cernovsky, 1992). In this respect, Rushton (1990a, 1990b, 1990c) also repeatedly misrepresented findings by Beals, Smith, and Dodd (1984) on cranial capacity. Rushton implied that Beals et al. presented large-scale evidence for racial inferiority of the Blacks with respect to cranial size. De facto, extensive statistical analyses by Beals et al. showed that cranial size varies primarily with climatic zones (e.g., distance from the equa- tor), not race. According to Beals et al., the correlations of brain size to race are spurious: smaller crania are found in warmer climates, irrespective of race.

And, although Rushton misleadingly reported Tobias's (1970) and Herskovits's (1930) surveys of cranial data as confirming his theory, their data are more consistent with the model presented by Beals et al. As already mentioned, in their reviews, cranial size and number of excess neurons of North American Blacks compared favorably to those of Caucasoids. It is only by pooling their data with data for Negroids from countries in hot climatic zones (noto- rious for famine and infant malnutrition) that Rushton obtained an illusory support for his postulates.

Rushton's (1988, Table 1) use of brain and cranial size as indicators of intelligence in humans is statistically absurd: Rushton's (1990a) own data showed that brain size and intelligence, in Homo sapiens, are only weakly related (average Pearson r = .18) and the highest correlations reported by Rushton were only .35, implying only 12.3% of shared variance (see critique by Cernovsky, 1991). In the past decades, even some persons with extremely small cerebral cortices were found by Lorber to have IQs in the superior range (> 120) and performed well in academic settings (Lewin, 1980). Rushton's pseudoscientific writings perpetuate lay public's misconceptions and promote racism.

Rushton (1990a, 1990c, 1991) also misrepresents the evidence for racial differences in brain/body size ratio. For example, Herskovits's (1930) data suggest that there is no consistent Black/ White difference with respect to stature or crania. And, with respect to Rushton's claim about the relationships of the brain/body size ratio to intelligence, this conceptual framework is suitable for some species of animals but not necessarily for the restricted range of data. The comparison of gender differences on three different brain/body indices by Ho, Roessman, Straumfjord, and Monroe (1980) led to inconsistent results (see their tabularly summaries on p. 644). Further empirical data in this field are necessary: Authori- tarian statements "about the reality of racial differences," based on conveniently selected trends in the data, do not qualify as a scien- tific contribution.

Contrary to Rushton's speculations on race and crime, skin color would be a poor predictor of crime rate due to low base rates and very large intragroup variance. His own data (summaries of Interpol statistics, Rushton, 1990c, 1995) can be reinterpreted as showing that relying on race as an indicator of crime leads to 99.8% of false positives (Cernovsky & Litman, 1993a). The average correlations between race and crime are too low and inconsistent to support genetic racial speculations and, in fact, might point to the opposite direction than Rushton postulated (see higher crime rates in Whites than in Blacks in Interpol data analyses, Cernovsky & Litman, 1993b). To demonstrate that Blacks are less intelligent and, perhaps, to allege that this is genetically given, with only minor environmental modifications, Rushton (1988, 1991) refers not only to his own biased review of brain size studies but also to Jensen's work.

Yet, it has been shown that the theories favoring hereditarian over environmentalist explanations tend to be based on poor methodol- ogy (see Kamin, 1980) and that Jensen's estimates of "hereditabil- ity" are based on too many assumptions, which hardly could all be met (Taylor, 1980). Some applications of the heritability estimates were shown to have absurd consequences (Flynn, 1987a). Simi- larly, Jensen's recent claims about racial differences in reaction time are biased and might lack in scientific integrity (Kamin & Grant-Henry, 1987). There is no solid evidence in favor of herita- bility over environmental influences with respect to the develop- ment of intelligence (see a review in Kamin, 1980, and Flynn, 1987a, 1987b).

In a similar vein, some of Rushton's references to scientific literature with respects to racial differences in sexual charac- teristics turned out to be references to a nonscientific semipornog- raphic book and to an article in the Penthouse Forum (see a review in Weizmann, Wiener, Wiesenthal, & Ziegler, 1991). Rushton's claims thatfertility rates are higher in Blacks disharmonize with well-known high figures for some Caucasoids such as North Ameri- can Hutterites (a group of Swiss-German ancestry, see a review in Weizmann et al., 1990, 1991). Rushton's claims about racial differ- ences with respect to brain, intelligence, crime, sexuality, and fertility (and also twinning rates; see Lynn, 1989a, 1989b; Weizmann et al., 1991) are based on an extremely biased and inadequate review of literature.

Erroneously relying on data based on hospital admission rates, Rushton (1988) concluded that mental disease is more frequent in Blacks than Whites. Members of the lower socioeconomic class are overrepresented in official hospital admission statistics because the private and more confidential treatment resources are not accessible to them. More adequate epidemiological studies by Robins et al. (1984) based on random sampling show no significant link of lifetime prevalence to race except for simple phobias. There were no significant differences with respect to major psychiatric illness or substance abuse (see a more detailed criticism of Rushton's assumptions in this area in Zuckerman & Brody, 1988).

Rushton (1988, 1991) implies that "racial differences in behav- ior" are genetic and relatively immutable: He ignores the plasticity of human beings as shown in secular changes and in the intragroup variance (see more detailed criticisms in Weizmann et al., 1990, 1991). The armamentarium of clinical psychologists was shown by a host of empirical investigations to induce desirable behavioral changes in various populations (see, e.g., Turner, Calhoun, & Adams, 1981): Rushton's view of human beings is obsolete. And, with respect to Rushton's (1988) attempt to apply r/K theory to racial differences, this is a misguided project as shown by criticisms from the ecological and biopsychological perspective (Anderson, 1991; Weizmann et al., 1990, 1991) and as shown by statistical considerations of the devastating effects of restricted range on size of correlation coefficients (rules derived from a wide dimension of measures perform poorly when applied to a minute interval on the scale; see, e.g., McCall, 1980). The r/K dimension is derived from an extremely wide range of species.

Its dogmatic application to the drastically reduced variance within contemporary Homo sapiens is statistically naive (for more detailed explanations, see Cernovsky, 1992). It is not even necessary to be a competent statistician to avoid similar errors. If Rushton (1988, 1990a) could heed Jerison's (1973) warning that racial differences in brain size are at most minor and "probably of no significance for intellectual differences," he would not attempt to extend Jerison's findings across species to subgroups within modem mankind. Instead, Rushton (1991) misleadingly refers to Jerison in a manner that implies an expert support from this famous comparative neuropsy- chologist, without mentioning their disagreement on the most cen- tral issue.

Rushton (1991) claimed that racial differences occur "on more than 50 variables," with Blacks being consistently in a less desirable direction. The present article examined the evidence with respect to the key variables only: The examination exemplifies that his claims are fallacious. Furthermore, long lists, such as Rushton's, tend to shrink when appropriate multivariate methods (e.g., the discriminant equation) are used: These techniques eliminate redun- dancies and remove nonsignificant variables. And, nota bene, if a scientist would search for a suitable "finding" to lower the social prestige of Blacks and examine 50 variables and suppress evidence favorable to Blacks, he or she might, by chance alone, one day, find one or more variables on which a "significant" trend in the desired direction could be located.

Given all these flaws in Rushton's work on "racial differences," it is obvious that his writings do not meet the usual requirements for a master's thesis in psychology. His knowledge of scientific methodology is definitely below the academic level required for the master's degree.

Finally, Rushton's most recent "scientific" contribution is the claim that women are likely to be less intelligent than men because his tape measurements of men and women in military settings indicated that males have larger heads (Rushton, 1992). Indeed, the racism is often associated with sexism.

In summary, although Rushton's writings and public speeches instill the vision of Blacks as small-brained, oversexed criminals who multiply at a fast rate and are afflicted with mental disease, his views are neither based on a bona fide scientific review of literature nor on contemporary scientific methodology. His dogma of bioevo- lutionary inferiority of Negroids is not supported by empirical evidence. Acceptance of similar theories should not be based on racist prejudice but on objective standards, that is, conceptual and logical consistency and integrity, quality of methods and data, and an analysis of disconfirmatory trends. Rushton's racial theory does not meet any of these standards.

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