Evolution continues, including brain evolution

A NY Times article explains that evolution did not grind to a halt a long time ago, but has continued during the past few thousand years:

Historians often assume that they need pay no attention to human evolution because the process ground to a halt in the distant past. That assumption is looking less and less secure in light of new findings based on decoding human DNA.

People have continued to evolve since leaving the ancestral homeland in northeastern Africa some 50,000 years ago ...

This shouldn't be surprising. Common sense ought to tell us that the different races were the result of continuing evolution. In fact, the article reveals that genes cluster in groups that, not coincidentally, correlate with the known races. Yes, the research shows that those leftist/liberal PC people who have been saying that race is purely a sociological concept are dead wrong. Race is based on genetic differences.

The article also mentions the important fact that brain genes have also been evolving:

Another puzzle is presented by selected genes involved in brain function, which occur in different populations and could presumably be responses to behavioral challenges encountered since people left the ancestral homeland in Africa.

But some genes have more than one role, and some of these brain-related genes could have been selected for other properties.

Two years ago, Bruce Lahn, a geneticist at the University of Chicago, reported finding signatures of selection in two brain-related genes of a type known as microcephalins, because when mutated, people are born with very small brains. Two of the microcephalins had come under selection in Europeans and one in Chinese, Dr. Lahn reported.

He suggested that the selected forms of the gene had helped improved cognitive capacity and that many other genes, yet to be identified, would turn out to have done the same in these and other populations.

Neither microcephalin gene turned up in Dr. Pritchard’s or Dr. Williamson’s list of selected genes, and other researchers have disputed Dr. Lahn’s claims. Dr. Pritchard found that two other microcephalin genes were under selection, one in Africans and the other in Europeans and East Asians.

Even more strikingly, Dr. Williamson’s group reported that a version of a gene called DAB1 had become universal in Chinese but not in other populations. DAB1 is involved in organizing the layers of cells in the cerebral cortex, the site of higher cognitive functions.

I previously blogged about Dr. Bruce Lahn's research. Reading between the lines, Dr. Lahn's research shows that blacks are less intelligent than whites, and that's why Dr. Lahn had to discontinue that line of research in favor of other projects without politically incorrect findings.

It would be interesting to give IQ tests to people who are part Chinese, and see if those who have the DAB1 gene mentioned in the quote above have higher IQ than those who don't.

Comments

[anon]

"IQ tests to people who are part Chinese"

IQ and personality tests. I imagine the more self-disciplined peasantry were able to prosper more.

[lol]

Suddenly, comment section has been quiet for long time at this blog. Very interesting. On the left, they do not like idea of racial difference. On the right, they have hard time to surrender their racial superiority.

[SFG]

Yeah, though you're mostly talking about the extreme right; the mainstream right tends to blame racial differences on pernicious underclass culture. They may be right.

[mondo]

I'll trade some of my Chinese DAB1 for some Western African fast-twitch muscle fibers.

[The Superfluous Man]

HS, the specific genes found by Lahn didn't pan out - he colloborated with Rushton, who found nothing. "The variants conferred no advantage on IQ tests. "[We] had no luck," Rushton told Science, "no matter which way we analyzed the data." Lahn was not a co-author, but his group genotyped the 644 adults of differing ethnicity in the study." http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/314/5807/1872

In short, there is little direct evidence (as in blacks lack gene X, which confers a few more IQ points), only reams of indirect psychometric evidence. Lahn's discoveries are more a 'proof of possibility,' because the gene's presence varies across populations.

I bet that when the first instance of an intelligence gene varying across populations is discovered, leftists will (correctly) respond that this doesn't necessarily mean there are racial differences. Like before, the bar for evidence will be raised so high that results good enough to satisfy the critics are unobtainable, sort of like how Gould and others said a cross-fostering experiment is needed to settle the debate. Of course, telling people who to have children with for the sake of an experiment is impossible.

[The Engineer]

Okay, finding an intelligence gene may be nice, but figuring out what protein it codes and creating a drug that provides that protein (and thus raises IQ) would be a more important discovery.

Then we wouldn't need to kill David Alexander. That would be good, we like him.

[James Collins]

Author writes:...Common sense ought to tell us that the different races were the result of continuing evolution.

The article also mentions the important fact that brain genes have also been evolving:
==============================================
Common sense cannot tell us that the different raced were the result of evolution. That ides is concluded by those who believe in evolution. They presume that evolution is taking place. The cannot in a million years present any scientific EVIDENCE, only guesses.

Real common sense plainly tells us the living things are almost infinitely too complex to even comprehend, to say something concerning evolution is a fact, is to stretch reality to the moon and back 4.3 billion times.

The same logic can be applied to the presumption that brain genes are evolving. Changing, yes, many are victims of the change we call Alzheimer's disease. THIS is the extent of evolution, bad accidents in brain cell maintenance.

Brains evolving? Present ONE piece of real evidence. Ask a hundred evolutionists a question regarding evolution. You will get multiple answers, many totally different from each other's postulates.

[non]

It would be interesting to give IQ tests to people who are part Chinese, and see if those who have the DAB1 gene mentioned in the quote above have higher IQ than those who don't.

The following links will be perfect for selection of such candidate for DAB1 gene study.

http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~jsm28/imo-scores/2006/scores-order.html

Above link shows individuals score. Even participants from non-Chinese nations have very Asian last name in Malaysia, Cananda, USA, even some East European nations. Some of them might be mixed blood.

http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~jsm28/imo-scores/

There certainly are some interesting exchanges going on in this thread.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, if "race matters", then why shouldn't one "race" seek to become "a master race"? Why shouldn't "inferior races" be enslaved or exterminated?

Of course no "race theorist" can even give a coherent definition of "race"...except along the lines of self-identification as a consequence of cultural immersion. Modern biology, for example, has discarded "race" as a meaningful concept altogether.

I "was taught" that I "was white" when I was a kid..."therefore" I'm a "white man".

The Enlightenment thinkers were mostly disdainful of "race" and Marx followed that tradition. In the present period, it is fashionable in academic circles to regard Marxism as "dead". That's hardly unexpected; the competition for academic jobs is ferocious and "race theory" is chic.

But even its self-described "progressive" advocates have summoned up a demon. Why not a "Department of White Studies"? Why not a "National Association for the Advancement of White People"? Why not...well, you know?

I know of no reason why racism on the part of people of color should be any less reactionary or any less brutal than that practiced by whites over the last five centuries or so.

Consider what the Japanese did to defenseless civilians in Nanking, China. Consider what some African "tribes" have done to others.

Yes, "race matters"...it matters very much that all forms of racial ideology be utterly discredited...if they already haven't.

Those who believe otherwise deserve the kind of world that their "thinking" would create.

But I wouldn't want to live in it...and I don't think any of you would either.

[Marc]

Recognizing racial differences doesn't mean that you believe that one race should seek to become the master race. Why would it? I recognize these differences and feel no such impulse.

Must... not... invade... Poland...

[blah]

meh, why are Americans so desperate to believe there are differences in intelligence across the races? Will it make you feel better to think hispanics and blacks are poor because they are not so smart? Seriously, this is getting pathetic.