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They Did Not Come Before Columbus
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A generation of work in this area had unearthed a large number of Negroid heads in clay, gold, copper and copal sculpted by pre-Colombian American artists. … Accidental stylazation could not account for the individuality and racial particulars of these heads. Their Negro-ness could not be explained away nor, in most cases, their African cultural origin. Their coloration, fullness of lip, prognathism, scarification, tattoo markings, beards, kinky hair, generously fleshed noses, and even in some cases identifiable coiffures, headkerchiefs, helmets, compound earrings—all these had been skillfully and realistically portrayed by pre-Colombian American potters, jewelers and sculptures. (Van Sertima, 1972: xiv; They Came Before Colombus)
Ivan Van Sertima is a fringe Afrocentric theorist (they all are), who argued that there was an African presence in America, long before Colombus set shore in the Bahamas in 1492. This view, of course, is seen as highly fringe in the field of anthropology. On the cover of the book, John A. Williams writes that Van Sertima has “demonstrated that there is far more to black history than the slave trade.” Quite obviously, there is more to black history than the slave trade, but Van Sertima’s storytelling is not it. This article will refute Van Sertima’s claim that the Olmec heads were of Negroid origin—or were sculpted to show the appearance of Negroids—and his other claim that Mali seafarers reached the Americans some 200-odd years before Colombus.
Van Sertima spent his career pushing pseudoscience of this type, even editing and publishing most of his own work in his own edited journals (because other journals would not accept his fringe work). It has come to my attention that Van Sertima’s (1972) book They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America (TCBC) will soon be used in certain syllabi.
Back in December of 2015, I published an article refuting the notion that the Olmecs—and other pre-Colombian civilizations—were started by Negroid peoples. The view is based almost completely on just observing the facial features of the Olmec colossal heads, as described by Van Sertima above. There are, of course, numerous problems with these claims: most importantly, the “evidence” that Van Sertima provides in his book to “prove” an ancient African presence in America is highly lacking.
Van Sertima believed that Mali seafarers sailed across the Atlantic and landed in Mesoamerica. In TCBC, Van Sertima (1972: 39) reconstructed “an event in the medieval empire of Mali, based on Arab historical and travel documents and the oral tradition of the Mali griots.” Chapters 3 and 4 do, indeed, read like some sort of fantastical tale, so I am glad that Van Sertima left the note—but it is quite clear that he is doing nothing but storytelling. Van Sertima claims that the Mixtecs and Aztecs were influenced by Bakari II. All of these claims are incredible—which means that they deserve incredible evidence in order to verify them. Alas, none exist.
Van Sertima claimed that Bakari II had a fleet of ships and set off from the west coast of Africa across the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico and influenced the Vera Cruz region of what is now modern-day Mexico. However, anthropologists and archaeologists who specialized in Mesoamerican history, rightly, reject Van Sertima’s storytelling.
So, Van Sertima became convinced due to the writings of linguists and anthropologists, that there was an ancient, as-of-yet-looked-into connection between ancient Africa and Mesoamerica. So, Van Sertima had his conclusion in mind first, and looked for evidence for it—meaning he was telling just-so stories. There is a lack of evidence for his claims and, the evidence he claims lends credence to his outlandish claims falls short since we know the origins of what convinced him that there was an ancient African presence in Mesoamerica.
Van Sertima’s main evidence for his claims regarding a pre-Colombian contact between ancient Africans (Nubians) and Olmecs rests on the supposed similarities between Negroid facial features and the colossal Olmec heads. For example, Van Sertima’s claims that the Olmec heads are Negroid due to the broad flat noses runs into a major problem: nose shape is dictated by climate; the climate of Mesoamerica and Africa is similar; the function of nose shape is to moisten air before it goes into the lungs; therefore, since climate is dictated by nose shape and the climate of Mesoamerica and Africa is similar, then they have similar-shaped noses due to the climate they lived in. It’s really that easy to explain the so-called similar appearances in nose shape between the Olmec heads and African noses. The Olmec heads, quite obviously, represent the peoples living in lowland Mexico—not Nubians who supposedly sailed across the Atlantic and made contact with pre-Colombian civilizations (Viera, de Montellano, and Barbour, 1997).
Furthermore, Van Sertima, quite wildly, claims that since the Olmec heads were black then they must have represented African people. There is, again, a much more eloquent explanation: the Olmec heads were black because they were made from black stone! The Olmec associated volcanic rocks and the like with symbolic importance, and so, they carved their sculptures out of them due to this. However, Afrocentrists then make the claim that the natives of Mesoamerica regarded them as gods, and so they sculpted these statues in order to honor them (sounds like Ancient Aliens, to me).
Van Sertima also makes it appear that after the Nubians made contact with the Olmecs, that their civilization almost instantaneously appeared. However, archaeological work has indicated that the foundations of Olmec culture—and indeed all of Mesoamerican culture—had its beginnings in Mesoamerica long before the Olmec appeared on the scence.
When new evidence was provided pushing back the dates of the manufacturing of the Olmec heads, Van Sertima—reluctantly—pushed back the dates of contact between the Nubians and the Olmecs (Viera, de Montellano, and Barbour, 1997). How convenient. When evidence came out refuting Van Sertima’s storytelling, he concocted an ad hoc hypothesis to save his hypothesis from immunization.
There is hardly a claim in any of Van Sertima’s writings that can be supported by the evidence found in the archaeological, botanical, linguistic, or historical record. He employs a number of tactics commonly used by pseudoscientists (Cole 1980; Radner and Radner 1982: 27-52; Ortiz de Montellano 1995; Williams 1988), including an almost exclusive use of outdated secondary sources and a reliance on the pseudoscientific writing of others. (Viera, de Montellano, and Barbour, 1997: 431)
In conclusion, Van Sertima misrepresents archaeological, linguistic, botanical etc evidence for his ridiculous claims that Africans settled—and created or influenced—Mesoamerican civilizations. Note how these claims are eerily similar to claims of ‘white gods’ that, for example, the Aztecs and Maya speak of. Isn’t it weird how Van Sertima and other Afrocentrists use the same type of tactics as pseudoscientists (i.e., ad hoc hypothesizing)? No, since they are only telling just-so stories. If anything, the only thing Van Sertima’s book is good for is a good laugh into the delusions of someone with the conclusion in mind, working backward to prove it (meaning, he’s using the type of reverse engineering that EPists use).
White People Not 100 Percent Human? Afrocentrist Debunked
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I just came across this video on YouTube published yesterday called “White people are not 100% human (Race differences) (I.Q debunked)“, with, of course, outrageous claims (the usual from Afrocentrists). I already left a comment proving his nonsense incorrect, but I thought I’d further expound on it here.
His first ‘evidence’ that whites aren’t 100 percent human is showing some individuals who are born with tails. Outliers are meaningless, of course. The cause of the human tail is due to the unsuccessful inhibition of the Wnt3-a gene. When this gene isn’t successful in signaling the cell death of the tail in early embryonic development, a person is then born with a small vestigial tail. This doesn’t prove anything.
His next assertion is that since “94 percent of whites test positive for Rh blood type” and that “as a result, they are born with a tail”, then whites must have interbred with rhesus monkeys in the past. This is ridiculous. This blood type was named in error. The book Blood Groups and Red Cell Antigens sums it up nicely:
The Rh blood group is one of the most complex blood groups known in humans. From its discovery 60 years ago where it was named (in error) after the Rhesus monkey, it has become second in importance only to the ABO blood group in the field of transfusion medicine. It has remained of primary importance in obstetrics, being the main cause of hemolytic disease of the newborn (HDN).
…
It was wrongly thought that the agglutinating antibodies produced in the mother’s serum in response to her husbands RBCs were the same specificity as antibodies produced in various animals’ serum in response to RBCs from the Rhesus monkey. In error, the paternal antigen was named the Rhesus factor. By the time it was discovered that the mother’s antibodies were produced against a different antigen, the rhesus blood group terminology was being widely used. Therefore, instead of changing the name, it was abbreviated to the Rh blood group.
As you can see, this is another ridiculous and easily debunked claim. One only needs to do a bit of non-biased reading into something to get the truth, which some people are not capable of.
What he says next, I don’t really have a problem with. He just shows articles stating that Neanderthals had big brains to control their bodies and that they had a larger, elongated visual cortex. However, there is archeological evidence that our cognitive superiority over Neanderthals is a myth (Villa and Roebroeks, 2014). What he shows in this section is the truest thing he’ll say, though.
Then he shows how African immigrants to America have a higher educational achievement than whites and immigrant East Asians. However, it’s clear he’s not heard of super-selection. The people with the means to leave will, and, most likely, those with the means are the more intelligent ones in the group. We also can’t forget about ‘preferential treatment’, AKA Affirmative Action.
The concept of ‘multiple intelligences’ is then brought up. The originator of the theory, Howard Gardner, rejects general intelligence, dismisses factor analysis, doesn’t defend his theory with quantitative data, instead, drawing on anthropology to zoology findings for his claims, being completely devoid of any psychometric or quantitative data (Herrnstein and Murray, 1994: 18). The Alternative Hypothesis also has a thorough debunking of this claim.
He then makes the claim that hereditarians assume that environment/experience play no factor in performance on IQ tests/life success. We know that both the individual heritability is 80/20 genetics and environment, with the black-white gap being the same (Rushton and Jensen 2005: 279). Another easily refuted claim.
The term ‘inferior’ is brought up due to whites’ supposed ‘inferiority’, though we know that terms such as those have no basis in evolutionary biology.
He claims that a black man named Jesse Russel invented the cell phone, when in reality a white man named Martin Cooper did. He claims that Lewis Latimer invented the filament lightbulb, when a man named Joseph Swan obtained the patent in the UK in 1860. Of course, individual outliers are meaningless to group success, as they don’t reflect the group average as a whole, so these discussions are meaningless.
He finally claims that the “black Moors civilized Europe”. Europeans didn’t need to “be civilized”, I guess people don’t understand that empires/kingdoms rise and fall and go through highs and lows. That doesn’t stop people from pushing a narrative, though. Further, the Moors were not black. People love attempting to create their own fantasy history in which their biases are a reality.
I don’t know why people have to make these idiotic and easily refuted videos. Lies that push people further from the truth of racial differences, genetics, and history as a whole. Biases such as these just cloud people’s minds to the truth, and when the truth is shown to them, refuting their biases and twisting of history, genetics, and IQ, they then look at it as an attack on what they deem to be true despite all of the conflicting, non-biased evidence shown to them. Afrocentric loons need to be refuted, lest people believe their lies, misconceptions and twistings of history.
Are There Race Differences in Penis Size? Part II
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I haven’t completely discredited the notion that Rushton and Lynn may be correct on this variable, but I’m highly skeptical. Hormonal data doesn’t show it. Hormones like IGF-1 and androgen don’t show the differences between races that would lead you to believe that Rushton’s Rule applies here.
PP is at it again, citing the same studies, not providing primary sources, and not addressing what I say to him about hormones in regards to penis size. Hormones affect the body in different ways, and different races have different levels of hormones. This is what I will discuss today.
Insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) is a hormone that, as it’s name implies, is structurally similar to the hormone insulin. IGF-1 is “partly responsible for systemic GH activities although it possesses a wide number of own properties (anabolic, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and cytoprotective actions).” Laron and Klinger (1998) showed that children with Laron syndrome who stopped receiving IGF-1 injections showed reductions in penile and testicular size and they returned to pretreatment serum levels. This shows the effects of IGF-1 on sexual organ size.
Knowing this about IGF-1, for Rushton’s theory to be plausible, Blacks would have higher levels, Asians the lowest, and whites in the middle, skewing towards Asians. Platz et al (1999) investigated whether there were racial differences in circulating IGF-1 and insulin-like growth factor-binding protein 3 (IGFBP-3). IGFBP-3 binds IGF-1 and 2, with a dysregulation of IGFBP-3 correlating with cancer. IGFBP-3 is the main transporter of IGF-1 and 2 in the blood stream. The researchers tested men whose self-described ancestry (we know that self-describer ancestry is a great proxy for race, having a 99.86 percent success rate) African American (63) a random sample of Asians and Caucasians (75 respectively) aged 45 to 78 years old. Caucasians had the highest levels of IGF-1 (224 ng/ml), Asians (208 ng/ml), and African Americans (205 ng/ml). The IGF-1:IGFBP-3 ratio was greatest in Caucasians and lowest in Asians. This study was carried out to see if IGF-1 had an effect on prostate cancer. The 13 percent difference in IGFBP-3 between blacks and whites may account for the higher levels of prostate cancer, as IGFBP-3 can control IGF-1 bioavailabilty.
PP also cites Ross et al (1986) showing that blacks have “19 percent higher testosterone”, attempting to use this as evidence for the theory in favor of an inverse relationship between brain size and penis size. He seems to think that total testosterone matters, when what matters is free testosterone.It’s also 15 percent circulating testosterone, 13 percent free testosterone in that one study. Free testosterone is biologically active, and is able to exert its effect by passing through a cell and activating its receptor. Speaking of free testosterone, in this meta-analysis of 23 studies on black-white differences in testosterone, Richard et al (2014) showed a 2.5 to 4.9 percent difference in free testosterone and concluded that that difference was not enough to account for the racial disparity in prostate cancer. So it’s either black Americans have lower levels of IGFBP-3 or diet/environmental factors that cause this racial disparity in prostate cancer, not testosterone.
Rohrmann et al (2007) showed that testosterone differences between blacks (n=363) and whites (n=674) did not noticeably differ (5.29 ng/ml and 5.11 ng/ml respectively). Mexican Americans (n=376) , on the other hand, showed a higher average rate (5.48 ng/ml) over both cohorts. Blacks had higher levels of estradiol than whites (40.80 pg/nl and 35.46 pg/nl respectively). Blacks also had a higher level of sex hormone-binding globulin (SHGB) (36.49 nmol/liter) than whites (34.91 nmol/liter) and Mexican Americans (34.91 nmol/liter). That may account for some of the racial disparity in prostate cancer, but it’s not testosterone (which shows that ‘higher levels of testosterone’ as PP says, isn’t proof of any racial differences in penis size).
The Kinsey data is nonrepresentative and nonrandom. We have comparative sizes for certain ethnies, and the only statistical difference is between Nigerians and Koreans and Czechs. Rushton and Boegart didn’t mention that blacks danced less than white college students, blacks are more prudish regarding nudity, more likely to have a prostitute as a sexual partner and less likely to want large families (Weizmann et al, 1990). A study on certain CAG repeats shows that Africans cluster with East Asians on two measures, contradicting Lynn’s hypothesis. French Army Surgeon, lol (see Weizman et al 1990 from above):
This work is filled with internal contradictions. For example, an average African Negro penis is said to be 7 3/4 to 8 inches long on p. 56, while on p. 242 it is stated that it “generally exceeds” 9 inches. Similarly, while the French Army surgeon announces on p. 56 that he once discovered a 12-inch penis, an organ of that size becomes “far from rare” on p. 243. As one might presume from such a work, there is no indication of the statistical procedures used to compute averages, what terms such as “often” mean, how subjects were selected, how measurements were made, what the sample sizes were, etc.
I think I’ve shown that there are no “””racial””” differences in size with the Veale et al 2014 study and the Orakwe and Ebuh (2007) study. As far as I see, two statistical differences exist between Nigerians and Koreans and Czechs. But there’s not enough “””quality data””” to say “this race bigger than that race”. To believe there are racial differences in penis size or that there is even an inverse relationship between penis size and brain size takes a huge leap of faith to believe.
There are, without a doubt, average differences in a lot of things between races; hormones being one of them. Any differences between races in IGF-1 have no effect on penis size (IGF-1 is, however, one reason why black girls reach menarche at a younger age than white girls. Will write more on that in the future.). Africans were more similar to Asians that Caucasians on two of the five androgen indicators that Dutton (2015) tested. The Kinsey data is nonrepresentative and nonrandom and that is what PP continuously references. I’m highly skeptical leading towards no based on my knowledge of hormones and how they work in the human body. Testosterone does not explain any racial differences in penis size, and does not explain any differences in prostate cancer acquisition (though, other hormones do).
Are Australoids and Pacific Islanders Negroid? A Reply to PumpkinPerson
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I’ve been in a few discussion with PumpkinPerson on phenotype and if the similar phenotype found in Australoids and Pacific Islanders meant they were Negroid. However, just because two *dissimilar groups* look *phenotypically similar*, that doesn’t mean that they are *genotypically similar*. Afrocentrists have also latched on to this ridiculous theory, saying that blacks are ‘all over the world, displaced by whites yada yada yada’. Today, I’ll show that just because those two groups look similar to Africans doesn’t mean that they are similar on the genotype.
PP wrote an article last week, The importance of leaving Africa, which I will be quoting from for the remainder of this article.
The root of this debate is not so much genuine scientific disagreement, but ethnic genetic interests. The black Afrocentrists believe it’s good for black people to be seen as part of this larger, global black community, thus dispelling the claim that blacks only left Africa in chains. For leaving Africa was one of the milestones that separates humans from our closest living relatives (chimpanzees), so the claim that blacks never left Africa is seen as racist indeed.
I agree here that Ethnic Genetic Interests is the main driver of the dispute.
But if the mere leaving of Africa did indeed screen for IQ, why do the Australoids score even lower on IQ tests than sub-Saharan Africans do, and have somewhat smaller brains
Because the environment is similar it would select for similar phenotypes, but just because the environment is extremely similar doesn’t mean that no genetic change occurred in the 70 ky that Australoids left Africa in.
By contrast, the non-black HBDers think it elevates their racial status to promote the idea that their ancestors did something that blacks couldn’t accomplish: leaving Africa.
Well, as I’ve covered here last year (time flys), those who left Africa had specific alleles, the DRD7 and DRD4 alleles, which are absent from SSA populations. This ‘wanderlust’, due to the DRD7 allele, is the *cause* of the migration OoA. It has nothing to do with being more intelligent than those who stayed, it has to do with the genetic mutation that arose from a common ancestor around the time of the OoA migration. The cause of the migration does come down to genetic differences in the founder population (s), but not intelligence differences.
Two notes on the DRD4 allele: populations with a history of migration have a higher chance of having the allele in comparison to sedentary populations. And: a correlation of .85 was found between km traveled and the rate of DRDR4 allele frequency distributions. These alleles are more prevalent in South America, which is not surprising since they had to travel the furthest.
PP then starts talking about why Australoids have lower IQs, saying:
With agriculture/civilization, the dark caucasoids traveled the World, spreading their high IQ mutation to every corner of the globe except those that are most isolated. So the mean genetic IQ of the entire World increased by 13 points, with the exception of places that were too hard to get to, such as Australia and Papua New Guineas, the Congo rain forest, the Southern tip of Africa, and the Americas. Since most of sub-Saharan Africa got the genes, they suddenly leaped from having lower IQs than the Austaloids, to being smarter (only the bushmen and pygmies, who like the Australoids, were too isolated to get the genes, remained behind the Australoids).
This is a great hypothesis. It makes a lot of sense. The ‘Dark Caucasoids’ as PP calls them, better known as Anatolian/Neolithic Farmers could have had a higher chance for more high IQ mutations due to the fact that they could farm and thus have a higher population giving more of a chance for higher IQs.
The downfall for the dark caucasoids was spreading these genes to whites and East Asians. Because of cold winters, East Asians and whites were smarter than pre-mutation dark caucasoids, and now with these mutations, they were smarter once again.
I’m confused here. What we call whites today did not exist that far back in the past. Europeans are an amalgamation of four different ancient populations, basically are an amalgamation of ‘Dark Caucasoids’. Is he also saying that the Neolithic Farmers were more intelligent than East Asians?
Eurasians didn’t become a distinct breeding group until the end of the last Glacial Maximum. This is why there is ‘genetic similarity’ to modern-day Europeans with some old, 10k year plus peoples in the Americas. Because the two groups didn’t split into distinct populations, they show a similar genotype. This is what proponents of the Solutrean Hypothesis need to get through their heads. (I recently got into a nice discussion over at The Alternative Hypothesis, scroll down for comments. I’m going to make a more comprehensive post on the SH in the near future as I have come across even better data on it.)
We can see from this PCA graph (from Zainel Abidin et al) that Australoids don’t even cluster in the vicinity of Africans. They are on the complete other side of the graph, showing how great of a genetic distance there is between these two populations. You can see the other Oceanic peoples (the orange dots, who Afrocentrists and others say are Negroid, Abos, Papuans, Melanesians, etc) are also clustered away from Africans. PCA graphs show that the three populations are not genetically similar and that phenotype, sometimes, isn’t enough to show who belongs to what racial grouping. PCA analysis refutes peoples ‘feelz’ on what they believe with their eyes. Even with this data, their ‘feelz’ still overrides the truth and they still believe lies.
While on this subject of similar phenotype not meaning one population is racially the same as another, people use this same fallacious reasoning for ‘white-looking’ peoples in the ME.
Quoting Razib Khan:
The final issue is that a lot of the phenotypes that we racially code are recent. This probably explains why groups like the Kalash and Nuristanis can look more like Europeans than South Asians, but they’re genetically more like South Asians.
What does any of this have to do with non-scientific things? I don’t really know. My interest in population structure is intellectual, not personal. But a certain type of person should probably stop talking about how white people have been in Europe for 40,000 years. First, the ancestors of modern Europeans 40,000 years ago were almost all residing outside of Europe. An assertion that holds until 15,000 years ago. And most would still be resident outside of Europe 8,000 years ago as depending on how you count/calculate. *** And, perhaps more importantly, the typical phenotype of Northern Europeans probably really coalesced only around ~5,000 years ago. ***
How can there be such phenotypic similarity in two populations separated by thousands of miles?
Easy. The Kalash and other ME ‘white-looking’ populations have ancient Siberian ancestry. As shown in my linked article, modern-day Europeans have a great deal of Siberian ancestry, mostly from the true Aryans, the Yamnaya peoples.
And in the comments Razib was asked:
“Could I bother you to list the top three theories/positions that you see falling into this unsupportable category?”
To which he responded:
“that phylogeny and phenotype track closely. just because you can’t tell the physical difference between two pops (e.g., solomon islanders and sub-saharan africans) they must be phylogenetically close. this is not the case.”
Pretty much seals the deal.
Just because populations look similar on the outside doesn’t mean they are genetically similar. As shown from Razib’s post, the phenotypes that we code are relatively recent, which is why there are some populations separated by thousands of miles yet look extremely similar.
Bonus:
This was said in the comments:
I can’t really tell about the genetics since I don’t have the scientific background, but my impression is a lot of those white identity guys have an extremely mythologised view of the past. This seems to be true even of the smarter ones; e.g. I recently read a bit of Richard Spencer’s twitter account (out of interest in the alt right phenomenon) and he throws out such totally retarded comments as “Europe has always been unified, even before Christianity” (totally ignoring what is known about the ancient Greeks’ intimate links to the Near East, the Greeks’ and Romans’ unflattering view of the northern barbarians, the emergence of Latin Christendom in the middle ages and the fairly late rise of the concept of Europe etc.) or “Europe is a nation”. There seems to be little awareness of the complexities of historical change because everything is reduced to some supposedly unchanging racial essence reaching back into the mists of prehistoric times. Now I’m pretty far right and “racist” myself, but a lot of this really seems pretty stupid…like myth-making for identity politics.
i knew the pre-WN richard spencer (we lost touch after his ideological changes ~2010). he’s smart. i have a hard time believing he doesn’t know the latest research, which was evening starting to be evident back then. so i think it’s myth-making.
p.s. a friend of mine sent me a link to a richard spencer interview with kevin macdonald last year i think, pointing to a specific segment of the podcast talking about ancient genetics. kevin was telling richard how europeans 40,000 years ago were white, and those are the ancestors of europeans. that’s wrong.
Europeans 40kya were not white those in the area at that time are *not* the ancestors of today’s Europeans.
Both Afrocentrists and Nordicists need to keep up with the new information that’s constantly coming out. Because what they say in regards to genetics and/or anything else is mostly wrong.
Refuting Agabond on Scientific Racism
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To set myself apart from other HBD bloggers, I decided to start a few series, one on Afrocentrism, HBD and Sports and refutations on how race isn’t a social construct. Agabond has a lot of untrue things to say, and I am here to refute them. Agabond, you can expect a lot of pingbacks from me on a lot of your posts, so get used to this.
Agabond wrote an article on the cons of Scientific Racism. The whole article is wrong.
According to race realism and the field of human biodiversity (HBD), the scientific racism of our day, the following are true:
- Race is genetic.
- Race affects intelligence.
- The races in order of intelligence are: Asians, Whites, Hispanics/Mixed, Blacks.
All of these are true.
Why this is wrong:
- Race is a social construct, created by the rules of society not by genetics.
My favorite saying from race-denialists. Yes, everything is a social construct. The Universe is a social construct, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t actually physically exist. We have social constructions for EVERYTHING, does that mean that NOTHING exists because they are social constructs?
The above picture is a PCA graph showing how the different races cluster on the graph. This is actually scientific evidence that what we call ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ has an actual biological basis. You say that “it’s created by the rules of society not genetics”, but you can clearly see here that GENETICS shows that humanity CLUSTERS into distinct groups.
2. The differences between people from different parts of the world are too new and too slight to account for differences in IQ.
Not true at all. They are not “too new”, Agabond. Due to genetic isolation between populations for thousands of years, i.e., no population migrations between people with different genomes, this caused evolution to happen faster.
Faster evolution means more ethnic differences. This is due to, as I alluded to before, no migration of others with differing genes. Due to us moving genetically AWAY from each other and not genetically CLOSER from each other, shows that evolution is speeding up in the OPPOSITE WAY.
How are they too new and too slight to account for differences in IQ? Selection pressures varied depending on where those populations evolved. The more cognitively demanding Northern part of Europe, as well as the cognitively demanding parts of Asia that East Asians evolved in led to cooperation, which in turn led to evolutionary selection pressures, ala altruism. They also had to be smart with their food in regards to rationing. Along with more variables, over tens of thousands of years of genetic isolation, populations evolved to have distinct physical, as well as biological differences due to those certain selection pressures in those environments.
The less cognitively demanding parts of the world, along the equator, doesn’t foster high intellectual capabilities due to the lifestyle of the peoples there. They lived a mostly hunter-gatherer lifestyle (which was extremely difficult in Eurasia during the Ice Age). Evolution dictated the traits that it would enhance with Africans, e.g., longer limbs for better throwing and to cover more ground while running to get food, darker skin due to the climate, as well as their hair.
There are evolutionary reasons for everything. You should have done a bit more research here before writing this.
Your intelligence is determined not by your race but by where you were born, when you were born, a bit from your parents’s genes and the rest from what you make of it.
Yes, it is determined by your race, but I’ll get back to that later. Depending on where you’re born? Sure. If you’re born in a place with high rates of disease, parasitic load and bad nutrition, this will retard IQ. But for those born in first world countries, their IQ is at their genetic limit due to better nutrition. You said “where you were born”, do you even realize that “where you were born” means that you’re giving credence to the hereditarian hypothesis?
When you were born? Is this an epigenetic argument?
A bit from your parents genes, well more than a bit. Funny you say that. We know that the mother’s IQ is the best predictor of the child’s IQ. That being said, in studies of racially mixed black and white children, those with white mothers have higher IQs than those with black mothers. So yes, it is your parents genes. I assume you were going for the “individual variation in IQ is greater than between the races” is what you were going for. Not going to work.
The rest is what you make of it. I agree here. Even those with high IQs won’t be automatically successful, personality variables have a lot to do with it, which I will cover in a future post.
1. Correlation does not equal causation
Just because blacks in America have a higher crime rate or a lower average IQ does not necessarily mean the cause is mainly genetic. To come to such a conclusion you would have to assume that racism is pretty much dead, that American society is just so gosh-darn fair to everyone that genetics is pretty much all that remains to account for the differences.
I can’t count how many times I’ve heard this since I jumped into the black-white IQ debate. Yes, we know that correlation does not equal causation, but with retesting what you tested before with the same variables and lab conditions, if you come to the same conclusions, it is not a correlation does not equal causation argument.
Higher crime rates and lower average IQs are inversely related. There is a negative correlation there. We can see here that the low IQ being correlated with crime argument holds up in studies.
Deborah Denno analyzed data from 987 African American school children in Philadelphia. Her data contained multiple measures of intelligence collected at ages four, seven, and thirteen as well as officially recorded criminal offenses. Chronic, violent offenders consistently had low IQ scores. For example, female chronic offenders were almost four times less likely to be in the top third of verbal-IQ test scores than female nonoffenders. Similarly, male violent offenders scored 10 to 17 percentile points lower on measures of vocabulary, reading, and language than nonoffenders.
In addition to finding a robust IQ-crime correlation, studies have turned up two other empirical regularities worth noting. The first regards two different types of IQ measures: performance IQ (PIQ) versus verbal IQ (VIQ). Performance IQ is measured with nonverbal tests of attention to detail, manual design construction, and visual puzzle solving. Verbal IQ is measured with tests of general factual knowledge, abstract reasoning, mental arithmetic, and vocabulary. Studies have consistently found that criminals have PIQ scores close to the general population but VIQ scores substantially lower. This PIQ > VIQ finding holds even when controlling for race, class, and reading ability (Moffitt), suggesting that verbal intelligence is a more important correlate of criminal behavior than other types of intelligence.
I also touched on black crime and correlates for crime here. No matter what you can say about this, low IQ is correlated with crime. There are countless studies on this. Juvenile criminals average 92, whereas adult offenders are at IQ 85, right at the black average in America.
Genetics does account for the difference though you seem dishonest enough to believe any other reasons for it.
2. Confirmation bias
Scientific racists notice the cases that prove their ideas while overlooking those that disprove them. But in science it is the exceptions that disprove the rule. That is why the law of gravity is still a part of science: no known exceptions!
Care to tell me what they overlooked that disproved them? Why did you not use any examples?
3. Lack of expertise
Look at the race realists and HBDers you hear about most:
- Steve Sailer, journalist/computer salesman.
His occupation says something about his knowledge on these subjects?
- J. Philippe Rushton, psychologist.
OK? What about him? He’s a Ph.D. in psychology. He cites what he says, obviously. Rushton is one of the most important psychologists of this generation. Have you ever read any of his books, or have you only read attack articles on him? He first began researching the study of altruism. This gives him credibility, in your eyes, to talk about racial differences, as well as HBD. Hell, altruism is how our complex societies formed. That is a part of HBD as well, but you seem to talk about things you don’t know.
- Francis Fukuyama, political economist.
First I’ve heard of him. Seems to get heat for his book arguing that we have almost reached the end of history. He says people have misunderstood his thesis, that “the French and American revolutions, and their underlying principles of liberty and equality, were the final resting point for human ideological evolution. So we need to consider whether Hegel, when he declared the end of history in 1806, was not right. My argument is concerned less with the world of real events and more with the world of ideas. Essentially the question I was trying to pose is whether there are any systematical ideological competitors left to modern liberalism.”
- Steve Hsu, astrophysicist.
I love Steve Hsu. It seems that, according to Agabond, you can’t have other interests outside of your field, and if you do have interests outside of your field and speak on them, that no one should listen to you. Things don’t work like that. Steve Hsu is actively looking for intelligence genes. He also shows the reality of human genetic variation.
Just because someone is interested in things outside of their field, does that mean they can’t become an authority on it?
- Richard Herrnstein, psychologist.
Same with Rushton. Are you telling me that psychologists can’t study IQ differences and behavioral differences between races? Hernnstein knows damn well what he’s talking about in terms of IQ. Are you trying to use Hernnstein and Murray as examples of people who talk about actual human genetics? Well, they don’t. They talk about IQ, and yea they talk about genetic causes for it, but they’re mostly concerned with the policy of the country that we are no noticing because we are ‘IQ blind’ so to speak.
- Charles Murray, political scientist.
Same as above. Murray has defended himself multiple times with attacks him and Hernnstein got on The Bell Curve. 22 years later, and the book is still not refuted.
- Arthur Jensen, psychology professor.
My personal favorite. He is THE AUTHORITY ON IQ as well as RACE DIFFERENCES IN IQ. Sure Rushton and Jensen bring up genetics sometimes, but they always cite where they got their information from.
Really bad arguments here.
You notice anything strange? No biologists or anthropologists, much less geneticists.
>some of the biggest names in HBD aren’t biologists, anthropologists (LOL), and geneticists
>means there are no HBD biologists, anthropologists (LOL) and geneticists
Nice fallacy.
Why in the world should we trust these people over biologists and anthropologists, the very people who study these things for a living? To leave no stone unturned, some biologists and anthropologists have even written books about race for the general public:
This is going to be good. Let’s see what “has been written for the general public by biologists and anthropologists”.
- “Guns, Germs, and Steel”, Jared Diamond, biologist
!!!! People still cite this?!?!??!?!?
I’ll say something on G,G&S then let Rushton take over:
So different levels of civilizations can be traced to environmental differences and not innate differences in races? Because physical environment can explain civilization differences does that mean all human brains are the same on average? Horrible strawman. No one says environment doesn’t matter.
We can look at 2 countries within Sub-Saharan Africa. Look at South Africa. Still one of the wealthiest countries in Africa. Economic freedom isn’t the only source of wealth, human capital and natural resources are important. The lack of proper resources for civilizations in the past isn’t why Africa is poor today since we can see actual African countries that are better of by simply having more economic freedom.
The poverty today in Congo isn’t dated back to the dawn of time. Diamond says New Guineans are probably smarter than white Europeans. So does he accept that all races are the same in the brain except New Guineans? So does he then accept that human brains can differ in environments? Jared Diamond’s work is irrelevant and does nothing to explain why the various races perform differently in Europe. You can say racism or lingering effects of oppression, but the reasons for Africa’s poverty is not relevant to the racial gaps in Europe and America.
If you think it’s caused by environmental poverty in the past, you still have to argue the facts on racial differences today, the evidence still exists.
Jared Diamond is a man who spent a lot of time in Papua New Guinea. I guess he grew to like the natives there and befriended some of them so he makes ridiculous leaps in logic to actually say they may be more intelligent than Europeans. Hilarious. Any intelligent person can see the ridiculousness of what he claims. I can’t even begin to think how, when faced with all of this evidence of differences, that you can possibly believe in some warped view of equality or egalitarianism.
Here is Rushton’s dismantling of G,G&S.
- “The Mismeasure of Man”, Stephen Jay Gould, biologist
Arthur Jensen refutation here.
- “Genes, Peoples, and Languages”, Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, geneticist
What about it?
- “Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Human Race”, Ashley Montagu, anthropologist
Never heard of this book but from the Amazon review:
It presented a revolutionary theory for its time; breaking the link between genetics and culture, it argued that race is largely a social construction and not constitutive of significant biological differences between people.
Discarded.
These books are good to help you overcome the racist brainwashing of American society.
Let’s see. G,G,&S is trash. It has some cool tidbits of information, but it’s largely not true and is an egalitarians way of attempting to say that Europeans “got lucky” in regards to geography.
Mismeasure of Man is full of sidestepping and not addressing points, as well as wishful thinking mixed with lying about the truth and not telling his audience certain things. Sure, if anything, this book will make you MORE BRAINWASHED.
No idea why you cited Cavalli-Sforza.
A book that says race doesn’t exist. Wow, that’s a new one.
4. Conspiracy theories
The reason scientific racists give for trusting, say, Steve Sailer, a computer salesman, over Cavalli-Sforza, a professor of human genetics who has, like, studied race, is, wait for it, that people like Cavalli-Sforza secretly agree with them but are too afraid to say so in public! Have they gone mad?
What are you talking about? Are you talking about how Cvalli-Sforza uses terms like “population clusters”? That doesn’t matter. You can call the things what you’d like, but that doesn’t change the underlying biological reality of genetics, race and ethnicity.
If you’d have understood Cvalli-Sforza, you’d get that.
I know you got this pingback, Agabond. I’d love a response from you though I doubt it.
Blacks in Medieval Europe? Afrocentric Ramblings
1000 words
Came across this article today from a (totally not unbiased source) person who seems to believe in the myths of Afrocentrism.
I’m always amazed at how many people are so quick to argue that people of color did not exist in Europe during medieval times or that black people, for instance, weren’t around during the Greek and Roman eras. And to include said PoCs during such time periods would be unrealistic and another example of shoving a PC agenda down our throats OH-EM-GEE.
Not that it would be unrealistic, just that those ‘PoC’ get thrown into positions of power in the setting they’re portrayed in, which is not realistic at all. Sure the Romans had black slaves, but that doesn’t mean that any important Senators or Emperors were Negros. Just because they were “around” doesn’t mean they did anything of significance, or even had a large population in comparison to Romans and Greeks.
This usually comes up in medieval fantasy stories. Like say for instance, Guinevere in BBC’s Merlin. Actress Angel Coulby caught heat for daring to be a beautiful powerful black queen.
His last 4 words aside (Kanazawa’s studies say otherwise), what kind of ‘black queen’ was there ever in Europe? Name one, please. Of COURSE she’s catching heat, as that’s not historically accurate, and I’m sure that most people care about being historically accurate in some of the things they watch. I know the show is a ‘fantasy’, but I don’t even think some people could suspend their disbelief to believe that there were ‘black kings and queens’ in medieval Europe.
This nonsense makes me laugh A LOT for two main reasons:
1.) It’s a huge double standard in that whites can always be placed in stories revolving around Egypt, China, Africa, or pre “discovered” America and no one blinks an eye.
Well, think about this. The majority of the country that these movies are made in and mostly come out in are white. Egyptians were Caucasoids, so using whites isn’t too far of a stretch. What about Africa and China and ‘pre-discovered America’? Care to give some examples?
Yet if a PoC shows up in medieval fantasy tale, it’s unrealistic. Talking animals, elves, dragons, gnomes, all totally plausible. Black people in Europe? Too many people can’t suspend disbelief at that.
Some things are just that unrealistic that you cannot suspend your disbelief of them to watch a story. =^)
First of all, people of color have been in Europe for ages. Think about it. Between all the wars, travel, and trade that countries and nations do, it would only make sense that some PoCs have traveled, relocated, and settled in other lands.
OK? Populations migrate all the time, this means nothing. Does that mean they had a strong historical presence? No way.
The Egyptians who dealt with the Romans and Greeks were black. Egypt is in Africa, in case you didn’t know.
No, they were not black. They were West Asian Caucasoids. Genetic testing on mummies from the years 806 BC to 124 AD shows that they have the haplotype I2, which originated in Western Asia. Makes sense, seeing as Egypt is right by the Middle East, and Egypt and Sumeria did have extensive trading with each other. Just because “Egypt is in Africa” doesn’t mean that they were black. The whole of North Africa are Caucasoids.
Rome and Carthage went to war and Hannibal gave the Romans a run for their money. Which anytime you can give the ROMANS a fight, you’re a bona fide badass.
I definitely agree that if you can give Rome a fight, you are a bad ass. But there’s one problem: Carthage was a Phoenician civilization, not sub-Saharan African. The “picture” you use of Hannibal is NOT an accurate portrayal of what he actually looked like.
He looks pretty damn Caucasoid to me. This fantasy of Afrocenstrists to insert themselves into most any important event in world history just to say they did something worth talking about truly shows the inferiority complex of blacks.
Also, to see what Phoenicians really looked like, look to Sardinians. Due to genetic isolation from being on the island, they have hardly any admixture from outside the island. They also speak a Phoenician language.
If you’re a Greek Mythology buff like myself, look up a brother named Memnon. Speaking of Greek Mythology, look up Andromeda, Perseus’ wife and see where she’s from. Here’s a hint. And by hint I mean answer: Ethiopia.
Are we to take all peoples of antiquities word for everything they say? Are we made of corn? Is the story of Romulus and Remus true? Were there gods on Mount Olympus?
Again. Just because they were present, doesn’t mean they had ANYTHING to do with any discoveries of that time period.
Blacks actually ruled in some parts of Europe and could be found in Scotland as early as the 10th century. Funny how that isn’t taught in school.
Funny how you provide no source.
Still not convinced? Look up Othello.
Why should I look it up? Oh, it’s because it’s another thing co-opted to add blacks where it was originally a play involving whites.
Is this guy being cast in this play almost 200 years ago supposed to mean anything?
Amina of Zaria was in fact the inspiration behind Xena: Warrior Princess.
Amina of Zaria is a myth.
Alexandre Dumas, the author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Crisco? Black excellence also.
Meaning… what exactly? This is pretty meaningless. OK, cool. Some blacks can write good stories, but they are outliers. The Bell Curve, etc.
And our accomplishments didn’t stop there. As this amazing heroine’s story illustrates.
Who the hell is ‘Belle’? Also, it says it’s BASED on the ‘inspiring’ true story. Meaning, things are embellished to make a better story. Or did you not know that?
So if you’re one of those who constantly gripe about the presence of PoCs in period fantasy as being unrealistic; your history, do learn you some.
No, you learn you some. You’re spreading ridiculous things to people who know no better. Just because ‘PoC’ had a presence in these places doesn’t mean they did anything of note.
I hope you respond to this refutation of your garbage, Nerd of Color.
Refuting Afrocentrism Part 2: Are Italians Black?
1400 words
Afrocentrists like to say things like ‘Italians were black’ and ‘the Romans were black’ and ‘The Moors were black’. All of this is based on shoddy evidence and uneducated people not knowing what they’re talking about.
In this article by an Afrocentrist, he claims that ‘Italians were black’ and talks about ‘dark-skinned Sicilians’.
Southern Italians were considered “black” in the South and were subjected to the Jim Crow laws of segregation. They weren’t allowed to marry “whites.” It was difficult, damn near impossible.
They were designated as “black” on census forms if they lived in the South and that is because the majority of them were dark-skinned Sicilians.
No idea what he’s talking about. In America at the time, Northern Italians said that Southern Italians were of a different race due to a slightly different look. Well, genetic testing shows similarities between the Northern and Southern Italians which I will get to later.
First off, it’s not only Sicilians who are ‘dark-skinned’. It’s all of Southern Europe.
The map seen above is a map of UV rays that Europe and parts of North Africa get. Notice how North Africa and Southern Europe get the same amount of UV rays. That’s the cause of the difference in appearance between the North and South of Italy.
Mass lynchings happened to them often.
Mass lynchings happened to everyone often, not just blacks and Italians. Lynchings happened to anyone who raped, murdered, or did any other heinous crime. 27 percent of those lynched between the years of 1882-1968 were white. It wasn’t only a ‘black problem’.
One of the biggest mass lynchings happened to Italians in New Orleans when they thought that a Italian immigrant had killed a “white” police officer.
Right. It was the biggest mass lynching ever in the history of the US, 11 Italians got lynched. But, what he says about the cause being ‘killing a “white” police officer’ is unfounded. They got lynched for killing the police officer, not because they were of ‘another race’.
The very few Northern Italians that immigrated here perpetuated the myth that Southern Italians and Greeks were of a different race than them in order to save their own asses. This wasn’t true, and there are actually dark-skinned Italians all over Italy, not just in the South, as well as light-skinned Italians all over Italy.
But it is true. The differences between Northern and Southern Italians are embellished due to political reasons. There are dark-skinned Italians who live in Italy but are not genetically Italian/Greek. Yes, light-skinned ‘all over Italy’, those in the North are more Germanic, while the South has slight admixture from North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. Though, some from the South migrated to the North and vice versa. The amount of non-white admixture in Italians is less than that of the average for Europe:
Combined data from two large mtDNA studies provides an estimate of non-Caucasoid maternal ancestry in Italians. The first study sampled 411 Italians from all over the country and found five South Asian M and East Asian D sequences (1.2%) and eight sub-Saharan African L sequences (1.9%). The second study sampled 465 Sicilians and detected ten M sequences (2.2%) and three L sequences (0.65%). This makes a total of 3% non-white maternal admixture (1.3% Asian and 1.7% African), which is very low and typical for European populations, since Pliss et al. 2005, e.g., observed 1.8% Asian admixture in Poles and 1.2% African admixture in Germans. (Plaza et al. 2003; Romano et al. 2003)
Similar data from the Y-chromosome reveals Italians’ even lower non-Caucasoid paternal admixture. Both studies obtained samples from all over the mainland and islands. No Asian DNA was detected anywhere, but a single sub-Saharan African E(xE3b) sequence was found in the first study’s sample of 416 (0.2%), and six were observed in the second study’s sample of 746 (0.8%). The total is therefore a minuscule 0.6%, which decreases to 0.4% if only Southern Italians are considered and 0% if only Sicilians are considered. Again, these are normal levels of admixture for European populations (e.g. Austrians were found to have 0.8% E(xE3b) by Brion et al. 2004). (Semino et al. 2004; Cruciani et al. 2004)
An analysis of 10 autosomal allele frequencies in Southern Europeans (including Italians, Sicilians and Sardinians) and various Middle Eastern/North African populations revealed a “line of sharp genetic change [that] runs from Gibraltar to Lebanon,” which has divided the Mediterranean into distinct northern and southern clusters since at least the Neolithic period. The authors conclude that “gene flow [across the sea] was more the exception than the rule,” attributing this result to “a joint product of initial geographic isolation and successive cultural divergence, leading to the origin of cultural barriers to population admixture.” (Simoni et al. 1999)
These studies show the opposite of what Afrocentrists, and even Nordicists say.
The reason I say very few is because over 80% of Italian immigrants were from Southern Italy (Sicily, Abruzzo, Calabria, Campania, Sardinia, Naples, etc.)
Correct, and as seen above with those 3 studies, neither of them are ‘African’. My grandmother was born in Calabria. She looked like any other normal Italian woman you see on the street. These people take their ideas from movies, take genetics information from a movie like True Romance and attempt to say that all Italians are ‘black’ or ‘African’ or ‘Moorish’.
It was highly unlikely (damn near impossible) for a Southern Italian to own a slave because they were seen as the same as blacks, and at the time, they were the second (right behind blacks) most discriminated against group.
Too bad Italians started coming to America in the 1870s. What he states doesn’t even make sense because blacks owned slaves way disproportionately than whites. 4.8 percent of Southern whites, along with the North, being 1.3 percent of all whites in America in 1860 owned slaves. There are reports from New Orleans from their 1860 census that showed 3000 freed blacks owned slaves, accounting for 28 percent of the city’s population.
In 1860 Louisiana, at least 6 blacks owned more than 65 slaves, with the biggest number of slaves being 165 slaves who worked on a sugar plantation. So even if Italians were looked at as ‘black’, as you can see, blacks themselves had no problem owning slaves, and actually did it more than whites did right before slavery ended.
A lot of this confusion comes from the race of the Moors. The Moors are a Caucasoid Muslim group from North Africa. People hear ‘Africa’ and automatically think sub-Saharan Africa. Well, the Moors were Cacausoid for one. 2, as I have shown above, the amount of Moorish/Berber admixture is minute in Italians. 3rd, I will show now that the Berbers are not sub-Saharan African.
You have other Afrocentrist websites who talk about so-called ‘black Moors’. Well, the Moors were Berbers and Arabs, who are Caucasian.
Berbers live in groups scattered across NorthAfrica whose origins and genetic relationships with their neighbours are not well established. The first hypervariablesegment of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region was sequenced in a total of 155 individuals from three Tunisian Berber groups and compared to other North Africans. The mtDNA lineages found belong to a common set of mtDNA haplogroups already described in NorthAfrica. Besides the autochthonous North African U6 haplogroup, a group of L3 lineages characterized by the transition at position 16041 seems to be restricted to North Africans, suggesting that an expansion of this group of lineages took place around 10500 years ago in NorthAfrica, and spread to neighbouring populations. Principal components and the coordinate analyses show that some Berber groups (the Tuareg, the Mozabite, and the Chenini-Douiret) are outliers within the NorthAfrican genetic landscape. This outlier position is consistent with an isolation process followed by genetic drift in haplotypefrequencies, and with the high heterogeneity displayed by Berbers compared to Arab samples as shown in the AMOVA. Despite this Berber heterogeneity, no significant differences were found between Berber and Arab samples, suggesting that the Arabization was mainly a cultural process rather than a demographic replacement.
Refuting Afrocentrism Part 1: Olmecs Were Africans?
1600 words
All over the Internet, you may have seen ‘Beethoven is black’, with an accompanying picture. Or that Mozart was black, or Hannibal from Carthage or other historic figures from antiquity were African Negroids. We all know it’s not true. Afrocentrists just take things that agree with their viewpoint, and warp anything they can in an attempt to say that “they were African”. There are tons of these lies going around the internet, with enough people who believe in Afrocentrism religiously, convinced that the white man hid knowledge of past African greatness. This will be a series of posts on Refuting Afrocentrism, with each successive piece focusing on a different part of the Afrocentric narrative.
I’ve had an interest in Mesoamerican history since I was a kid. I was reading adult level books when I was 10 years old. I got this book, The Mayan Prophecies: Unlocking the Secrets of a Lost Civilization, which talked a lot about Maya history, as well as where they came from. It’s an extremely interesting book, which goes through the history of the Maya, their astrology, mathematics, agriculture, building methods and so on. It said nothing about the Maya being African. That’s because it’s just Afrocentric rubbish.
Recent new evidence has said that the Olmecs and the Maya were easy to differentiate in the Classic Period (250 to 900 AD, which was their Golden Age) because they had language and culture distinct from the Olmecs. It’s said that while the Olmecs were building La Venta in Mexico, the Maya were living in loosely associated nomadic groups to the east and southeast. That holds that the Maya developed from the Olmec, but Ceibal is 2 centuries older than La Venta. Though, the researcher says that there was a flow of ideas and culture between the two locations and that through those interactions, a new society developed. He says from 1000 to 700 BC that that La Venta and Ceibal were freely trading ideas, technology, culture, and maybe even people.
From this study on Maya genetics, you can see that it says the closest group to the Maya were the Arhuacs, the first recorded Caribbean inhabitants. They are not genetically close to the Mesoamerican Zapotec, Mixe and Mixtec, who generally cluster together. The Mixe are only related to the Maya on a linguistic basis. DRB1*0407 and DRB1*0802 alleles are found in 50% of Mayans, they’re also found in other Amerindians, but the Maya’s high frequencies may be because of a founder effect from the Mesoamerican-Caribbean population. They described Maya-specific HLA haplotypes (which are involved in inflammation as well as other immune system activities). Some HLA genes have many possible variations, allowing each person’s immune system different protections against certain diseases. Language and genes do not completely correlate in microgeographical studies.
“Significant genetic input from outside is not noticed in Meso and South American Amerindians according to the genetic analyses; while all world populations (including Africans, Europeans, Asians, Australians, Polynesians, North American Na-Dene Indians and Eskimos) are genetically related. Meso and South American Amerindians tend to remain isolated in the neighbour joining analyses.”
This further proves another point that I read. That Mesoamericans are the furthest genetically from Africans, because of no genetic mixing between any populations with Mesoamericans, allowing their DNA to go from distinct East Asian (because Native Americans are descended from Siberians who crossed the Bering Land Bridge 12,000 years ago, since they evolved completely separated from Africa, no gene flow from anywhere else in the world got to the Mesoamericans, and over thousands of years they developed to be a genetically distinct group), to their own distinct genetic clade.
This is attributed to isolation from the rest of the world, as well as faster evolution. That is another reason why I believe the once great Mesoamericans are how they are today, because 1) because the Spanish killed off all of the high-status people, who were more intelligent, as well as disease killing them off. The slave population they had would have been more immune to the diseases. 2) Faster evolution. With evolution in a hot climate for tens of thousands of years, in comparison to where they first evolved when they were still genetically similar to East Asians, it obviously changed their genetics to make them distinct from East Asians, but not enough to get rid of the intellect they had already due to the Ice Age evolution. Anyway, I’m digressing, that will be for a future post.
Now to see Olmec genetics (Mexican Mazatecan Indians), who are pretty similar to the Maya, as noted above.
Findings were indirect evidence of Olmec/Maya relatedness, further supporting the theory that the Olmecs were the precursor to the Maya. Again, language and genetics do not correlate in the microgeographic area, a significant genetic output is not noticed at all in Mesoamerican populations while all other world populations (Africans, Europeans, Asians, Australians, Polynesians, North American Na-Dene Indians and Eskimos) are genetically related. As I said above, Mesoamericans are so genetically distinct due to faster evolution as well as no gene mixing between regions, which, over time, caused their DNA to mutate to the clade they have today. Both Central and South American Indians are genetically distinct from the rest of the world.
So we can see that all Mesoamerican populations are mostly similar to each other, except the Maya who are pretty unique, most likely due to the founder effect from the Caribbean.
The name ‘Olmec’ is a Nahuatl word meaning ‘the Rubber People’ Nahuatl is an Aztec language. They extracted latex from rubber trees. The Olmecs were thought to have died out around 400 BC.
Now that we have a good background on the Olmec and Maya connection, as well as Maya and Olmec genetics, let’s see what this Afrocentric Olmec theory is about.
The theory of Olmecs being Africans was first developed by Ivan van Sertima in the 70s. He wrote a book called They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America (Journal of African Civilizations). He first developed the theory from seeing the giant stone heads the Olmecs made, which look distinctly Negroid in appearance, as seen in the picture below.
Sure, from direct outward appearance, I can see how people would believe how the head looks like that of a negroid, but genetics tells us a different story.
Van Sertima claims that Mali seafarers reached Mesoamerica, and had consistent contact with the Olmecs, trading ideas and culture with them.
As I said above, most Mesoamerican populations are related to each other, with having no admixture from other parts of the world that all other populations have. So, if the Malinese people did have contact with them, we would find some of their DNA in Mesoamerican peoples today. We obviously know how ‘Hispanics’ came to be today, Spaniards mixing with the ‘Natives’. So, if we have Spaniards mating with ‘Natives’, and Mali supposedly had contact with Mesoamerica, then logic would dictate that genetic testing would find African blood in Mesoamerican populations.
But, as I noted earlier in this article, Mesoamericans are genetically distinct from all populations. We can see here that neighbor-joining analyses were done by putting together many worldwide and American populations. Both analyses show that Meso and South Amerindians are not related to the Na-Dene, because they came in one of the 3 migrations out of Siberia into the Americas. They are also not related to the Eskimos. Mesoamericans also do not show any relatedness with Polynesians, Australoids (discarding a massive Pacific colonization), Caucasians or African blacks. Genetic evidence also suggests that people moved from South America to North America into Siberia.
So why are there clear negroid features on the Olmec heads? Because they were obviously modeled after the Olmecs themselves. We know that the shapes of people’s noses comes from the climate that their ancestors evolved in. It has to do with temperature and moisture in the air. In areas where it’s extremely dry and has a lot of heat, a larger mucous area is required to moisten inspired (breathe in; inhale) air, which is why a more flat and narrow nose is needed. Olmecs and West African-descended peoples have short, flat noses because they lived in wet and tropical areas, whereas Nubians and Egyptians have longer and thinner noses due to living in the desert.
Here are some peoples who are said to be descended from Olmecs. There are pictures of statues as well as modern day people who look like them.
The Olmec statue heads are clearly of the indigenous peoples in the area, and not of West African Negroids.
Because of that one man’s theory, you have all of these Afrocentrists, with absolutely no understanding of genetics or human migration, who write these articles saying that any and all peoples and old/ancient cultures were negroid based on shoddy evidence and only physical appearance as well as cockamamie theories.
I’m pretty sure I have given way more evidence than is needed that the Olemcs were NOT negroids, but alas, you still have people who parrot this clearly refuted and untrue things, because they have absolutely no grasp on humanity in antiquity and will take any type of ‘theory’ that fits their warped worldview.
My brother told me a few years ago “If you’re looking for something, you’re going to find it”. Well, this is a perfect example of that.
In conclusion, because of genetic testing, as well as evolutionary factors which explain the ‘negroid-looking statues’, as well as most Mesoamerican populations being similar with each other completely debunk any and all notions of the Olmecs, and all Mesoamericans for that matter, to be African negroids.
NotPoliticallyCorrect 
