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The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution was written by University of Utah professors Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending. The thesis of the book is explicit in the title. The velocity of human evolution has increased dramatically during the past 10,000 years for two reasons. First, the development of agriculture and later on of urban civilization has presented human populations with different population pressures than those which existed during the Paleolithic era. Second, because of agriculture and civilization the human population has grown dramatically. A large gene pool is likely to evolve faster than a small gene pool because there is a greater likelihood that beneficial mutations will appear and spread.
This may seem self evident. Nevertheless, Stephen Jay Gould articulated the consensus when he wrote, “There’s been no biological change in humans in 40,000 or 50,000 years. Everything we call culture and civilization we’ve build with the same body and brain.”
In Guns Germs and Steel Jared Diamond has argued that the Caucasian race achieved its domination over non whites due to a series of lucky breaks. It just so happened that Caucasians lived where there were plants and animals that were easy to cultivate. Horses can be tamed. Zebras cannot be. Wild strains of wheat and barley grew (and still grow) in the Fertile Crescent.
Cochran and Harpending would agree that the availability of useful plants and animals helps to explain why agriculture and civilization began in the Near East, rather than in, let us say, Australia. Nevertheless, they maintain that once agriculture began in the Near East over ten thousand years ago, and once urban civilization began there about five thousand years later, they began to effect human evolution.
Farmers need to be able to plan at least a year into the future. They need to be able to defer gratification. No matter how hungry they get they cannot eat grain reserved for the next planting season. They cannot butcher all of their farm animals.
The most noticeable result of human evolution ever since the development of the Rift Valley separated the common ancestors of chimpanzees and humans six million years ago has been higher intelligence. This is because proto humans had to survive in an environment where they lacked physical gifts. They could not run as fast as prey animals and predators. They lacked the horns and hoofs of prey animals, and the large teeth and claws of predators. They had to live by their wits.
Nevertheless, urban civilization placed more of a premium on superior intelligence than a hunter gatherer existence. Men with above average intelligence could become successful merchants, government officials, military leaders, money lenders, artists, and so on. They became more prosperous than laborers and had more children who survived and reproduced.
Also, civilization reduced the inclination to engage in violent crime. The criminal justice systems of civilized country remove those with criminal inclinations from the gene pool. This explains why whites and East Asians have lower crime rates than and Hispanics, and higher average IQs. Hispanics are a hybrid race of whites, American Indians, and blacks. Although a number of Latin American countries have higher murder rates than black countries in sub Saharan Africa, Hispanics in the United States have lower crime rates than blacks, and higher average IQs. They also have higher crime rates than whites, and lower average IQs.
Assertions presented by Stephen Jay Gould and Jared Diamond are efforts to maintain that racial differences are only cosmetic. Stephen Jay Gould won fame and applause as a critic of The Bell Curve. Jared Diamond maintained in his book – with no evidence – that New Guinea tribesmen are as intelligent as Europeans.
I find two shortcomings of The 10,000 Year Explosion, although neither negates the central thrust of the argument.
Most adults in the world today are unable to consume fresh milk because their bodies lose the ability to digest milk sugar as children. At various times during the last seven thousand years several mutations have appeared which give selected populations the ability to digest milk sugar as adults.
Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending argue that one of these mutations enabled Indo Europeans to spread their language throughout most of Europe and much of Asia. However, the Indo European language is believed to have originated in what is now Turkey, or slightly to the north and east of Turkey. Lactose tolerance, or the ability to digest fresh milk as adults, is most common in northern Europe.
The second shortcoming of the book is that Professors Cochran and Harpending do not explain why Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese have lower crime rates and higher average IQs than white Gentiles. Agriculture and civilization developed in the Far East independently of similar developments in the Near East, and each developed one or two thousand years after they developed in the Near East. If civilization accelerated human evolution we would not expect East Asians to be more evolved than white Gentiles, but they are.
I explain the higher IQs of Chinese by the imperial exam system. For nearly two thousand years intelligent peasant boys in China who could pass the imperial exams entered the Scholar Gentry. They received generous incomes and were expected to have several wives and many children that they were able to provide well for. Meanwhile in Europe intelligent peasant boys entered the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church and were forbidden to have any children at all. Nevertheless, this does not explain the higher IQ averages in Korea and Japan. They never had an equivalent to the imperial exam system.
Nevertheless, in its entirety The 10,000 Year Explosion explains the evolution of racial differences described by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray in The Bell Curve, and by Professor J. Philippe Rushton in Race, Evolution, and Behavior.
http://www.charlesdarwinresearch.org/Race_Evolution_Behavior.pdf
This may seem self evident. Nevertheless, Stephen Jay Gould articulated the consensus when he wrote, “There’s been no biological change in humans in 40,000 or 50,000 years. Everything we call culture and civilization we’ve build with the same body and brain.”
In Guns Germs and Steel Jared Diamond has argued that the Caucasian race achieved its domination over non whites due to a series of lucky breaks. It just so happened that Caucasians lived where there were plants and animals that were easy to cultivate. Horses can be tamed. Zebras cannot be. Wild strains of wheat and barley grew (and still grow) in the Fertile Crescent.
Cochran and Harpending would agree that the availability of useful plants and animals helps to explain why agriculture and civilization began in the Near East, rather than in, let us say, Australia. Nevertheless, they maintain that once agriculture began in the Near East over ten thousand years ago, and once urban civilization began there about five thousand years later, they began to effect human evolution.
Farmers need to be able to plan at least a year into the future. They need to be able to defer gratification. No matter how hungry they get they cannot eat grain reserved for the next planting season. They cannot butcher all of their farm animals.
The most noticeable result of human evolution ever since the development of the Rift Valley separated the common ancestors of chimpanzees and humans six million years ago has been higher intelligence. This is because proto humans had to survive in an environment where they lacked physical gifts. They could not run as fast as prey animals and predators. They lacked the horns and hoofs of prey animals, and the large teeth and claws of predators. They had to live by their wits.
Nevertheless, urban civilization placed more of a premium on superior intelligence than a hunter gatherer existence. Men with above average intelligence could become successful merchants, government officials, military leaders, money lenders, artists, and so on. They became more prosperous than laborers and had more children who survived and reproduced.
Also, civilization reduced the inclination to engage in violent crime. The criminal justice systems of civilized country remove those with criminal inclinations from the gene pool. This explains why whites and East Asians have lower crime rates than and Hispanics, and higher average IQs. Hispanics are a hybrid race of whites, American Indians, and blacks. Although a number of Latin American countries have higher murder rates than black countries in sub Saharan Africa, Hispanics in the United States have lower crime rates than blacks, and higher average IQs. They also have higher crime rates than whites, and lower average IQs.
Assertions presented by Stephen Jay Gould and Jared Diamond are efforts to maintain that racial differences are only cosmetic. Stephen Jay Gould won fame and applause as a critic of The Bell Curve. Jared Diamond maintained in his book – with no evidence – that New Guinea tribesmen are as intelligent as Europeans.
I find two shortcomings of The 10,000 Year Explosion, although neither negates the central thrust of the argument.
Most adults in the world today are unable to consume fresh milk because their bodies lose the ability to digest milk sugar as children. At various times during the last seven thousand years several mutations have appeared which give selected populations the ability to digest milk sugar as adults.
Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending argue that one of these mutations enabled Indo Europeans to spread their language throughout most of Europe and much of Asia. However, the Indo European language is believed to have originated in what is now Turkey, or slightly to the north and east of Turkey. Lactose tolerance, or the ability to digest fresh milk as adults, is most common in northern Europe.
The second shortcoming of the book is that Professors Cochran and Harpending do not explain why Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese have lower crime rates and higher average IQs than white Gentiles. Agriculture and civilization developed in the Far East independently of similar developments in the Near East, and each developed one or two thousand years after they developed in the Near East. If civilization accelerated human evolution we would not expect East Asians to be more evolved than white Gentiles, but they are.
I explain the higher IQs of Chinese by the imperial exam system. For nearly two thousand years intelligent peasant boys in China who could pass the imperial exams entered the Scholar Gentry. They received generous incomes and were expected to have several wives and many children that they were able to provide well for. Meanwhile in Europe intelligent peasant boys entered the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church and were forbidden to have any children at all. Nevertheless, this does not explain the higher IQ averages in Korea and Japan. They never had an equivalent to the imperial exam system.
Nevertheless, in its entirety The 10,000 Year Explosion explains the evolution of racial differences described by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray in The Bell Curve, and by Professor J. Philippe Rushton in Race, Evolution, and Behavior.
http://www.charlesdarwinresearch.org/Race_Evolution_Behavior.pdf
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