08.08.10
Email on Ashkhenazis
I got an email today re: the post here on Koestler and the 13th tribe. I am grateful for the feedback, but not necessarily swayed. Let me say that I hold no brief for Koestler’s view, but the text of Abraham’s Children , referenced in the email, is filled with dubious confusions, whatever the merit of the research it cites and seems to mangle. And the book is filled with its own agendas, prejudices and muddle. It mixes smart genetics with a kind of Biblical fundamentalism, which makes no sense/
The implication from a righwing jewish chauvinist from the Heritage Institute that anyone who agrees with Koestler is a lightwing jew-hater spoils the book, which points to some important new research. I think the author is a gentile hater, actually, so there. The book does a crash and burn here, despite the promise in some of its genetic explorations.
My point here was not Koestler’s thesis, which never mentions the IQ issue, but what I consider the invalid arguments citing natural selection behind IQ in Askhenazis, in a mere few centuries, due to competitions in business contexts, no less. Noone has noticed economic ideology at work here.
My point was that the Caucasus environs was the homeland for the probable winners of the IQ sweepstakes, such peoples as the Indo-Europeans (and others! we don’t quite know), but this may be beside the point, since the Khazarians were probably Turkish. So that issue may be guess work on my part. But this factor is reflected in Northern Europeans. I find it suspicious that claims for IQ for a group mixed in with these North Europeans wish to claim there is no connection.
It is possible that Abraham’s Children in some parts will survive the confused methodology, but as is it is an untrustworthy book. It mixes theistic historicism with Darwinism, references an ‘Abraham’ who never existed in a tacit assumption about myths from the Bible being true also in the context of genetics, a shortcircuit of modes, and is filled with the strange blend of DNA science and covenental Jewish chauvinism reeking from its pages.
The thesis’ value, which I won’t reject out of hand, demands a complete rewrite from a more balanced source.
Let me note in passing my suspicion, which is not science as yet, that the IQ issue is a red herring in so far as homo sapiens originally was more intelligent than he is now, and the continuation of this in some strains of the Out of Africa population streams maintained the source potential. Let me note the fact that San speech, that clue to primordial man, has over 120 distinct sounds. We are speaking gibberish these days.
Watch out, this perspective may be false, also. We don’t really know, and the IQ issue is highly misleading.
Some jews are very smart, but the majority of such supposed genius’ are hopeless Darwinian dullards, even if they can do string theory. So IQ is not intelligence.
In any case, intelligence is, I suspect, highly variable: Jews may have activated a potential of some kind, a possibility that has a number of historical precedents.
I am writing in response to
http://darwiniana.com/2010/07/21/koestler-and-13th-tribe/
Jon Entine discusses the probable reasons for high IQ among Ashkenazic
Jews in his 2007 book “Abraham’s Children”.It didn’t come from intermarriage with Europeans (though such
intermarriage did take place) because Sephardic Jews did that, too, yet
their IQ isn’t higher than average.And as for Koestler’s “The Thirteenth Tribe”, that book is both out of
print and inaccurate. Some Khazars and Slavs did join Ashkenazic
communities but new DNA studies show that the majority of conversion and
intermarriage events involving European Jews took place with northern
Mediterranean peoples like Italians/Romans, Greeks, and French/Franks.For further study:
“Abraham’s Children” by Jon Entine
http://www.amazon.com/Abrahams-Children-Identity-Chosen-People/dp/0446580635
“The Jews of Khazaria, Second Edition” by Kevin Alan Brook
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0742549828
Jewish Genetics
http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/abstracts.html
Jon Entine said,
August 8, 2010 at 8:37 pm
I’m the author of Abrahams Children. Your note about it is clearly ignorant of the book–you just haven’t read it. Almost all your summary comments about it are wrong–such as it embraces biblical fundamentalism. In fact, I’m an atheist, and state none of biblical history as fact. I am also a Democrat, not a “right winger” as you state. I also don’t work for the Heritage Foundation. I’m a “visiting fellow” at the American Enterprise Institute, which gave me some feed money for my research. But the book has zero ideological agenda. I’m not even a Zionist!
As for the discussion of Jewish IQ, I do not (as you misstate) attribute it to recent evolutionary events. Again, your willful misrepresentations or revealing. Nor do I even fully endorse the thesis. What I do—again you haven’t read the book–is discuss the very well regarded hypothesis put forth by three distinguished academics, including Henry Harpending, one of the world’s most respected biologists. All three are Christian, by the way. My elucidation of their paper–again, highly regarded among geneticists–is no different from, for example, population geneticist and Duke professor David Goldstein’s discussion of the same book in his parallel book to mine, Jacob’s Legacy. BTW, Goldstein–considered one of the two 2 or 3 population geneticists in the world–is working with me on a new book on personal genomics.
Again: willful ignorance–and misrpresentation to readers about what you’ve read and not read–is disgaraceful.
To anyone really interested in the subject, do read Goldstein’s book, my book, and the Khazar book. Koestler’s account is an embarrassment.
Jon Entine said,
August 8, 2010 at 8:48 pm
Jewish IQ
Unlike what Nemo posted, the Harpending et al thesis is linked to positive selection of Jewish neurological disorders, and stretches back as much as 2000 years, and his not linked to Jewish “business contexts” as is erroneously stated. Darwinian selection is always “processed” through cultural factors. The Harpending thesis speculates (and says it speculates, and my book and Goldstein’s book underscores this) that Jewish males who achieved certain cultural status, such as being able to parse the Talmud (rabbis, for example) or were successful as moneylenders were rewarded by “getting the girl” and having lots of kids, hence passing along their higher IQ genes. That’s how evolution works—-those with genes that help them cope survive to pass on more of their genes. That’s why most of us are lactose tolerant.
Whether the Harpending et al theory is correct or not is debatable, as both Goldstein and I underscore. But as we both say, it’s the economical argument to date, and Occam’s razor has proved its mettle over many centuries. It certainly conforms with the data of higher Jewish Ashkenazi IQ and the high percentage of Jews with LSD and gene repair diseases, which by all measure should long have evolved out of the Jewish population.
nemo said,
August 9, 2010 at 10:46 am
I have actually read the book, so that’s not the issue. The question of methodology is as indicated unclear. Mixing genetics and covenental Judaism is a recipe for distortions, and a needed caution.
Darwiniana » Comments on Abraham’s Children said,
August 9, 2010 at 12:19 pm
[...] comments from Jon Entine: http://darwiniana.com/2010/08/08/email-on-ashkhenazis/comment-page-1/#comment-353620 I am charged with not reading Abraham’s Children: not true, I have read the book twice, [...]