Brenton Sanderson writes: The failure of Australia’s Aborigines to domesticate plants and animals is attributed by Diamond to “the lack of domesticable animals, the poverty of domesticable plants, and the difficult soils and climate.”[vii] Yet Diamond confirms that yams, taro, and arrowroot grow wild in northern Australia and could have been cultivated along with two native grasses which could have been bred to produce cereals. Richard Lynn notes that Diamond fails to acknowledge that Australia’s climate is very varied and that “apart from the deserts of the central region is potentially suitable for the agriculture that was developed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by Europeans.”[viii]

The real reason why the Aborigines continued to live as hunter-gatherers right up to the time of European contact (and after) is most likely that the evolution of sufficiently high intelligence was an essential preliminary for the independent invention of agriculture, with an average IQ of about 80 necessary for this to occur. Lynn notes that the transition to agricultural societies was not possible until people evolved sufficient intelligence to take advantage of wild grasses, and that it was only after the last glaciation that they were cognitively fit to do this. Evolutionary psychologist J. Philippe Rushton points out that: “Lynn’s view provides an explanation for why these advances were never made by Negroids or those southeast Asian populations who escaped the rigors of the last glaciation.”[ix] Michael Hart makes the points that “The idea of planting crops, protecting them, and eventually harvesting them is not obvious or trivial, and it requires a considerable degree of intelligence to conceive of that notion. No apes ever conceived of that idea, nor did Australopithecus, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, nor even archaic Homo sapiens. It seems unlikely that such a notion could be originated by a group of humans with an IQ of about 70.”[x]

According to psychologist Richard Lynn, the first attempt to estimate the intelligence of the Australian Aborigines was made by Francis Galton in 1869. On the basis of descriptions of their accomplishments, he estimated that their intelligence was approximately three “grades” below that of the English. Lynn explains that “In Galton’s metric, a grade was equivalent to 10.4 IQ points. Hence in terms of the IQ scale, he estimated the Australian Aborigine IQ at 68.8. Seventeen studies of the intelligence of Australian Aborigines assessed by intelligence tests have shown that this was a fairly accurate assessment. … The median IQ of the seventeen studies is 62 and represents the best estimate of the average intelligence of Australia’s Aborigines”[xi] In 1929 the eminent Australian anthropologist A.P. Elkin had observed that “some races possess certain powers in greater degree … than do others. Thus the Australian Aborigines and the African Negroes are human and have powers but they are not necessarily equal to the white or yellow races.”[xii]

The findings from studies into Aboriginal IQ have been corroborated by a study showing Aborigines have slower reaction times (reaction time being significantly correlated with IQ), and seven studies showing that the average brain size of Aborigines is significantly smaller that Europeans (brain size being correlated with IQ at approximately 0.4). The most authoritative study of Aboriginal brain size is that of Smith and Beals (1990) which gave a brain size difference between Aboriginal and Whites of 144cc. or about 10 per cent. Four studies put the average IQ of Aboriginal-European hybrids at 78 — about midway between the IQs of Aborigines and Europeans. The low intelligence of the Aborigines is also corroborated by their very low levels of educational attainment. Lynn notes that “Aborigines do poorly in education, consistently with their low intelligence, showing that their low cognitive abilities are not confined to their performance on intelligence tests.”[xiii] As of 1976 no Aborigine had ever obtained a Ph.D. Citing psychological studies showing that Aboriginal Australians had a much stronger self-concept (self-esteem) than Europeans, Lynn makes the point that “These are remarkable results considering the low levels of achievement of Aborigines in school and employment. Similar results however have been found for African-Americans in the United States, and Africans in Britain.”[xiv]

A 2010 report on Aboriginal school performance found that indigenous students in year 9 achieved similar scores last year to non-indigenous students in year 3. … Of the indigenous students who sat the tests , 40 per cent – 60,000 students – failed to meet national minimum standards, a proportion mirroring the 40 per cent of indigenous families who were welfare-dependent. [Substantial percentages [18-30%, in different states] do not take the test and may be presumed to be likely to not meet minimum standards.) ”Every state and territory has a problem, in every year, in every subject,” the report said. (Indigenous students are six years behind in literacy and numeracy, report says)

Australian Aborigines have much higher rates of crime than Europeans. Studies show that they are 10 times more likely to commit homicide than Europeans, and are 10 to 15 times more likely to commit a serious assault. Aborigines are, consequently, vastly overrepresented in Australia’s prison population. It is common to blame White Australia for this dismal state of affairs. Lynn cites an Australian sociologist who argues that “the key general cause of the perceived criminalisation of Aborigines is universally perceived to be socioeconomic deprivation and consequential exclusion” and that “the underlying issues of unemployment, poverty, ill-health, dispossession, and disenfranchisement are the causes of the over-involvement of Aborigines in prison,” and these are themselves “the product of indirect discrimination.” Lynn notes wryly that “Thus it is the Europeans who are responsible for the high crime rates of the Aborigines.”[xv]

The reality is that a population with a mean IQ of only 62 is congenitally incapable of functioning effectively in a modern technological society like Australia. The observations of the German sociologist Hans Schneider, who studied Aboriginal communities in 1986, retain their relevance today. While the Europeans had built houses for the Aborigines,

the Aborigines do not accept these houses with the result that they are usually unoccupied. Many of them have been deserted, vandalized, or even destroyed. In order to prevent Aborigines destroying their houses, these are now prefabricated out of steel-plated units. Most of the inhabitants live in self-constructed shacks made from branches or sheets of corrugated iron, erected outside of and around the settlement. They have not accustomed themselves to garbage disposal with the result that the surrounding bush land is littered with old cans, bottles, tires, transistor radios, and batteries. Rusty car bodies and unauthorized garbage dumps can be seen everywhere. … The health, education and living standards are well below the Australian average. Almost all the inhabitants are unemployed and fully dependent on social security. They just sit around in a state of boredom and hopelessness. They do not send their children to school. The Aborigines have no problem operating machines or driving cars and tractors, but they have not learned how to service and repair them. Faulty machinery is simply left where it breaks down and transistor radios are thrown away when the batteries are flat. Under the supervision of whites they are able to establish a plantation or cattle station and will work there, but as soon as this supervision and instruction is withdrawn the project collapses.[xvi]

One Australian demographer has observed that “In every conceivable comparison the Aborigines stand in stark contrast to the general Australian population. They have the highest growth rate, the highest birth rate, the highest death rate, the worst health and housing, and the lowest educational, occupational, economic, social, and legal status of any identifiable section of the Australian population.”[xvii] To ascribe this situation exclusively to the legacy of European colonization and the evils of “White racism” in Australia is nonsense. Non-White migrants like the Chinese have somehow managed to overcome this supposedly intractable racism to outperform White Australians in a range of social indicators. Lynn points out that

the Australian Aborigines are a racial underclass with the same characteristics of the black underclass of the United States, Britain, and Brazil, but they are an even more serious social problem. They have much lower intelligence with an average IQ of 62, as compared with approximately 85 for Blacks in the United States and Britain, and they have worse rates of educational attainment, unemployment, crime, teenage motherhood, welfare dependency, alcoholism, and the other social pathologies of the underclass. In addition they have high fertility that is about double that of Europeans, and although this is to some degree offset by their high mortality, their numbers are growing to the extent that they are approximately doubling every generation. There can be little doubt that the syndrome of social pathologies of the Australian Aborigines has a genetic basis. Their shorter gestation times and typically small brain size that underlies their low intelligence, poor educational attainment, and low socioeconomic status cannot be explained by environmental deprivation or European racism. None of this is recognized or at least articulated by any of the Australian social scientists. … None of them even make any mention of the contribution of low intelligence and high psychopathic personality to the social pathology of the Australian underclass.[xviii]

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* I need some advice from HBD central.

I made a White student union that is going viral, and a professor has now responded with this:

“As a professor at Macquarie University – Faculty of Arts who teaches specifically on this topic, I challenge you to find one peer reviewed scientific paper, in a reputable, non-racist journal, that ties any gene variants to poverty of Aboriginal people. One. Paper. In contrast, I can find you scores that discuss the roots of Aboriginal impoverishment in colonialism, alcohol use, inequality in education, ongoing racism, entrenched lack of services in remote communities, intergenerational trauma, decades (or centuries) of racist government policy.

The concept of ‘race’ is itself incoherent when applied to humans, a basic fact that students taking a 100-level course in human biology would be able to tell you.”

I’m not claiming that gene variants have been discovered. I only speculated that they existed. So i got him there.

Anyway, any pointers?

* I challenge you to find one peer reviewed scientific paper, in a reputable, non-racist journal, that ties any gene variants to poverty of Aboriginal people. One. Paper.

There is a good chance this work has not been done. That being said, this is a red herring. The point is that:

1) Differences in group IQ are highly correlated with national GDP/capita. And individual income. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations

Link

In this case, the correlation is most likely to be due to the higher group IQ causing the higher incomes. Life is an IQ test. If your group has vanishingly few people smart enough to pass exams to become engineers, doctors, dentists, scientists, or the similar sort of level required to run businesses, it is not going to produce much of worth as a nation unless it is sitting on huge and valuable natural resource supplies (like much of the Middle East).

2) Australian Aboriginals have an IQ of around 62-85. Recently it has been revised downward to 62. See this.

3) Thus, Occam’s Razor would suggest that the simple explanation is that most Australian Aboriginals live in poverty because very few of them have the intelligence required to be gainfully employed. One could argue that all of this is due to something other than genetics. Diet perhaps, though most do not appear to be underfed.

* Why would you let yourself be dragged into such a conversation? Even if you have all the facts on your side you will still lose. Think how a Nobel prize winner like Watson was treated.

I doubt such a thing has even been researched. It would be career and social suicide in the current political climate. And even if such research had been done, getting it published would be almost impossible. Think of how much difficulty the researchers had publishing their results recently of the shocking increasing death rate of WHITE men in the US.

But ask this? Are there any results refuting a genetic reason. Have they even looked for it?

Intelligence would be a prime reason for the Aboriginal’s problems. And intelligence is partly hereditary. Is any proof they have the same intelligence as whites? Because IQ studies have shown them to have an IQ of 62.

This person has framed the question in such a way that it is almost impossible to answer. Don’t fall for such simple debating tricks.

* I’d say abo poverty is only relative to whites and nonexistent compared to abo achievement absent whites. The Sentinal Islanders and some Amazonian tribes in Brazil and Panama/Columbia (Darien Gap). These tribes are running the jungle exactly as they did in 1000 BC. By comparison, their abo cousins who have been “contacted” often have white provided television, homes, cars, refrigerators, medicine, etc. Do we need a gene for 65 IQ? Isn’t it enough to see the 65 IQ? Usually they find genes they look for. Who would look for an abo IQ gene? For what purpose? How would he keep his job? Who would fund the search?

* Read A Troublesome Inheritance, Genes, Race and Human History, by Nicholas Wade. He’s a clear writer. The book came out in 2014 so it’s reasonably current. I enjoyed it.

Starting at the bottom of page 54, there is a discussion of a gene called MOA-A that is associated with violance that varies at a racial level. On page 56, Wade refers to a paper by Michael Vaugn of Saint Louis University (of all places!) that reported 5% of African Americans carry two promoters for MOA-A, while among Caucasians it’s 0.1%.

Wade says, “The blank slate notion has been particularly attractive to Marxists who wish government to mold socialist man in its desired image and who see genetics as an impediment to the power of the state.”

I suppose one would have had to search the libraries of Renaissance Europe long and hard for a monograph extolling the virtues of Islam over Christianity.

* The first thing is, if you’ve made claims about stuff that you can’t back up with evidence, say that clearly. The only thing hbd has going for it is truth, so don’t squander that.

It’s not my field, but I don’t think the study of human genetics is yet at the point where you can look at two normal individuals and determine which will have a higher IQ with better than 50/50 chances of being right. If we can’t do that, it’s hard to imagine how we’d be able to show definitively what fraction of the differences in outcomes between aborigines and Europeans is due to genetics.

The current dominant explanation for all group differences excludes genes, and my understanding is that this also runs ahead of the available data.

If you’re looking for places where aboriginal people in general are likely to have genetic problems fitting into modern life, the only thing I can think of that might be solid enough to work with is a genetic tendency toward alcoholism.

* First, while you put it out there and, therefore, it needs to be addressed, the issue of genetic differences in population groups should by no means be a test for whether European-American students should be allowed to have their own student union.

Do African-American students need to prove genetic differences between themselves and other racial/ethnic groups to have a black student union? Asian-Americans? Etc.

Of course not. Whites are distinct ethnic group with a shared history and culture that differs from other ethnic groups; therefore, they have every right to have their own student union so long as you allow – and even encourage – other ethnic groups to form their own.

Second, regarding genetic variants linked to poverty, i.e. intelligence and other behavioral aspects, being different across different groups, I’ll let others vastly more knowledgeable address this issue. From my very basic understanding, genetic research hasn’t progressed that far – but, again, I could be wrong. My understanding is that genetic research has progressed enough to determine that intelligence is highly heritable – 50% explained by genes when we’re young and up to 80% as adults. (See link) We also know from IQ testing that different racial/ethnic groups consistently score differently. Those different scores are statistically significant, i.e. they’re no fluke.

When you put those two together – IQ is highly heritable (mostly genetic) and IQ isn’t distributed evenly across racial and ethnic groups – the most logical conclusion is that there are genetic differences in IQ across racial groups. Indeed, that conclusion fits perfectly with the Theory of Evolution. Different population groups living in dramatically different climates and cultures (agriculture vs. nomadic, cities vs. small groups) evolved differently over tens of thousands of years.

Now, someone could argue that IQ test don’t really measure intelligence, but the fact that IQ correlates so well with some many social outcomes (income, academic achievement, etc.) seems to reject that argument. They could also argue that IQ scores are changing and thus the gap will disappear (Flynn effect) but despite a slight narrowing of the gap in the 1970s, the black/white gap has stabilized over the past 30 years. (I’d suspect that the black increase relative to whites was due to improved environment – which does count – in the 1960s and early 70s from the end of Jim Crow and other developments.)

No, evidence definitively points in one direction: IQ differences across different population groups.