"For generations, Jews had prided themselves on being the craziest suicidal motherfuckers of the Levant..."
When you word it like that, its suddenly clearer to me why the Jews/Hebrews were found taking up odd and seemingly random roles in old Middle Eastern wars.
Archers one day. Chariot drivers the next. A platoon of spearmen that season. Mercenaries at some other time.
Good article overall, though you should know that Botticini & Eckstein's estimates of population figures in late antiquity are based on literally nothing at all, and neither the architectural evidence nor the literacy evidence from liturgical poetry fits with their claims of rapid population decline in Palestine (which are based on older historians taking Roman decrees at face value).
I think you are underestimating quite significantly the difference between Ashkenazi and 'Mizrahi' intelligence, and thus (like Botticini and Eckstein) antedating the emergence of Jewish intelligence beyond what is justifiable. That is to say, it is probable that urbanization was a precondition for Jewish selection for intelligence, but not the proximate cause. Cochran and Harpending's theory of adaptation to usury in medieval Europe fits the data best. (This further complicates the narrative because it's probable that Ashkenazi Jews are partially, and maybe mostly, descended from Jews from Palestine, not from Iraqi diaspora that formed the Rabbinically-oriented communities in Spain and North Africa).
I don't think I am in disagreement with Cochran & Harpending, I do find their paper pretty convincing: "Other selective factors have been suggested. ‘Winnowing through persecution’
suggests that only the smartest Jews survived persecution. Why this should be so is
not clear. There was no similar outcome in other groups such as Gypsies, who have
Implicitly you are, because a major point of their theory is explaining why Ashkenazi Jews are smart, and other Jews aren't particularly (or at all). So Jewish history up till 1100ish isn't relevant (except in creating the precursor conditions).
It is relevant in that the "adaptation to usury" definitely predates the year 1100. By this time Jews had been often described in these terms in Europe and the Islamic Ummah, for centuries.
Yes, sorry, I should have said 900. The point is that Jews were never particularly concentrated in moneylending in Muslim countries and there is no stereotype of them doing so (except imported later).
Not correct. The urbanization happened first in the Ummah, and by the time the Ashkenazis arrived in Europe they were already specialized in moneylending, education, medicine and trading. As I note in the piece, that's clear in the Geniza evidence from Cairo (starting in the 6th century), where farming is the least common profession and crafts, trade, moneylending and medicine the most common. This wasn’t always to the community's benefit, as such work put them straight on bureaucratic crosshairs: just to given example, in 941 the famous Jewish banker Sah bin Nazir was tortured in Baghdad because of some accounting dispute, although his banking dynasty – composed of the descendants of a certain Yusuf – remained prominent in the capital in following decades through his cousins the “Sons of Aaron”: Ishak, Jacob, Sahl and Yusuf . Their tracks are later lost, and it’s mostly likely that they or their descendants later joined a then growing trend of merchants taking their business out of Iraq and to the North African shore.
I think you are either drastically overstating how many Jews in Islamic countries worked in usury, or drastically underestimating how many were in Ashkenazi countries. To quote C&H:
> When persecution began to be a serious problem and the security required for long-distance travel no longer existed, the Ashkenazim specialized more and more in one occupation, finance, left particularly open to them because of the Christian prohibition of usury. The majority of the Ashkenazim seem to have been moneylenders by 1100 AD (Ben-Sasson,1976; Arkin, 1975), and this continued for several centuries. Such occupations (sales, trade, finance) had high IQ demands, and we know of no other population that had such a large fraction of cognitively demanding jobs for an extended period. In some cases, we have fairly detailed records of this activity. For example (Arkin, 1975, p.58), concerning the Jews of Roussilon circa 1270: “The evidence is overwhelming that this rather substantial group of Jews supported itself by money lending, to the virtual exclusion of all other economic activities. Of the 228 adult male Jews mentioned in the registers, almost 80 percent appear as lenders to their Christian neighbors. Nor were loans by Jewish women (mostly widows) uncommon, and the capital of minors was often invested in a similar manner. Moreover, the Jews most active as moneylenders appear to have been the most respected members of the community.”
> The majority of Jews had already given up agriculture (Botticini and Eckstein, 2002), but the Jews of Islam, although urban, mostly worked in various crafts. The Ashkenazim, from their beginnings and for a long time, seldom had such jobs. This pattern is detailed in Gross (1975, p. 147): “Two entirely different patterns in the practice of crafts and their place in Jewish life and society are discernible throughout the Middle Ages. One characterizes the communities in countries around the Mediterranean, including in the south those in the continents of Asia and Africa, and in the north extending more or less to an imaginary demarcation line from the Pyrenees to the northern end of the Balkans. The other, in the Christian countries of Europe, was more or less north of the Pyrenees-Balkans line.” and (p. 151) “North of the Pyrenees and in the Balkans crafts played a very small role as a Jewish occupation, from the inception of Jewish settlement there.”
> The Ashkenazi occupational pattern was different from that of the Jews living in the Islamic world. The Jews of Islam, although reproductively isolated, did not have the concentration of occupations with high IQ elasticity. Some had such jobs in some of the Arab world, in some periods, but it seems it was never the case that most did. In part this was because other minority groups competed successfully for these jobs-Greek Christians, Armenians, etc., in part because Moslems, at least some of the time, took many of those jobs themselves, valuing non-warrior occupations more highly than did medieval Christians.
The main reason why C&H's theory is preferable to the B&E theory is because the B&E theory explains something that isn't actually true (namely that Jews in general are unusually intelligent).
"-which curtailed their IQ potential, much as the lack of the development in Sub-Saharan Africa does much to depress average IQ there."
That is kind of a cart before the horse explanation. The lack of IQ in Sub-Saharan Africa does much to depress development there, which seems more plausible.
There is no need to start with higher intelligence to get to the next level of complexity. It all comes down to geography, experimentation and thousands of years of societal evolution. Most of it involves gradually more productive means to produce food. You do not have to be a genius to figure that out.
The first farmers did not need to be rocket scientists to figure out how to grow crops in regions with the geographical factors that suited grain production. People of average intelligence can figure it out given enough time. Remember that their life depended on it.
And the smartest person in the world could not figure out how to grow grains outside those geographical conditions.
Same with domestication of animals.
There is no evidence of differences in intelligence between groups before the advent of agriculture. The changes occurred afterwards because some societies with specific geographical conditions evolved into more complex societies. In those societies higher intelligence was a much bigger advantage, so there was a biological pressure to evolve in that direction.
If you cannot see at least the plausibility of my argument, then you are not much of a “realist” who believes that Darwin’s theories applies to humans.
So give me evidence for differing levels of average intelligence between regions before the invention of agriculture. As far as I know there is none. But there is plenty of evidence for it afterwards.
And I can explain why.
And you honestly cannot see the increased advantages of intelligence for survival and reproduction in an increasingly complex social environment?
Seriously?
Regarding: “ mostly environmental”
Yes, but the key environment was not the natural environment. It was the social environment. That is far more complex and requires higher levels of intelligence because humans are competing against other humans, not just nature.
Regarding, “selection”
Yes, but much of the selection was not natural selection, but sexual selection.
Can you honestly not see why a woman and her family would not want to marry a more intelligent man who more likely to out-compete other men in a more complex social environment?
Before 1900, men who were high status, income, and wealth had more children survive to adulthood. Because those men were more likely to be more intelligent, they were more likely to pass on that heritable characteristic to the next generation.
"And you honestly cannot see the increased advantages of intelligence for survival and reproduction in an increasingly complex social environment?"
I never said that or implied that. You are setting up a straw and arguing with it.
"Can you honestly not see why a woman and her family would not want to marry a more intelligent man who more likely to out-compete other men in a more complex social environment?"
AshkeNAZI - name used hundreds if not thousands of years prior to Nazi.
So why did AshkeNAZI's, allow shortened term Nazi to be the enemy name and their name.
When say jews, there are differences in different Jewish cultures. I suspect during war, other jews said not us was the Nazi Jews or AshkeNAZI jews. The name title AshkeNAZI was well before Nazi. Simply shorter like Joe for Joseph or Bert for Albert ... i be lie eve this is how the term Nazi is from.
Right in our faces. I recently saw term typed out and my jaw dropped. WTF.
They are semites cause they decifer language differently. The meaning we may perceive is the one they want us to be lie eve, while their interpretation is very different.
I think it should be much better known! Talmudic Judaism in effect was an extraordinarily successful eugenics program. Plenty of people across the planet could use an average 15 IQ bump, more scholars and fewer terrorists
Ask today's Jews and they'd probably agree, but if you could ask the millions of Jewish victims of the German genocide and the Russian pogroms they could well say that it wasn't worth it.
"For generations, Jews had prided themselves on being the craziest suicidal motherfuckers of the Levant..."
When you word it like that, its suddenly clearer to me why the Jews/Hebrews were found taking up odd and seemingly random roles in old Middle Eastern wars.
Archers one day. Chariot drivers the next. A platoon of spearmen that season. Mercenaries at some other time.
Splendid essay, David. Thank you.
Interesting article.
Good article overall, though you should know that Botticini & Eckstein's estimates of population figures in late antiquity are based on literally nothing at all, and neither the architectural evidence nor the literacy evidence from liturgical poetry fits with their claims of rapid population decline in Palestine (which are based on older historians taking Roman decrees at face value).
I think you are underestimating quite significantly the difference between Ashkenazi and 'Mizrahi' intelligence, and thus (like Botticini and Eckstein) antedating the emergence of Jewish intelligence beyond what is justifiable. That is to say, it is probable that urbanization was a precondition for Jewish selection for intelligence, but not the proximate cause. Cochran and Harpending's theory of adaptation to usury in medieval Europe fits the data best. (This further complicates the narrative because it's probable that Ashkenazi Jews are partially, and maybe mostly, descended from Jews from Palestine, not from Iraqi diaspora that formed the Rabbinically-oriented communities in Spain and North Africa).
I don't think I am in disagreement with Cochran & Harpending, I do find their paper pretty convincing: "Other selective factors have been suggested. ‘Winnowing through persecution’
suggests that only the smartest Jews survived persecution. Why this should be so is
not clear. There was no similar outcome in other groups such as Gypsies, who have
faced frequent persecution (Crowe & Kolsti, 1991)."
Implicitly you are, because a major point of their theory is explaining why Ashkenazi Jews are smart, and other Jews aren't particularly (or at all). So Jewish history up till 1100ish isn't relevant (except in creating the precursor conditions).
It is relevant in that the "adaptation to usury" definitely predates the year 1100. By this time Jews had been often described in these terms in Europe and the Islamic Ummah, for centuries.
Yes, sorry, I should have said 900. The point is that Jews were never particularly concentrated in moneylending in Muslim countries and there is no stereotype of them doing so (except imported later).
Not correct. The urbanization happened first in the Ummah, and by the time the Ashkenazis arrived in Europe they were already specialized in moneylending, education, medicine and trading. As I note in the piece, that's clear in the Geniza evidence from Cairo (starting in the 6th century), where farming is the least common profession and crafts, trade, moneylending and medicine the most common. This wasn’t always to the community's benefit, as such work put them straight on bureaucratic crosshairs: just to given example, in 941 the famous Jewish banker Sah bin Nazir was tortured in Baghdad because of some accounting dispute, although his banking dynasty – composed of the descendants of a certain Yusuf – remained prominent in the capital in following decades through his cousins the “Sons of Aaron”: Ishak, Jacob, Sahl and Yusuf . Their tracks are later lost, and it’s mostly likely that they or their descendants later joined a then growing trend of merchants taking their business out of Iraq and to the North African shore.
I think you are either drastically overstating how many Jews in Islamic countries worked in usury, or drastically underestimating how many were in Ashkenazi countries. To quote C&H:
> When persecution began to be a serious problem and the security required for long-distance travel no longer existed, the Ashkenazim specialized more and more in one occupation, finance, left particularly open to them because of the Christian prohibition of usury. The majority of the Ashkenazim seem to have been moneylenders by 1100 AD (Ben-Sasson,1976; Arkin, 1975), and this continued for several centuries. Such occupations (sales, trade, finance) had high IQ demands, and we know of no other population that had such a large fraction of cognitively demanding jobs for an extended period. In some cases, we have fairly detailed records of this activity. For example (Arkin, 1975, p.58), concerning the Jews of Roussilon circa 1270: “The evidence is overwhelming that this rather substantial group of Jews supported itself by money lending, to the virtual exclusion of all other economic activities. Of the 228 adult male Jews mentioned in the registers, almost 80 percent appear as lenders to their Christian neighbors. Nor were loans by Jewish women (mostly widows) uncommon, and the capital of minors was often invested in a similar manner. Moreover, the Jews most active as moneylenders appear to have been the most respected members of the community.”
> The majority of Jews had already given up agriculture (Botticini and Eckstein, 2002), but the Jews of Islam, although urban, mostly worked in various crafts. The Ashkenazim, from their beginnings and for a long time, seldom had such jobs. This pattern is detailed in Gross (1975, p. 147): “Two entirely different patterns in the practice of crafts and their place in Jewish life and society are discernible throughout the Middle Ages. One characterizes the communities in countries around the Mediterranean, including in the south those in the continents of Asia and Africa, and in the north extending more or less to an imaginary demarcation line from the Pyrenees to the northern end of the Balkans. The other, in the Christian countries of Europe, was more or less north of the Pyrenees-Balkans line.” and (p. 151) “North of the Pyrenees and in the Balkans crafts played a very small role as a Jewish occupation, from the inception of Jewish settlement there.”
> The Ashkenazi occupational pattern was different from that of the Jews living in the Islamic world. The Jews of Islam, although reproductively isolated, did not have the concentration of occupations with high IQ elasticity. Some had such jobs in some of the Arab world, in some periods, but it seems it was never the case that most did. In part this was because other minority groups competed successfully for these jobs-Greek Christians, Armenians, etc., in part because Moslems, at least some of the time, took many of those jobs themselves, valuing non-warrior occupations more highly than did medieval Christians.
The main reason why C&H's theory is preferable to the B&E theory is because the B&E theory explains something that isn't actually true (namely that Jews in general are unusually intelligent).
Mountain Jews (not the drink) are one small exception to the "no Jewish farmers" thing.
"-which curtailed their IQ potential, much as the lack of the development in Sub-Saharan Africa does much to depress average IQ there."
That is kind of a cart before the horse explanation. The lack of IQ in Sub-Saharan Africa does much to depress development there, which seems more plausible.
No, I think the author got it correct. There is no evidence of differences in intelligence between groups before the advent of agriculture.
Complex societies lead to higher intelligence, not vice versa.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-our-deep-history-explains-global
It was geography that is the key variable accounting for differing levels of complexity in historical societies by region:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/how-geography-constrained-development
"Complex societies lead to higher intelligence, not vice versa."
I adamantly disagree. How would a society get complex without higher intelligence?
It does make sense that an intelligent society becomes more complex, thereby perpetuating advancement in intelligence.
Read the linked article and find out.
There is no need to start with higher intelligence to get to the next level of complexity. It all comes down to geography, experimentation and thousands of years of societal evolution. Most of it involves gradually more productive means to produce food. You do not have to be a genius to figure that out.
The first farmers did not need to be rocket scientists to figure out how to grow crops in regions with the geographical factors that suited grain production. People of average intelligence can figure it out given enough time. Remember that their life depended on it.
And the smartest person in the world could not figure out how to grow grains outside those geographical conditions.
Same with domestication of animals.
There is no evidence of differences in intelligence between groups before the advent of agriculture. The changes occurred afterwards because some societies with specific geographical conditions evolved into more complex societies. In those societies higher intelligence was a much bigger advantage, so there was a biological pressure to evolve in that direction.
"In those societies higher intelligence was a much bigger advantage, so there was a biological pressure to evolve in that direction."
You are using your own articles as agency for a position...LOL.
Two of the main pressures on evolution of traits are survival and selection.
Yes, I linked to that article because that is the only article that fully explains my theory.
Where else would you expect to find my theory?
If you read it then you will understand.
I have no idea what “ agency for a position” even means…
"I have no idea what “ agency for a position” even means…"
Look up the definition of agency.
"It was geography that is the key variable accounting for differing levels of complexity in historical societies by region"
It is survival challenges, mostly environmental and selection, that account for the evolution of traits.
If you cannot see at least the plausibility of my argument, then you are not much of a “realist” who believes that Darwin’s theories applies to humans.
Darwin's theories apply to humans, but I don't see your logic.
Because you did not read the article.
So give me evidence for differing levels of average intelligence between regions before the invention of agriculture. As far as I know there is none. But there is plenty of evidence for it afterwards.
And I can explain why.
And you honestly cannot see the increased advantages of intelligence for survival and reproduction in an increasingly complex social environment?
Seriously?
Regarding: “ mostly environmental”
Yes, but the key environment was not the natural environment. It was the social environment. That is far more complex and requires higher levels of intelligence because humans are competing against other humans, not just nature.
Regarding, “selection”
Yes, but much of the selection was not natural selection, but sexual selection.
Can you honestly not see why a woman and her family would not want to marry a more intelligent man who more likely to out-compete other men in a more complex social environment?
Before 1900, men who were high status, income, and wealth had more children survive to adulthood. Because those men were more likely to be more intelligent, they were more likely to pass on that heritable characteristic to the next generation.
"And you honestly cannot see the increased advantages of intelligence for survival and reproduction in an increasingly complex social environment?"
I never said that or implied that. You are setting up a straw and arguing with it.
"Can you honestly not see why a woman and her family would not want to marry a more intelligent man who more likely to out-compete other men in a more complex social environment?"
You seem to be pulling this out of your ass.
LOL
No, I am not "setting up a straw man." I am reacting to your statements above.
And nothing came out my ass.
Try reading the articles and leave a comment there as to why you think that it is incorrect.
Otherwise, good bye.
"And nothing came out my ass."
Maybe that's your problem.
Why oh why the name Nazi?
Hmmmm
https://www.nbcnews.com/sciencemain/most-ashkenazi-jews-are-genetically-europeans-surprising-study-finds-8C11358210
AshkeNAZI - name used hundreds if not thousands of years prior to Nazi.
So why did AshkeNAZI's, allow shortened term Nazi to be the enemy name and their name.
When say jews, there are differences in different Jewish cultures. I suspect during war, other jews said not us was the Nazi Jews or AshkeNAZI jews. The name title AshkeNAZI was well before Nazi. Simply shorter like Joe for Joseph or Bert for Albert ... i be lie eve this is how the term Nazi is from.
Right in our faces. I recently saw term typed out and my jaw dropped. WTF.
They are semites cause they decifer language differently. The meaning we may perceive is the one they want us to be lie eve, while their interpretation is very different.
Europa The Last Battle Documentary
Europathelastbattle.net
So it turns out the Talmud and the pacifist reaction to the Bar Kochva revolution was one of the best innovations in history.
I think it should be much better known! Talmudic Judaism in effect was an extraordinarily successful eugenics program. Plenty of people across the planet could use an average 15 IQ bump, more scholars and fewer terrorists
Ask today's Jews and they'd probably agree, but if you could ask the millions of Jewish victims of the German genocide and the Russian pogroms they could well say that it wasn't worth it.
that's not wrong