mieret
08-03-2017, 07:17 PM
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-100766.html
I was reading this old thread today, raising the question about why ashkenazi jews are so notoriously smart while the other branches are far behind, and I thought it is a pity that there weren't any serious answers(just the typical bringing it all down to what I call the "north over south; both cromagnoid&neanderthal admixture; clear of negroid influence, blabla.." wild card)
While on the other hand, nobody brought up this article which I find way more scientific than all the chit-chat, and which makes very interesting points
More or less, it proposes that Ashkenazi jews in particular endured some very special circumstances for a long time(1000 years) which resulted in a natural selection of the more IQ favorable variants. It does so after analyzing a group of conditions that are known to be more prevalent in this group, which indicate that this group has undergone a strong genetic selection mechanism
https://web.archive.org/web/20130911054719/http://harpending.humanevo.utah.edu/Documents/ashkiq.webpub.pdf
Here is the summary:
Summary. This paper elaborates the hypothesis that the unique demography
and sociology of Ashkenazim in medieval Europe selected for intelligence.
Ashkenazi literacy, economic specialization, and closure to inward gene flow
led to a social environment in which there was high fitness payoff to
intelligence, specifically verbal and mathematical intelligence but not spatial
ability. As with any regime of strong directional selection on a quantitative
trait, genetic variants that were otherwise fitness reducing rose in frequency.
In particular we propose that the well-known clusters of Ashkenazi genetic
diseases, the sphingolipid cluster and the DNA repair cluster in particular,
increase intelligence in heterozygotes. Other Ashkenazi disorders are known
to increase intelligence. Although these disorders have been attributed to a
bottleneck in Ashkenazi history and consequent genetic drift, there is no
evidence of any bottleneck. Gene frequencies at a large number of autosomal
loci show that if there was a bottleneck then subsequent gene flow from
Europeans must have been very large, obliterating the effects of any
bottleneck. The clustering of the disorders in only a few pathways and the
presence at elevated frequency of more than one deleterious allele at many of
them could not have been produced by drift. Instead these are signatures of
strong and recent natural selection
I don't know if this is the best section for this topic, correct me if it isn't
I was reading this old thread today, raising the question about why ashkenazi jews are so notoriously smart while the other branches are far behind, and I thought it is a pity that there weren't any serious answers(just the typical bringing it all down to what I call the "north over south; both cromagnoid&neanderthal admixture; clear of negroid influence, blabla.." wild card)
While on the other hand, nobody brought up this article which I find way more scientific than all the chit-chat, and which makes very interesting points
More or less, it proposes that Ashkenazi jews in particular endured some very special circumstances for a long time(1000 years) which resulted in a natural selection of the more IQ favorable variants. It does so after analyzing a group of conditions that are known to be more prevalent in this group, which indicate that this group has undergone a strong genetic selection mechanism
https://web.archive.org/web/20130911054719/http://harpending.humanevo.utah.edu/Documents/ashkiq.webpub.pdf
Here is the summary:
Summary. This paper elaborates the hypothesis that the unique demography
and sociology of Ashkenazim in medieval Europe selected for intelligence.
Ashkenazi literacy, economic specialization, and closure to inward gene flow
led to a social environment in which there was high fitness payoff to
intelligence, specifically verbal and mathematical intelligence but not spatial
ability. As with any regime of strong directional selection on a quantitative
trait, genetic variants that were otherwise fitness reducing rose in frequency.
In particular we propose that the well-known clusters of Ashkenazi genetic
diseases, the sphingolipid cluster and the DNA repair cluster in particular,
increase intelligence in heterozygotes. Other Ashkenazi disorders are known
to increase intelligence. Although these disorders have been attributed to a
bottleneck in Ashkenazi history and consequent genetic drift, there is no
evidence of any bottleneck. Gene frequencies at a large number of autosomal
loci show that if there was a bottleneck then subsequent gene flow from
Europeans must have been very large, obliterating the effects of any
bottleneck. The clustering of the disorders in only a few pathways and the
presence at elevated frequency of more than one deleterious allele at many of
them could not have been produced by drift. Instead these are signatures of
strong and recent natural selection
I don't know if this is the best section for this topic, correct me if it isn't