Aberdeen said:
because of the small percentage of literate people in any country, including China, until recently.
I cannot agree. Late Middle Ages saw an increase in literacy rates in Europe, also in central-eastern Europe.
Poland-Lithuania had a relatively high literacy rate in the 15th - 16th centuries, which declined in the late 17th - 18th centuries.
Parochial schools that emerged in the Late Middle Ages spread basic skills such as
reading prayer-books, catechisms, and
counting the main Christian Octaves in calendar. According to "The Golden Autumn of the Polish Middle Ages" by Henryk Samsonowicz, by the end of the reign of Casimir IV Jagiellon (1480s - 1490s) around 4/5 of all parishes in the Kingdom of Poland had a school, and on average there was 1 parochial school per 800 inhabitants. In the Archdiocese of Gniezno the number of parishes was 4000 and the number of schools in the countryside and in towns was 3500 (this number includes not only parochial schools but also cathedral schools and monastic schools).
So I would say that in the 15th - 16th centuries even many peasants in Poland-Lithuania had some basic level of literacy. Literacy declined in the 17th century when serfdom was re-introduced (google: "the refeudalization of eastern Europe in the early modern period").
Expredel said:
The results for Egypt might be a clue regarding the origin of Jewish intelligence.
Angela said:
As for a correlation between skull size and IQ, I thought size didn't matter.
Indeed cranial capacity has only a very limited correlation with IQ, other factors seem to be much more important - check this article:
https://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/the-head-sizeraceiq-trainwreck/
There seem to be a very small correlation, but in general race and ethnicity seem to correlate better with IQ than does skull size.
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As for Jewish intelligence - looking for the roots of it in Ancient Egypt is pointless, since it is a more recent phenomenon.
According to H. Harpending & G. Cochran high Ashkenazi Jewish IQ evolved under strong selective pressures in the Middle Ages. They suggest that more intelligent Jews had more surviving children than less intelligent Jews and the average IQ was gradually increasing.
Check:
"The 10,000 Year Explosion - How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution":
https://lesacreduprintemps19.files....-2009-by-gregory-cochran-henry-harpending.pdf
"Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence":
http://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jbiosocsci.pdf
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That was the case not only with Jews but also with other European Medieval populations, only perhaps to a lesser degree.
Studies on Medieval family size show that wealthy people had more surviving children than poor people throughout most of Europe.
In Poland-Lithuania of the 15th - 16th centuries wealthy peasants had 1,6 - 2 surviving sons per father, while peasants of average wealth had 1,1 - 1,5 (where replacement fertility = 1,05 sons per father = 2,1 children per father). Poor peasants probably had sub-replacement fertility. That was more related to wealth than to class, because medium nobles had 2 - 2,1 (the same as wealthy peasants) and magnates (very rich nobles) had 2,9. Poor nobles probably had less than 2. This only refers to sons, so multiply x2 if you want sons + daughters.
In the 16th - 17th centuries in England fathers with assets at death lower than 25 pounds also had a sub-replacement fertility (less than 2,1 surviving children). By "surviving children" I mean those surviving to adulthood, so that they could have their own children.
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From Nicholas Wade, "A Troublesome Inheritance...", New York 2014:
https://atroublesomeinheritance.fil...-human-history-penguin-press-hc-the-20141.pdf
"(...) Clark has uncovered the simple genetic mechanism through which the Malthusian economy wrought these changes on the English population: the rich had more surviving children than did the poor. From a study of wills made between 1585 and 1638, he finds that will makers with £9 or less to leave their heirs had, on average, just under two children. The number of heirs rose steadily with assets, such that men with more than £1,000 in their gift, who formed the wealthiest asset class, left just over four children. The English population was fairly stable in size from 1200 to 1760. In this context, the fact that the rich were having more children than the poor led to the interesting phenomenon of unremitting social descent. Most children of the rich had to sink in the social scale, given that there were too many of them to remain in the upper class. Their social descent had the far-reaching genetic consequence that they carried with them inheritance for the same behaviors that had made their parents rich. The values of the upper middle class - nonviolence, literacy, thrift and patience - were thus infused into lower economic classes and throughout society. Generation after generation, they gradually became the values of the society as a whole. This explains the steady decrease in violence and increase in literacy that Clark has documented for the English population. Moreover, the behaviors emerged gradually over several centuries, a time course more typical of an evolutionary change than a cultural change. (...)"
And here the data for Poland-Lithuania:
http://homoeconomicus.uwb.edu.pl/pdf/Struktury_demograficzne.pdf
From page 21 (number of sons per father who lived to their adulthood):
^ Note that the English graph shows children per family (couple), while the Polish graph shows sons per father.
So in case of the English graph replacement fertility is 2,1 while in case of the Polish graph it is 1,05.
4 children living to adulthood in the English graph, is equivalent to 2 sons living to adulthood in the Polish graph.
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The same pattern was also observed among Ashkenazi Jews - from Harpending's "The 10,000 Year Explosion":
From pages 199 (214) - 200 (215) of the PDF book in the link posted above:
"(...) Jews who were particularly good at these high-complexity jobs enjoyed increased reproductive success. As Weinryb noted: “More children survived to adulthood in affluent families than in less affluent ones. A number of genealogies of business leaders, prominent rabbis, community leaders, and the like - generally belonging to the more affluent classes show that such people often had four, six, sometimes even eight or nine children who reached adulthood. On the other hand, there are some indications that poorer families tended to be small ones. It should also be added that overcrowding, which favors epidemics, was more prevalent among the poorer classes.” In short, Weinryb wrote, “the number of children surviving among Polish Jews seems to have varied considerably from one social level to another.” He also suggested that wealthier Jews were less crowded, as they lived in bigger houses; could keep their houses warmer; could afford wet-nurses; and had better access to rural refuges from epidemics. As an example, he cites a census of the town of Brody in 1764 showing that homeowner households had 1.2 children per adult member, while tenant households had 0.6. (...)"
it might not have been a good idea for Europe to try to exterminate its Ashkenazi Jews
Indeed. Germans exterminated millions of Ashkenazi Jews, who have the highest average IQ of all ethnic groups - imagine how many potential Nobel Prize winners died. Ethnic Jews were especially successful (in relation to Gentiles) in Germany itself, where they excelled ethnic Germans in high-ranking accomplishment 22 times according to Charles Murray - Jews were over 20% of all significant figures in Germany in 1870 - 1950, despite being only 0,9% of all citizens (graph from Charles Murray, "Human Accomplishment", 2003):
http://s28.postimg.org/jehmgvz3x/Jewish_Gentile_ratio.png
Charles Murray, "Human Accomplishment. The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950", 2003:
https://www.gwern.net/docs/2003-murray-human-accomplishment.pdf
According to Jewish-American author, Theodore Newman Kaufman, those were Germans who incited Anti-Semitism among Christians:
http://www.ihr.org/books/kaufman/perish.shtml
"(...) Germanism Abroad
True Germanism, being as it is a purely primitive paganism with some modern "refinements" finds that it can express itself best by committing barbaric and bestial acts of violence against civilized peoples. Thus, if Germanism were ever to prevail upon this earth we can be sure that every step would be taken though few indeed are these steps which the Germans have not already taken! to reawaken every dormant animal instinct and vicious trait in man. Thus it has been a chief aim of the German to eradicate each and every one of the three principal religions from this earth. However, the German was practical enough to realize that he could not successfully combat all the religions at one time with any hope of emerging supreme. But since their extinction was absolutely necessary to the propagation of the German dogma of hate and destruction, the Germans conceived their now infamous and ofttried trick of pitting first the believers in one religion against those of another until, at a single coup, they could deliver the final knock-out blow against the single remaining adversary. It was in Austria that they first tested the efficiency of their scheme, a test which, at that time, actually constituted organized high treason against that country. Germanism had its birth in Austria as an organized movement founded and headed by an Austrian statesman, one Schoenerer, in 1878. Its activity was rather limited in scope until 1898 when Schoenerer joined with Hasse; from that time on the Pan-German League in Berlin became the head of the movement in Austria, and it proceeded at once to establish permanent bases of operation in that country. First a plan of attack was decided upon. Hasse and Schoenerer agreed that if Germany was ever to rule over Austria the latter country must first be forced to break with Rome (Roman Catholicism). In order to achieve this objective the leaders decided upon a roundabout course of action. They therefore first created an artificially stimulated pseudo-religious revivalist movement having anti-Semitism as its primary and immediate purpose. The German Hasse found some renegade, so-called Catholics (though such men were no more Catholics in spirit than those men of any religion who, hiding behind a pulpit of a church, rail against God and preach hatred and intolerance) members of the leading Catholic Party, who agreed to act as leaders of such a movement. It was not long thereafter that a frightful wave of anti-Semitic persecution began to sweep over Austria, continuing unabated in intensity, until Schoenerer and Hasse felt that a sufficiently high degree of agitation and terrorism had been reached. Thereupon they turned their efforts against the Catholic Party and in turn, started a rabid anti-Catholic, "free from-Rome" movement of their own, Schoenerer declaring that "the chains which tie us to a Church hostile to Germanism must be broken." The "No Popery" and anti-Catholic agitation was stimulated by Hasse and Schoenerer through their introduction into Austria of numerous pseudo-evangelical, free-booter German clergymen who were liberally paid, with money and liquor, to rail against the Catholics. Though the complete success of this plan was not achieved, it did have a salutary effect; that of establishing and proving that audacity and ruthless aggressiveness of the German. (...)"
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Back to IQ:
How Medieval
feudalism and
manorialism in Europe increased selective pressures leading to gradual increase of European IQ:
"(...) Inheritance for peasants did not normally extend beyond the next of kin, and an eligible heir had to be produced on each holding or there was a risk of reversion to the lord. The feudal mode of production was thus characterized by a strong linkage of landholding to marriage and marriage to procreation.
Those without land could not easily marry, and those with land had to marry and produce offspring to keep the holding productive and in the family. Only legitimate offspring (i.e., those sanctified by wedlock) could succeed to a holding. The timing of marriage was normally dependent on entry to a holding, and marriage was the principal social regulator of fertility.
The land-poor therefore tended to marry later than well-established peasants, and to raise fewer children. The poorest stratum did not reproduce their own numbers in most periods. The population grew by means of a molecular process of downward mobility engendered within peasant families. Those young adults who were not favoured by inheritance and lost out in the scramble for established village holdings became the mass labour force of the system’s extensive growth, moving to the periphery and clearing new land. (...)"
In modern Europe there is the opposite trend - thanks to welfare systems, poor people tend to have more children than rich people. People with no education tend to have children earlier (and - in total - more of them) than people who continue education at universities. According to Michael A. Woodley, due to this kind of relaxation of selective pressures, European IQ is already on the decline since ca. 1850:
Michael A. Woodley, "The social and scientific temporal correlates of genotypic intelligence and the Flynn effect":
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289611001620
"(...) Some of Woodley’s main points include: IQ rose among European populations from the Middle Ages to the present, reaching a 105 average in 1850, and has since declined (...)"
Europe is dumbing down since ca. 1850 even without immigration - average IQ among
native Europeans is also declining.
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BTW - Hitler's extermination of European Jewry prevented their assimilation into and integration with European societies. This has taken place in the USA on the other hand, where Americans of Jewish descent now frequently intermarry with Non-Jewish Americans.