Richard Lynn's hypothesis states that cold climates acted as a selection pressure for intelligence. I'm sure most people who read this blog read Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis.

Lynn's hypothesis has little to do with the question of which climates provide the best environment for development of intelligence in a human individual (as opposed to long-term selection pressures).
One additional factor that varies with altitude is UV exposure, which in turn could affect vitamin D synthesis. That seems a little more tenuous than the pathogen explanation though, especially given that people probably get less sun exposure in cold or northern climates.

Yeah, civilization only ever flourishes in high latitudes and cold climates. See, e.g. Egypt, Mesopotamia, Levant, Indus Valley, Greece, Latin America...

</sarcasm>

Could any of you eminent Nordics point me to just one highly literate civilization, besides Northern China, that actually originated in a cold, high-latitude environment (i.e. was not mostly imported from some other, hotter place)? As a special case, try to find any Northern European people that developed a highly literate civilization before coming into contact, directly or indirectly, with the Greco-Roman culture. I'm not aware of any.

As for the original post, the so-called "IQ" data of the GSS is actually a vocabulary test ("Tell me the number of the word that comes closest to the meaning of the word in capital letters.") This data was somehow fudged into an IQ measure by Inductivist, who as his nickname indicates is not one to let paucity of data get in the way of an attractive hypothesis.

If you want to make a point about health in the Mountains, you'd be better off pointing out that the top 7 counties for life expectancy in the USA are all in Colorado (actually they tie it up with 3 other counties.) Note that Iowa and Minnesota also make a strong showing though.

The original study (about life expectancy in America by geography, race, etc.) is extremely interesting.

I am crying BS(!) here. Assuming that my sleep dep state doesn't intefere with my readin capabilities, the reason you are seeing a skew here is because the MTN zone is filled with government sponsored laboratories (DOE: LANL, Sandia, etc) while having low population for that zone otherwise. You should resample without those artificial additions.

Will -- New England and the Mid-Atlantic (basically Pennsylvania up through the northeast) are filled with academics, the smartest professionals (Wall St, Manhattan / Boston / DC lawyers, etc.), the Athens of America, and so on. And yet none of the top 10 groups in the IQ & mobility ranking were raised in MA or NE. So I'm skeptical that govt labs in MTN do much -- New Mexico as a state doesn't do too well.

Toto -- this is your one warning, since I'm a nice guy. Within the very post you're criticizing, I listed not only one but numerous civilizations in South Asia that flourished in climates less hospitable than even the Fertile Crescent ones you mentioned. I also made it clear that I think climate accounts for part of the variance in civilizational outcomes. For example, there has never been impressive civilization in almost all tropical areas.

Again within the post you're criticizing I make it clear I'm more interested in comparing degree (rather than mere presence) of civilization -- that's why I said I couldn't tell whether the hypothesis is on the right track in South Asia, since my impression that the more northern civs have been more impressive than the southern ones may be off.

One more bad-faith condescending remark on your part, and you're banned.

"Lynn's hypothesis has little to do with the question of which climates provide the best environment for development of intelligence in a human individual (as opposed to long-term selection pressures).
One additional factor that varies with altitude is UV exposure, which in turn could affect vitamin D synthesis. That seems a little more tenuous than the pathogen explanation though, especially given that people probably get less sun exposure in cold or northern climates."

Development of intelligence? I guess you're referring to environmental influence. I doubt that has a significant effect on phenotypic intelligence.

agnostic: I was mainly replying to the two comments above mine. "The original post" meant the "Climate and civilization follow-up" one, not the "winged insect" thing. That would have been interesting to comment on though.

As for "tropical areas", what do you call "tropical"? According to the official definition, South East Asia (including the Khmer and Thai empires) and most of the important Meso-American civilizations fall within the "tropical zone".

history: just an interesting fact, the locus of classical south asian civilization between the 6th and 6th centuries was magadha, in the modern state of bihar, which has all the lowest socioeconomic indices in the present day. the st. aquinas of india was sankara, a namboothiri brahmin from the state of kerala (the southern tip). impressionistically from my reading of south asian history, though i'll have to do some checking....

toto,

you need to chill. no one makes you read all the posts. in the ideal world assman would know everything, but he doesn't, so he does a non-trivial amount of due diligence and cranks out hypotheses based on theories. if the predictions aren't validated, you can refute them. otherwise, don't read his posts. the "nordic" jibe was low seeing as how assman is 1/4 japanese & looks closer to 1/2. page down and you'll see that i'm the #1 contributor.

HellKaiserRyo,

every thread i see you in you make a reference to richard lynn. take it down a notch. lynn has done good work in collecting data, but you need to reevaluate looking to him as the gold standard for a theoretical system to explain the data. i've gotten into arguments on an e-list with rushton, and see exchanges between rushton and interlocutors, and his defense of lynn's theories were unimpressive. lynn and rushton should stick to psychology, they're not evolutionary theorists. if you want evolutionarily plausible rationals for the patterns that lynn & rushton see keep watching out for cochran's work, for example, or the new batch of young geneticists who aren't going to be walled off from taboo topics anymore.

here is a map of where 'famous' indian mathematicians were born. please note that during the late colonial period the north civil service was often staffed by southern brahmins, and today on most social indices the northwest 'heartland' (excluding the punjab) is rock bottom.

finally assman, one thing about the tropics: the highlands might be healthful, but they are also rather isolated. in the pre-modern period water travel was a primary way that communication lines were maintained, so any population forced into the mountains would become culturally isolated. the coasts were the place "to be," e.g., the cochin coast in southwest india where vessels from the eastern roman empire, persia, arabia and china docked.

re: the map, don't take it as scripture. one of the points for the south is agustus de moran. he's not brown ;-) one of the points in pakistan (lahore) is chandrasekar, who was from a south indian brahmin family. his father was simply working in lahore.

Could any of you eminent Nordics point me to just one highly literate civilization, besides Northern China, that actually originated in a cold, high-latitude environment (i.e. was not mostly imported from some other, hotter place)? As a special case, try to find any Northern European people that developed a highly literate civilization before coming into contact, directly or indirectly, with the Greco-Roman culture.

Northern China certainly isn't "high latitude" if the comparison is Greece and Rome. Eg. Beijing is at just below 40N, which is conveniently a bit north from Athens and a bit south from Rome (and Constantinople). Northern China means exactly Greco-Roman latitudes. (Of course it has colder winters than the Mediterranean, but that's not the same thing. In all the other stuff that depends on latitude northern China is the same as to southern Europe and northern Middle East.)

As for the original post, the so-called "IQ" data of the GSS is actually a vocabulary test ("Tell me the number of the word that comes closest to the meaning of the word in capital letters.") This data was somehow fudged into an IQ measure by Inductivist

This is incorrect. The WORDSUM is used as an IQ test in a number of sociological papers. This is because it has demonstrated criterion validity and correlates very highly with other IQ tests (.70+).

the east coasts of continents are always like this, just so people realize. the further you go the more maritime it will get. e.g., eureka california is about the same latitude as new york city, as is central spain.

New England and the Mid-Atlantic (basically Pennsylvania up through the northeast) are filled with academics, the smartest professionals (Wall St, Manhattan / Boston / DC lawyers, etc.), the Athens of America, and so on. And yet none of the top 10 groups in the IQ & mobility ranking were raised in MA or NE.

I think its just a ratio issue: there are simply more 'normal' people children out in M & NE per intellectual's child than there are in the MTN zone. Anyone looked at the TFRs of MTN zone intellectuals/scientists/engineers compared to the M&NE's?

So I'm skeptical that govt labs in MTN do much -- New Mexico as a state doesn't do too well.

New Mexico as a whole doesn't do well, pravada. Yet how much worse would it be if you removed the Lab-brats? Yet, it's not just the NMican labs I am thinking of. What of NCAR, frex? NREL? Or even Colorado Springs, which is DOD admittedly? Or Phillips Lab? Or WSMR?

There's a lot of technical jobs in the MTN zone that put a lot of emphasis on educating their kids. I assert more per capita than in the M&NE.

There's a lot of technical jobs in the MTN zone that put a lot of emphasis on educating their kids. I assert more per capita than in the M&NE.

you should back up your assertion with data digging ;-) the mountain states aren't tardish as some would say, at least the northern ones. look at montana's standardized test results and what not. but this is big sky territory. missoula is not butte. rock springs is not boulder.

It would be interesting to try your argument in Australia. Two population centres have hot, dry summers - Adelaide, Perth - and three have hot and humid - Sydney, Brisbane and the north Queensland cities. Melbourne could be used to test any conclusions. You could omit Tasmania (temperate) and Canberra (capital city distortions).

Hate to be obvious, but Non "native Americans" haven't lived in the Rocky Mountain areas long enough (

luke, and whoever else didn't read the original post, this isn't about evolution of heritable characteristics. this is about the expression of traits in a particular environment. bbartlog alluded to it in comment #2, but i figure i should just state it for those who are skimming.

Its not just the climate, its your company too.

Being stucked in a house with a room full of intellectuals for long winter months vs.
being in an island with the same people.

Then you have the simple people who got stucked in winter seasons, thus we have the blonde jokes.

re: the map, don't take it as scripture.

The most accomplished group of Brown mathematicians pre-Independence were called the Kerala School, so even if they don't have lots in quantity, these were the guys who figured out infinite series for trig functions w/o calculus.

I just didn't want to take the nerd approach and equate civilization with math development, though that's part. Surely producing honey-skinned darlings counts for something?

I guess we are talking about white IQ though and not hereditary traits. BTW, what do you think is the effect of a MTN environment? 5 IQ points? If so, it is just about as efficacious as breast feeding. Well, the Inuit live in a gelid (although not in mountainous terrain), but they have a mean IQ of 91, which is .6 standard deviation units below whites. So, a gelid environment (I doubt contagious diseases are prevalent in Alaska or in Nunavut) isn't enough to trump heredity.

I only mention Lynn because I respect his relentless determination to eliminate human misery. Richard Lynn has made important contributions to the fundamental theorem of psychometrics: human misery is inversely correlated with psychometric intelligence. The expatiation of these ideas are presented in IQ and the Wealth of Nations and IQ and Global Inequality. .

Maybe differences in the geographic distribution of various white ethnicities explains some of the geographic variance in white intelligence in the US.

The most accomplished group of Brown mathematicians pre-Independence were called the Kerala School, so even if they don't have lots in quantity, these were the guys who figured out infinite series for trig functions w/o calculus.


Uhhh... don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia. ;-)

razib et al.: Yeah, that was clearly over the line. Sorry about that.

you should back up your assertion with data digging ;-)

After I get back from Atlanta that I will. :D

Uhhh... don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia. ;-)

I took an upper division class on the history of Indian mathematics, if you'll believe me. We read the originals in translation. They definitely did do what I said -- no calculus or analysis (that part of Wikipedia is wrong), but if you're interested I'll dig up my papers from that class and give you the scholarly references.

How about Singapore, Hong Kong and SouthernChina?
These climates are tropical, humid subtropical, similar to some of the North Indian areas, it seems on the map?

Also, another thing? How does aridity influence civilization, productivity as well? It seems all the early civilizations from Egypt, Indus, the Fertile Crescent etc... are all arid and dry...
is dryness good for civilization because insects like to come out in wet, humid lands?

How about South-east Asia.... more wet than South Asia?

What Egypt, Indus, the Fertile Crescent all have in common is not that they were arid, but that they were riverine!
They all developed crop based agriculture based on yearly flooding - thus fertilizing and irrigating for free!

Yeah, but they also happened to be in lush river valleys within arid, desert places.... I mean the initial civilizations didn't seem to develop that much along river valleys in jungles, forests etc.. in places that are already very rainy and wet (except maybe in China I think)....

Maybe seasonality is also important I guess, wet and dry, flooding and harvesting.... not just in places that are continuously wet....

just noticing that the Tigris-Euprates, Nile, Indus etc... are all in arid places, and early civilized states started there rather than say, the Elbe or the Rhine....

As far as the correlation between regional migration and IQ goes, I think the key to understanding the numbers is to look at the volume of the flows. I grew up in MTN and, speaking from personal experience (which is backed up by national migration statistics) we've had very few emigrants to the northeast, and those who did go likely did so to take one of those academic or legal jobs. I would bet that if we were to look at the absolute number of people with an IQ exceeding say, 120, moving into each region, at least from MTN, we would find that New England would be among the least popular destinations, however high their average might be.