NATURAL GENIUS?
By Frederica Saylor
Science & Theology News, MA
March 15 2006
Anthropologist Henry Harpending says intelligence may be genetically
predetermined by cultural background.
Sidestepping political correctness, Henry Harpending says intelligence
may be genetically predetermined by cultural background.
The Thomas Chair Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the
University of Utah, he and two colleagues say they believe central
and northern European Ashkenazi Jews until the 17th century may have
been naturally selected for enhanced intellect. Their hypothesis
was published in the November 2005 issue of the Journal of Biosocial
Science.
Though admitting more research needs to be done to substantiate their
argument, Harpending explained the premise of their theory to Science &
Theology News’ Frederica Saylor.
Q: Will you give an overview of your theory on the influence of
Ashkenazic genes on intelligence?
A: With a couple of colleagues, we started chatting a few years ago
about the biology of Northern European Jews. They’re one of the more
interesting populations in the world from the viewpoint of human
biology for two reasons. First is their high intelligence, and the
second is the high prevalence of inherited disorders in the population.
I think Greg Cochran, the lead author of the paper, threw out the
idea one day that the two might be related, and we started looking
into that hypothesis. The more we looked, the better the idea seemed.
We found that several of the disorders were intelligence boosters,
so when we’d done about as much as we could just doing mathematics
and going to the library, we published this paper saying, “Here’s a
good-looking hypothesis, somebody ought to test it.” There’s a lot
of substance in the paper, and everything we found supported that
hypothesis, but it’s still a hypothesis.
Q: Can you outline this hypothesis a little more specifically?
A: If you look at the history of Northern European Jews, they first
show up around the year 800. They are traders and financiers – almost
all of them are in these professions of trade and finance. They were,
for whatever reason, pushed into these occupations that require a high
IQ, and they were confined to these occupations for about 800 to 900
years. It’s well known from the history that those who did better –
the wealthier ones – had a lot more children. So it looks like a
situation where there’s strong selection for IQ.
Q: What does this mean in terms of natural selection?
A: We know from studies of domestic animals and studies in the
laboratory that when you have a strong natural selection of the
population, strong selection for something new, what selection often
picks up first is advantageous heterozygotes.
We thought an interesting hypothesis was that these Ashkenazi Jewish
diseases were advantageous in heterozygotes and in particular that
they boosted intelligence. We know that seems to have been the strong
selective force under history. We know that whatever favors these
Ashkenazi mutations must have been social. It wasn’t a disease because
it never happened to the people who lived literally across the street
from them: the Lithuanians, Poles. It only happened to the Ashkenazi.
Q: Why do you suggest this link may be found only in the Ashkenazi
Jews and not in the Sephardic Jews?
A: Northern European Jews were surrounded by zealous Christian
politics, where there were two things that a male could do that
were approved: He could be a warrior and kill people, or he could be
celibate. Nobody wanted these jobs, and management, finance, trade were
kind of sneered at among the Christian aristocracy. The Sephardic, they
were in Islamic regions where they had a lot of competition: Armenians,
Greeks, Arabs who were quite happy to take high-intelligence jobs. The
Sephardic had competition and the Ashkenazi really didn’t. There wasn’t
anyone else trying to get into finance, at least in Eastern Europe.
Q: What do you think is true today in Ashkenazi genes?
A: Today, two things are going on, at least in North America. One is
Ashkenazi Jews aren’t having very many children, and two, there’s a
lot of marriage with non-Jews. So, I doubt that this process is going
on today.
Q: Are there any ramifications today based on your hypothesis?
A: I think there are none, except they continue to have this high
intelligence.
Q: What kind of data do you think needs to be selected for further
research?
A: If we’re right, then in a family where some siblings are carriers,
say of Tay-Sachs, and some aren’t, the prediction is that the
Tay-Sachs carriers would have higher SAT scores than their brothers
and sisters. If carriers do seem to have an increased IQ, it’s worth
looking further into our theory. If they don’t, then we’re wrong,
and we try something else.
Q: Have you encountered roadblocks in terms of people arguing on the
other side of your hypothesis?
A: I’ve had lots of nice, interesting commentary and comments from
people. We’ve had delightful, helpful correspondence with lots of
different people.
Northern European Jews have kind of an origin myth that the reason
they’re smart is that the prettiest girls always wanted to marry the
best scholars, so that smart boys got the prettiest girls. There’s been
a lot of cordial, usable discussion about that with people. It’s not
politically correct these days to talk about one group being smarter
than another. We thought we’d get a lot of hostile reaction, and we
haven’t had a trace of it.
Q: Do you think religion is something to consider when looking at
evolutionary patterns?
A: Religion certainly affects behavior, affects human society,
and human society is the context for human evolution. The one thing
we point out in this paper is that people make history, but history
makes people, and religion is part of history. I don’t think you can
study human biology without considering religion, but I don’t think
we have any very good evolutionary theory of religion.
Q: What are your specific research interests?
A: My interest has always been human evolution, specifically human
social evolution and human population genetics. I’ve done a lot of
fieldwork in southern Africa with several different tribes there. And
I’ve written a lot about human genetics, modern human origins and
human social evolution.
Frederica Saylor is health editor at Science & Theology News.