Discover's HBD kit: Some assembly required

You can’t send firearms via U.S. mail, and you shouldn’t try to transport explosives with your carry-on luggage on a commercial flight. But it is possible to transport the components, and then assemble them later.
In the same way, some mainstream science writers avoid delivering HBD (human bio-diversity), in its recognizable form, to their readers – but they can get away with including its basic components in their articles, and allowing intelligent readers to assemble it themselves.
We know that average brain size varies between races; there is no longer any dispute about this. Therefore, it is generally verboten to concede that there is a correlation between brain size and IQ. Happily, it appears that one can get away with it if it’s buried deep inside an article that deals with the overall reduction in human brain size in recent history.
I recently read Kathleen McAuliffe’s excellent essay “If Modern Humans Are So Smart, Why Are Our Brains Shrinking?” After mulling over some fascinating theories, McAuliffe eventually writes (toward the very end):

Whatever the reason for the recent uptick in cranial size, Jantz believes it is having an effect on how we think. Recent MRI studies, according to Jantz and other scientists, show that brain volume really does correlate with intelligence—at least as measured by that oft-celebrated but widely criticized metric, the IQ test.

The middle part of McAuliff’s article elaborates on the human domestication theory, that the reason our brains have been getting smaller is that we’ve been domesticated. She writes:

A TAMER BREED
Other researchers think many of their colleagues are barking up the wrong tree with their focus on intelligence as the key to the riddle of our disappearing gray matter. What may have caused the trend instead, they argue, is selection against aggression. In essence, we domesticated ourselves, according to Richard Wrangham, a primatologist at Harvard University and a leading proponent of this view.
Some 30 animals have been domesticated, he notes, and in the process every one of them has lost brain volume—typically a 10 to 15 percent reduction compared with their wild progenitors. Domesticated animals also have more gracile builds, smaller teeth, flatter faces, a more striking range of coloration and hair types—and, in many breeds, floppy ears and curly tails. Except for those last two traits, the domesticated breeds sound a lot like us…
To illustrate how this could happen, Wrang­ham refers to an experiment that began half a century ago in Siberia. In 1958 the Russian geneticist Dmitri Belyaev started raising silver foxes in captivity, initially selecting to breed only the animals that were the slowest to snarl when a human approached their cage. After about 12 generations, the animals evidenced the first appearance of physical traits associated with domestication, notably a white patch on the forehead. Their tameness increased over time, and a few generations later they were much more like domesticated dogs

I find it interesting that one of the “domestication traits” listed is “a more striking range or coloration and hair types.” This trait, along with more gracile build and smaller teeth, seems to imply that Caucasians are more domesticated than Negroes. Caucasians have larger ears than do Negroes or Asians.
Of course, none of this proves anything by itself. However, when we compare behavioral patterns in places such as Ferguson, Missouri and Portland, Oregon, a clear picture begins to emerge.
Being domesticated is a mixed blessing at best. I fear that, as the rule of the jungle spreads, domesticated humans will be fully replaced by the more wild varieties.

This entry was posted in nurture vs. nature and I.Q., Race science and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

10 Responses to Discover's HBD kit: Some assembly required

  1. R. says:

    Being domesticated is a mixed blessing at best. I fear that, as the rule of the jungle spreads, domesticated humans will be fully replaced by the more wild varieties.

    No. Domesticated humans are way better at organized violence. Therefore, they’re the ones more likely to survive. Remember the LA riots? The ‘wild varieties’ did not fare well against the Koreans..
    The wild varieties can’t have levels of trust and cooperation necessary for success against those who can rely on each other.

    • icareviews says:

      “No. Domesticated humans are way better at organized violence. Therefore, they’re the ones more likely to survive. Remember the LA riots?”
      Unfortunately, in the present order, the semi-feral population’s aggression is largely controlled and directed by a hostile elite perfectly willing to weaponize it against recalcitrant whites. In this order, too, the aggression frequently takes the semi-domesticated form of a vote.

  2. Stan Mute says:

    As R notes, the domesticated humans per your thesis are much more socially organized. And while domesticated man may be less apt than the bald ape to bludgeon or hack with a machete, he is much more likely to shoot from a hundred yards or more. The trend for domesticated man seems to be to effect killing from ever greater distances, perhaps to overcome any aversion to the bald ape’s up close blood lust. We can now kill on the other side of the planet with the simple press of a button. And still we are very reluctant to do so. Today we are developing autonomous machines to do our killing for us.
    At some point, western man must begin to defend his territory if he is to survive. I wonder if this will only happen when robocop becomes reality.

  3. I read this in Nicholas Wade “A troubled inheritance”. A Must Read Book!
    There it also said that only 2 populations were not gracilized, domesticated. One was Australian aborigines who seem to fare worse then Africans in IQ.

    • BX says:

      That is indeed an excellent book, as is Wade’s previous book Before the Dawn.
      As for Aborigines having a lower IQ but better “Visual intelligence”, this is very true anecdotally and the science from previous decades (would never be investigated these days) suggests as much too. Try evolving in the Australian outback, with sparse water holes and hunting grounds, for 40,000 years, and do it without selective breeding pressure on the visual cortex!

  4. CS says:

    Much of the brain is concerned with sense perception, balance, physical coordination and other non-intellectual functions. Thus, the reduction of brain size with the evolution of modern man may, in part, have been the result of loss of non-intellectual capacities. For example, According to some reports, Australian aborigines and Canadian Innu have a larger visual cortex than caucasians, which is associated with superior navigational skills, but which is likely unrelated to IQ test scores.

  5. BX says:

    Whites and east Asians most certainly have been domesticated in the last ten to twenty thousand years. Our skulls proves this. Gracialisation (skulls reducing in thickness) is most prominent in Asians and Europeans. This goes hand in hand with (but is not caused by or a cause of) higher intelligence. It results from being mentally wired to live in a larger society, where we do not have as much hand to hand violence in day to day life. Hence those with thinner skulls are not weeded out of the gene pool, and may keep breeding just as much as the thick-skulled society members. (Unlike hunter gatherers or archaic humans.)

  6. Rob says:

    It would also seem to imply that Caucasians are more domesticated than East Asians with their monochrome black hair, which certainly doesn’t seem to be the case.
    As for gracile builds – many of the most primitive African tribes, like the Masai but many others, have extremely gracile builds, whereas the Koreans have squat, stocky builds.
    I could go on.
    As usual, researchers see what they wanna see to construct a neat little narrative.A tidy narrative is all.

    • jewamongyou says:

      Of course, there may be other reasons for lanky/gracile builds besides having been domesticated. Extremes of heat or cold could explain the Maasai and the Koreans; in fact, this is the standard explanation. Another domesticated trait that Caucasians have, which other racial groups tend to lack, is “flat faces” (lack of prognathism).

    • BX says:

      As I stated above, gracilisation and IQ are not a *cause* of each other in any way, but rather there is a positive correlation between the two. IQ (including mathematical capabilities, and social-construct abilities) is really all that matters in a high-functioning society. But gracilisation has a (very) telling correlation with it. IQ and thinner bones are most certainly correlated with Caucasians and East Asians.
      [Honestly, anyone that wants to compare tribal Kenyans with modern-day Koreans… be my guest… (hint, try starting with a correlation with society-success and “IQ”, a “European” construct…)]

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