I have lately been posting on Substack and not here. My aim is to write longer articles that build on earlier posts from Evo and Proud. Some of them may eventually be consolidated into a book. Here are the ones to date:
Recent
cognitive evolution
West
Africans
In
West Africa, mean cognitive ability seems to be higher in populations closer to
the Niger—the main conduit of trade between the coast and the interior. Trade
selects for cognitive ability, either directly through its cognitive demands or
indirectly through a consequent increase in social complexity.
https://peterfrost.substack.com/p/west-africa-and-recent-cognitive
Ashkenazi
Jews
For
almost a millennium, Ashkenazi Jews saw their mean cognitive ability steadily
increase from one generation to the next. That increase ended in the 20th
century and has given way to a noticeable decline since the 1970s.
https://peterfrost.substack.com/p/ashkenazi-jews-and-recent-cognitive
Europeans
In
terms of GDP per capita growth, northwest Europe began to surpass the rest of
the world during the fourteenth century. This was before the conquest of the
Americas, the invention of printing, the Atlantic slave trade, and the
Protestant Reformation.
https://peterfrost.substack.com/p/when-did-europe-pull-ahead-and-why
The
high mean IQ of Europeans is relatively recent in origin, as is that of East
Asians. Both of these “IQ plateaus” arose largely during the time of recorded
history.
https://peterfrost.substack.com/p/europeans-and-recent-cognitive-evolution
In
the European world, cognitive evolution was driven by the middle class having
more babies than everyone else. That baby boom ended in the late 19th century.
There then ensued a decline in cognitive ability from one generation to the
next.
https://peterfrost.substack.com/p/the-great-decline
French
Canadians
In
French Canada, two alleles for Tay-Sachs arose independently, and over a short
time span, in two adjoining areas that had few British or American merchants.
Did that vacant niche favor the reproductive success of French Canadians with
the right abilities?
https://peterfrost.substack.com/p/french-canadians-and-recent-cognitive
Gene-culture
coevolution
Parsis
Increased
longevity is associated with 217 of the 420 genetic variants that are specific
to the Parsi mitochondrial genome. Others are associated with reduced sperm
motility, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and cognitive ability. Did Parsi culture
select for a slower life history?
https://peterfrost.substack.com/p/the-parsis-and-gene-culture-coevolution
Chinese
Why are East Asians more collectivistic? Why is their approach to
thinking more relational and less abstract? They may have been steered in that
direction by the requirements of rice farming.
https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/how-rice-farming-remade-east-asians
Sexual
selection for hair, eye, and skin color
Europeans
have many hair and eye colors. Those two polymorphisms arose about the same
time in ancestral Europeans, while not sharing the same genetic causes. They
also differ significantly between men and women.
https://peterfrost.substack.com/p/a-people-of-many-colors
Skin color is perceived through the lens of a mental algorithm that initially arose for gender recognition. People can tell whether a face is male or female even if the image is blurred and provides no other useful information than its hue and luminosity.
https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/the-original-meaning-of-skin-color
Human races: do they exist?
Do genes vary a
lot more within human populations than between them? That seems to be the
current wisdom. Yet we see the same pattern elsewhere in the animal kingdom—not
only with subspecies but also with related species that are nonetheless
distinct from each other anatomically and behaviorally.
https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/do-human-races-exist-what-lewontin
