This is a followup to a previous post by Rex about an article which claimed that Ashkenazi Jews are genetically smarter. The folks at Gene Expression have had a few posts on the subject, mostly focusing on the ways in which the paper overlooks the historical importance of Sephardic Jews, and the general importance of “cultural” factors. They also reproduced an interesting paper by Howard Metzenberg. He argues that “above average Jewish intelligence can be traced to the origins of rabbinical Judaism itself around the time of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.” I would re-write that to say “the above-average engagement in academic pursuits” so as to avoid the tricky “intelligence” word, which Rex so rightly picks on in his post. (And which Metzenberg tactfully avoids discussing.)
Nonetheless, the article is full of interesting insights. For instance, I never thought of Judaism as an proselytizing religion, but that’s what it was in the first and second centuries:
In the ancient world of Greece and Rome, Judaism was a proselytizing religion and took in many converts. It has been estimated that in the 1st and 2nd centuries, about 10% of the population of the Roman Empire was Jewish, and as many as 25% in the Greek speaking cities of the Eastern Mediterranean. It was for this largely Greek speaking population that the Septuagint (a Greek translation of Hebrew scriptures) was produced. And it was amongst this Greek speaking Jewish population that Paul of Tarsus traveled, proselytizing Christianity.
He also argues that it is impossible to distinguish Ashkenazis as a distinct genetic group within the Jewish population:
One of the reasons that the authors could find no evidence of a population bottleneck in the Ashkenazi Jewish population is that the Ashkenazi population has never been as distinct or isolated as they imagine. The original Ashkenazi population probably descends from Italian Jews who migrated north in the early Middle Ages. Genetic testing of Y-Chromosome phenotypes supports the theory that Ashkenzi Jewish males are closely related to the remnant community of Romaniote Jews, who by tradition are the descendants of Judeans brought to Italy and Greece as captives after the many religious wars and rebellions in the Middle East. Throughout the Middle Ages, Jews of Europe were engaged in trade with the Middle East, and it was through those trade routes that Jewish scholarship from the Middle East entered Europe. Later on, there was considerable gene flow from Sephardic populations escaping the Inquisition into the Ashkenazi community, and this is reflected in language and surnames.
Personally I still prefer the theory that Ashkenazis are primarily Central Asian in origin…
I’m actually really angry at Gene Expression for their use of the term ethno-autism, which is pejorative towards autistic people. I am writing a letter of complaint.
I’ve just been exploring Gene Expression and my initial reaction is, “Holy crap!” I mean seriously, they uncritically accept data from IQ studies, they use books by Raphael Patai (author of “The Arab Mind”, also known as “How to Torture Arabs” by the US government) to support their arguments, and they decry the influence of the “PC crowd” in undermining the objective truths espoused by the “race realists”. Seriously, wtf?
Jesse,
It sounds like you’ve already figured out wtf about that website — yet another incarnation of Galton for yet another generation of devotees. So depressing.
“I’m actually really angry at Gene Expression for their use of the term ethno-autism, which is pejorative towards autistic people. I am writing a letter of complaint.”
Kathy; I couldn’t find the post in question. Do you have the link?
Thanks in advance!
my post on ethno-autism.
Personally I still prefer the theory that Ashkenazis are primarily Central Asian in origin…
if primarily, then you’d have to look at the autosomes, not the Y lineage (the levite study was Y based i believe). most of the Y data though points to a midddle eastern origin and the mtDNA data is mixed, probably indicative of introgression from european populations.
and as for uncritical, i suppose around here “quotes” are used unselectively and promiscuously around everything because you all have no viewpoint?
Razib. Thanks for clearing up the differences in the two kinds of data.
But I have to say, looking at your ethno-autism post (which is pretty interesting, btw) I see a lot of “quotes” there as well!
Jesse and Ozma: I’ve always found Gene Expression to be interesting and provocative, even if their contrarianism often supports the status-quo. For instance, I really like Razib’s quote from this post:
I, for one, look forward to more dialog between SM and GE.
I’d meant to add this before but my Internet was down (again, dammit!). Anyway, my latter two examples were from the comments on Gene Expression and not from the entries themselves, but I think that still says something about the readership it attracts. Raphael Patai’s book, The Arab Mind, is most famous now for being a major influence in the US’s policies towards Arabs, and it is especially infamous for its influence in the design – officially sanctioned or not – of the torture procedures in the Abu Ghraib prison. That should have set off alarm bells, and yet no one ever mentioned it on Gene Expression. It’s been mentioned before, but Patai’s book isn’t even good anthropology, considering that it uses a conceptual model of culture that was decades out of date by the time of Arab Mind’s publication.
The second example from the comments, the one warning about the PC bogeyman, I unfortunately can’t find again, but it’s there on the site somewhere. It’s not really important, I was just struck by the whole “the PC hordes are at the gate!” tone of it.
The last point about IQ tests is one that is from an actual , as well as from the general comments of the blog.
If there have been additional posts clarifying this IQ issue then I’ll modify my comments accordingly.
Anyway, there are all sorts of basic criticisms of IQ tests and standardized tests in general that I’m surprised that such a seemingly scientific-oriented site like Gene Expression doesn’t mention them. For example, do IQ tests measure intelligence, or do they measure test-taking skills? For that matter, how is intelligence defined? And what about the culture-bound nature of IQ tests themselves? An illiterate hunter-gatherer would not even be able to take an IQ test, and the Pirahã, whose counting system doesn’t even go past three (I am simplifying), would fail miserably. Does that mean that they are necessarily less intelligent than someone who got 80 on an IQ test?
Much more can be made of this issue. Like I said, these are basic criticisms, so when I see something written about IQ which does not mention these weaknesses of the IQ concept, then my estimation of the article’s worth goes down.
Goddamit, I hate it when that happens.
But I have to say, looking at your ethno-autism post (which is pretty interesting, btw) I see a lot of “quotes” there as well!
fair enough, but i have a viewpoint and i admit it (for example, i tend to preface any of my points that deal with early christianity with the honest admission that i am a hellenophilic atheist who sympathizes the classical past).
and hey kerim, don’t leave out the context! my first thought reading that snip was “what the hell was i thinking?” then i reread it:
i messed up the cite. here is the context:
Hindus, it is true, do not proslyetize aggressively or practice much intolerance, but then, but of course, caste acts as an integrative and segregative phenomenon that makes conversion or unified outlook unecessary. Tolerance and religious pluralism is gained at a rather repulsive cost (from the Western perspective).
razib. Sorry, it does sound bad out of context. I actually really like what you were saying there. When I was attending a conference in India over winter break, I was confounded by all the talks about how communal conflict would go away if everyone returned to traditional Hindu values. I think they liked the way “everyone knew their place” back then… For those two lazy to click, Razib’s previous sentence is:
I was confounded by all the talks about how communal conflict would go away if everyone returned to traditional Hindu value
until recently the RSS and other hindu nationalist groups did not have a non-brahmin leader, ever. this in a nation that is only 2% brahmin (the chitpavan brahmins of of the konkan coast have been dominant in hindu nationalism). hindu intellectuals do tend to espouse an “organic” sense of society, and interestingly i read an book on indian history from a frenchmen who had become hindu and lived in varanasi for most of his life, and his explanation for why the maurya dynasty was simple: they were sudras who had usurped the traditional role of the kshatriya caste.
“Hindus do not practice intolerance”
What a strange idea. Isn’t this the topic of Leveling Crowds? http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/6574.html
In my experience pretty much every group has done something wrong at some point when given the opportunity.
I have to admit that I do find the use of the term “ethno-autism” disturbing. In fact, I’ve encountered a comparison between early Christians who couldn’t understand that other groups did not perceive the world the same way that they did and autistic people before and didn’t like that either.
Being very close to an autistic, I don’t want to go too far down this road because my emotions will get in the way. But I *can* say that the term “autism” is so far reaching, considering that the criteria for diagnosis has been widened, that I don’t think it’s useful or constructive to use it to refer to a general attitude such as that described by Razib. Perhaps s/he has her or his reasons for doing so, just as the person who made the comparison I mentioned had his reasons.
Nonetheless, there are many faulty conceptions of autism and not enough education and awareness about it. I would hate to see this negative association help perpetuate negative stereotypes.
Perhaps Razib would care to elaborate on this choice of term over another . . .
Rex: One could debate the applicabiity of Weberian ideal-type models to religions, but if we were to adopt one for Hinduism, I think its integrative aspects would be worth highlighting. For instance, Buddhism, one of the biggest threats to Hinduism, was successfully reabsorbed into Hinduism. For the record, so has Islam in many ways. Numerous Hindus make visits to the temples of Sufi saints. Although I am wary of arguments that various religious traditions can be divided up into their “true” and “false” varients (i.e. people who argue that Jihadism constitutes a “false” Islam), if we start from the premise that it is possible to constitute some kind of Weberian ideal type then I think it is possible to argue that Stanley Tambiah’s communal violence constitutes an ethnonationalist exception to a history that has been generally tolerant. Indian scholars would even argue that this exception is a direct result of British colonial divide-and-conquor efforts to differentiate and distinguish between religious traditions that were much more complex and heterogenous in practice.
nancy, i didn’t give much thought to it, it was simply based on my perception that autistic people seem to have a hard time relating to other people in a fully-fleshed out way. similarly, i was trying to convey that there is a tendency for many people with strong ethnic consciousness to not really view other groups as fully fleshed out entities.
i will give a specific example. i have read a fair amount of religious commentary from the perspective of judaism (i have a personal interest in genesis so it is mostly for historical interest) and note a tendency for religious jews to view ethical monotheism as a light in the dark, which around ~1000 BCE shone the light of morality to the rest of humankind. in the context of jewish religious traditions about the depravities of the canaanites this might make sense, but indian, greek or chinese thinkers might have something to say about primacy as far as a systematic ethical systems go, and i would argue that there is probably some “innate ethics” in most human beings from our biological substrate (that is, rational choice avariciousness is bounded).
snips:
In my experience pretty much every group has done something wrong at some point when given the opportunity.
yes, i am not thinking in terms of platonic ideals, but in terms of degrees. even in ancient times the hindu “tolerance” is not absolute, there was for example religious violence and persecutions along the fissure of jainism-saivite hinduism in southern india during early 1000s that is redolent of some of the protest-catholic wars of religion from what i can see. but, i am speaking of tendencies, these sorts of religious purges and enforcements of “orthodoxy” are far less normative, i would argue, that among some of the populations who adhere to “abrahamic” religious systems.
if we start from the premise that it is possible to constitute some kind of Weberian ideal type
and here is an issue, though language offers constraints, i on the basic level think in terms of populations and distributions. there are some hindus who are probably as fixed on theistic orthodoxy as muslims are on absolute monotheism or particular christian sects on the precise formulae of the trinity, but i would argue that a smaller fraction of hindus express these tendencies, not because a smaller fraction have innate psychological tendencies in that direction but the historical trajectory of hindu social institutions do not support this sort of personality. there is a lot to go over here…but, i would point out that along the stretch of territory between morocco and india, it is in greater india that non-muslim religion remained in the majority, and i would argue that the character of hinduism, with its lack of reliance on elite institutions and state support, and its grounding jati, allowed it to weather erosions to islam. the areas where islam made the greatest inroads, the punjab and bengal, were also areas where caste-jati based hinduism was weakest when islam arrived because of the strong influence of tantric buddhism.
i could go on, but i will finish by simply noting that the persistence of parsis (zoroastrians) and jews on the western coast of india, both groups escaping periodic persecution in the lands of islam or christianity (ashkenazi jews from germany actually settled in cochin after the rise of “jew burners” in the rhineland during the high middle ages), was facilitated by the fact that both groups were simply slotted into the caste system, more or less. other groups, like central asians, were also assimilated into the caste system (though some brahmin groups still refuse to accept the rajputs as kshatriyas because of their foreign origin). the bene israel of the coast to the some of bombay seem to be an extremely ancient group which preserves pre-talmudic jewish tendencies. their men carry the “cohen modal haplotype” which marks them as relatives to other cohens around the world. how could such a group, in relative isolation (in contrast to the cochin jews) maintain their traditions in india? because hindu society’s assimilative tendencies are of a different kind than that of say islam’s or christianity’s, for where those religions dominated jews went through periods of persecution, sometimes forced apostasy, etc.
anyway, all for now.
Nancy et al: Thanks for the good discussion–manually trackbacking–my commentary is here.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/museumfreak/272758.html
Nancy et al: Thanks for the good discussion–manually trackbacking–my commentary is here.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/museumfreak/272758.html
Apparently I need more words to have this comment not flagged as spam, so here’s the definition of ethno-autism from Gene Expression, which should be useful to people in general who are hanging around the discussion: “ethno-autism, roughly speaking, [is] an inability to conceive other peoples and cultures as fully fleshed out organisms who have their own creativity, histories and genius, and most importantly values congruent with those of modern Western civilization.”