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From: "Josh Magee" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA-R1B1C7] On Behalf of Something like ethnic specifics
Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2007 11:45:05 -0500


Hey Paul,

Thanks for the thoughtful response, and the link the the gene
expression site. I have no desire to steer this conversation into
nature/nurture and IQ (I'll pass on that one!) :), but my purpose
before was to point out some of the potential dangers of assuming
genetics while not acknowledging the environmental influences on
behavior, and influences on expression of the genetics. I think that
clearly all of these are important, in varying degrees according to
the behavior/outcome of interest.

If you'll indulge me, I'm not sure I reach the same conclusion
following your rationale about how the Irish Gift of Gab must be
genetically based (if I'm misreading your conclusion, I apologize).
Your evidence, while it makes a good story, still doesn't address
possible environmental/cultural explanations, and is still
correlational. For instance, you could apply the your argument to the
fact that the Irish were the only ones in the world that spoke a
particular variant of a language. While more Irish spoke this
language than any other group, I doubt that you would argue that use
of this particular language was genetically based, even though the
group speaking it shared genetics.

I'm with you that there may indeed be real differences in verbal
ability tests (I haven't examined that and I'll take your word for
it), but why couldn't these still be explained by environment and
culture influences that have been shared by Irish-related groups over
a long period of time? Because this group placed such importance on
literature, reading & story telling, this may have led to cultural
practices that led to increased verbal IQ in each generation of
children. We know that hearing others tell you stories from a young
age, learning to storytell and presumably competing with others to be
a good storyteller would be very likely to raise verbal IQs. Same
thing with reading and composing literature. So this shared cultural
value could have easily been passed down through the generations,
encouraging verbal ability in this group, but still have little to do
with genetics, but instead the practices involved in raising children
in a community. It also could have culturally transmitted to Iceland
along with the Irish DNA, since the people carrying that DNA were also
carrying the culture.

Best,
Josh

> 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

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