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Archiver > DNA-R1B1C7 > 2007-11 > 1196441680


From: "Paul Conroy" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA-R1B1C7] On Behalf of Something like ethnic specifics
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 11:54:40 -0500
References: <b5c3b3070711300731j32cc2e6dqc5d1cf7f1dda5270@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <b5c3b3070711300731j32cc2e6dqc5d1cf7f1dda5270@mail.gmail.com>


Josh,

Well this discussion forum is primarily about Genealogy and more
specifically Genetic Genealogy, and not nature vs nurture in relation to IQ.
I highly recommend the Gene Expression site - where I'm a frequent
contributor - for that discussion:
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/index.php

Having said that, most R1b1c7's are from Ireland or their descendants, with
a lesser number from Scotland (in areas known to have some prior Irish
emigration or colonization) or descendants, and almost none elsewhere. So in
estimating any peculiar or unique aspects of R1b1c7 males in regard to IQ,
one could somewhat plausibly use Irish IQ as a proxy. To my knowledge the
only interesting thing that one could say about Irish IQ (versus that of
other White Northern European populations) is that it is more skewed towards
Verbal IQ ability and lesser towards Quantitative IQ ability. So for
instance if you had a Swede with IQ 100 and an Irish person with IQ 100, the
Irish person might score half a Standard Distribution (SD) higher on Verbal,
and half a SD lower on Quantitative. In a practical sense this gives the
Irish the famous, "Gift of the Gab", and has resulted in Ireland punching
way above its weight in terms of quality literary output - not just
recently, but as far back as the Early Middle Ages. I have read that in the
8th century Ireland had an estimated 40,000 literate people out of a total
estimated population of 250,000 - at the time the highest literacy rate in
the world.

Think of it this way, in all the Viking lands of Northern Europe, where is
the only place that there is a huge corpus of literature and why?
The answer is of course all the sagas of Iceland. Is there anything
different about Iceland versus other Viking lands? Yes, about 60% of the
population - based on mtDNA - are of Irish descent.

It is also the reason that Ireland, with a population of 4 million has won 5
Nobel prizes - 4 in literate and 1 in Physics - which is very high number
for such a small population. Compare this to Japan with 125 million people
and a measly 7 Nobel prizes?! Incidentally, what is the country with the
greatest number of Nobel Prize per capita? Why Iceland, with 1 Nobel Prize
in Literature!

I have 3 exact 12-marker matches in Iceland - which unfortunately don't
appear on Ysearch or other public databases.

Cheers,
Paul


On Nov 30, 2007 10:31 AM, Josh Magee <> wrote:

> I agree that this is a potentially interesting route, but also must be
> considered with caution when interpreting the results. 'Predominant
> attributes' don't necessarily stem from shared genetic causes within
> an ethnic group, they may alternatively be due to shared environmental
> causes. For example, in much of the 1800's I would bet that tests of
> R1b1c7 (hypothetical tests of course) in the United States would show
> that this ethnic group demonstrated lower rates of becoming lawyers
> than many other U.S. ethnic groups. However, a closer examination
> would reveal that this group was made up of many immigrants with
> little U.S. education, low income, etc....environmental factors that
> we know would lessen one's chance of becoming a lawyer. So it
> wouldn't be like there was something in the genes that was causing the
> ethnic group to appear this way, but rather the fact that many people
> with similar genes ended up with environmental surroundings that
> poorly prepare one for becomin a lawyer. Theoretically, if you put a
> bunch of R1b1c7's in a different environment, it may be that the rates
> of lawyers would be equal or higher than another group.
>
> The ethnic specificity investigation becomes more dangerous when
> people start to apply it to areas like intelligence without fully
> considering the influences that I discussed above.
>
> Note that I'm not dismissing the importance of genetic contributions,
> because there is no doubt that they contribute to many behaviors (and
> there is good research to back this up), but instead I'm trying to
> highlight that it is very tricky to figure out what is genetic and
> what is environmental at this point, especially with genealogical DNA
> tests.
>
> Best,
> Josh
>
> > Researchers conduct ethnic specific surveys, e.g.
> > Percentage of dentists who are Jewish, of doctors who are Irish,
> > sport champions who are Afro-Americans, etc.
> > also characteristics and physical attributes.
> > Ethnic groups are usually very varied in origin
> > but nevertheless certain predominant attributes are often noticed.
> >
> > R1b1c7 members are probably of much less varied origins than most
> > ethnic groups.
> > The chances are that some characteristic attributes of statistical
> > significance do exist.
> >
> > Why not test for them?
>
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