Posts Tagged races

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May16

The Races of the Ancients

by tdaxp on May 16, 2008 at 4:31 am
Posted In: Science

Genetics is fascinating. The study of population structure — those nations and races that make of humanity — has been infinitely improved by careful analysis of our genes. DNA has replaced the imprecise tools of facial features, skin color, and linguistics as the best tool for understanding the group-level diversity we see today. It was once thought (at least 10 years ago, when I came upon the theory) than the Ashkenazi Jews were an inbred German population, given their Germanic language (Yiddish) and looks that were taken to be exaggerations of European features. It is now generally accepted that the Rhinelander Jews are a Southeast European/Levantine population that at one time were more numerous than “white” Europeans.

Genetics continues to look at these subpopulations — races, you might say — deeply. Now comes an article on two ancient races, that existed for half of humanity’s history — entirely on the African continent:

Mitochondrial Eve And Humanity’s 100,000 Year Genetic Divide | Scientific Blogging
The human race was divided into two separate groups within Africa for as much as half of its existence, says a Tel Aviv University mathematician. Climate change, reduction in populations and harsh conditions may have caused and maintained the separation.

Dr. Saharon Rosset, from the School of Mathematical Sciences at Tel Aviv University, worked with team leader Doron Behar from the Rambam Medical Center to analyze African DNA. Their goal was to study obscure population patterns from hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Rosset, who crunched numbers and did the essential statistical analysis for the National Geographic Society’s Genographic Project, said the team was trying to understand the timing and dynamics of the split into at least two separate groups.

…

Recent data suggests that Eastern Africa went through a series of massive droughts between 90,000 and 135,000 years ago. It is possible that this climate shift contributed to the population splits. What is surprising is the length of time the populations were separate — for as much as half of our entire history as a species.

Dr. Spencer Wells, director of the Genographic Project and Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society, said, “This new study illustrates the extraordinary power of genetics to reveal insights into some of the key events in our species’ history. Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world. Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA.”

While much of this research is conducted because of scientific curiosity, the engine that keeps it going is pharmaceuticals. There’s big money in genes, in changing how they express themselves and even changing which ones are in a body. As we resurrect long-dead plants and animals, it will be fascinating to see how many “extinct genes” rise again through gene therapy and modern medicine.

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Jan18

Evolutionary Cognitivism, Part V: Man Among Men

by tdaxp on January 18, 2007 at 12:00 am
Posted In: UNL / Genetic Development

I believe, as Bjoyklund & Pellegrini (2002, 193) do, “that the evolution of the human species’ unique intelligence was motivated by the need to deal with other members of our social group.” I think a large humanity’s genetic inheritance – that which is universal to all people as well as that which is particular to one breeding population (that is, race) or another – is the result of the coevolution of genes and society.

Human-general adaptations are well described by the text. This species general social cognition (which the text describes as “cognition about social relationships and social phenomena” on page 193) include things such as social learning, a theory of mind, and cheater detection. Social learning, which ranges from local enhancement and mimicry to emulation and imitation (194-196) involves learning because of the actions of others. Some creatures are born with everything they need to survive, but humans need to be able to learn a culture to survive. The theory of mind assists in social learning by informing individuals that “other people have knowledge and desire that may be different from one’s one” (203), and the mental processes this fact entails. Relatedly, cheater detection, or the ability to use “deontic reasoning, which is reasoning about what one may, should or out to do” (216) allows us to effortlessly discover those who have violated social rules.


The book leaves out adaptations that are related to different human populations. This is not surprising, as most Evolutionary Psychologists are skeptical of race-specific adaptations (Kurzban, Tooby, & Cosmides, 2001), preferring instead to believe that most adaptations occurred in the late stone age and thus are shared by all human beings are genetically very similar (Tooby & Cosmides, 1992, 2005). Nonetheless, some issues should be address. Phenotypic differences directly impacting athletic ability vary between Africans, Europeans, and Orientals (Rushton, 2000). One possibility is that this is an adaptation to different physical environments, these could equally be social adaptations. If different cultural styles existed in these physical locales for a sufficiently long duration (perhaps no more than four hundred years, see see Pinker, 2002, 111, or a few thousand, see Buller, 2005, 56) then evolution would lead to adaptations for that cultural style.

Perhaps a less speculative case of society-specific genetic adaption comes via research into HIV and AIDS. A genetic factor that increases the risk of aquiring AIDS is higher in Africans than non-Africans (Gonzalez, et al., 2001) and a mutation that slows-down AIDS was found in Europeans but not non-Europeans (Martinson, Chapman, Rees, Lui, & Clegg, 1997). While some may view such findings as evidence that HIV is a tool of genocidal warfare devised by a racist elite (Ross, Essien, & Torres, 2006), perhaps a more likely explanation is that a disease similar to AIDS has previously ravaged the European race before dieing out. Thus, cultural phenomenona related to the spread of an HIV-like sexually transmitted disease effected the evolution of one human breeding population but not others.

There are other examples of selection by society as well. European adult lactose tolerance, for example, appears to be a relatively recently adaptation that increased dairy farming, which in turn spread the lactose tolerant genes (Bersaglieri, et al., 2004). A more brutal example may be possible strong positive selection for intelligence in Jews as a result of centuries of hateful persecution and bigotry (Cochran, Hardy, & Harpending, 2005) Others have gone into this area in some detail (Wrangham, 2005). My purpose here is merely to applaud Bjorklund & Pellegrini for emphasizing the power of society in shaping our psyches, and outline other ways society achieved the same ends in diverse groups of people.

The authors close their chapters discussing ways development may influence species evolution. They write that not only social complexity, similar to the dairy example mentioned above, but also “extension of the juvenile period may have prompted modifications of reasing conditions, which in turn led to the ability to understand the intention of others and eventually the creation of culture” (218). I wonder if this impacts human group diversity as well, in a racial, clinal, or some other sense. Could some breeding populations of man have a more extended juvenile period than other. If juvenile period extension is indeed linked with eusociality, are some populations more eusocial than others. Or, in the juvenile period is linked with more rambunctousness, may children from some parts of the world do best in more chaotic conditions than others? I do not know, and nothing I have read answers this question for me. Hopefully in the future, great evolution cognitive psychologists like Bjorklund & Pellegrini will find this out. Science will progress.

Bibliography
Bersaglieri, T., et al. (2004). Genetic signatures of strong recent positive selection at the lactase gene. American Journal of Human Genetics 74: 1111-1120.
Bjorklund, D. F., & Pellegrini, A. D. (2002). The origins of human nature: Evolutionary developmental psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Buller, D.J. (2005). Adapting Minds. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.
Cochran, G., Hardy, J., & Harpending, H. (2006). Natural history of Azhkenazi intelligence. Journal of Biosocal Science 38: 659-693.
Kurzban, R., Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2001). Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization. PNAS 98(26):15387-15392.
Gonzalez, E., et al. (2001). Global survey of genetic variation in CCR5, RANTES, and MIP-1alpha : Impact on the epidemiology of the HIV-1 pandemic. PNAS 98(9): 5199-5204.
Pinker, S. (2002). The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Viking Adult: New York, NY.
Ross, M.W., Essien, E.J., & Torres, I. (2006). Conspiracy beliefs about the origins of HIV/AIDS in four racial/ethnic groups. Journal of Aquired Immune Deficiency Synddrome 41(3): 342-344.
Rushton, J.P. (2000). Race, evolution, and behavior: A life history perspective (3rd edition). Port Huron, MI: Charles Darwin Research Institute.
Martinson, J.J., Chapman, N.H., Rees, D.C., Lui, Y.T., & Clegg, J.B. (1997). Global distribution of the CCR5 gene 32-basepair deletion. Nature Genetics 16(1): 100-103.
Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (1992) The Psychological Foundations of Culture. In The Adapted Mind, Jerome Barkow, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, eds. New York: Oxford University Pres.
Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (2005). Evolutionary psychology: Conceptual foundations, in David M. Buss (Ed.), Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology. New York: Wiley.
Wrangham, W.H. (2005). Interaction of genetic and cultural evolution: Models and examples. Human Ecology 10(3): 399-334.


Evolutionary Cognitivism, a tdaxp series
1. Selection and Cognition
2. Epigentics and Diversity
3. Children and Civilization
4. The Implicit and the Explicit
5. Man Among Men
6. More Than Genes
7. Bibliography

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Jan16

Evolutionary Cognitivism, Part III: Children and Civilization

by tdaxp on January 16, 2007 at 12:00 am
Posted In: UNL / Genetic Development

For most of hominid evolution, newer meant bigger. Newer species had bigger brains than older ones, and later members of a species had bigger brains than earlier members (Rightmire, 2001). And for generations researchers have puzzled over the Neanderthal’s quick demise (Hrdlicka, 1927), especially puzzling in light of apparently developed communicative abilities (Arsenburg, Tilier, Vandermeersch, Duday, Schepartz, & Rak, 1989) and the fact that some Neanderthals may be more closely related to humans than other members of their own species (Paablo, 2003). Yet fifteen thousand years ago the human brain began shrinking (Ridley, 2003). Though perhaps the decline is older than that – Neanderthals may have had larger brains than we do (Klein, 2003).

I do not know what this means. We know that “within primates the relative size of the neocortex is significantly correlated with group size” (Bjorklund & Pellegrini, 2002, 102). We like to think that our brains make us special, though apparently the seemingly-simpleminded purposes are large-brained as well (92). Additionally, considering that “brain size is correlated (negatively) with litter size” and that larger-brained “animals tend to have smaller litters and to give birth to infants at longer intervals” (97), this implies that modern humans are more expendable and less precious than our ancestors of fifteen thousand years ago, or even the ancient Neanderthals! Clearly humans are evolving, but how and why?


Bjorklund & Pellegrini give hints of an answer. They write that “brain growth continues into adolescence” (100) and (quoting Bjorklund & Green, 1992) “lessons learned as a young child will not interfere with the qualitatively different tasks required of an adult” (108). These facts must be synthesized with a view of evolution that leads to us, an agricultural species, to having smaller brains and the Neanderthals, another recent non-agricultural species, to have larger ones. The most likely explanation to me is that human agriculture allowed even young children to become productive workers, as there are a myriad of tasks on a farm requiring little muscluar or intellectual strength (such as feeding chickens, etc.), and that human society allowed the formation of an “anatomically distinct worker caste” (Wilson & Holldobler, 2005, 13368). In other words, children are something like worker bees, who learn lessons appropriate for worker bees, but upon adolescence are able to be reprogrammed to be functioning adults. Thus the claim that “childhood and adolescence, are not observed in any other species” (Bjorklund & Pellegrini, 2002, 99) misses the mark – asexual workers exist in many species, and adolescence is a form of functional cocooning. And this is why (quoting Mason, 1968) “Developmental stages are less sharply delineated in humans than in other primates. Sensitive periods in development are more difficult to establish…” (Bjorklund & Pellegrini, 2002, 106): humans develop twice, once into a worker, and then into an adult.

Clearly, a view of children as “worker humans” should not be taken to extremes. Deprived environments will hamper children through the rest of their lives (Bjorklund & Pellegrini, 2002, 105) and children are safer when cared for by biological parents (Buller, 2005). Yet many children are surprisingly resilient to early traumas (Caspi, et al., 2003) and the traits that predict criminality may be largely heritable (Pinker, 2002, 315) so most children may be all but assured a good life. Other policy implications of resilient cihldren – everything from social services to educational styles – are too many to list.

Yet this gets me away somewhat from my primary question, about brain size. Clearly it would be possible for humanity to develop children as a worker caste without limiting the skull size of adults. Even if skull size and less reproductively valuable children correlate, unless these effects are caused by the same alleles there still has to be a reason for our smaller brains. My guess is that this is also from socialization, and that there is less need for us to think now that we have evolved to live in agricultural communities. If a caveman is largely on his own, with only his band to protect him, he must be a jack-of-all-trades. Everything from possible ritual cannibalism (White, et al., 1991) to warfare (Zollikofer, Ponce de Leone, Vandermeersch, & Leveque, 2002) would have to be done with the same band, meaning a successful live with a cognitively flexible life. However, humans in a modern economy rely on others for most of their needs, and they only need to learn a few things well. Thus the human brain may be evolved to be a specialist – an extraordinary mind (Gardner, 1998) — in only one domain, and a naïve generalist in others. Anyway – that’s my guess.

Bibliography
Arensburg, B., Tillier, A. M. , Vandermeersch, B. , Duday, H., Schepartz, L. A. & Rak, Y. (1989). A Middle Palaeolithic human hyoid bone. Nature (338): 758-760.
Bjorklund, D.F. & Green, D.L. (1992). The adaptive nature of cognitive immaturity. American Psychologist 47: 46-54.
Bjorklund, D. F., & Pellegrini, A. D. (2002). The origins of human nature: Evolutionary developmental psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Buller, D.J. (2005). Adapting Minds. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.
Capsi, A., et al. (2003). Influence of Life Stress on Depression: Moderation by a Polymorphism in the 5-HTT Gene. Science. Vol. 301 No. 5631 pp. 386-289.
Gardner, H. (1998). Extraordinary Minds. Basic Books: New York, NY.
Hrdlicka, A. (1927). The Neanderthal phase of man. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 57: 249-274.
Klein, R.G. (2003). Whither the Neanderthals? Science 299(5612): 1525-1527.
Mason, W.W. (1968). Early social deprivation in the nonhuman primates: Implications for human behavior. In D.C. Glass (Ed.), Environmental influence (pp. 90-101). New York: Rockefeller University Press.
Paabo, S. (2003). The mosaic that is our genome. Nature 421: 409-412.
Pinker, S. (2002). The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Viking Adult: New York, NY.
Ridley, M. (2003). Nature via Nurture. Harper Collins: New York, NY.
Rightmire, G.P. (2001). Brain size and encephalization in early to Mid-Pleistocene Homo. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 124(2): 109-123.
White, T.D., et al. The question of ritual cannibalism at grotta guattari [and comments and replies]. Currently Anthropology 32(2): 118-138.
Wilson, E. O., & Holldobler, B. (2005). Eusociality: Origin and Consequences. PNAS 102(38)-13367-13371.
Zollifoker, C.P., Ponce De Leone, M.S., Vandermeersch, B., & Leveque, F. (2002). Evidence for interpersonal violence in the St. Cesaire Neanderthal. PNAS 99(9): 6444-6448.

Evolutionary Cognitivism, a tdaxp series
1. Selection and Cognition
2. Epigentics and Diversity
3. Children and Civilization
4. The Implicit and the Explicit
5. Man Among Men
6. More Than Genes
7. Bibliography

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Jan15

Evolutionary Cognitivism, Part II: Epigenetics and Diversity

by tdaxp on January 15, 2007 at 12:00 am
Posted In: UNL / Genetic Development

The question of group-level human variation has been a hot one. Some research argues for continental, race-like groupings in which there is more variation between groups than within them (Jorde, et al., 2000) and that self-identified race is a reliable predictor for one’s genetic heritage Tang, et al,, 2005). Other research suggests while there is group-level genetic variation, it exists within a gradation of populations and not a small number of historically isolate draces (Serre & Paabo, 2004). While it is increasingly recognized that early scientific research, such as Lewtonin 1970, which denied any meaningful group-level variation was overly simplistic (Edwards, 2003). Though studies which look at only a few phenotypes continue to find little intergroup variation (Relethford, 2002), broad studies find definite intergroup variation (Rosenberg, 2005) and intragroup similarity (Rosenberg, et al., 2006) Several portions of Bjorklund & Pellegrini’s (2002) third chapter, History and Controversy, also hint at ways that human groups could be more different from each other than once thought.

One way that biological group level variation can increase is if experience can somehow be paseed from parent to child. For instance, even if two populations are genetically very similar, if they face different environments, and the effects of the environment can be passed down, you could have biologically-based differences in only one generation. This was once considered anathema to modern biology: Bjorklund & Pellegrini write that “Inheritance, and thus genetic variation, is found only within the germ line and is not influenced by experience” (47). However, i tis now recognized that “physical” and “behavioral” changes can be passed on (53). An early example of this was Jean Piaget’s experiment with epigenetic snails (54). In contemporary jargon, we should say that “females pass on cytoplasm (i.e., the cell body) to their offspring [and so environmental] changes that induce chemical changes in the cytoplasm can thus be inherited through the motehr but not through the father” (56). On the same page, the authors note that while this cytoplasm is not itself genetic, “Cytoplasmic inheritance should not be thought of as nongenetic [because] it necessarily expressed its effect on the genes.”


It’s relatively easy to imagine how this could work. Imagine two otherwise similar populations which are divided from each other. This division forces both to become relatively self-contained breeding populations and leads to differences in diet, with one population eating nutritious food and the other near starvation. After just a few generations, cytoplasmic variants adept to surviving and reproducing in starvation-conditions could become very widespread in the one population, while an opposite set of cytoplasmic variants become widespread in the other population. Frighteningly, this may be happening in Korea. The height difference between North and South Koreans is already four inches (Ser & Team, 2006). If some of this difference is epigenetically, cytoplasmically inherited, this could create a de-facto “racial” divide among Koreans that might last centuries, even after a return to environmental equality.

Non-coding DNA is another thing that may have led to a discounting of human intergroup genetic diversity. Bjorklund & Pellegrini describe this DNA as “dormant” and “underused” (57). However, the 97% of our genome that is intergenetic “can have dramatic effects on the way that nearby genes are activated to make proteins” (Pinker, 2002, 78). One such piece of junk DNA, Dopamine Receptor D4 7 Repeat – has been tied to ADD and novely seeking (Laucht, Becker, & Schmidt, 2006). As earlier studies of human differences focused on coding DNA, such as protein loci and blood group loci (Latter, 1980), these studies have essentially just ignored 97% of human genetic difference. This is especially sad as junk DNA can be inserted into RNA, thus becoming functional (Lev-Maor, Sorek, Shomron, & Ast, 2003).

Yet the idea of intergroup genetic diversity among homo sapiens causes controversy. Indeed, the idea that genes matter in the human species causes controversy Richard Lewtonin, whose work denying the existence of races was cited earlier, famous accused E.O. Wilson of mirroring “the ideologies of the bourgeois revolutions of the eighteenth century” (Ridley, 2003, 243). How much more disturbing it might be if not only do children already know about “language… objects… and social relations” (Bjoklund & Pellegrini, 2002, 61), but that groups of children vary in their knowledge of these objects. For instance, if one group has a higher general intelligence ability while another group as a higher rythmatic intelligence (Lynn, 2006). Does this imply that one genetic grouping is more valuable than another?

The answer, of course, is no. As Steven Pinker (2002, 145) wrote “The case against bigotry is not a factual claim that humans are biologically indistinguishable. It is a moral stance…” We are all equally human. We are all equally valuable. No evidence, ever, could change that.

Bibliography
Bjorklund, D. F., & Pellegrini, A. D. (2002). The origins of human nature: Evolutionary developmental psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Ding, Y., et al. (2002). Evidence of positive selection acting at the human dopamine receptor D4 gene locus. PNAS, 99(1) 309-314.
Edwards, A.W.F. (2003). Human genetic diversity: Lewtonin’s fallacy. BioEssays 25(8): 798-801.
Jorde, L.B., Watkins, W.S., Bamshad, M.J. Dixon, M.E., Ricker, C.E., Seielstad, M.T., & Batzer, M.A. (2000). The Distribution of Human Genetic Diversity: A Comparison of Mitochondrial, Autosomal, and Y-Chromosome Data. American Journal of Human Genetics
Latter, B.D.H. (1980). Genetic differences within and between populations of the major human subgroups. The American Naturalist 116(2): 220-237.
Laucht, M., Becker, K., & Schmidt, M.H. (2006). Visual exploratory behaviour in infancy and novelty seeking in adolescence: two developmentally specific phenotypes of DRD4?. Journal of Child Psychology and Pschiatry 47(11): 1143-1151.
Lev-Maor, G., Sorek, R., Shomron, N., & Ast, G. (2003). The birth of an alternatively spliced exon: 3` splice-site selection in Alu exons. Science 300(5623): 1288-1291.
Lewontin RC. The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change. New York: Columbia University Press. 1974.
Lynn, R. (2006). Race differences in intelligence: An evolutionary analysis. Washington Summit Publishers: New York:
Pinker, S. (2002). The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Viking Adult: New York, NY.
Relethford, J.H. (2002). Apportionment of global human genetic diversity based on craniometrics and skin color. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 118(4): 393-398.
Ridley, M. (2003). Nature via Nurture. Harper Collins: New York, NY.
Rosenberg NA, Mahajan S, Ramachandran S, Zhao C, Pritchard JK, et al. (2005) Clines, Clusters, and the Effect of Study Design on the Inference of Human Population Structure. PLoS Genet 1(6): e70 doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.0010070
Rosenberg NA, Mahajan S, Gonzalez-Quevedo C, Blum MGB, Nino-Rosales L, et al. (2006) Low Levels of Genetic Divergence across Geographically and Linguistically Diverse Populations from India. PLoS Genet 2(12): e215 doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.0020215
Ser, Myo-ja & Team. At the DMZ, average height changes 4 inches. JonhAng Daily. November 21, 2006. Available online: http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200611/20/200611202311326539900090409041.html.
Serre, D. & Paabo, S. Evidence for gradients of human genetic diversity within and among continents. Genome Research 14:1679-1685.
Tang H, Quertermous T, Rodriguez B, Kardia SL, Zhu X, Brown A, Pankow JS, Province MA, Hunt SC, Boerwinkle E, Schork NJ, Risch NJ (2005) Genetic structure, self-identified race/ethnicity, and confounding in case-control association studies. Am J Hum Genet 76:268–275


Evolutionary Cognitivism, a tdaxp series
1. Selection and Cognition
2. Epigentics and Diversity
3. Children and Civilization
4. The Implicit and the Explicit
5. Man Among Men
6. More Than Genes
7. Bibliography

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7 Comments
Jan14

Evolutionary Cognitivism, Part I: Selection and Cognition

by tdaxp on January 14, 2007 at 12:00 am
Posted In: UNL / Genetic Development

I am very enthusiastic about Bjorklund & Pellegrini’s 2002 text, Evolutionary Developmental Psychology. I am going to discuss four places I believe that the book’s discussion can be extended, on ADD, domain generality, geological time, and group selection. While I feel the authors’ work to be incomplete in these areas, I choose these areas because otherwise the book seems flawless.

On page 5, the authors mention mention that “natural selection has similarly shaped domain-general information processing mechanisms,” and that “working memory” and “speed of processing” are examples of such domain-general mechanisms. I agree that these things exist, are important, and were shaped through evolution, though I do not know if they are “domain general.”


For instance, I think it is clear that working memory effects how we memorize names, how we do long division, and how we solve complicated puzzles. But does working memory capacity load only cheater detection, or in the hundred subconscious ques we receive to tell us how the person we talk to is feeling? I believe the authors could have been more accurate had they spoken of these “conscious, domain-multiple” skills instead of domain-general ones.

Additionally, I think the author’s words on the nature of selection cover much of evolution. They write that “natural selection does not necessarily yield what is ‘best for the group’ but rather works on the level of the individual” (14). Sometimes this is true. However, eusocioal adaptations (those that benefit the group but harm an individuals’ inclusive fitness) have been observed in the wild (Wilson & Holldobler, 2005) and computer simulations (Hammond & Axelrod, 2006) and network analysis (Bloom, 2000) imply that something similar may exist among men . Selection pressure is not limited to the individual level, or the genetic level, or the group level, but exists on every level of organization (Alford & Hibbing, 2004).

Relatedly, the authors claim that “individuals who truly have ADHD would be at a disadvantage in any environments” (28). This may or may not be true, but the Goldstein & Barkley (1998) paper they say they agree with goes further, arguing that ADHD could not be “adaptive” (1) or “adapted” (2) (it is not clear that Goldstein & Barkley understand the difference in these concepts) because because it is not shown to be beneficial in some economic activity (hunting, wading, etc). Goldstein & Barkley then bizarrely state: “[Advocates for ADHD] can not on the one hand argue that ADHD needs to be taken seriously as a legitimate developmental disability. Then on the other hand simultaneously sing its praises as a once successful adaptation that leads to higher intelligence, greater creativity, and heightened sensory awareness, but that now results in suffering due to an overcontrolled, linear-focused, and intolerant culture” (4-5). Why this should be true is beyond me. It may well be that ADHD is adapted on a genetic level to increase reproduction. For instance, if ADHD leads to rape (Giotakos, Markianos, & Vaidakis, 2005) then it easily could be an adaptation that is beneficial to a selfish gene while being harmful to individuals and society. Alternatively, ADHD may well be a stable polymorphism, in other words humanity may be “a mixed population [that] is evolutionary stable” (Buller, 2005, 42) with regard to ADHD. This could arrive if at certain times a group’s survival hinged on having hyperactive members, and at other times hinged on having members capable of concentration.

Last, while I agree that the “human mind has been prepared by natural selection, operating over geological time, for life in a human group” (Bjorklund & Pellegrini, 4). However, human minsd have also been prepared by natural selection, operating over historical time, for life in human groups (Voight, et al., 2006). That is, human genomes of different populations have undergone selection within the past few thousand years. Evolution acted in the past, giving us stone-age brains for our modern lives. But it also acted more recently, adapting those stone-age brains for live in agricultural communities.

However, while these are nit-picks, Bjoklund & Pellegrini’s contribution to the field should not be underrated. Their text competently integrates evolutionary psychology and cognitive psychology, two fields who share many assumptions but whose practitioners are often unaware of each other’s advances. It is through books like this can scientists in both domains leverage each other’s unique contributions and advance the state of our unified, scientific view of the world.

Bibliography
Alford, J. & Hibbing, J. (2004) .The Origin of Politics: An Evolutionary Theory of Political Behavior. Perspectives on Politics, 2(4), 707-723
Bloom, Howard. (2000). Global Brain. Wiley & Sons: New York, NY.
Bjorklund, D. F., & Pellegrini, A. D. (2002). The origins of human nature: Evolutionary developmental psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Buller, D.J. (2005). Adapting Minds. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.
Goldstein, S., & Barkley, R. (1998). ADHD, hunting, and evolution: “just so” stories. The ADHD Report 6(5): 1-4.
Giotakos, O., Markianos, M., & Vaidakis, N. (2005). Aggression, impulsivity, and plasma sex hormone levels in a group of rapists, in relation to their history of childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms. Journal fo Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology 16(2): 423-433.
Hammond, R., & Axelrod, R. (2006) The Evolution of Ethnocentricism. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 50(6).
Spielman, R.S., Bastone, L.A., Burdick, J.T., Morley, M., Ewens, W.J., & Cheung, V.G. (2007). Common genetic variants account for differences in gene expression among ethnic groups. Nature doi:10.1038/ng1955.
Voight BF, Kudaravalli S, Wen X, Pritchard JK (2006) A Map of Recent Positive Selection in the Human Genome. PLoS Biol 4(3): e72 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040072
Wilson, E. O., & Holldobler, B. (2005). Eusociality: Origin and Consequences. PNAS 102(38)-13367-13371.

Evolutionary Cognitivism, a tdaxp series
1. Selection and Cognition
2. Epigentics and Diversity
3. Children and Civilization
4. The Implicit and the Explicit
5. Man Among Men
6. More Than Genes
7. Bibliography

└ Tags: , , , , , ,
 Comment 
Dec30

Biological Theories of Race At the Millennium

by tdaxp on December 30, 2006 at 12:00 am
Posted In: UNL / Genetic Development

Graves’ begins the last section of his book (“Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium,” starting on page 155) with a discussion of psychometry. It should be quickly noted that Graves chooses to criticize the field, in part, for its belief in “g” — a single-measure of intelligence. Belief in the power of “g” has been criticized even by those who believe genetic factors do help determine intelligence (Gardner 1983, 2003). Thus there could be significant, group variations in verbal ability, or abstract thinking, or analogical thinking, or some other domain without there being any different in general intelligence.

The author then proceeds to make several questionable assertions. He claims that the President and the Chief Justice discussing a case is a “violation of the principle of the separation of powers” (162) without evidence. On the very next page he argues that The Bell Curve was “uncritically accepted by elements of the popular press” (163) — a strange accusation considering how the book was controversially received (a controversy that no-doubt increased its sales). He questions “the correlation between SAT scores and intelligence” (164), which is as brave an assertion as wondering if Europe and Australia are separate continents, as the SAT is an achievement and aptitude, not an intelligence, test. Similarly, Graves shows ignorance of the concept of an ecological niche. He writes that “There is no reason to suppose that these should have produced intellectual inferiority only in sub-Saharan Africans… one would have to suppose some form of natural selection was operating” (169). Well, actually, all one would have to assume is that in some way high intelligence and the increased energy consumption that goes along with it was somehow maladaptive in in sub-Saharan Africa or that, alternatively, it was high intelligence which led the ancestors of non-African humans to be able to leave that continent. Are any of these true? I have no idea. But Graves’ dismissal of these claims is flimsy.


I’ve criticized Graves’ poor grasp of statistics before, so I will not retread old arguments. However, he makes two new fallacies in his work’s last section. He argues that assuming that Asians have genetically different rates of disease is spurious because, while this holds true for specific Asian nationalities, “when the individual Asian groups are combined into one large category, these data no longer support this idea” (179). How is Graves’ poor use of statistical aggregation evidence of anything? Likewise, on the same page notes that even though “Japanese and Korean populations are genetically closely related” they show different rates of cancers. Yet earlier in the book Graves notes that Volga Germans suffer from maladies at different rates than other Germans. How can this news possibly be surprising?

Unfortunately for a book that focuses on social views of race, Graves’ view of race’s cultural role is either simplistic or extremist. On page 196 he asks us to imagine what life would be like if “we had recognized that there are no races in the human species.” An obvious explanation is nearly nothing: race serves as just one of many markers of in-group and out-group. Recognition of race as a salient factor can trivially be erased merely by altering the membership in coalitions (Kurzban, Tooby, & Cosmides, 2001). If race doesn’t matter, than some other feature would.

The last pages of the conclusion show this. Graves spills some ink describing hate crimes around the turn of the millennium, supposedly stemming from “the idea held among white supremacists that the millennium would signal the start of the final race war” (199). On the next page there is hope, however: “There can be no race war if there are no races.” True, I guess. Black churches would then be burned in the name of Satan (“National News Briefs…”, 2000), instead of the white race. And whites would no longer have to worry about local rioters destroying their office building: Islamists will happy fill the gap. War was with us – it was part of our genetic adaption to our environment – long before humans discovered racism, or chimpanzees became humans (Wrangham, 1999).

However, race (whether or not it is a social construction) covaries with other categories that surely do matter. Even if we did not recognize “race,” would cultural or geographic? Graves maintains “There would have been no reason to maintain marital prejudices in such a society” (196) but this claim surely is not true. Geography and race are independent variables in determining the dependent variable of mate selection – eliminating one does not eliminate the other. (To put this is concrete terms, even if there was never any social stigma toward white-black miscegenation, there are all sorts of cultural and practical stigmas with a northerner marrying a southerner – or for that matter someone from the Bronx marrying a Log Angelino).

This is my final reaction paper for this class, so it is appropriate I state my beliefs. Are there separate breeding populations within the human race? Yes, obviously – any inbred family would count for that. Are there large-scale breeding populations with the human raec? Yes. If you do not live in the same country, speak the same language, have similar cultural mores, and are in the same height quintile (for the appropriate sex) of a potential mate, mating is unlikely. Do these constitute “races”? Probably. Are their racial differences in intelligence? I have no idea. Would racial differences in these traits effect anyone’s worth as a human being? No.

The Apostle writes, in Galatians 3:28, that “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The New Testament is the founding document of western civilization and clearly it states that whether the difference between two individuals is clearly genetic (as with sex), clearly socially constructed (as with enslavement), or the result of genetic-environmental interaction (one’s nationality, or race), no one is more important than any other. We should not be afraid of race, just as we are not afraid of culture. Because regardless of our race, regardless of our culture, we are all created equal.

Bibliography
Gardner, H. (1983). Multiple Intelligences. Basic Books: New York, NY.
Gardner, H. (2003). Multiple Intelligences After Twenty Years. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association.
Graves, J. L., Jr. (2001). The emperor’s new clothes: Biological theories of race at the millennium. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Kurzban, R., Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2001). Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization. PNAS 98(26):15387-15392.
“National News Briefs; Satanist Pleads Guilty to 26 Church Fires.” (2000). New York Times: 12 July 2000. Available online: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E02E1D91138F931A25754C0A9669C8B63.
Wrangham, R. (1999). Evolution of Coalitionary Killing. Yearbook of Anthropology 42 1-30.

Reactions to The Emperor’s New Clothes, part of Biopsychological Development
1. The Origin of the Race Concept
2. Darwin and the Survival of Scientific Racism
3. Applications and Misapplications of Darwinism
4. Biological Theories of Race At the Millennium

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Dec27

The Origin of the Race Concept

by tdaxp on December 27, 2006 at 12:00 am
Posted In: UNL / Genetic Development

Graves’s The Emperor’s New Clothes has so many things wrong with it, so many untruths, half-truths, and examples of naivety, that it is difficult to know how to begin critiquing it. Nonetheless, such must be done, so I will begin at the beginning (page 1) and continue until the end of the first section (page 52).

First, Graves dances around with the definition of race. His first approximation seems reasonable, “The term ‘race’ implies the existence of some nontrivial underlying hereditary features shared by a group of people and not present in other groups” (5) but his thoughts go down-hill from there. Latter in the page he notes that “None of the physical features by which we have historically defined human races… unambiguously corresponds to the racial groups we have constructed.” First, Graves’ look for unambiguous markers is misguided. Not all human beings are born with a brain, but possession of the brain is nonetheless typical for the human race. Secondly, Graves attempts to jump between a physical definition of race and a socially constructed definition. Our concepts of race imprecisely but accurately describe real genetic populations (Parra, et al., 2003; Pimenta, et al., 2006) in spite of what graves later claims (36).. Ultimately, the definition Graves takes from the dictionary may be best: “A population of organisms differing from others of the same species in the frequency of hereditary traits; a subspecies” (6). Graves’ question, “How much genetic difference must there be before a subspecies can be said to exist?” is best answered with “a statistically significant amount.” If this implies races and sub-races, and sub races within those, so be it. In some cases, it may be that it is easiest to speak about those who left Africa and those who stayed (Underhill, P.A., et al., 2000), as Africans, Asians, and Europeans (Bamshad, et al., 2003), or even smaller groups. (Lindh, Andersson, & Gusdal, 1997).


Graves historicism confuses him as to the nature of those he disagrees with. Believing that genes vary in significant ways among breeding populations – that races exist – does not imply that “inequalities cannot be fundamentally altered by environmental interventions such as social programs.” Indeed, almost the reverse is true: if we are born with differing genetic propensities, identical environmental factors will lead to unequal environments. The conclusion then is that if we are born differently genetically, we can create unequal outcomes to lead to equal outcomes. As Stephen Pinker writes, “the more equal we make society, the higher heritability will be, and the more genes will matter” (Pinker, 2002, 77).

Going back to Graves’ definition, he claims that the “Jews were a cultural group rather than a biologically distinct population (to say nothing of a race)” (20). Again, the Jewish population appears to be an interaction between real genetic links and socially constructed ones. As Behar et al. 2003) summarize the evidence, “the Cohanim, a paternally inherited Jewish priestly caste, predominantly share a recent common ancestor irrespective of the geographically defiend post-Diaspora community to which they belong, a finding consistent with common Jewish origins in the Near East” (768). His social construction leads him to confuse anti-Judaic acts of Catholics with anti-Semitism, where he lists anti-Jewish attitudes (21) that were based on belief, not parernity.

Graves also suffers from his apparent ignorance of the tools of social science. He approvingly quotes Frederick Douglass’s thoughts on “the impossibility of legitimately comparing the innate abilities of different races in a society that maintained such disparity in the physical conditions in which the races lived.” Dougglass believing that was understandable, as John Dewer’s revolution of the social science had not happened when he wrote such words. But for the last century scientific examination of humans has relied on correlation and regression two tools that do not only require similar conditions but often spurn them (so that more variables may be examined). Social science does not work by naively comparing two groups identical in one category and different in two others, but by explaining the variance of dependent variables in terms of independent variables.

Related to this is Graves’ frustratingly simplistic statements on genetics. He expects us to believe that, somehow, the fact that there “is more genetic variability in one tribe of East African chimpanzees than in the entire human species!” means anything at all. What is his point? Is he claiming a consistent cross-species relationships between “genetic variability” (however he defines it) and phenotypic and extended phenotpyic variability? Such a statement could easily be read to imply that races matter, as when fewer things change they may matter more. Ultimately, Graves is silent on the meaning of this rhetorically nifty but substantively empty statement.

Bibliography
Bamshad, M.J., Wooding, S., Walkins, W.S., Ostler, C.T., Batzer, M.A., Jorde, L.B. (2003). Human population genetic structures and inference of group membership. American Journal of Human Genetics 72: 578-589.
Behar, D.M., Thomas, M.G., Skorecki, K., Hammer, M.F., Bulygina, E., Rosengarten. D., Jones, A.L., Held K., Moses, V., Goldstein, D., Bradman, N., & Weale, M.E. (2003). American Journal of Human Genetics 73: 768-779.
Graves, J. L., Jr. (2001). The emperor’s new clothes: Biological theories of race at the millennium. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Lindh, M., Andersson, A.S., & Gusdal, A. (1997). Genotypes, nt 1858 variants, and geographic origin of hepatitis B virus–large-scale analysis using a new genotyping method. Journal of Infectious Diseases 175(6): 1285-1293.
Parra, F.C., Amado, R.C., Lambertucci, J.R., Rocha, J., Antunes, C.M., & Pena, S.D.J. (2003). Color and genomic ancestry in Brazilians. PNAS 100(1): 177-182..
Pimenta, J.R., Zuccherato, L.W., Debes, A.A., Maselli, L., Soares, R.P., Moura-Neto, R.S., Rocha, J., Bydlowski, S.P.k, & Pena, S.D. (2006). Color and Genomic Ancestry in Brazillians: A Study with Forensic Microsatellites. Human Heredity 62(4): 190-195.
Pinker, S. (2002). The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Viking Adult: New York, NY.
Underhill, P.A., Shen, P., Lin, A.A., Passarino, G., Yang, W.H., Kauffman, E., Bonne-Tamir, B., Bertranpetit, J., Francalacci, P., Ibrahim, M., Jenkins, T., Kidd, J.R., Mehdi, S.Q., Seielstad, M.T., Wells, R.S., Piazza, A., David, R.W., Feldman, M.W., Cavalli-Sforza, L.L., & Oefner, P.J. (2000). Y chromosome sequence variation and the history of human populations. Nature Genetics 26: 358-361.

Reactions to The Emperor’s New Clothes,part of Biopsychological Development
1. The Origin of the Race Concept
2. Darwin and the Survival of Scientific Racism
3. Applications and Misapplications of Darwinism
4. Biological Theories of Race At the Millennium

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