Two recent, two older.
One: "neurocognitive processes associated with self identity underlie extraordinary empathy and altruistic motivation for members of one's own social group."
Two: "participants displayed activity over motor cortex when acting and when observing ingroups act, but not when observing outgroups – an effect magnified by prejudice and for disliked groups (South-Asians, then Blacks, followed by East Asians)."
Three: "What we found was that students were more likely to choose the white confederate as a partner (63 per cent), despite the fact that the white person had made a racist comment about the black person," said Kawakami. "And the racist comments ranged from moderate to one of the most powerful anti-black slurs in the English language." (pubmed)
Four: "Blacks may, ironically, prefer to interact with highly racially biased Whites, at least in short interactions." (pdf)
Ancient DNA from Small River Cemetery Number 5
Someone asked about the reference to Siberian admixture in the NYT article on Ordek's necropolis. According to the paper reporting the DNA results, the majority of individuals tested belonged to a branch of haplogroup C4 that shows some similarities to one found among "Evenks and Udegeys of southeastern Siberia". Other mtDNA lineages detected include H and K. All Y chromosomes tested belonged to haplogroup R1a1a.
The shared sequences of the Xiaohe C haplotype (S1) were distributed in southeastern Siberia. It implies that the east Eurasian component in the Xiaohe people originated from the Siberian populations, especially the southern or eastern Siberian populations.
The mtDNA haplogroup H is the most common mtDNA haplogroup in Europe, especially in northwestern Europe, and its frequency can be as high as 65% in Iberia. Frequencies gradually decrease from the northwest to the southeast of Europe. By contrast, the frequency of haplogroup H rises to only 20% in the Near East, and to less than10% in Central Asia, and is very low in East Asia [33,34]. All of the shared sequences of the Xiaohe H haplotype, however, were distributed in Western Europe. Haplogroup K is also common in Europe, particularly around the Alps and the British Isles. It is found with less frequency in North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia [21,35-37]. Considering the presence of haplogroups H and K in the Xiaohe people and the geographical distribution of shared sequences, we conclude that the west Eurasian component observed in the Xiaohe people originated from western European, and maternal ancestry of the Xiaohe people might have close relationship with western European.
Regarding the Y chromosomal DNA analyses, the seven males identified all belonged to haplogroup R1a1a. It is most frequently found in Eastern Europe, South Asia and Siberia. In contrast, it is relatively uncommon in Middle Easterners and rare in East Asian [22-24]. It is thought to be a trace of the migration events of early Indo-European [38,39]. The presence of haplogroup R1a1a in the ancient Xiaohe people implies that the parental ancestry of the Xiaohe people originated from somewhere in Siberia or Europe, which is consistent with the origin of maternal ancestry.
[Chunxiang Li et al. Evidence that a West-East admixed population lived in the Tarim Basin as early as the early Bronze Age. BMC Biology 2010, 8:15doi:10.1186/1741-7007-8-15.]
Small River Cemetery Number 5
All the men who were analyzed had a Y chromosome that is now mostly found in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Siberia, but rarely in China. The mitochondrial DNA, which passes down the female line, consisted of a lineage from Siberia and two that are common in Europe. Since both the Y chromosome and the mitochondrial DNA lineages are ancient, Dr. Zhou and his team conclude the European and Siberian populations probably intermarried before entering the Tarim Basin some 4,000 years ago.Folke Bergman's 1939 report, Archaeological Researches in Sinkiang, is available online at the Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books, along with expedition records from Sven Hedin, Aurel Stein, and others. Ördek was Sven Hedin's Turkish servant, who after being inspired by what he saw working for Hedin discovered the cemetery on a tomb robbing expedition in search of buried treasure. From Bergman:
The Small River Cemetery was rediscovered in 1934 by the Swedish archaeologist Folke Bergman and then forgotten for 66 years until relocated through GPS navigation by a Chinese expedition. Archaeologists began excavating it from 2003 to 2005. Their reports have been translated and summarized by Victor H. Mair, a professor of Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert in the prehistory of the Tarim Basin. [. . .]
Several items in the Small River Cemetery burials resemble artifacts or customs familiar in Europe, Dr. Mair noted. Boat burials were common among the Vikings. String skirts and phallic symbols have been found in Bronze Age burials of Northern Europe.
STEIN emphasizes the non-Mongolian features of the Lop-nor mummies, and I have been able, on the whole, to confirm his statement. One or two of the mummified heads at Cemetery 5 had, however, broad cheek-bones giving them a "Mongolian" look, but this might be due to the individual variations that occur in every race or type
Coon: Race and social evolution (1962)
The conclusion of Carleton Coon's paper from the CIBA Foundation conference "Man and His Future":
I have left to the end the most troublesome — and least rationally handled — aspect of the total problem of social evolution, that of race. Yet it is a real problem and must be faced if we are to do anything but chat about the future of man. Since the time of our first knowledge of Homo erectus our genus has been divided into geographical races adapted in varying fashions and degrees to heat, cold, altitude, and disease. These adaptations remain. How long will the Communist Chinese be able to survive and reproduce their kind in the thin air of Tibet? Will the genetic superiority of native West Africans over White men, which has kept the latter out for centuries, be lost when all the malaria-carrying mosquitoes have been stamped out with millions of tons of DDT? If the races of man stay where they are best adapted, it creates much less trouble than when they move into each other's territories.In his autobiography, Coon says of the reaction to his paper:
And, more importantly, are all peoples equally suited, in a neuroendocrinological sense, to live under the regimentation which is bound to come in a vastly overcrowded world? These are questions that I cannot answer, and the very mention of them is considered indecent in my country. Do the minds of all races work in the same fashion, do not their emotions differ with differences in their hormonal peculiarities, and is it not possible that cultures vary to a certain extent in terms of these variations? These questions require research, and the results may mar the vision of a single world culture. People are genetically and culturally different, and short of a global police state run by persons yet to be determined, entrusted with the power to perform chromosomal surgery and interspecific transplants, they will remain different for a long time to come. If the world is to become united, the union must be a loose confederation of very different units, or it will not long endure.
[Carleton S. Coon, "Growth and Development of Social Groups," in Man and His Future (Gordon Wolstenholme, ed.), a Ciba Foundation Volume (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1963), pp. 120-133.]
In my diary I noted that Haldane had approved it heartily, and Bronowski had liked all of it except the last part, on race. He was a tiny man, almost a dwarf, with a huge, globular head topped with tightly curled, black hair. Had I been his twin, I wouldn't have like it either.The official publication of the conference, Man and His Future, is available online (thanks, again, to archive.org's biodiversity collection). More on the conference, from Coon's autobiography:
[Adventures and Discoveries, p. 346]
At five o'clock, just after tea, Sir Julian Huxley delivered the first of sixteen papers. It was entitle "The Future of Man--Evolutionary Aspects." For me to try to abstract it here would do it ill justice. I can only note that he mentioned Teilhard de Chardin's noosphere, at that time a fashionable subject; the dependence of human progress on a procession of ideas: ecology, new drugs, population control, the population explosion, birth control; and a need for a rise in global IQ. In general, Sir Julian's paper was a stimulating overview of what the symposium was about.And, describing the final chapter of The Living Races of Man:
Chapter 11, the last, is entitle "The Future of the Races of Man," and subtitled, "Every Man a Genius and the Centaur's Return." It is half joke, half fantasy. In it I toyed with some of the ideas expressed at the CIBA conference of 1962 by J. B. S. Haldane, Joshua Lederberg, Gregory Pincus, and others, about slicing chromosome with nano-knives (microscopic scalpels) to make transgeneric hybrids to serve as seal-human frogmen, building sperm banks that Hermann Muller had begun and William Shockley has revived; my own idea was to re-create black and white centaurs who could play polo with each other forever, thus stalemating interracial troubles.
The races of mankind: an introduction to Chauncey Keep Memorial Hall (1933)
To explain satisfactorily the racial problems so realistically and so truthfully presented to us in this hall, we have to accept as a truth the prevalence of the laws of evolution in the world of humanity.Fittingly, the work was digitized as part of archive.org's Biodiversity Heritage Library. About the author: "Henry Field was a Field Museum Assistant Curator of Physical Anthropology and a nephew of Marshall Field, the department store magnate who helped start The Field Museum and after whom the museum is named." Field Museum benefactor "Marshall Field was born on a farm in Conway, Massachusetts, the son of John Field IV and wife Fidelia Nash. His family was descended from Puritans".
[Fieldiana, Popular Series, Anthropology, no. 30; contents: Preface / Berthold Laufer -- Introduction / Sir Arthur Keith -- Human Biology -- Description of Races -- I. Africa. -- II. Europe -- III. Asia -- IV. America -- V. Oceania. -- Bibliography -- Plan of Chauncey Keep Memorial Hall (Hall 3) -- List of sculptures by Malvina Hoffman]
Some notes on Sheldon and correlations between physique and personality
A pdf version of William H. Sheldon's 1942 book Varieties of temperament: a psychology of constitutional differences can be downloaded here. A summary of Sheldon's claims and some later work:
Sheldon (1942) claimed to have found strong correlations between somatotype and human behavior.John Derbyshire mentions a 1951 Life magazine article on Sheldon's work.
He posited three fundamental dimensions of temperament, each associated with a component of physique;
Table 1 shows the correlations between temperament and somatotype found by Sheldon (1942).
- Visceratonia (associated with endomorphy) is characterized by lassitude, slow reaction to stimuli, and love of eating and physical comfort.
- Somatotonia (associated with mesomorphy) is characterized by assertiveness, risk taking, aggressiveness, and indifference to pain.
- Cerebrotonia (associated with ectomorphy) is characterized by physical and emotional restraint, fast reaction to stimuli, and social inhibition (Sheldon, 1942).
Table 1. Correlations between temperament and somatotype reported by Sheldon (p. 400, 1942)
Note. All coefficients are significant at p < .01. N = 200.
Endomorphy Mesomorphy Ectomorphy Viscerotonia .79 -.23 -.40 Somatotonia -.29 .82 -.53 Cerebrotonia -.32 -.58 .83
However, these results were strongly criticized on methodological grounds. Sheldon’s early method of somatotyping, used in the 1942 study, involved a degree of subjective judgment (Carter and Heath, 1990; Cortés and Gatti, 1972; Parnell, 1958) and the ratings of temperament were made by the same researcher (Sheldon) who somatotyped the subjects. Sheldon fully acknowledged this latter point; [. . .]
Nevertheless, constitutional psychology can not be so easily dismissed. For example, there is now a large literature on the relationship between somatotype and a variety of health conditions, including hypertension and heart disease (Singh, 2007). Both Child (1950) and Cortés and Gatti (1965) tried to replicate Sheldon’s psychological findings using more objective somatotyping procedures and self-report measures of temperament. These results are shown in Tables 2 and 3.
Table 2. Correlations between temperament and somatotype reported by Child (p. 447, 1950)
Note. N = 400. **p < .01.
Endomorphy Mesomorphy Ectomorphy Viscerotonia .13** .13** -.15** Somatotonia .03 .38** -.37** Cerebrotonia -.03 -.38** .27**
Table 3. Correlations between temperament and somatotype reported by Cortés and Gatti (p. 57, 1972)
Note. *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001. N = 114. Other values not reported.
Endomorphy Mesomorphy Ectomorphy Viscerotonia .35** Somatotonia .22* Cerebrotonia .34***
While the effect sizes were lower than those found by Sheldon, the pattern of correlations in these studies is essentially the same. There is now a substantial body of research showing weak to moderate correlations between somatotype and such variables as occupational interest (Deabler, Hartl, and Willis, 1975), academic performance (Parnell, 1958), temperament type (Peterson, Liivamagi, and Koskel, 2006), and susceptibility to hypnosis (Edmonston, 1977). Perhaps the most studied behavioral correlate of somatotype is the relationship between criminal behavior and mesomorphy (Cortés and Gatti, 1972; Glueck and Glueck, 1956). In a review of the research, Ellis and Walsh (2000) note that “to date, all studies have reported significant tendencies for delinquents and criminals to be more mesomorphic than persons in general” (p. 278).
[Jeremy E. C. Genovese. Physique Correlates with Reproductive Success in an Archival Sample of Delinquent Youth. Evolutionary Psychology. 2008. 6(3): 369-385.]
On the basis of his work up to now, many workers in the psychiatric field and in the allied sciences of sociology and anthropology are convinced that Dr. Sheldon has done what Hippocrates tried to do 2,500 years ago: he has shown that character and physique are closely related, and that the first, like the second, is to a considerable extent a product of heredity.A fan of his work is mortified by Sheldon's political views:
[Robert Coughlan. What Manner of Morph Are You? In old debate on what makes temperament a new school of "constitutional psychiatry" gives heredity equal place with environment. LIFE Jun 25, 1951.]
Sheldon in The Varieties of Delinquent Youth ranted about the endomorphic-mesomorphic mothers of the delinquents, and how America had become mongrelized from its original New England Anglo-Saxon origins. But just how much of a racist was Sheldon? Here we can look at the account by John Sample, in "A Closer Look at William H. Sheldon." It certainly looks like Sheldon had become prey to all sorts of fearful and hostile fantasies.From the aforementioned essay by John Sample:
Far from a coolly objective social theorist, Sheldon, vituperatively anti-Semitic, favored northern Europeans, particularly Anglo-Saxons, as his preferred racial groups.Sheldon's origins:
At the end of our visit, Sheldon said I could look forward to doing "great things." I think he may have said this because I was a reasonably intelligent, clean-cut Wasp! [. . .] He sent me on my way with a copy of American Nazi Lincoln Rockwell’s biography… Those visits ended my personal contact with William H. Sheldon.
William Herbert Sheldon was born in Pawtuxet, Rhode Island, on November 19, 1898. His parents, William Herbert and Mary Abby Greene, were related to old New England families like the Carders and Remingtons. And his father had been well off until a partner in the family firm ran off with the money. William and Mary had lost their first two daughters to diphtheria and then had three more children: Israel in 1889, Kate in 1891, and finally William seven years later. Sheldon's father had been able to keep the family homestead, which dated from around 1740, and supported his family by working as a jeweler in nearby Providence.More:
William Herbert Sheldon was born in Warwick, Rhode Island, to an old New England family; his father bred poultry and dogs competitively. Sheldon’s early familiarity with the idea of breeding better species, and his sense of the importance of his own Anglo-Saxon pedigree, fed into his lifelong advocacy of eugenics, the program for breeding better humans that inspired his morphological research. Through his father’s tutelage, Sheldon came to recognize what he later termed a t or thoroughbred factor in the human constitution, the quality of appearing aesthetically pleasing.This page lists some ways to determine body types; "measure your temperament", from the 1951 Life article:
[Nicole Rafter. SOMATOTYPING, ANTIMODERNISM, AND THE PRODUCTION OF CRIMINOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE. Criminology. Volume 45 Issue 4, Pages 805 - 833.]
23andMe DNA Day sale (today only)
Again, not offering any endorsement, but 23andMe is offering the complete edition at 80% off today.
William D. Hamilton on differential birth rates and ethnic conflict
A commenter at The Cold Equations brought to my attention this part of a review of Narrow Roads of Gene Land, Volume 2:
Hamilton is an unabashed, no-fig-leaf naturist. He believes that genetics, not nurture, accounts for a large and important range of human behaviour — from racism and xenophobia to differences in intellectual abilities between men and women — and that only by admitting and understanding this, only by casting aside hypocrisy on the matter, can fundamental human problems be tackled. As an example, he argues that a basic cause (emphatically not a justification) of racism — and, particularly, of ethnically motivated genocide — is a differential birth rate between groups. And, yes, he does extend this to the Nazi extermination of Jews.A footnote from Narrow Roads of Gene Land, Volume 2, p. 280:
Increase of Ashkenazi Jews in eastern Europe in the span of the nineteenth century is said to have been almost fourfold (S. Jones, In the Blood: God, Genes and Destiny (HarperCollins, London, 1996)). This implies a doubling about every generation. Very surprisingly this fact seems almost never to be discussed as part causative background to the holocaust, an omission that continues even when claims of group competition are the focus (K. MacDonald, Separation and its Discontents (Praeger, Wesport, CT, 1998)).The page that references this footnote seems to be unavailable in Amazon's preview, but some other relevant passages are available (continue reading).
Unfinished documentary on Jewish intellectual movements
Minority Rule would have been the late Byron Jost's second film, after the illegal-immigration documentary The Line in the Sand. About an hour of footage, consisting mostly of interviews with E. Michael Jones, Kevin MacDonald, Joseph Sobran, and others, has been uploaded to youtube. Subject matter includes Boasian anthropology, Freudian psychoanalysis, and the Frankfurt School (continue reading).
New evidence for archaic admixture in Eurasians
Nature news reports "Neanderthals may have interbred with humans":
Using projected rates of genetic mutation and data from the fossil record, the researchers suggest that the interbreeding happened about 60,000 years ago in the eastern Mediterranean and, more recently, about 45,000 years ago in eastern Asia. Those two events happened after the first H. sapiens had migrated out of Africa, says Long. His group didn't find evidence of interbreeding in the genomes of the modern African people included in the study.Here is the abstract from AAPA 2010 (continue reading):
The researchers suggest that the population from the first interbreeding went on to migrate to Europe, Asia and North America. Then the second interbreeding with an archaic population in eastern Asia further altered the genetic makeup of people in Oceania.
General Social Survey WORDSUM vocabulary test
I see Inductivist has already posted this, but I invested a few minutes confirming it, so I'll post it anyway (continue reading).
A genetic variant influencing digit ratio
Some recently-published research reinforces my doubts about the meaningfulness of attempts to infer cross-racial differences in prenatal androgen exposure from cross-racial differences in digit ratio:
A chart from SNPedia illustrates population differences at rs314277. Asians (CHB, CHD, JPT) show very low frequencies of the minor allele; blacks (YRI, ASW, LWK, MKK) show relatively high frequencies; and Europeans (CEU, TSI) are intermediate. This is actually the reverse of the pattern we might have expected, but many other genetic variants undoubtedly influence traits such as digit ratio and age at menarche and the fundamental issue remains.
The ratio of the lengths of an individual's second to fourth digit (2D:4D) is commonly used as a noninvasive retrospective biomarker for prenatal androgen exposure. In order to identify the genetic determinants of 2D:4D, we applied a genome-wide association approach to 1507 11-year-old children from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) in whom 2D:4D ratio had been measured, as well as a sample of 1382 12- to 16-year-olds from the Brisbane Adolescent Twin Study. A meta-analysis of the two scans identified a single variant in the LIN28B gene that was strongly associated with 2D:4D (rs314277: p = 4.1 x 10(-8)) and was subsequently independently replicated in an additional 3659 children from the ALSPAC cohort (p = 1.53 x 10(-6)). The minor allele of the rs314277 variant has previously been linked to increased height and delayed age at menarche, but in our study it was associated with increased 2D:4D in the direction opposite to that of previous reports on the correlation between 2D:4D and age at menarche. Our findings call into question the validity of 2D:4D as a simplistic retrospective biomarker for prenatal testosterone exposure.
[Medland et al. A variant in LIN28B is associated with 2D:4D finger-length ratio, a putative retrospective biomarker of prenatal testosterone exposure. Am J Hum Genet. 2010 Apr 9;86(4):519-25. Epub 2010 Mar 18.]
The Puritans as a test case (1945)
Chapter 6 of Mainsprings of Civilization by Ellsworth Huntington. Some previous posts related to Huntington's work on the descendants of New England Puritans. The book (see body of post for link to complete version) also contains discussion of Icelanders, Junkers, and various other groups.
Here, focusing on a larger sample of names, Huntington finds that the descendants of the earliest Puritan settlers are more successful than those descended from later waves, and those with a greater degree of New England ancestry are more successful than those with less New England ancestry (continue reading).
Guilt-wracked, self-hating Puritan?
The August 21, 1921, New York Tribune features a letter to the editor arguing against Prohibition in the following terms.
The towering Nordic race of physical and mental giants, comprising the Germans, Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons--the big-headed, broad-shouldered, big-eating, big-drinking and big-fighting sword-arm men of the north--were the architects of the modern world. They were the old Vikings who, before Columbus, ferried the Atlantic in an open boat. They were the conquerors of Imperial Rome. That race of men has civilized, enlightened and uplifted the entire world, banished the ages of darkness and savagery, and replaced them with this age of invention, discovery, enlightenment and human well-being. But that was a race of boozers, wine-bibbers and beer-drinkers.The author is Hudson Maxim, the brother of inventor Hiram Maxim, born in Maine of New England Puritan stock and a successful inventor in his own right.
During thousands of years the Norse giants, with the divine old brutality of the cave-man in them, had their nightly wassail and carousal around the oaken table, in the glare of the great fire and under the flare of the torches, where they drank to one another's health and well-being until they fell under the table; [. . .]
While the hard-drinking Nordics were molding the world into a thing of beauty in their great hands, what were the non-drinking races doing? What were the teetotaling Mohamedan Arabs and Turks and the Buddhist East Indians doing? What were the abstemious Chinese doing? What were four-fifths of the rest of the human race, who were abstemious in the use of alcohol doing, while these Nordic sots were conquering savage races, reclaiming wild domains and building empires? I, for one, am willing to risk for the sake of good fellowship and a good time, a little of the light alcoholic stimulants with which the great Nordic people soused themselves for thousands of years without apparent harm.
Physical condition of the Jews (1904)
From a New York Times article reporting on "an address delivered before the annual convention of the American Federation of Zionists" by Dr. Maurice Fishberg:
Throughout their history, said the speaker, the Jews had always considered the mind as of prime importance, and had developed it at the expense of their bodies. He continued:
"We all remember with what disdain the average Eastern European Jew looks upon anything which may tend to develop his muscular system. From the study of physicians and anthropologists we find that the Jews in Eastern Europe are short of stature; in some countries, like Galicia and Poland, they are only 5 feet 3 3/4 inches in height. In countries where their economic and social conditions are better, they are about one inch taller, but it is a matter of fact that they never reach the height of their non-Jewish neighbors.
"The average circumference of the chest of the Jews in Eastern Europe is about 32 to 34 inches, and is less than half their body height. As you probably know, the girth of the chest in a healthy man usually exceeds half his stature. [. . .]
"It is remarkable that while the stature of the Jews born in the United States is much superior to that of the foreign Jews, this is not true of the girth of the chest. [. . .]
"In order to assure a muscular Judaism you must encourage physical culture among the younger generation of American Jews.
Iron Age Scottish written language?
DiscoveryNews reports:
The ancestors of modern Scottish people left behind mysterious, carved stones that new research has just determined contain the written language of the Picts, an Iron Age society that existed in Scotland from 300 to 843.The paper ("Pictish symbols revealed as a written language through application of Shannon entropy") is open access.
The highly stylized rock engravings, found on what are known as the Pictish Stones, had once been thought to be rock art or tied to heraldry. The new study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A, instead concludes that the engravings represent the long lost language of the Picts, a confederation of Celtic tribes that lived in modern-day eastern and northern Scotland.
Entertaining example of folk evolutionary thinking
Joe Rogan advises delusional boxer James Toney:
Brock Lesnar, that's a freak of a man. That's like the high end of the genetic spectrum. [. . .] Brock Lesnar is some weird instance where vikings fucked vikings for generation after generation and their warrior bloodlines were passed on. And this motherfucker living in the woods in Minnesota, you know, he got the best of the best. [. . .] for sure has good wrestling, [. . .] but at the end of the day that motherfucker is a barbarian. The reason why he's so fucking good he is a direct descendant from ancient giant warriors from thousands of years ago.
Hrdlicka's proposed solution to America's race problem
From an article published in The New York Times in 1898:
[Ales Hrdlicka] told of the failure of the Liberian colony, and of several plans which had been suggested in Congress, but which had come to naught, chiefly because the Nation at large had never realized the gravity of the negro problem. Miscegenation he regarded as impossible. Education had been tried, but many regarded it as a failure. The abandonment of the South, which was proposed by some writers, seemed to be impracticable. Having disposed of all the previous suggestions, the speaker put forward his own plan, which was to scatter the negroes in the South over the whole United States and the recent acquisitions in the West Indies and the Orient.How did that work out?
"The negro," said Dr. Hrdlicka, "is willing to spread. He would go anywhere if some inducement were held out to him [. . .] Once dispersed, the negro would be far more amenable to education and to the influence of law and morals." Dr. Hrdlicka expressed the opinion that such a movement would not seriously inconvenience any part of the country in which the negroes might settle. He referred to similar treatment accorded to refractory tribes by ancient nations, and said that, in many cases, such tribes had lost their individuality in consequence. In conclusion, he suggested that the scientists of the country should formulate and publicly support some definite proposition for the solution of the negro question.
Emma Goldman's paean to Puritanism
Strangely, Goldman seems to identify with and argue through appeals to European Romantics and feminists, a European homosexual, a Southerner, and Freud, while denouncing Connecticut Yankee Anthony Comstock, "the Puritanism bred in the Anglo-Saxon blood", and the city of Boston. I guess this is because Mencius Moldbug was not around to explain to Goldman that her Jewish radicalism was merely mutated Puritanism, adopted in an effort to impress and assimilate with "Boston Brahmins". Full text within (continue reading).
"Cows are key to 2,500 years of human progress"
"Dairy farming is key factor in history of European nutrition, study argues, with Roman empire a net loss" (link, via Jason Malloy):
A study of the remains of almost 20,000 people dating from the 8th century BC to the 18th century AD has found that the Roman empire reduced our level of nutrition, which increased again in the "dark ages"Jean M comments:
As the empire expanded, Roman soldiers found themselves fighting milk-fed Celts and Germans who towered over them. Diodorus Siculus described the Gauls as tall of body, with rippling muscles. Strabo marvels that mere lads from milk-drinking Britain were as much as half a foot taller than the tallest people in Rome. Tacitus declared that the Germanic tribes had huge frames. [. . .]
Nikola Koepke, "Nutritional status in pre-historic and historic Europe" was read at the The Economic History Society Annual Conference, University of Durham, 26-28 March 2010. It is online in the accompanying volume [pdf], pp. 13-18.
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