NationStates Jolt Archive

NOTE!!!! Like Switzerland in international affairs, I'm pulling the neutrality card on this and do not want to be flamed for the OP....I'm just stating the article and putting it up for discussion, not making the thread because I agree with it and want to defend. JUST FOR DISCUSSION. Also, thread title does not reflect opinion but rather the caption from the source of the OP.

Fury at DNA pioneer's theory: Africans are less intelligent than Westerners:
Celebrated scientist attacked for race comments: "All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really"
One of the world's most eminent scientists was embroiled in an extraordinary row last night after he claimed that black people were less intelligent than white people and the idea that "equal powers of reason" were shared across racial groups was a delusion.

James Watson, a Nobel Prize winner for his part in the unravelling of DNA who now runs one of America's leading scientific research institutions, drew widespread condemnation for comments he made ahead of his arrival in Britain today for a speaking tour at venues including the Science Museum in London.

The 79-year-old geneticist reopened the explosive debate about race and science in a newspaper interview in which he said Western policies towards African countries were wrongly based on an assumption that black people were as clever as their white counterparts when "testing" suggested the contrary. He claimed genes responsible for creating differences in human intelligence could be found within a decade.

The newly formed Equality and Human Rights Commission, successor to the Commission for Racial Equality, said it was studying Dr Watson's remarks " in full". Dr Watson told The Sunday Times that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really". He said there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".

His views are also reflected in a book published next week, in which he writes: "There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."

The furore echoes the controversy created in the 1990s by The Bell Curve, a book co-authored by the American political scientist Charles Murray, which suggested differences in IQ were genetic and discussed the implications of a racial divide in intelligence. The work was heavily criticised across the world, in particular by leading scientists who described it as a work of " scientific racism".

Dr Watson arrives in Britain today for a speaking tour to publicise his latest book, Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science. Among his first engagements is a speech to an audience at the Science Museum organised by the Dana Centre, which held a discussion last night on the history of scientific racism.
http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3067222.ece

Personally...I'd like to see his "testing" that they keep talking about. Other than that, a 79-year-old geneticist, nobel prize winner and discoverer of DNA....has to have some reason to make such a controversial claim, I'd assume...so I'm waiting to see his research before anything else.

What do you guys think about this whole incident?

He claimed genes responsible for creating differences in human intelligence could be found within a decade.Until these genes can be definitively and accurately identified, I don't see what he's basing his arguments on. There are so many things that factor into "intelligence" (whatever the hell that even means since there doesn't seem to really be a true definition of it) ranging from wealth to diet to mood, that I don't see how a test could really peg an entire race (and, as with intelligence, race is a tricky subject in and of itself) as as lacking or possessing such an attribute.

Isn't the overall intelligence of a people influenced by education, health quality and nutrition? Let me guess: he compared the intelligence of an illiterate and malnourished african almost dying of starvation with the intelligence of an upper class WASP with the best education and health money can buy?

Africa isn't a world benchmark for life quality and in South Africa white people still tend to be more common in the upper classes. I'm no specialist, but I think that IQ is proportional to educational levels as gathering knowledge naturally develops someone's intelligence.

This? Again?

sigh.

Since human life originated in africa, I suspect that a long recessive gene in the good doctor has recently activated. ;)

We cannot assume interracial equality in all aspects. Undeniably, there will be differences on account of race. However, I cannot take these comments at face value. These claims have to be backed up by unbiased, reproducible, scientific studies. These are just too controversial to claim unless backed up by solid, irrefutable proof.

If ever there is some sort of inequality, then, measures shall be taken to provide equal opportunity.

But I do wonder, though if IQ is a reliable measuring test for intelligence across cultures. Westerners typically do well in these tests, non-Westerners fare poorly. Why? Despite all efforts to make IQ tests culture-free, there still remains some sort of residual cultural impact in these exams. Not all cultures think the same way as IQ testers would assume people MUST think.

I'm curious as to how many tests the doctor has examined/conducted where the only difference in subjects was race, and not educational background, nutrition, upbringing, social pressures, etc etc.

Because until you can find people who are similarly situated in all aspects but race, it becomes impossible to determine WHAT factor(s) cause the results.

"Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you're not going to hire them."

Nice one James.

He has some weird views.

IQ has fuck-all to do with intelligence.

But I do wonder, though if IQ is a reliable measuring test for intelligence across cultures. Westerners typically do well in these tests, non-Westerners fare poorly. Why?

Western nations tend to be richer with a more educated populace who naturally will have a tendancy to score higher on these kind of exams.

Of course, this isn't the case for ALL non western nations, and, well...have you seen what Japan does to our test scores?

NOTE!!!! Like Switzerland in international affairs, I'm pulling the neutrality card on this and do not want to be flamed for the OP....I'm just stating the article and putting it up for discussion, not making the thread because I agree with it and want to defend. JUST FOR DISCUSSION. Also, thread title does not reflect opinion but rather the caption from the source of the OP.

Fury at DNA pioneer's theory: Africans are less intelligent than Westerners
Celebrated scientist attacked for race comments: "All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really"

http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3067222.ece

Personally...I'd like to see his "testing" that they keep talking about. Other than that, a 79-year-old geneticist, nobel prize winner and discoverer of DNA....has to have some reason to make such a controversial claim, I'd assume...so I'm waiting to see his research before anything else.

What do you guys think about this whole incident?

Beyond the wild fonts and hyperbole, there doesn't seem to be much story here.

Dr Watson told The Sunday Times that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really". He said there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".
...
Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said: "It is sad to see a scientist of such achievement making such baseless, unscientific and extremely offensive comments. I am sure the scientific community will roundly reject what appear to be Dr Watson's personal prejudices.

"These comments serve as a reminder of the attitudes which can still exists at the highest professional levels."

Steven Rose, a professor of biological sciences at the Open University and a founder member of the Society for Social Responsibility in Science, said: " This is Watson at his most scandalous. He has said similar things about women before but I have never heard him get into this racist terrain. If he knew the literature in the subject he would know he was out of his depth scientifically, quite apart from socially and politically."

Anti-racism campaigners called for Dr Watson's remarks to be looked at in the context of racial hatred laws. A spokesman for the 1990 Trust, a black human rights group, said: "It is astonishing that a man of such distinction should make comments that seem to perpetuate racism in this way. It amounts to fuelling bigotry and we would like it to be looked at for grounds of legal complaint."

He has also suggested that beauty could be genetically engineered, saying:

"People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great."

Come on people, the man has merit.

I don't think many among us are really qualified to do anything that spurt out the usual half-remembered, fashionable opinions on genetic relations to IQ - I'm certain there is some relation but whether it's confined to an entire race I'm not sure. I can hardly believe everyone's brain has the same capabilities.

The thing is, we're putting a determination on use - the optimum result for genes is variety, which helps to ensure a species survival - not our own perceptions on what is the optimum state.

Eh, just because he and Crick (mostly*) discovered DNA, doesn't stop him from talking shit.

*Lets not forget Rosalind Franklin here.

Beyond the wild fonts and hyperbole, there doesn't seem to be much story here.
The only part of the story the Indy missed was the fact that he got dropped by the Science Museum in London - where he was due to give a talk.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/7050020.stm

Western nations tend to be richer with a more educated populace who naturally will have a tendancy to score higher on these kind of exams.

Of course, this isn't the case for ALL non western nations, and, well...have you seen what Japan does to our test scores?
Ah well, forgot about Japan. Perhaps it's education, but also exposure to Western culture also. I remember something like a tribe somewhere in the Orinoco, where tribespeople, when asked to draw a figure drew an entirely different thing, because that's how they think. But if we educate them, especially on a Westernized education system, we teach them how to think, what is correct, etc., and so they will score well.

Dr. Watson sounds woefully misinformed and what is this 'Africans' / 'black people' business?? :mad:Isn't that a gross generalisation? Africa is a continent made of many nations, all with very distinct and unique. And 'black people' means what, exactly?

And since when has a Western standard of intelligence been the measure of a person's intellectual aptitude? How extremely arrogant of the dear Dr. Low performance in academics is not a racially exclusive event. So much depends upon what natural ability exists at birth and then how that is developed and fostered through early childhood by parents, etc. The mark of intelligence is not how well one does on an IQ test but on how well one is able to adapt, survive and continue to grow in knowledge regardless of circumstances. There are plenty of highly intelligent people who are completely inept at life in general.

OK, I've had my rant at what my dear mother would fondly call 'a load of horse cobblers'.;)

And so starts the:

"Men to the left, women to the right"...

AGAIN!!! :upyours::headbang::(

I swear, if the US Gov't actually agrees with this guy, i'm putting a Pentacle on one arm-band, and an upside-down pink triangle on another arm-band, and will wait to be rounded up.

Where is that Anne Frank book o mine? or Maus for that matter?
:confused:

-Rafe
OOC

SNIPPED FOR LENGTH

I'm curious as to how many tests the doctor has examined/conducted where the only difference in subjects was race, and not educational background, nutrition, upbringing, social pressures, etc etc.

Because until you can find people who are similarly situated in all aspects but race, it becomes impossible to determine WHAT factor(s) cause the results.

And don't forget who the tests were written by. I'd guess white, educated, males - I'm sure women score lower as well.

As far as I am aware there is no culture neutral way of testing IQ / intelligence. What's seen as superior in one culture is seen as inferior in another.

And don't forget who the tests were written by. I'd guess white, educated, males - I'm sure women score lower as well.

As far as I am aware there is no culture neutral way of testing IQ / intelligence. What's seen as superior in one culture is seen as inferior in another.

Absoloodles - in my own cultural context, I am slightly above average in my IQ testing. In someone else's cultural context, it could have virtually no meaning. Actually, it doesn't have much meaning for me anyway, except when I am applying to study. Otherwise, employers & such are far more interested in my life experience, job experience & practical skills - things that really don't show up on your standardised academic testing.

I'm just wondering what exactly is being implied here with policies that don't presume that different ethnic groups exhibit roughly the same IQs across their members.

If we were to take him seriously and change our policies to take account of the idea that Africans are relatively stupid - what would such policies look like?

I think that's a more important question than whether or not his premises make any sense. If his prescribed policy is unworkable, stupid or unacceptable from a human rights and freedom standpoint, then we don't have to worry about IQ genes and can keep that where it belongs: in academic papers.

I like how the media tells me that I'm 'outraged' or 'furious' about Watson's comments.

Show you just how pathetic, and rotten, this whole societal structure is, watch what expressing your genuine opinion does.

I agree with Watson. I believe that, in general, sub-Saharan Blacks are less intelligent than other races. I've observed this, up close and personal, myself, and I am an amateur historian and can't help but notice the lack of achievement from this, the oldest race of man.

Now go ahead and delete the account, seeing as this is a forum for free speech and all.

And don't forget who the tests were written by. I'd guess white, educated, males - I'm sure women score lower as well.

As far as I am aware there is no culture neutral way of testing IQ / intelligence. What's seen as superior in one culture is seen as inferior in another.

Except that there has been over 240 different tests conducted on sub-Saharan Blacks, and in each and every one of them, they have scored below 'Westerners'.

All 'racism', no doubt.

They say that a genuinely stupid person doesn't realize he/she is stupid. Reading this thread, I see that to be true. Of course, there's also the cowardly, trendy individual who seeks to fit in, rather than be true.

Hooray for arbitrary definitions of intelligence.
Anybody for taking a group of PhD's and giving them a village in sub-saharan Africa just to see how long they last? We can set the next season of Survivor there.
I know I'd watch it.

Well, luckily this guy is the scientist, and not all of us. I wouldn't want to be in his shoes trying to prove that a fifth of the world are mentally inferior. Still, come take a Safari in Africa. Any part of Africa. I think you'll see that he's got a point. :)

White colonialists seized the term "White Man's Burden", which was created by Rudyard Kipling, who was an ardent imperialist himself. I'm going to go so far as to say that I agree with them, because if you take a look at Africa now, decades after independence, you will note that the natives are not 'liberated', in fact they are busy enslaving themselves. If you are still sceptical of the tribalist mentality which is so pervasive in Africa, take a look at Liberia's history. Africa is a cesspit, its natives don't care much for education. Instead they would rather take everything by force, thereby perverting what civilization was left.

Aw, lookit the widdle racist. He's so cute.

Hooray for arbitrary definitions of intelligence.
Anybody for taking a group of PhD's and giving them a village in sub-saharan Africa just to see how long they last? We can set the next season of Survivor there.
I know I'd watch it.

Or settling southern Africa and suddenly it becomes the most advanced nation on the continent.

You're delusional.

Arbitrary? In individual cases. IQ tests are best for generalization. When repeated studies show that Northern Europeans (spec. Germans, Scandinavians) and Northeast Asians (North Chinese, Japanese) score highest on IQ tests, whereas equatorial races do poorly, it isn't arbitrary.

Aw, lookit the widdle racist. He's so cute.

Ooh, there's two of them now! *points and laughs*

No, not Cthulu, the two trolls. I just realised that it looked like i meant Cthulu....

Aw, lookit the widdle racist. He's so cute.

While my previous statement on arbitrary definitions of intelligence still stands, I must say that its kinda dumb to instantly dismiss any arguement about 'intelligence' differences between races as 'racism' without at least SOME serious investigation into the matter.
The problem is that people are so paranoid about offending somebody that they wont start lest they get a result that people wont like.
Kinda like US politics, y'know? Its more important to score points than actually DO anything.

Aw, lookit the widdle racist. He's so cute.

Look at the sad delusional inferiority complex. It's so retrogressive.

Except that there has been over 240 different tests conducted on sub-Saharan Blacks, and in each and every one of them, they have scored below 'Westerners'.

All 'racism', no doubt.

Please share this research with the rest of the class.

What was done? By whom? When was it done? How was it done? Who participated? How were they chosen? Etc, etc, etc.

Links would be preferred.

While my previous statement on arbitrary definitions of intelligence still stands, I must say that its kinda dumb to instantly dismiss any arguement about 'intelligence' differences between races as 'racism' without at least SOME serious investigation into the matter.
The problem is that people are so paranoid about offending somebody that they wont start lest they get a result that people wont like.
Kinda like US politics, y'know? Its more important to score points than actually DO anything.

The problem is that every single study ever conducted that results in differing levels of intelligence has been torn to shreds.

Plus, the whole IQ tests not measuring intelligence thing.

Oh, and the fact that race is an arbitrary construct, since there are more differences within the so-called "races" than between them.

Add the fact that an enormous chunk of brain development has to do with environment and not genetics, and racism is pretty much the only reason to spout such tripe.

Look at the sad delusional inferiority complex. It's so retrogressive.

Those words don't mean what you think they mean.

Incidentally, I'm willing to bet that, by your own standards, I'm superior to you.

If a Maori would design an IQ-test, the entire western civilization would flunk it!

Or settling southern Africa and suddenly it becomes the most advanced nation on the continent.

You're delusional.

Arbitrary? In individual cases. IQ tests are best for generalization. When repeated studies show that Northern Europeans (spec. Germans, Scandinavians) and Northeast Asians (North Chinese, Japanese) score highest on IQ tests, whereas equatorial races do poorly, it isn't arbitrary.

So if we populated Southern Africa with white PhD's it'd suddenly become prosperous, eh? Lovely.

I'm actually not hallucinating at all, thank you. I was a few months ago when I got my wisdom teeth out. The nice doctor gave me some pills that made me happy. 'Cept they screwed with my blood preassure and I ended up throwing up, so I couldnt take them after that. It really kinda sucked, 'cause one of the teeth was still under the jawline so they had to cut into the bone to get it. Hurt like a thing which is very painful. Side of my face swelled up too. Still, it was fun while it lasted.

All measurements are arbitrary. You have to make up a unit to measure something, so somewhere along the line SOMEBODY said, lets say, 'An inch is equal to three grains of barley.' Only in this case its 'three grains of barley define how intelligent somebody is.'

The problem is that every single study ever conducted that results in differing levels of intelligence has been torn to shreds.

Plus, the whole IQ tests not measuring intelligence thing.

Oh, and the fact that race is an arbitrary construct, since there are more differences within the so-called "races" than between them.

Add the fact that an enormous chunk of brain development has to do with environment and not genetics, and racism is pretty much the only reason to spout such tripe.

Quite. So we need to come up with something at least somewhat accurate in terms of defining intelligence. That might take a while.

If the term 'race' doesnt work then maybe 'tribe'? Race is more of a regional thing, 'tribe' gives a more local sense, yes? Or maybe 'breeds'. Of course, that might offend some people, to compare them with dogs and such.

The problem is that every single study ever conducted that results in differing levels of intelligence has been torn to shreds.

Are you confining your 'study' to IQ tests.

There are multiple theories on genetic structure, disease-impact on Ashkenazi Jews and a host of studies on brain size - synapse efficiency that would indicate there are genetic differences between races.

Torn to shreds? I don't think so.

Why do we treat the brain as something different to bone structure, organ size, skin colour to say that among all facets of the human body, the brain must be equal among all races.

It simply doesn't fit.

Again, we're saying a form of intelligence is different, not necessarily better or worse and we really need to look at adaptation to environment, but to say there is no evidence of difference between races is wrong.

I'm not saying conclusively that there is a difference, I'd be surprised if there wasn't, but to call someone racist over it is simply closing off the debate.

Are you confining your 'study' to IQ tests.

Nope. There's not a single study that didn't get utterly destroyed.

Why do we treat the brain as something different to bone structure, organ size, skin colour to say that among all facets of the human body, the brain must be equal among all races.
Race does not exist. It's an artificial construct. The brain can't differ between races because there are no races.

I suspect that if I were raised by people who were far more interested in bare survival than higher education, I wouldn't do well on most tests either.

Nope. There's not a single study that didn't get utterly destroyed.


Race does not exist. It's an artificial construct. The brain can't differ between races because there are no races.

Race is probably a wrong word as someone's already said - but we can delineate groups to some extent though the edges are very blurred.

The human body is an extremely intricate system with any gene affecting a number of things and to simply single out the brain as unique in having no difference between groups is hard to believe. To not think there might be parity between close-related groups is also hard to believe.

Again, the problem lies in placing a qualitative judgment on them over adaptive necessity.

I suppose intelligence and race are such loaded words that perhaps we need to couch the debate in different terms.

I second Romanar.

Well whatever those studies were, they were seriously flawed.
As mentioned already there are plenty of examples of people which shows that no particular ethnic group can be inherently superior than another.

I am loling at the racial revisionism, no matter how many times it get squashed it still manages to come back some how.

Those words don't mean what you think they mean.

Incidentally, I'm willing to bet that, by your own standards, I'm superior to you.

Remember what I said about stupid people.

Forget White people even exist, and utilize your common sense. Are sub-Saharan Africans equal to Northeast Asians in intellectual aptitude? Yes or no.

Stop being squeamish and cowardly.

Forget White people even exist, and utilize your common sense. Are sub-Saharan Africans equal to Northeast Asians in intellectual aptitude? Yes or no.

I don't know. I also have no idea how to test that.
One assumes either group has its strenghts and weaknesses...

Remember what I said about stupid people.

Yeah. Prove that.

Personally...I'd like to see his "testing" that they keep talking about. Other than that, a 79-year-old geneticist, nobel prize winner and discoverer of DNA....has to have some reason to make such a controversial claim, I'd assume...so I'm waiting to see his research before anything else.

What do you guys think about this whole incident?

One must never consider anything without some context......
The scientist has courted controversy in the past, saying that a woman should have the right to abort her unborn child if tests could determine it would be homosexual.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/7050020.stm
He seems to be a bit reactionary.......

This is all gibberish...
Science, facts....etc
If you are a true christian believer, you will know that
"God created Adam and Eve in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
And God blessed them, Gen. 5.1, 2 and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

We all know that God is white.
As far as I know we dont need no doctor to tell me this things that white pople are more intelligent than the black folks.
The bible already tells us so.

We all know that God is white.

We do ? Does He ;) ?

This is all gibberish...
Science, facts....etc
If you are a true christian believer, you will know that
"God created Adam and Eve in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.


But we know the first humans were (a) not created and (b) came from Africa, where it was not a cold climate.......

We all know that God is white.
As far as I know we dont need no doctor to tell me this things that white pople are more intelligent than the black folks.
The bible already tells us so.
:eek: :eek: :eek:
Ever heard of the Black Nazarene (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Nazarene)? Or the Our Lady of Guadalupe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Guadalupe)? Or perhaps the Our Lady of Aparecida (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Aparecida)? Had you seen God personally and saw Him/Her as white? Or perhaps you are just blinded by the light and your beliefs? WHERE EXACTLY in the Bible does it say that "God is White"? And perhaps I can field a lot of non-whites who are more intelligent enough to put apostrophes in contractions and spell correctly.
[/feed troll]

Or, maybe, you know, it's because we're using Western standards where Europeans and North Americans will naturally fare better.

I bet if they made a similar test and used African standards, Africans would turn out the smartest.

Ah well, forgot about Japan. Perhaps it's education, but also exposure to Western culture also. I remember something like a tribe somewhere in the Orinoco, where tribespeople, when asked to draw a figure drew an entirely different thing, because that's how they think. But if we educate them, especially on a Westernized education system, we teach them how to think, what is correct, etc., and so they will score well.

That might not necessarily be a good thing though. We have plenty of people who can think in western ways. We might discover that intellectual diversity is just as important as genetic diversity.

I like how the media tells me that I'm 'outraged' or 'furious' about Watson's comments.

Show you just how pathetic, and rotten, this whole societal structure is, watch what expressing your genuine opinion does.

I agree with Watson. I believe that, in general, sub-Saharan Blacks are less intelligent than other races. I've observed this, up close and personal, myself, and I am an amateur historian and can't help but notice the lack of achievement from this, the oldest race of man.

Now go ahead and delete the account, seeing as this is a forum for free speech and all.

He claims that it's genetic though. It's as if ever he discovered DNA, he hasn't been able to talk about anything else.

I don't doubt that they're less capable. The reason, however, lies in the fact that they have less access to food, education and healthcare. Add to that a society which is more interested in survival than learning and you get people who simply won't do well on theoretical tests.

He claims that it's genetic though. It's as if ever he discovered DNA, he hasn't been able to talk about anything else.

I don't doubt that they're less capable. The reason, however, lies in the fact that they have less access to food, education and healthcare. Add to that a society which is more interested in survival than learning and you get people who simply won't do well on theoretical tests.

And might even be less inclined to even if given proper education.

The process is called natural selection: The situation in certain parts of Africa *might* give rise to attributes that are counter productive to mathematical & logical intelligence instead promoting, for example, energy conserving brain and stringy muscles.

Note: Same can (and some would argue has ;)) happen in the Western world also - for different reasons, though.

Until these genes can be definitively and accurately identified, I don't see what he's basing his arguments on. There are so many things that factor into "intelligence" (whatever the hell that even means since there doesn't seem to really be a true definition of it) ranging from wealth to diet to mood, that I don't see how a test could really peg an entire race (and, as with intelligence, race is a tricky subject in and of itself) as as lacking or possessing such an attribute.

I've read a newspaper article about that and looks like he claimed that it is preposterous to postulate that different human groups that have evolved separatedly for long time share the same characteristics. It could be right... but he's totally disregarding the fact that almost ALL HUMANS ARE OF RECENTLY (less than 100 years) MIXED DESCENT - and this makes his claims absolutely idiotic, imo. I'm sure that I, as european, carry a lot of genes that were originally indian, altaic, african and semitic. In the very same way, most african black-skinned people carry also originally semitic and indian genes, and US black-skinned people have interbred with europeans, semites, uralo-altaics, native americans etc. So, he's talking racistic shit.
The main factors that affect intelligence are education, life standards and culture.

That might not necessarily be a good thing though. We have plenty of people who can think in western ways. We might discover that intellectual diversity is just as important as genetic diversity.
Agreed.
Actually I'm just pointing out that education and culture both affect IQ measurements and perceived 'intelligence'... not that everybody should think the same, which is rather bland...

IQ tests are not trustable.

You can add up your IQ with 10 to 20 points.

How?

• Prepare the official test by doing other IQ tests.
• Do the official test in the morning.

IQ tests just measure a part of your intelligence: mostly only logical & verbal intelligence.

It is not testing your creativity, memory, spatial intelligence, inter- and intra communication skills, motoric-, musical- or emotional intelligence and so many other types and subtypes…

That’s why IT people score in general high on IQ tests. They arrogantly think they have proof for their ‘smartness’, but it isn’t. They are just trained better (by education and their work) to use their logical ‘brain’ and thus have advantages in a merely logical IQ test.

Western IQ tests do not work in some African jungle. And an ‘African-jungle’ IQ test will not work in the West. By instance, in lots of African jungles their houses have a circular shape. Some of those people never saw square shaped houses. When they have to perform an IQ test and square shaped houses are used, they will suffer lots of problems, just by recognizing the shape as a house and thus it will influence their result.

And even if one can proof, genetically, that one race is having a real higher/lower IQ (it’s plausible that it is), so what?

Intelligence isn’t that interesting either.

Knowledge is worth more: Even ‘dumb’ or average people can consume tons of information.

Lots of us, know really smart kids that dropped out High School. And we all know dumb people that finished university… Guess, who will in general perform better in our society…

According Dr. Watson…

He said there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true"

This is not a test or proof, it's amazing that a guy with such academic baggage is showing prejudice at an unseen level.

Honestly, I think that Dr Watson his dementia is walking away with him, at 79 your brain isn’t in top condition anymore.

I guess his IQ is currently below the average of the people he's targeting at.

Oh btw, the inventor, Alfred Binet, of the modern IQ test said in 1905!:

"The scale, properly speaking, does not permit the measure of intelligence, because intellectual qualities are not superposable, and therefore cannot be measured as linear surfaces are measured. "

Some of the poorest people in the world aren't very smart by our standards? Well clearly it's because they're black. I mean, it couldn't possibly have anything to do with the whole lack of education in the way we've had it. Oh no.

Some of the poorest people in the world aren't very smart? Well clearly it's because they're black. I mean, it couldn't possibly have anything to do with the whole lack of education. Oh no.

Nitpick: different education. No doubt the stereotypical Maori hunter for instance has quite impressive spatial insight, but he might be unable to solve the "which shape does this become when you fold it" questions of an intelligence test.

To quote Pratchett:

“Ignorant: a state of not knowing what a pronoun is, or how to find the square root of 27.4, and merely knowing childish and useless things like which of the seventy almost identical-looking species of the purple sea snake are the deadly ones, how to treat the poisonous pith of the Sago-sago tree to make a nourishing gruel, how to foretell the weather by the movement of the tree-climbing Burglar Crab, how to navigate across a thousand miles of featureless ocean by means of a piece of string and a small clay model of your grandfather, how to get essential vitamins from the liver of the ferocious Ice Bear, and other such trivial matters. It's a strange thing that when everyone becomes educated, everyone knows about the pronoun but no one knows about the Sago-sago”

Nitpick: different education. No doubt the stereotypical Maori hunter for instance has quite impressive spatial insight, but he might be unable to solve the "which shape does this become when you fold it" questions of an intelligence test.

To quote Pratchett:

I approve of this nitpick, and award you one[1] huge cookie.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j317/mccloud24/CHOCOLATE_CHIP_COOKIE.jpg

*snip*

*snip*

Gosh! You should inform everyone studying this issue of this possibility because, so far, they've just been sitting people down to the Stanford-Binet test and drawing conclusions from that.

Seriously...

It's like saying you can't measure the difference in intelligence between a trout and a chameleon because, hey, put a trout on a tree and see if it can catch a fly.

Genetic variance has to affect the brain in the same way genetic variance affects the height of a pygmy.

Race, as people have pointed out, may not be much of an indicator but there's stacks of evidence on climate affecting brain size and IQ variance - it's not about a western education, you can look at the need to use more tools and problem-solving abilities in extreme weather conditions, or differing weather conditions.

The ultimate conclusions are yet to be narrowed down, we're at the beginning of understanding the full effects of genes, but to put it down to education alone is naive.

WHERE EXACTLY in the Bible does it say that "God is White"?

Hehe, also define "white": for all we know, Iesus Nazarenus (or Yeoshua of Nazareth...) was no indo-european. He was a jew, hence semite!

Oops... I fed the troll.

Gosh! You should inform everyone studying this issue of this possibility because, so far, they've just been sitting people down to the Stanford-Binet test and drawing conclusions from that.

Seriously...

Companies with a high IQ already recognize this and don’t use it anymore as their only source.

If I was you and you’re forced to do an IQ test for a job application, just refuse. But comment well (and polite) why.

In most cases they will hire you. :)

Oops... I fed the troll.
I'm not a troll... :(

But I agree, though.

Hehe, also define "white": for all we know, Iesus Nazarenus (or Yeoshua of Nazareth...) was no indo-european. He was a jew, hence semite!

Oops... I fed the troll.

Fun isn't it ;)
Let us see...
If white skin is a mutation of black skin, it means there were blackskinned humans before (the current) whiteskins.
If one insists on a literal interpretation of the Bible, this implies God was black (or at least non-white) as well.
Since whites are an aberration, whites must be servants of Satan.

Well... guess I will have to go eat some fruit ;)

I'm not a troll... :(
I wasn't referring to you. I humbly apologise for the misunderstanding.
Here, have a fluffle:fluffle:

Fun isn't it ;)
Let us see...
If white skin is a mutation of black skin, it means there were blackskinned humans before (the current) whiteskins.

Btw, on wikipedia (human evolution) it is hinted that hominidae first came out of Africa and evolved in the Middle East, then separated into various branches who migrated again - we descend from the branch that re-entered Africa. Original skin colour... who knows? Maybe blue, for all we know.

If one insists on a literal interpretation of the Bible, this implies God was black (or at least non-white) as well.
Even worse. If we are God's "children", then God must have all the genes of the human race, hence God is a mixed breed!

Since whites are an aberration, whites must be servants of Satan.

MUHAHAHAHAHA!!! *hides fork and takes Mephistopheles' shape*

I wasn't referring to you. I humbly apologise for the misunderstanding.
Here, have a fluffle:fluffle:
*feels better* Man, that huge cookie on top of the page makes me want to eat.

*opens bag of cookies* Want some chunky chocolate chip cookies?

Some of the poorest people in the world aren't very smart? Well clearly it's because they're black. I mean, it couldn't possibly have anything to do with the whole lack of education. Oh no.
Well I have to agree with this, but any 'Western' test for our idea of 'intelligence' is bound to go awry in different cultures, for example the Australian Aboriginals would have been seen as 'savage' by Westerners for their lack of clothing, industry etc, but when you actually their extremely elaborate social and spiritual societal structure you are blown away, no Western could ever truly understand it.

Well I have to agree with this, but any 'Western' test for our idea of 'intelligence' is bound to go awry in different cultures, for example the Australian Aboriginals would have been seen as 'savage' by Westerners for their lack of clothing, industry etc, but when you actually their extremely elaborate social and spiritual societal structure you are blown away, no Western could ever truly understand it.

I once heard a relevant quote...

"If IQ test was designed by an aboriginal we'd all fail it"

Btw, on wikipedia (human evolution) it is hinted that hominidae first came out of Africa and evolved in the Middle East, then separated into various branches who migrated again - we descend from the branch that re-entered Africa. Original skin colour... who knows? Maybe blue, for all we know.


Even worse. If we are God's "children", then God must have all the genes of the human race, hence God is a mixed breed!


MUHAHAHAHAHA!!! *hides fork and takes Mephistopheles' shape*



Yep, whites evolved from blacks. Racists don't like this. :)

So whites are just a mutation and have probably more DNA garbage than blacks.

Odds are high that blacks have a better brain ‘cause it’s more ‘close’ to the original….

But that’s just speculation. I don’t know anything about genes and DNA.

In fact I don't care, like I pointed out before: it doesn't matter a lot.

Some Brazilian Indian tribe was shown movies of fighting jet planes in Iraq.

They really understood the concept. They know what war is, they know what a plane is.

While they never saw a fighter plane or a war at the scale of the Iraqi battlefield.

The war, the planes, all of it was not shocking for those people.

What was shocking for them, is that we kill people we don’t know. They never do that and they really can’t understand why we are doing it.

They know the concept of war, they have wars by themselves, but they know the people they sometimes kill in such wars.

Just to show how different races (or just people) look at different things.

Sounds fair. White people have small dicks, black people are dumb.

Yep, whites evolved from blacks. Racists don't like this. :)

So whites are just a mutation and have probably more DNA garbage than blacks.

Odds are high that blacks have a better brain ‘cause it’s more ‘close’ to the original….

But that’s just speculation. I don’t know anything about genes and DNA.

In fact I don't care, like I pointed out before: it doesn't matter a lot.

Umm... if it was closer to the original, wouldn't it be closer to apes and neanderthals?

Umm... if it was closer to the original, wouldn't it be closer to apes and neanderthals?

No not even close.

Apes, Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens have the same parents.

Personally...I'd like to see his "testing" that they keep talking about. Other than that, a 79-year-old geneticist, nobel prize winner and discoverer of DNA....has to have some reason to make such a controversial claim, I'd assume...so I'm waiting to see his research before anything else.

What do you guys think about this whole incident?

He probably refers to I.Q. tests. And that git conveniently forgets that EDUCATION, as well as intelligence, plays a huge part in I.Q. test results. And considering Africa as a continent, and black people in general throughout western countries are an economically less fortunate group, and thus often cannot afford education on par with us more privileged bastards, it comes without saying the first assumption would be to consider the level of education in the interpretation of the results.

Because there's no freaking way people who have a grade 6 education living in impoverished areas and struggling to survive and have something to eat each day are going to consistently score higher -or equal to- privileged people who don't have to worry about dinner and who have a 100 times more graduates with superior education.

It's not genes, it's common sense. That researcher certainly has his judgment colored by racism, that much is apparent to me.

No not even close.

Apes, Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens have the same parents.

Yes, but apes are closer to the common ancestor than humans. And if blacks have brains closer to the original, it would be... closer to the common ancestor.

Besides, your entire statement was flawed. Why would you WANT to have a brain closer to the "original"? It's basically less evolved.

Odds are high that blacks have a better brain ‘cause it’s more ‘close’ to the original….

You are talking a bunch of crap, my friend. That is just reverse racism, and although I'd understand it if you were black, I highly doubt you are. I'd say you're a white apologist, and you probably feel inferior to most blacks because your wife left you for one or something similar.

Now, if blacks had a "better brain", as you so aptly put it, where is their civilization? Hmm?

They really understood the concept. They know what war is, they know what a plane is.

Where are you getting this from? It sounds to me like you are trying to apologize for every race in existence, however ill-defined the term is. Blacks are already much trendier than Whites in popular culture, and semi-literate hip-hop artists are earning more in a year than you'll be able to in a lifetime.

Almost all of the first-world countries have legislation in place to combat discrimination, but at what cost? When you're interviewing employees for your company, do you hire the blackest people, or the smartest people? If all the pioneers and heroes of this world are bogged down trying to uplift the mentally retarded and lame, we will never have any progress of any kind. Whatsoever.

Why not just make everyone equal before the law? Blacks complain about a lack of education, but what education are they talking about? Yes, Western education. Without Europeans they wouldn't even know the meaning of education. I say stop handing everything to them on a silver plate, because ask yourself, how would you be if you didn't have to work for anything? How would you turn out if people didn't praise your skills or knowledge, but rather only looked at the blackness of your skin?

Apes, Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens have the same parents.
Yes but only one survived.

Now, if blacks had a "better brain", as you so aptly put it, where is their civilization? Hmm?

Oh lord - here's the problem with conducting impartial science and why there's such a fight against studying environmental effects on brain evolution - because of this attitude.

...here endeth any reasonable debate alas.

You are talking a bunch of crap, my friend. That is just reverse racism, and although I'd understand it if you were black, I highly doubt you are. I'd say you're a white apologist, and you probably feel inferior to most blacks because your wife left you for one or something similar.

Now, if blacks had a "better brain", as you so aptly put it, where is their civilization? Hmm?


You're intellectual dishonest, I added in the next line as well:

"But that’s just speculation. I don’t know anything about genes and DNA."

But I understand that you have no clue either. 'Civilisation' has nothing to do with having a better brain.

For the record; I'm white and my wife didn't run away with some black. And no I don't feel inferior or superior to blacks.

Where are you getting this from? It sounds to me like you are trying to apologize for every race in existence, however ill-defined the term is. Blacks are already much trendier than Whites in popular culture, and semi-literate hip-hop artists are earning more in a year than you'll be able to in a lifetime.

I know something about cognitive psychology and antropology. I need that knowledge for my job.

Those Indians are not blacks...

Almost all of the first-world countries have legislation in place to combat discrimination, but at what cost? When you're interviewing employees for your company, do you hire the blackest people, or the smartest people? If all the pioneers and heroes of this world are bogged down trying to uplift the mentally retarded and lame, we will never have any progress of any kind. Whatsoever.

Why not just make everyone equal before the law? Blacks complain about a lack of education, but what education are they talking about? Yes, Western education. Without Europeans they wouldn't even know the meaning of education. I say stop handing everything to them on a silver plate, because ask yourself, how would you be if you didn't have to work for anything? How would you turn out if people didn't praise your skills or knowledge, but rather only looked at the blackness of your skin?

I don't believe in positive discrimination as well. But sometimes it's needed to start up something...

Maybe blacks are the white women of the 40ties and 50ties, no?

Yes but only one survived.Apes?

Apes?

And some Neanderthal leader (http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blpic-arnoldleno.htm) in Kali-forn-ia ? :)

*feels better* Man, that huge cookie on top of the page makes me want to eat.

*opens bag of cookies* Want some chunky chocolate chip cookies?

KOOKEEEEZZZ!!!

...
Just to show how different races (or just people) look at different things.
I agree 99%.
Replace "race" with "culture" (it's a cultural thing, after all, isn't it) and I'll wholeheartedly agree with you.

Yes, but apes are closer to the common ancestor than humans. And if blacks have brains closer to the original, it would be... closer to the common ancestor.

Besides, your entire statement was flawed. Why would you WANT to have a brain closer to the "original"? It's basically less evolved.

I'm not a expert. Maybe someone with a better background in this subject could answer you.

But from the little knowledge I have, I think you're on the wrong track.

What I know for sure:
Whites are not a better version of blacks 'cause they are 'younger'.
They are the same homo sapiens.

What I assume:
Whites are mutation from blacks and thus include more genetical defects and this could influence the actual brain capacity.

Wow, Africans are less intelligent than Westerners! That's news to me.

What a crock pot of shit. If Westerners lived in the hell hole most of Africa is they'd be dumb as rocks too.

Now, if blacks had a "better brain", as you so aptly put it, where is their civilization? Hmm?


Many black cultures never developed civilisations (in the "civitas" strict meaning of it) because they didn't need cities in the rain forest. People who live in other kinds of territories do.

We Europeans and the Arabs destroyed also a lot of black civilizations - may I quote Timbuktu (typical savanna civilizations)? Also, we Italians tried (and luckily were unable) to wipe the Ethiopian state from the map.

It isn't: intelligence, hence civilisation.
It is: intelligence + problems that are readily solved by civilisation, hence civilisation. Or, intelligence + problems that are readily solved by tribal culture, hence tribal culture.

Anyway, there is no such thing as "racially better brain".

What I assume: Whites are mutation from blacks and thus include more genetical defects and this could influence the actual brain capacity.
One could also assume that, since the whites are more interbred than black, due to the usually higher population mobility in the lands traditionally inhabited by whites, whites enjoy a lesser risk of carrying diseases linked to recessive genes and inbreeding. I prefer not to assume such things. Assuming such things about such issues as race isn't generally a good idea.

I agree 99%.
Replace "race" with "culture" (it's a cultural thing, after all, isn't it) and I'll wholeheartedly agree with you.

Even boy and girls of the same culture can react different at any subject.

As a usability engineer I did some experiments.

People had to use some software behind a special screen that could detect eye movement. So we could see to which part of the screen one was looking.

And for a joke I added some picture of a naked woman. :)
Believe me, men 'look' (as in looking at something) different as women :)

Even boy and girls of the same culture can react different at any subject.
Yep. Anyway, the point is that behaviour is primarily influenced by culture and education - which, of course, can be quite different for every individual, even in the same group/race/culture/state/city/village/religion/home/family/age...

And for a joke I added some picture of a naked woman. :)
Yay! Pr0n!

Believe me, men look different as women :)
:eek: Don't you say!

Many black cultures never developed civilisations (in the "civitas" strict meaning of it) because they didn't need cities in the rain forest. People who live in other kinds of territories do.

We Europeans and the Arabs destroyed also a lot of black civilizations - may I quote Timbuktu (typical savanna civilizations)? Also, we Italians tried (and luckily were unable) to wipe the Ethiopian state from the map.

It isn't: intelligence, hence civilisation.
It is: intelligence + problems that are readily solved by civilisation, hence civilisation. Or, intelligence + problems that are readily solved by tribal culture, hence tribal culture.

Anyway, there is no such thing as "racially better brain".


One could also assume that, since the whites are more interbred than black, due to the usually higher population mobility in the lands traditionally inhabited by whites, whites enjoy a lesser risk of carrying diseases linked to recessive genes and inbreeding. I prefer not to assume such things. Assuming such things about such issues as race isn't generally a good idea.


I don't know for sure. One could talk about it, without releasing racist words

Anyway, it doesn't count a lot.

Women and men, in general, think different as well.

Women have a smaller brain but a bigger hippocampus and more neurons.

For some tasks, women are having better brainware, by instance for simultaneous translating.

For other tasks, men are having advantages: merely task oriented jobs.

I don't know for sure. One could talk about it, without releasing racist words.
There's always the risk, even if one tries to be quite polite.


Women and men, in general, think different as well.
Women have a smaller brain but a bigger hippocampus and more neurons.
For some tasks, women are having better brainware, by instance for simultaneous translating.
For other tasks, men are having advantages: merely task oriented jobs.
Yep, it's a well-known fact.
I've just read an article showing that men tend to use more the grey matter when thinking, while women use the white matter more.

There's always the risk, even if one tries to be quite polite.

I can. I'm not a racist, so I feel safe.

Yep, it's a well-known fact.
I've just read an article showing that men tend to use more the grey matter when thinking, while women use the white matter more.

I'm not an expert in the difference between women and men. After a marriage of 10 years I just know that I know nothing. :)

We cannot assume interracial equality in all aspects. Undeniably, there will be differences on account of race. However, I cannot take these comments at face value. These claims have to be backed up by unbiased, reproducible, scientific studies. These are just too controversial to claim unless backed up by solid, irrefutable proof.

If ever there is some sort of inequality, then, measures shall be taken to provide equal opportunity.

But I do wonder, though if IQ is a reliable measuring test for intelligence across cultures. Westerners typically do well in these tests, non-Westerners fare poorly. Why? Despite all efforts to make IQ tests culture-free, there still remains some sort of residual cultural impact in these exams. Not all cultures think the same way as IQ testers would assume people MUST think.
Basically, IQ tests test how well you can do IQ tests. Specifically IQ tests that are based around Western thinking.
I remember one older USA IQ test that had a question something along the lines of, "You have 3 quarters, 2 dimes and a nickel. You buy some gum costing 70cents. How much money do you have left?"
Notice what's wrong with that question?

Your language and culture greatly affect the way you think and act. Western IQ tests don't measure certain abilities. Who would you much rather be lost in the Australian Outback - a Harvard Economics major with a measured IQ of 150 or an Aborigine whose measured IQ is 85 (and has lived in the outback all his life)?

I can. I'm not a racist, so I feel safe.
I'm not a racist, but I somewhat feel always threatened by random idiots that may appear, take some non-racist sentence, use it as a start, shout some racist bullshit, and leave us staring in awe at the 10^(-9) Pa vacuum in their heads.

I'm not an expert in the difference between women and men. After a marriage of 10 years I just know that I know nothing. :)
I assume that you managed to learn the external, more evident, differences. Just so, like, well, you know, don't you know... I don't know.:D

I'm not a racist, but I somewhat feel always threatened by random idiots that may appear, take some non-racist sentence, use it as a start, shout some racist bullshit, and leave us staring in awe at the 10^(-9) Pa vacuum in their heads.


I assume that you managed to learn the external, more evident, differences. Just so, like, well, you know, don't you know... I don't know.:D

Racist are generally ill informed. Or they improve their knowledge and leave their path or they stay ill. We should give them a chance to improve, no?

My wife says, it's al easy: "I just have to agree with everything she propose".

And she's right. :p

What I know for sure:
Whites are not a better version of blacks 'cause they are 'younger'.
They are the same homo sapiens.

What I assume:
Whites are mutation from blacks and thus include more genetical defects and this could influence the actual brain capacity.

Evolution =/= mutation.

Evolution =/= mutation.

Scientists said yesterday that they have discovered a tiny genetic mutation that largely explains the first appearance of white skin in humans tens of thousands of years ago, a finding that helps solve one of biology's most enduring mysteries and illuminates one of humanity's greatest sources of strife.

Source:
http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/1416.html

This article is from 2005....

Funny as fuck really. I don't pretend to undertstand the actual science behind the contention, however, I would suggest that, given either African nations, or Afro-carribean ethnic communities, tend to possess inferior services to the "westerners" cited in the article, this is more significant than pure genetics.

And might even be less inclined to even if given proper education.

The process is called natural selection: The situation in certain parts of Africa *might* give rise to attributes that are counter productive to mathematical & logical intelligence instead promoting, for example, energy conserving brain and stringy muscles.

Note: Same can (and some would argue has ;)) happen in the Western world also - for different reasons, though.

For proof of it happening in the western world - see the Dark Ages.

You wouldn't exactly want to return to that, would you?

Scientists said yesterday that they have discovered a tiny genetic mutation that largely explains the first appearance of white skin in humans tens of thousands of years ago, a finding that helps solve one of biology's most enduring mysteries and illuminates one of humanity's greatest sources of strife.

Source:
http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/1416.html

This article is from 2005....


Europeans aren't just mutated Africans. We've evolved differently. It's obvious. Just look at a European's skull and an African's skull. They're both different.

One obvious point is the shape of the nose. Africans tend to have wider, flatter noses while Europeans have narrower, straighter noses.

NOTE!!!! Like Switzerland in international affairs, I'm pulling the neutrality card on this and do not want to be flamed for the OP....I'm just stating the article and putting it up for discussion, not making the thread because I agree with it and want to defend. JUST FOR DISCUSSION. Also, thread title does not reflect opinion but rather the caption from the source of the OP.

Fury at DNA pioneer's theory: Africans are less intelligent than Westerners:
Celebrated scientist attacked for race comments: "All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really"

http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3067222.ece

Personally...I'd like to see his "testing" that they keep talking about. Other than that, a 79-year-old geneticist, nobel prize winner and discoverer of DNA....has to have some reason to make such a controversial claim, I'd assume...so I'm waiting to see his research before anything else.

What do you guys think about this whole incident?

Is intelligence innate? Is it the measure of how well one can learn, or the accumulated knowledge of what one has learned? I think this is an important distinction to make. If we arbitrarily assign a specific variable to the measure of intelligence, it is impossible for that variable to not be affected by some personal bias. Defining intelligence is necessarily subjective and naturally incomplete--how does one account for common sense learned through experience versus what one naturally possesses? Is there a distinction? Is intelligence just how well one can remember specific information? Or how well he can use it?

I like asking questions, but I think they are important to realize that measuring intelligence is not objective.

You see? Evolution is inherantly racist. Hitler thought the jews were inferior now this. Survival of the fitest is nothing but racism. Did you know that darwin thought the aboriginies were the missing link? God created all men equal.

You see? Evolution is inherantly racist. Hitler thought the jews were inferior now this. Survival of the fitest is nothing but racism. Did you know that darwin thought the aboriginies were the missing link? God created all men equal.

American Blacks have a higher IQ as African Blacks.

So...

And 'Survival of the fitest' doesn't mean 'Survival of the strongest' but 'Survival of the best adapted one'

You see? Evolution is inherantly racist. Hitler thought the jews were inferior now this. Survival of the fitest is nothing but racism. Did you know that darwin thought the aboriginies were the missing link? God created all men equal.

You're funny, I like you.

I'd say you're a white apologist, and you probably feel inferior to most blacks because your wife left you for one or something similar.

Now, if blacks had a "better brain", as you so aptly put it, where is their civilization? Hmm?

For one thing, we blacks (Black Panther Communists) are able to construct a rational argument. One day perhaps, you too will be able to.

This thread fails, too much speculation, nothing backed up (by both sides of the argument).

I don't see why Watson's not allowed even to raise the issue.

In his recent book (Avoid Boring People and Other Lessons from a Life in Science) he writes:

There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.

And he's right. That shouldn't even be a controversial statement.

I don't see why Watson's not allowed even to raise the issue.

Oh, he definately is. He just needs to back it up with solid reasoning; which he has not provided yet.

I don't see why Watson's not allowed even to raise the issue.

In his recent book (Avoid Boring People and Other Lessons from a Life in Science) he writes:

There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.

And he's right. That shouldn't even be a controversial statement.

Before raising such an issue you should have the preponderance of evidence to support it.

I believe that intelligence is definitely genetic. Smart caveman did not pet the sabretooth tigers. Dumb ones did and died before they were able to reproduce. This just makes sense.

I would think even if black people were less intellegent by percentage, they are still intellegent, and deserve to be equal. If we can have white fools deciding the course of our world, well then blah

I don't see why Watson's not allowed even to raise the issue.

In his recent book (Avoid Boring People and Other Lessons from a Life in Science) he writes:

There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.

And he's right. That shouldn't even be a controversial statement.

That's the scientific consensus. The bit where he goes "not all races are of the same intelligence - ask someone who has to deal with black employees" coupled with his history of intolerance and bigotry is where we should start to question nice mister Watson.

actually, let's just let the africans have basketball, and we'll make all the important decisions. everyone wins.

Most of the brothers that live in my neighborhood are much more intelligent when it comes to dealing with things that are important or essential for living. So I guess I would have to say that they genetically inherit more wisdom. Intelligence is just hard drive space anyways... and having alot of gigs doesn't get you anywhere, but lost in your own head.

Nichola

Before raising such an issue you should have the preponderance of evidence to support it.
The quote I offered doesn't make any positive claims. It points out a lack of evidence on the issue. A lack of evidence should lead to uncertainty, shouldn't it?

It is unreasonable to hold that A is true in the absence of evidence that A is true. I should be permitted to make that claim regardless of the value of A, and certainly if there is an absence of evidence supporting A.

Who gives a crap what the statistics say? I'll tell you who the real stupid people are - those who would just guess a person's intelligence by their race instead of testing that individual person.

For example, when I applied to my job, I was given a test to demonstrate that I could think logically. Do you think the company would have as much success hiring good employees if they just guessed people's results based on their race instead of actually testing them?

I don't see why Watson's not allowed even to raise the issue.

In his recent book (Avoid Boring People and Other Lessons from a Life in Science) he writes:

There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.

And he's right. That shouldn't even be a controversial statement.
Actually, I agree. There doesn't need to be evidence and back up to simply say: "Hey, this is a generally accepted theory that has no evidence or sourcing to back it up." One does not have to have a credible counter-claim to simply take note that a staetment has nothing to back it itself up on.

That's what I see in this. The theory of equal intelligence across humanity may be true, or it may be false....but the stement Watson is that we accept it to be true without asking why...or...what if it's not?

Come to think of it, I suppose it is possible. Not because of their skin color, but because of the isolation that caused a lower intelligence gene or set of genes was proliferated in their isolation.

The biggest flaw with any kind of cross-cultural measurement of intelligence is the way you measure it. Not all cultures approach problems, learning, logic, reasoning or any other thought process in the same way; it's rather foolish to apply the same standards to completely different cultures when they are often significantly different from one another in the way they go about thinking. Mind you, I mean different, not inferior, superior or any other kind of value judgement. Different ways of viewing the same problem produce more meaningful results than one approach.

I would have to see the methodology used in order to make such a decision, but inferring that a given group is less intelligent because they don't equal Westerners in a test designed by Westerners to measure a Western way of thinking just doesn't work. I'd actually be quite interested to see how a group of people from Western nations perform on a test based on an African or Asian way of thinking.

What would be the point in trying to figure out which ethnic group was the smartest overall? It doesn't say anything to the fact that there are extremely smart as well as extremely stupid people in every ethnic group.

What would be the point in trying to figure out which ethic group was the smartest overall? It doesn't say anything to the fact that there are extremely smart as well as extremely stupid people in every ethic group.

Yeah, that's my view too. As I said - test individuals if you need to know their intelligence.

Yeah, that's my view too. As I said - test individuals if you need to know their intelligence.

I probably would have just quoted you and agreed then had I actually read past the OP :P

Also I noticed I made the same spelling mistake twice in the post you quoted which makes us white folk look doomb. :D

I probably would have just quoted you and agreed then had I actually read past the OP :P

Also I noticed I made the same spelling mistake twice in the post you quoted which makes us white folk look doomb. :D

"Ethic" instead of "ethnic" is more of a typo than a genuine spelling mistake, surely?

what time is it?

1904?

or 1938?

what time is it?

1904?

or 1938?How does that matter? The history of humankind was not decided in the last 100 or so years, but has been going on for at least the last 60000 years (since homo sapiens sapiens stepped out of Africa). The question whether since then humankind has developed more in the vast new territories it has conquered or in its natural habitat it had already occupied prior is a valid question.

Actually, I agree. There doesn't need to be evidence and back up to simply say: "Hey, this is a generally accepted theory that has no evidence or sourcing to back it up." One does not have to have a credible counter-claim to simply take note that a staetment has nothing to back it itself up on.

That's what I see in this. The theory of equal intelligence across humanity may be true, or it may be false....but the stement Watson is that we accept it to be true without asking why...or...what if it's not?

Except that Watson was either ignorant of the fact that such evidence has been accumulated, (linky (http://www.suz.unizh.ch/volken/ThomasVolken/pdfs/IQWealthNation.pdf), linky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man), linky (http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006608), linky (http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/wealth_of_nations.htm), linky (http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/siegle/research/Correlation/Intelligence.pdf), linky (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=14992214&dopt=Citation)) or he is simply lying. Apparently, he is unable to use Google.

The reason many scientists believe that the correlation between race and intelligence is not as simple as Watson suggests is because that what reality tells us.

"Ethic" instead of "ethnic" is more of a typo than a genuine spelling mistake, surely?


it surely was but it looked like a doomb spelling mistake.

Dr. James Watson is not some radical who wants to prove some whacked out racist agenda. He is one of the greatest scientist of our time. There is evidence to support his claims. I mean, just look at Africa and compare it to Europe. Evolution does not always favor the most intellegent, it favors whoever has the most kids. So the brilliant person who never has sex loses to the violent rapist in the long run. In much of Africa, there is no family planning, there are no monetary rewards for being intellegent, people don't get married because they love each other, there are just strong men who pass on their genetics by raping women. I'm not saying all of africa is like that, and I'm not trying to perpetuate racist stereotypes of Africa. This stuff is true.

I'm just wondering what exactly is being implied here with policies that don't presume that different ethnic groups exhibit roughly the same IQs across their members.

If we were to take him seriously and change our policies to take account of the idea that Africans are relatively stupid - what would such policies look like?

I think that's a more important question than whether or not his premises make any sense. If his prescribed policy is unworkable, stupid or unacceptable from a human rights and freedom standpoint, then we don't have to worry about IQ genes and can keep that where it belongs: in academic papers.
Indeed. My main concern is that science remains science, and does not delve into the realm of politics and ethics. If he can prove that blacks are less intelligent, so be it. Whether this warrants them being treated differently is tangential and not for science to determine. Of course, if he were consistent, he'd be advocating for rights to be linked to intelligence, but again that is an ethical matter.

Actually, I agree. There doesn't need to be evidence and back up to simply say: "Hey, this is a generally accepted theory that has no evidence or sourcing to back it up." One does not have to have a credible counter-claim to simply take note that a staetment has nothing to back it itself up on.

That's what I see in this. The theory of equal intelligence across humanity may be true, or it may be false....but the stement Watson is that we accept it to be true without asking why...or...what if it's not?
Exactly. Nothing deserves not to be questioned just because it's generally accepted to be true, especially when it lacks supporting evidence.

How does that matter? The history of humankind was not decided in the last 100 or so years, but has been going on for at least the last 60000 years (since homo sapiens sapiens stepped out of Africa). The question whether since then humankind has developed more in the vast new territories it has conquered or in its natural habitat it had already occupied prior is a valid question.



a rehash of the ye olde eugenics garbage popular around those times.
it sure seems like 1938 around this planet recently.

Africans being blamed for their poverty,
while it doesn't take a 1st grader to tell you about colonialism, neo-colonialism (to the present) and corrupt local 'leaders' "Looting Africa (http://www.amazon.com/Looting-Africa-Exploitation-Patrick-Bond/dp/1842778110)"


the racist views we get exposed to in the media make it look like the poors of Africa are that way because they are un-intelligent.

Yup, theys poor b'cause theys dums.

Except that Watson was either ignorant of the fact that such evidence has been accumulated, (linky (http://www.suz.unizh.ch/volken/ThomasVolken/pdfs/IQWealthNation.pdf), linky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man), linky (http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006608), linky (http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/wealth_of_nations.htm), linky (http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/siegle/research/Correlation/Intelligence.pdf), linky (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=14992214&dopt=Citation)) or he is simply lying. Apparently, he is unable to use Google.

The reason many scientists believe that the correlation between race and intelligence is not as simple as Watson suggests is because that what reality tells us.

Are you aware that none of those links actually offer the evidence you claim they do? Some of them point out problems in studies making contrary claims, but that's far from the same thing.

Oh, he definately is. He just needs to back it up with solid reasoning; which he has not provided yet.

Or, he presumes the audience has a reasonable degree of intelligence and common sense.

a rehash of the ye olde eugenics garbage popular around those times.
it sure seems like 1938 around this planet recently.

Africans being blamed for their poverty,
while it doesn't take a 1st grader to tell you about colonialism, neo-colonialism (to the present) and corrupt local 'leaders' "Looting Africa (http://www.amazon.com/Looting-Africa-Exploitation-Patrick-Bond/dp/1842778110)"


the racist views we get exposed to in the media make it look like the poors of Africa are that way because they are un-intelligent.

Yup, theys poor b'cause theys dums.

The sad, tired, pathetic 'blame Whitey for all our failure' argument.

How is Singapore and Hong Kong these days?

Some people took advantage of it.

Dr. James Watson is not some radical who wants to prove some whacked out racist agenda. He is one of the greatest scientist of our time. There is evidence to support his claims. I mean, just look at Africa and compare it to Europe. Evolution does not always favor the most intellegent, it favors whoever has the most kids. So the brilliant person who never has sex loses to the violent rapist in the long run. In much of Africa, there is no family planning, there are no monetary rewards for being intellegent, people don't get married because they love each other, there are just strong men who pass on their genetics by raping women. I'm not saying all of africa is like that, and I'm not trying to perpetuate racist stereotypes of Africa. This stuff is true.

know what I like...Sources. Not just "this stuff is true"

On this:

The Science Museum has cancelled a talk by American DNA pioneer Dr James Watson after he claimed black people were less intelligent than white people.

Dr Watson, who won a Nobel Prize in 1962 for his part in discovering the structure of DNA, was due to speak at the venue on Friday.

But the museum has cancelled the event, saying his views went "beyond the point of acceptable debate".

Skills Minister David Lammy said Dr Watson's views "were deeply offensive".

He added: "They will succeed only in providing oxygen for the BNP.

"It is a shame that a man with a record of scientific distinction should see his work overshadowed by his own irrational prejudices."

Dr Watson, currently director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) in New York, has arrived in Britain to promote his latest book.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, the 79-year-old said he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really".

He went on to say he hoped everyone was equal but that "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true".

A spokesman for the Science Museum said: "We know that eminent scientists can sometimes say things that cause controversy and the Science Museum does not shy away from debating controversial topics.

"However, we feel Dr Watson has gone beyond the point of acceptable debate and we are, as a result, cancelling his talk."

Unreserved apology

But reacting to the "storm in the media", the geneticist said he was "mortified" by what had happened.

"I can certainly understand why people, reading those words, have reacted in the ways they have.

"To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologise unreservedly.

"That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief."

The scientist has courted controversy in the past, saying a woman should have the right to abort her unborn child if tests could determine it would be homosexual.

Here's the source (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/7050020.stm).

A black person growing up in a healthy environment would probably be smarter than a black person living in the inner city or a third world country. Environment has some influence over intelligence. I was watching Nova and they had an episode about epigenetics. Epigenes shut off certain parts of your dna depending on what happens to you in your life. Epigenes can be affected by famine, and negative (or positive) effects can be passed down for at least 2 generations. I doubt it’s a coincidence that people with money tend to be more intelligent. Ashkenazi jews have a much higher average iq than ordinary white people.

Read this study http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=16391557

In other words unhealthy parents alter their epigenes and their kids become more likely to be unhealthy.

I read a book called Guns, Germs, and Steel that gave some non racist explanations for the fact that the rest of the world did not develop as quickly as Europe and Asia did. One of the most important factors for the start of civilization is the domesticated animal. Without good domesticated animals, very little agriculture will develop and an agriculture society will probably not develop. The ancient Mayans managed to build an empire on corn and lamas, but most native americans didn't manage to pull that off. It's not as easy as building an empire with carrots, beans, cows, pigs, horses, ect. Agriculture is essential to life as we know it, because agriculture is the only way to produce more food than the wilderness can provide, and thus create more roles in society other than hunting and gathering. Without agriculture, you would spend all day of every day trying to find food and protect your family. If your life was like this you and your peers probably wouldn’t develop any written languages, but your lack of technology would have nothing to do with your intelligence. In that situation it would be life endangering to spend a lot of time doing anything except finding food. Developing an agricultural society would be the only way to start creating advanced technology.

Agriculture is more difficult in some places than others. Africa is one of the most brutal places on Earth. Europeans got lucky because Europe happened to be full of pigs and cows instead of zebras and rinos. African animals evolved alongside with humans, and they developed hereditary a bad temper in self defense. Many European animals didn’t have time to evolve bad tempers, and so they where easily tamed. Since Europe had better plants and animals to use they developed more quickly, and then they attacked Africa and reduced it to the chaotic state it's in today. None of this is the fault of the Africans.

Just because this guy says something controversial, its stupid to reject it without examining the evidence.

Just because this guy says something controversial, its stupid to reject it without examining the evidence.

That's the point, he hasn't provided any.

The evidence is that most non European countries started out poorer and remain poorer to this day. I'm not a racial supremacist, but the evidence here is strong and should be discussed instead of being considered a taboo topic of conversation.

The evidence is that most non European countries started out poorer and remain poorer to this day. I'm not a racial supremacist, but the evidence here is strong and should be discussed instead of being considered a taboo topic of conversation.

Except most places started out much richer than their European counterparts.

Pff. Even the generalization of "Africans" in this study is ridiculous. The genetic diversity of people within Africa is far greater than the genetic diversity of people outside it. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/01/990125073157.htm)

To quote Pratchett:
:)

Click Stand;13146768']Except most places started out much richer than their European counterparts.Where? I know that the Middle East was more advanced than Europe for a long time, but the Middle East and Europe share so much of the same culture and history that some people consider the Middle East part of Europe. (When talking about race I mean. Obviously in geography they aren't the same place.)

Lets say that africans really are less intellegent than westerners. How would you go about proving something like that? Could anyone here design a better test than dr. watson? Is such a thing, in fact, impossible to prove.

The evidence is that most non European countries started out poorer and remain poorer to this day. I'm not a racial supremacist, but the evidence here is strong and should be discussed instead of being considered a taboo topic of conversation.

Thankyou, most people don't give this idea any credence before they start picking it apart. There is a difference between being a racist and a realist. I know black people, africans even, who are smarter than I am, but I still think that dr. watson is on to something.

Where? I know that the Middle East was more advanced than Europe for a long time, but the Middle East and Europe share so much of the same culture and history that some people consider the Middle East part of Europe. (When talking about race I mean. Obviously in geography they aren't the same place.)

Hell, there was even a time when africa was the center of wealth and knowledge in the world. The modern word chemistry comes from the ancient egyptian word kemia which means to mix paint. the arabs later attached the word al which means the to kemia to make al-kemia which later became alchemy. Then alchemy became chemistry in Germany. So you can see a progression here. Africa - arabia - europe.

Click Stand;13146602']know what I like...Sources. Not just "this stuff is true"

South Africa has the highest rape-rate. Other countries in Africa have even higher rates but the rapes are not reported and the government does not keep records of them.

link (http://www.nationmaster.com/country/se-seychelles/cri-crime)

Except that there has been over 240 different tests conducted on sub-Saharan Blacks, and in each and every one of them, they have scored below 'Westerners'.

All 'racism', no doubt.

Not necessarily. Where these tests culturally neutral?

Did they account for the educational norms of the populations they were testing?

What form did the tests take?

Who monitored them?

A test written by white 'westerners' as you put it will favour white westerners.

How many tests have been written by sub-Saharan Africans? How did westeners score on them?

Have you any idea what validity means?

Hell, there was even a time when africa was the center of wealth and knowledge in the world. The modern word chemistry comes from the ancient egyptian word kemia which means to mix paint. the arabs later attached the word al which means the to kemia to make al-kemia which later became alchemy. Then alchemy became chemistry in Germany. So you can see a progression here. Africa - arabia - europe.

Following this trend, I predict polar bears, Alaskans, Canadians and Siberians will experience an intelligence boom in the coming years, which jealous Europeans will contribute to the wealth from mining oil that has been made more accessible by global warming. (and increased natural selection in polar bears due to less ice) Seeing this, the penguins will launch a preemptive strike to prevent super-intelligent polar bears from using them as a source of food. Provided the polar bears don't die out before then.

Thankyou, most people don't give this idea any credence before they start picking it apart. There is a difference between being a racist and a realist. I know black people, africans even, who are smarter than I am, but I still think that dr. watson is on to something.I agree with you, people should look at the world and say "how did it get this way?" Instead of coming up with an opinion before they examine any of the facts.

Instead of talking about racism people just put up signs that say "This is a HATE FREE ZONE" (that sign has been in my neighborhood for years and it always bothers me, like just saying it makes it true) and then they refuse to seriously compare cultures unless you are careful to compare them in a way that avoids generalization and makes everyone's accomplishments look equal.

But, you shouldn't be so quick to say Watson is on to something. He's only scratched the surface and he's shown no interest in looking any deeper. His only redeeming quality is his unusual honesty. He admits that he spends time around smart people so he can seem smarter. I think he has an inferiority complex which causes him to avoid anyone he considers beneath him. He has no ethical dilemma with aborting the bottom 10% in intelligence and engineering all girls to be pretty. The only reason he said that is because he is so hideous. Also, his laugh is as creepy as hell. I've heard him on the radio, he sounds like a villain in a movie. He kind of snorts and giggles at the same time. It's pretty funny.Hell, there was even a time when africa was the center of wealth and knowledge in the world. The modern word chemistry comes from the ancient egyptian word kemia which means to mix paint. the arabs later attached the word al which means the to kemia to make al-kemia which later became alchemy. Then alchemy became chemistry in Germany. So you can see a progression here. Africa - arabia - europe.Yeah, geographically Egypt is in Africa. But culturally, all of northern Africa is in the Middle East.

Europeans aren't just mutated Africans. We've evolved differently. It's obvious. Just look at a European's skull and an African's skull. They're both different.

One obvious point is the shape of the nose. Africans tend to have wider, flatter noses while Europeans have narrower, straighter noses.

Come on... you really believe this? You're joking, right?

I don't see why Watson's not allowed even to raise the issue.

In his recent book (Avoid Boring People and Other Lessons from a Life in Science) he writes:

There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.

And he's right. That shouldn't even be a controversial statement.

He's allowed to do, but then he has to back it up with valuable things and not stuff as:

"He said there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true"

Nitpick: different education. No doubt the stereotypical Maori hunter for instance has quite impressive spatial insight, but he might be unable to solve the "which shape does this become when you fold it" questions of an intelligence test.

To quote Pratchett:“Ignorant: a state of not knowing what a pronoun is, or how to find the square root of 27.4, and merely knowing childish and useless things like which of the seventy almost identical-looking species of the purple sea snake are the deadly ones, how to treat the poisonous pith of the Sago-sago tree to make a nourishing gruel, how to foretell the weather by the movement of the tree-climbing Burglar Crab, how to navigate across a thousand miles of featureless ocean by means of a piece of string and a small clay model of your grandfather, how to get essential vitamins from the liver of the ferocious Ice Bear, and other such trivial matters. It's a strange thing that when everyone becomes educated, everyone knows about the pronoun but no one knows about the Sago-sago”

Pratchett is my new hero. :D

Anyway, as has been said many times in this thread, it's the height of absurdity to design tests based on Western norms of education, knowledge and priorities, then feign surprise when Westerners outperform everyone else.

Pratchett is my new hero. :D

Anyway, as has been said many times in this thread, it's the height of absurdity to design tests based on Western norms of education, knowledge and priorities, then feign surprise when Westerners outperform everyone else.

I'm even silent about the food issue.

Even if we design a nice trustable test, it could show differences in IQ.

But lack of healthy and nutritious food is influencing the potential IQ.

Maybe that's why hamburger-loving America is doing worse as lots of European countries.

Is Europe smarter as USA? No.

First of all apologies for the "god is white post" I just wanted to see how people reacted to a statment like that.;)
On the seriousness side, I do believe that there are a lot of stupid, non-intelligent people out there, from both races but that is thanks to our media that has been "feeding" us with retarded reality shows making these hollow-media-created-people into VIP's flooding magazines and prime time with useless exhibitions of themselves and (opinions??)
Racially speaking - if there is still any such thing - I find that almost all races have a grudge with us (wonder why:confused:) and like black people and jews usually they choose to carry a victimization iron foot-ball using it whenever the tide turns against them.

"We were well off in Africa it was youz whites that brought us here" - 3rd generation black person speaking or "The German government never gave us a cent for my uncles' time in the concentration camps" - lady the War it's been over for almost 70years give it a rest will you!

Finally however I think that this doctor decided on making a statment which he knew would cause great upheavel - it's what you call a publicity stunt very popular into todays world...case you didnt know.
In this sick world of ours I'm pretty sure that he will get lots of invitations to conferences, foundations bla bla bla...because as you probably are all aware researchers and Univ. which publish material stating that global warming is in no way related to the consumption of fossil fuels are those that receive millions for research...makes you think heh!

Or, he presumes the audience has a reasonable degree of intelligence and common sense.

I work with several people of recent African descent. My workfloor experiences do not correspond to his.
Again: I want to see how he compares intelligences.

I work with several people of recent African descent. My workfloor experiences do not correspond to his.
Again: I want to see how he compares intelligences.

He asked the opinion of former Nazis, 70-year old South African farmers and he watched too much COPS (http://www.cops.com/).

He's a known racist. Next.

He's a known racist. Next.

Is it?

He asked the opinion of former Nazis, 70-year old South African farmers and he watched too much COPS (http://www.cops.com/).

Watson has probably been racist all his life and tried to back up his beliefs with whatever science he could twist, his comment about black employees is a testament to that.

There's more to intelligence that filling out a form properly. If a group of university boffins and a group of nomadic Masai warriors were para-dropped into the middle of the African desert and told to fend for themselves, then we'd see who is smarter.

He asked the opinion of former Nazis, 70-year old South African farmers and he watched too much COPS (http://www.cops.com/).

Possibly. Then again, he could have actually made an effort.
I am just curious to see how, because to me it is like comparing bakers and plumbers: different, but in my eyes not inferior to eachother.

Hell, there was even a time when africa was the center of wealth and knowledge in the world. The modern word chemistry comes from the ancient egyptian word kemia which means to mix paint. the arabs later attached the word al which means the to kemia to make al-kemia which later became alchemy. Then alchemy became chemistry in Germany. So you can see a progression here. Africa - arabia - europe.

Actually, not.

Africa has a deep cultural and ethnical divide, since about 10000 years ago: the Sahara. Cultures on the northern edge of Sahara are quite different from cultures south of the Sahara.

The ancient egyptian culture is part of the same cultural group of the Middle-East and Mediterranean. See the Hyksos invasion, trade with the Phoenicians and the Etrurians, Jews in Egypt, Alexandrine Egypt, Roman domination - while Saharan (typically Nubian, today's Sudan) cultures appear only very briefly as invaders/PoWs/slaves in egyptian history, and sub-saharan people are just briefly named as "jungle-men who live way south" by some egyptian or phoenician explorers.

The myth of the "western" civilisation as a purely "european" culture is totally unfounded. The urheimat of the "western" civilisation includes the Mediterranean, Northern Africa, and Asia from the western border going east to Western China and India.

Possibly. Then again, he could have actually made an effort.
I am just curious to see how, because to me it is like comparing bakers and plumbers: different, but in my eyes not inferior to eachother.

So?

And even if it is proven that those whites are having a higher IQ as blacks or vice versa, what's next?

A hillbilly with a high IQ remains a hillbilly.

Btw dumb people will never win the formula 1 championship. A black guy is now in the possibility to achieve the title…

a rehash of the ye olde eugenics garbage popular around those times.
it sure seems like 1938 around this planet recently.

Africans being blamed for their poverty,
while it doesn't take a 1st grader to tell you about colonialism, neo-colonialism (to the present) and corrupt local 'leaders' "Looting Africa (http://www.amazon.com/Looting-Africa-Exploitation-Patrick-Bond/dp/1842778110)"


the racist views we get exposed to in the media make it look like the poors of Africa are that way because they are un-intelligent.

Yup, theys poor b'cause theys dums.When the colonialists arrived in Africa, what did they find? Why didn't they find cultures and civilizations to match, rival, and withstand their own?

When the colonialists arrived in Africa, what did they find? Why didn't they find cultures and civilizations to match, rival, and withstand their own?

It depends what you use as a barometer to describe 'success'

The climate, the environment and the richness it gave, the isolation are surely determining why they didn’t develop according our standards.

Even today, you can find similar cultures in the rainforests of Brazil or Borneo.

We brought ‘civilization’ but destroyed their very well working way of life.

When the colonialists arrived in Africa, what did they find? Why didn't they find cultures and civilizations to match, rival, and withstand their own?
read, "Guns, germ and steel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns%2C_Germs%2C_and_Steel)". It'll answer your questions.
Or, if you can't be arsed hunting down the book and reading it, here's a transcript of the PBS special on it:

http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/show/index.html

It's basically a primer of the book, takes about 30 minutes to read through all episodes.

Once again the Nobel Committee proves it's amazing ability to pick winners ;)

Once again the Nobel Committee proves it's amazing ability to pick winners ;)

He won his prize in 1962 and I think he deserved it.

But at that time he was still sane, I guess.

He won his prize in 1962 and I think he deserved it.

But at that time he was still sane, I guess.

I think it's good that the Nobel Prize is awarded for the single result, and not life, carreer, and generally not being a prick.

I think it's good that the Nobel Prize is awarded for the single result, and not life, carreer, and generally not being a prick.

:)

Are you aware that none of those links actually offer the evidence you claim they do? Some of them point out problems in studies making contrary claims, but that's far from the same thing.

Let's look at the comment he made and that you quoted:

There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.

He makes two statements here. The second one about humans wanting something not making it real; that one's correct. The first one is not.

There are many firm reasons to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. They are brought up every time somebody tries to find a genetic justification for their racism. Let's look at just one: intelligence as a survival trait. Intelligence is like strength, or speed, or a better immune system. It always confers a survival advantage. Things like skin colour may or may not, but these do.

Now, why would Africans, the most genetically diverse group of people on the planet, happen to stop evolving their intelligence despite the fact that it confers a definite survival advantage in all of Africa's diverse environments?

There. One firm reason. My links include abundant evidence against a genetic correlation between race and intelligence.

Now, I have a question which would go a long way to disproving my claim, if you can answer it affirmatively:

Is there any real, hard, scientific evidence that there are any inherent, hereditary psychological differences of any kind between different human "races" or colors or ethnic groups?

Maybe someone had posted it before, but I didn't read the entire thread. Whatever.

There've been highly advanced cultures in Black Africa (it's just a poetic name, not racist proclamation), like Ashanti (lots of talented craftsmen and metalworkers) and Great Zimbabwe.

What do you guys think about this whole incident?

I think it's true, but intelligence genes can alter quite quickly. I'm sure if I had God powers, by only changing the environments I could switch intelligence levels in just a few generations.

There've been highly advanced cultures in Black Africa (it's just a poetic name, not racist proclamation), like Ashanti (lots of talented craftsmen and metalworkers) and Great Zimbabwe.
Exactly. The problem is just that when those fell apart, generally there didn't immediately pop something else up to take their places and build on their achievements. In Europe you had one "Dark Age" and historians aren't even entirely sure whether that was as dark as we initially assumed. In general though, when one empire collapsed you had someting else conquer it or otherwise take over and the same was true in China. In Africa on the other hand you had lots and lots of Dark Ages.

I would blame a combination of the physical distances, climate and geography, not really the people who live there. For scientists, artists et al to sit down and have great advances they need enough free time, enough food and a certain freedom from being clubbed over the head. That wasn't often available in Africa.

There's more to intelligence that filling out a form properly. If a group of university boffins and a group of nomadic Masai warriors were para-dropped into the middle of the African desert and told to fend for themselves, then we'd see who is smarter.
The guy who stayed behind and flew the plane to Vegas.

Dr. James Watson is not some radical who wants to prove some whacked out racist agenda. He is one of the greatest scientist of our time. There is evidence to support his claims. I mean, just look at Africa and compare it to Europe. Evolution does not always favor the most intellegent, it favors whoever has the most kids. So the brilliant person who never has sex loses to the violent rapist in the long run. In much of Africa, there is no family planning, there are no monetary rewards for being intellegent, people don't get married because they love each other, there are just strong men who pass on their genetics by raping women. I'm not saying all of africa is like that, and I'm not trying to perpetuate racist stereotypes of Africa. This stuff is true.

Gee, and to think I wondered why you were such an apologist for the Civil War. Go figure.

I wonder how those of you that have been agreeing with Watson's statements will deal with the fact that he has repudiated them:

The biologist apologized "unreservedly" Thursday for his comments and said he was "mortified" by the words attributed to him.

"I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said," Watson said during an appearance at the Royal Society in London. "I can certainly understand why people, reading those words, have reacted in the ways that they have."

"To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief."

linky (http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/10/19/uk.race/index.html) (emphasis added)

I wonder how those of you that have been agreeing with Watson's statements will deal with the fact that he has repudiated them:

That's not what he said, though.

He said his meaning was not that Africa, "as a continent", is "genetically inferior." Not a word about whether or not Africans, in general, are intellectually inferior for genetic reasons... which is a different claim, at least to a racist interested in backpedaling.

When the colonialists arrived in Africa, what did they find? Why didn't they find cultures and civilizations to match, rival, and withstand their own?

Read some of George B.N. Ayittey's books.

Maybe someone had posted it before, but I didn't read the entire thread. Whatever.

There've been highly advanced cultures in Black Africa (it's just a poetic name, not racist proclamation), like Ashanti (lots of talented craftsmen and metalworkers) and Great Zimbabwe.But that was only in the 15th and 16th centuries CE. What has Africa done before??

Read some of George B.N. Ayittey's books.Why?

But that was only in the 15th and 16th centuries CE. What has Africa done before??They invented coffee, and they where the first humans in the universe, okay?

They invented coffee,And coffee was enough to keep colonialists away?

and they where the first humans in the universe, okay?That's not an achievement.
And btw. all other humans are descended from those folks, too. However, outside of Africa their pace of development has increased. Why not in Africa?

It is an achievement to survive so long in Africa, and develop the first human society's, languages, art, weapons, ect. I already wrote a post about why so few large society's where developed by ancient Africans, their environment was much more difficult to tame than the Europe's environment. If you want you can read that post on page 10.

Europe also failed to tame Africa's environment. European and Asians totally conquered all of america and most of the world, and yet they couldn't take over Africa very successfully. This is because Africa is a brutal place.

It is an achievement to survive so long in Africa, and develop the first human society's, languages, art, weapons, ect. I already wrote a post about why so few large society's where developed by ancient Africans, their environment was much more difficult to tame than the Europe's environment. If you want you can read that post on page 10.

Europe also failed to tame Africa's environment. European and Asians totally conquered all of america and most of the world, and yet they couldn't take over Africa very successfully. This is because Africa is a brutal place.Oh please, what are you saying? Humanity lived in Africa for millions of years before homo sapiens sapiens stepped out of Africa around 60000 BCE. All of humanity has survived that long in Africa, but then, especially after the last ice age that ended roughly 10000 BCE, the development started to differ considerably. The neolithic revolution started outside of Africa and apparently from then on Africa never caught up. I mean the jungles of Asia were no easier to tame than those of Africa but South Asia and Southeast Asia have also surpassed Africa. And while Africa may have a difficult environment, the resources available are much more abundant than anywhere else. The effort humans had to take in Asia, Europe, and later the Americas to secure food was surely greater than it ever was in Africa.
The question remains: when Africa saw the building of Great Zimbabwe, Michelangelo started re-building St. Peter; why this immense difference in almost every aspect of human (social) life?

Sorry, but you're just wrong about Africa having more abundant resources and equally dangerous jungles. Read the book guns, germs, and steel, or just read the wikipedia entry on the book. It goes into great detail about why the plants and animals in Africa are very difficult to turn into an agricultural society. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns_germs_and_steel

By the way, you didn't address the fact that Europe has failed to take over Africa. Why where most of the native north and south Americans exterminated and replaced by successful European society's, but the attempted take over of Africa only resulted in more chaos? It certainly wasn't because the armies of Africa rivaled that of Europe's.

By the way, you didn't address the fact that Europe has failed to take over Africa. Why where most of the native north and south Americans exterminated and replaced by successful European society's, but the attempted take over of Africa only resulted in more chaos? It certainly wasn't because the armies of Africa rivaled that of Europe's.

From what I've heard, it had to do with malaria or some disease like that. The Europeans didn't want to set foot into inner Africa because of that and probably a few other factors.

I agree with you BTW

It doesn't take any test to see that Africans are less intelligent, just compare their advances in technology and civilization to others. You will see that African contributions are both dwarfed by European and Asian advances.

Also, the 'out of africa' theory is now incorrect. The first humans are now believed in the scientific community to be out of Asia.

It doesn't take any test to see that Africans are less intelligent, just compare their advances in technology and civilization to others. You will see that African contributions are both dwarfed by European and Asian advances.

Also, the 'out of africa' theory is now incorrect. The first humans are now believed in the scientific community to be out of Asia.

I would look up the differences in invention, but I am afraid of getting a great deal of racist type websites. I will instead refer you to the Kingdom of Mali and be on my merry way.

Also, the 'out of africa' theory is now incorrect. The first humans are now believed in the scientific community to be out of Asia.
You're so wrong it's not even funny.

Aspadan, if you had read the rest of the thread and my posts you would find perfectly reasonable explanations for the lack of invention in Africa that have nothing to do with intelligence. It's natural to assume that the most inventive civilizations have the most intelligent people, but the truth is that environment has a much bigger impact on society than the intelligence of individual people. Africans have a low average IQ, but starving people never have as high an IQ as the wealthy. The brain is made of fat, so starving people can lose brain mass to feed the rest of the body. Africans thrive when they are given the chance to. African americans have been very inventive in music, literature, politics, art, and entertainment.

In some cases, it's stupid to work on inventing things. When you live in the desert and are always struggling to find edible plants and water, it would be suicidal to waste your time trying to develop a written language, or to try to farm anything when there are no few plants to farm and no good place to farm it. The people who left Africa found that the animals in the middle east where less dangerous, and wheat grew all over the fertile crescent. This is why agriculture developed, it had nothing to do with the intelligence of the people living there.

Personally I haven't met many black people, but all the ones I've met have seemed like they have normal or above average intelligence.

You're so wrong it's not even funny.

I am not wrong at all, actually.



Personally I haven't met many black people, but all the ones I've met have seemed like they have normal or above average intelligence.

That sums it up perfectly.

Try living around them for twenty years. See if your views change.

African americans have been very inventive in music, literature, politics, art, and entertainment.

The minority of them have. Keyword: Minority.

If you live around a lot black people, you probably live in a pretty poor area with bad resources where the white people are also stupid.

It's defiantly not a minority of black people who are inventive with music. Black Americans have pretty much been in charge of innovation in popular music ever since jazz and the blues. Again I think this is because of environment and not innate ability. Slaves where not allowed any freedom of expression except in music, so this is the ability that they passed on to newer generations.

Also, if you're so sure about all of humanity coming from Asia, you should show some kind of resource, because that is the exact opposite of what everybody has been taught in school. Strong claims need strong evidence.

One other thing. You think Asians are not stupid, and Africans are stupid. You also think Asians immigrated to Africa. Why did the Asians become stupider? There's no genetic advantage to stupidity.

Sorry, but you're just wrong about Africa having more abundant resources and equally dangerous jungles. Read the book guns, germs, and steel, or just read the wikipedia entry on the book. It goes into great detail about why the plants and animals in Africa are very difficult to turn into an agricultural society. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns_germs_and_steelDevelopment comes out of the necessity to develop. Apparently Africans were adapted to their environment well enough to survive, after all Africa is human's natural habitat. But Africans never made that step beyond mere survival. And although they shared the continent with Middle-Eastern cultures (Egypt, Punt) they did not take up those impulses to move ahead in their cultural evolution. I mean, when Europeans started to really explore the African continent they came across tribal societies in a de facto neolithic stage of development (both technically and socially). I find it hard to blame that entirely on the environment. Why did something like Great Zimbabwe not occur 5000 years earlier?

By the way, you didn't address the fact that Europe has failed to take over Africa. Why where most of the native north and south Americans exterminated and replaced by successful European society's, but the attempted take over of Africa only resulted in more chaos? It certainly wasn't because the armies of Africa rivaled that of Europe's.How did Africa end up being sliced into colonies?

Of course they're not, but they're both obviously less intelligent than us Asians. Brown and yellow all the way!

When the colonialists arrived in Africa, what did they find? Why didn't they find cultures and civilizations to match, rival, and withstand their own?

Intelligence is measured by ones capacity to wage war ?

Intelligence is measured by ones capacity to wage war ?Who spoke of war?

Who spoke of war?

Throughout history cultures and civilisations seldom survived due to being enlightened and peaceful. The barbaric neighbours somewhat tend to take over.

Throughout history cultures and civilisations seldom survived due to being enlightened and peaceful. The barbaric neighbours somewhat tend to take over.What the heck are you talking about?
When colonialists came to take over Japan, what did they find? When colonialists came to take over Guinea (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinea_%28region%29), what did they find? How and why was it different?

Development comes out of the necessity to develop. Apparently Africans were adapted to their environment well enough to survive, after all Africa is human's natural habitat. But Africans never made that step beyond mere survival. And although they shared the continent with Middle-Eastern cultures (Egypt, Punt) they did not take up those impulses to move ahead in their cultural evolution. I mean, when Europeans started to really explore the African continent they came across tribal societies in a de facto neolithic stage of development (both technically and socially). I find it hard to blame that entirely on the environment. Why did something like Great Zimbabwe not occur 5000 years earlier?

How did Africa end up being sliced into colonies?

Your a jerk

This video covers the fall of the fairly primitive Zulus, the one attatched (you'll see the icon) talks about the fall of some of the more advanced Civilizations (sorry the video on the first video is shotty)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwLYW8s4jEc


My own video (with links to several websites)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYAakRdQeNQ

From Howard Zinn's history of the united states"

Was their culture inferior -- and so subject to easy destruction? Inferior in military capability, yes --vulnerable to whites with guns and ships. But in no other way -- except that cultures that are different are often taken as inferior, especially when such a judgment is practical and profitable. Even militarily, while the Westerners could secure forts on the African coast, they were unable to subdue the interior and had to come to terms with its chiefs.


The African civilization was as advanced in its own way as that of Europe. In certain ways, it was more admirable; but it also included cruelties, hierarchical privilege, and the readiness to sacrifice human lives for religion or profit. It was a civilization of 100 million people, using iron implements and skilled in farming. It had large urban centers and remarkable achievements in weaving, ceramics, sculpture.


European travelers in the sixteenth century were impressed with the African kingdoms of Timbuktu and Mali, already stable and organized at a time when European states were just beginning to develop into the modern nation. In 1563, Ramusio, secretary to the rulers in Venice, wrote to the Italian merchants: "Let them go and do business with the King of Timbuktu and Mali and there is no doubt that they will be well-received there with their ships and their goods and treated well, and granted the favours that they ask..."


A Dutch report, around 1602, on the West African kingdom of Benin, said: "The Towne seemeth to be very great, when you enter it. You go into a great broad street, not paved, which seemeth to be seven or eight times broader than the Warmoes Street in Amsterdam. ...The Houses in this Towne stand in good order, one close and even with the other, as the Houses in Holland stand."


The inhabitants of the Guinea Coast were described by one traveler around 1680 as "very civil and good-natured people, easy to be dealt with, condescending to what Europeans require of them in a civil way, and very ready to return double the presents we make them."

Why was Africa cut up and colonized? It had nothing to do with Civilization advancement but rather military technology, why do you think the advanced Civilizations of Mexico were conqured? In fact for most of it's history Africa has been more stable and yes advanced than Europe, except for Rome and Greece. Interestingly Rome and Greece had great respect for Africa but saw the primitivness of their more pale skinned brothers to the north as innately stupid and savage and would never ammount to anything

Here is some good websites that talk about that (note Greeks and Romans have an olive complexion and they didn't think of themselves as white)

http://www.geocities.com/ru00ru00/racismhistory/earlyhistory.html

http://endingstereotypesforamerica.org/black_and_white_intelligence.html

Ok I don't want to get into contreversy, we'll stay away from the ethnicity of the Egyptions

The Nubians (who were black) were Civilized before stupid whitey or Greece or Rome

Later Taharqa (the greatest Nubian Pharoh who ruled Egypt in the 25th dynasty) was written by the Greek geographer Starbo as one of the great military geniuses of the world

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H81eBWMYgtk

While Herodotus said the Ethiopians (Nubians) were the tallest and most handsome of all men and Nubia was one of the cultural centers 2nd to Egypt

This is what the cultural histians said about whitey

"Barbarians can neither think nor act rationally, theological controversies are Greek to them... Under the assault of their horrible songs the classic meter of the ancient poet goes to pieces...Barbarians are driven by evil spirits; "possessed by demons", who force them to commit the most terrible acts...incapable of living according to written laws and only reluctantly tolerating kings...Their lust for gold is immense, their love of drink boundless. Barbarians are without restraint...Although generally they are considered good-looking, they are given to gross personal hygiene...They run dirty and barefoot, even in the winter...They grease their blond hair with butter and care not that it smells rancid...Their reproductive energy is inexhaustible; the Northern climate of their native land, with its long winter nights favors their fantastic urge to procreate...If a barbarian people is driven back or destroyed, another already emerges from the marshes and forests of Germany...Indeed, there are no new barbarian peoples--descendents of the same tribes keep appearing."

Ok I'll end the rant with this, when explorers landed on western Africa their own accounts (and those of Arabs to) are that of respect for the cities and virtues of the native Africans

"The Emperor (Mansa Musa) also brought Arabs scholars to Timbuktu. To his great surprise, the Emperor has found that these scholars are underqualified compared to the black scholars of Timbuktu. Abd Arahman Atimmi had such a low level that he was obliged to migrate to Marrakech to complete his prerequisites so he can sit in the classes as a student."

http://www.timbuktufoundation.org/history.html

"The museum plans to highlight a little-known connection between its host state and the manuscripts of Timbuktu: the story of Ibrahima Abd ar-Rahman, an 18th-century prince from what is now Guinea who studied at Timbuktu before being sold into slavery in Natchez, Miss. The prince's saga contradicts another widely held Western belief -- that Africans sold in the slave trade were uncivilized. In fact, many were doctors, dentists, lawyers, professors, musicians and members of royal families. And a large number were Muslim."
http://www.toubab.com/Contents/The_Niger_Trip/Timbuktu/tm13/tm14/w_post.html

The point is history goes in cycles, the problems in Africa have only happened since the Euro-Barbarien invasions, and yes I'm white :p

P.S. Before some ignoramous says it was built by Arabs like I've heared people say before (Christianity in Europe can from Jews did Jews build the churches) here is a video with some pagan kingdoms in it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M0xTgJWwW4

Sorry for the rant its just that I think it's horrible when people put down Africa after all the horrible things done to it

Throughout history cultures and civilisations seldom survived due to being enlightened and peaceful. The barbaric neighbours somewhat tend to take over.

I think thats true Songhay was probably the most advanced black African empire, I've even heared they knew the planets revolved around the sun before anyone else (but I can't confirm this) but it didn't stop them from falling to the guns and cannons of the Morocans.

Zulus put up a better fight against post Napoleonic era Britan

One last link I thats facinating

"Universal preference of whiteness over blackness?"
http://www.colorq.org/Articles/article.aspx?d=1999&x=blackwhite#encounters

Roman army defeats all nations encountered except the Ethiopians

The only nation which successfully resisted Roman domination was the Ethiopians. After conquering nations all the way from Italy to Egypt, the Roman legions were finally stopped by the Ethiopian military. Three times, Augustus sent his armies into Nubia, but he never conquered the Nubians.

Poe describes in Black Spark, White Fire:

"From the moment Augustus occupied Egypt in 30 B.C, the Romans had nothing but trouble from their southern frontier... the Ethiopians ... attacked the Thebais... took Syene and Elephantine and Philae, and enslaved the inhabitants, and also pulled down the statues of Caesar...The Emperor Diocletian was obliged, at the end of the third century A.D, to pay tribute to two Ethiopian tribes called the Nobatae and the Blemyes in order to stop their raids. These tribes continued collecting Roman tribute for the next two hundred years."20

I think it's astounding that some people can literally go, "Gee there's no Great African Empire. Therefore, black people are stupid."

Really, such people are about the last persons on this planet with a right to criticize anyone or anything based on intelligence.

Conversely, it's always amazed me that people can look at Beethoven and say, "Beethoven was white. Beethoven was great. Therefore, white people are great. (And I'm Beethoven.)"

You're so wrong it's not even funny.

I don't know, I think it's kind of funny.

Development comes out of the necessity to develop. Apparently Africans were adapted to their environment well enough to survive, after all Africa is human's natural habitat. But Africans never made that step beyond mere survival. And although they shared the continent with Middle-Eastern cultures (Egypt, Punt) they did not take up those impulses to move ahead in their cultural evolution. I mean, when Europeans started to really explore the African continent they came across tribal societies in a de facto neolithic stage of development (both technically and socially). I find it hard to blame that entirely on the environment. Why did something like Great Zimbabwe not occur 5000 years earlier?


Let's see...

Africans developed societal systems have been in place for thousands of years(Bands are very adaptable).

Europeans have developed a system which tend to crumble after only a few hundred years(As pretty much any civilizations tends to do; Rome, Mycenae, Minoans, and moder countries really only existing in their current state mostly for a a few hundred years).

So, if you think about it, the Band system is really more successful than Civilization.

As well, environment poses a massive barrier for much of Africa. Desert in the North, dense jungle in the mid. Not exactly ideal.

I agree that Africans black, brown and white are not as smart as Westerners. In fact any group of people that are not educated to a high degree as most in the west are most likely will be not as smart. The study is just pointing out the problems with education not in the ability of a certain race over another. My examples would be blacks in the US that have been educated are just as smart as their white or Asian counterparts.

I agree that Africans black, brown and white are not as smart as Westerners. In fact any group of people that are not educated to a high degree as most in the west are most likely will be not as smart. The study is just pointing out the problems with education not in the ability of a certain race over another. My examples would be blacks in the US that have been educated are just as smart as their white or Asian counterparts.

Well, educated in what? In academics? Sure, I'd agree. In the practicalities of living in Africa? Hell, they'd outrank us any day. Throw any westerner into the middle of any African city/town/village or even band, and said Westerner would probably wander about with their thumb up their ass wondering "What the hell do I do now?"

Okay, there's a lotta crap out here, and I'll try to srtraighten this out as best I can.

First off, evolution only cares if you have babies. If you don't have babies, your DNA dies with you, and any traits you have die with you. And for 99% of human history, intelligence just hasn't been a plus in that area. Smart people have just as many children as stupid people. And that really didn't change until the beginnings of industrialization. Illiterate serfs had babies, and so did educated knights.

Secondly, we only left Africa 100,000 years ago. As far as evolution goes, that isn't a lot of time. Arriving in Europe about 50,000 years ago, again not much compared to the 400,000 years that humans have existed. And the 10,000 years of "civilization" we have behind us haven't yet had much impact on our evolution. I don't think there's enough evolutionary time for a big difference between an African and a European. Just plain not enough time.

Another thing to keep in mind is that an IQ test can only measure G (general intelligence) indirectly. We test a certain skill set and use the results to estimate IQ. The problem is that all IQ tests test a skill. Usually its math or spatial reasoning skills. But just like any other set of skills, those skills can be learned. You can practice spatial skills and math skills by doing those sorts of puzzles. Basicly, if you spend enough time doing those types of activities, you'll get better at them.

First off, evolution only cares if you have babies. If you don't have babies, your DNA dies with you, and any traits you have die with you.

Nitpick: if you or your close relatives (preferably siblings) don't have babies etc.

Well, educated in what? In academics? Sure, I'd agree. In the practicalities of living in Africa? Hell, they'd outrank us any day. Throw any westerner into the middle of any African city/town/village or even band, and said Westerner would probably wander about with their thumb up their ass wondering "What the hell do I do now?"

Yes, for the average westerner that may be the case. I know I could survive but that is because I grew up hunting and spent a lot of time out in the wild as a kid and teenager. But I believe we are not talking about the basic survival smarts here. I also would suggest that most westerners would eventually do alright out in the wild if they were forced into the situation.

But I believe we are not talking about the basic survival smarts here. I also would suggest that most westerners would eventually do alright out in the wild if they were forced into the situation.

When the Portugese first travled to cities in east Africa the Africans thought they were uncivilized

I agree that Africans black, brown and white are not as smart as Westerners. In fact any group of people that are not educated to a high degree as most in the west are most likely will be not as smart.

Education =/= Intelligence.

People, stop acting as if Africa was inhabited completely by primitive people (although many were primitive)

The primitiveness of many people can be explained by the size and wildness of much of the continent, but still historicly Europe was backward and chaotic

They need to start teaching kids about the advanced Civilizations of Africa in school

When the Portugese first travled to cities in east Africa the Africans thought they were uncivilized

Well if someone arrived at your doorstep dressed in strange clothes smelling like a crap from a long journey on a ship then I can see why.

Well if someone arrived at your doorstep dressed in strange clothes smelling like a crap from a long journey on a ship then I can see why.

lol thats true, I'm just returning racism with racism which isn't really a good thing but it's fun

its ok if I call white people barbariens because I'm white :sniper:

human life began in africa:upyours:(the smiley for the scientist)

human life began in africa:upyours:(the smiley for the scientist)

Aye, anyone who bothers to do just a little research on African or American history (before colonization) knows blacks and Mexican people are equal to whites, asians

So, if you think about it, the Band system is really more successful than Civilization.That depends on what you call success. Cultural and social stagnation is not what I call success.
And I honestly doubt the environment argument.

human life began in africaAnd??

They need to start teaching kids about the advanced Civilizations of Africa in schoolSuch as?

That depends on what you call success. Cultural and social stagnation is not what I call success.
And I honestly doubt the environment argument.

And??

Such as?

go back a page you racist savage and try reading a book

I've "debated" with allot of your kind and your barbarien mentality prevents you from learning anything, no matter what it says in Encyclepedias or respected scholars

But if you really want to learn then here are some key words to look up, I've found all these in my old 89 world book encyclepedia:

1. Ghana

2. Mali

3. Songhay

4. Kongo

5. (great) Zimbabwe

6. Swahili

7. Bornu

8. Benin

10. Nubia

11. Aksum

I am not wrong at all, actually.

Then provide a source.

Here are two websites that are good in showing the general history of Africa, don't just pretend the facts arn't here like racists always do

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/index_section16.shtml

http://endingstereotypes.org/african_history.html

Also an interesting book is Basil Davidson's "African Kingdoms"

I'm sorry its just that its obvious this guy doesn't care about facts but rather stereotypes that fit his racist agenda

Here are two websites that are good in showing the general history of Africa, don't just pretend the facts arn't here like racists always do

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/index_section16.shtml

http://endingstereotypes.org/african_history.html

Also an interesting book is Basil Davidson's "African Kingdoms"

I'm sorry its just that its obvious this guy doesn't care about facts but rather stereotypes that fit his racist agenda


One would have to be a complete idiot to overlook the great African cultures of the past. However today it is in sad shape for the most part. Do we blame the Europeans or do we blame the Africans themselves?

I've "debated" with allot of your kind and your barbarien mentality prevents you from learning anything, no matter what it says in Encyclepedias or respected scholarsYou don't debate, you just shout.
I mean, folks always dwell on the fact that Africa is the homeland of humankind. But how have the remaining humans used all the time while their brothers were leaving Africa to conquer the rest of the world? So where are all those works of literature, architecture, agriculture out of ancient times that I fail to see? Where and what were those magnificent African civilizations while Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, China, and Yucatán thrived? Africans has so much more time than everybody else to found cities, build roads, engage in trade, collect knowledge. Oh, and what about writing? How did Africans preserve their assembled knowledge, how did they pass it on to their descendants?
And don't just refer me to books I don't have at hand.

You don't debate, you just shout.
I mean, folks always dwell on the fact that Africa is the homeland of humankind. But how have the remaining humans used all the time while their brothers were leaving Africa to conquer the rest of the world? So where are all those works of literature, architecture, agriculture out of ancient times that I fail to see? Where and what were those magnificent African civilizations while Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, China, and Yucatán thrived? Africans has so much more time than everybody else to found cities, build roads, engage in trade, collect knowledge. Oh, and what about writing? How did Africans preserve their assembled knowledge, how did they pass it on to their descendants?

you have no idea how much it hurts me for you to insult our African brothers like that

Do we blame the Europeans or do we blame the Africans themselves?

Will you have to admit Africa has been a misse since Europeans interfered with it, I'd say both

You would find the answers to your questions if you had clicked on any of the links in this thread. The wikipedia article on guns, germs and steel isn't even that long and yet you didn't read it. I'm not going to argue with people who can't read.

I'm going to combine what I said before into one post so you can see it:



[QUOTE=United Beleriand;13152410]Development comes out of the necessity to develop. Apparently Africans were adapted to their environment well enough to survive, after all Africa is human's natural habitat. But Africans never made that step beyond mere survival. And although they shared the continent with Middle-Eastern cultures (Egypt, Punt) they did not take up those impulses to move ahead in their cultural evolution. I mean, when Europeans started to really explore the African continent they came across tribal societies in a de facto neolithic stage of development (both technically and socially). I find it hard to blame that entirely on the environment. Why did something like Great Zimbabwe not occur 5000 years earlier?

How did Africa end up being sliced into colonies?

Your a jerk

This video covers the fall of the fairly primitive Zulus, the one attatched (you'll see the icon) talks about the fall of some of the more advanced Civilizations (sorry the video on the first video is shotty)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwLYW8s4jEc


My own video (with links to several websites)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYAakRdQeNQ

From Howard Zinn's history of the united states"

Was their culture inferior -- and so subject to easy destruction? Inferior in military capability, yes --vulnerable to whites with guns and ships. But in no other way -- except that cultures that are different are often taken as inferior, especially when such a judgment is practical and profitable. Even militarily, while the Westerners could secure forts on the African coast, they were unable to subdue the interior and had to come to terms with its chiefs.


The African civilization was as advanced in its own way as that of Europe. In certain ways, it was more admirable; but it also included cruelties, hierarchical privilege, and the readiness to sacrifice human lives for religion or profit. It was a civilization of 100 million people, using iron implements and skilled in farming. It had large urban centers and remarkable achievements in weaving, ceramics, sculpture.


European travelers in the sixteenth century were impressed with the African kingdoms of Timbuktu and Mali, already stable and organized at a time when European states were just beginning to develop into the modern nation. In 1563, Ramusio, secretary to the rulers in Venice, wrote to the Italian merchants: "Let them go and do business with the King of Timbuktu and Mali and there is no doubt that they will be well-received there with their ships and their goods and treated well, and granted the favours that they ask..."


A Dutch report, around 1602, on the West African kingdom of Benin, said: "The Towne seemeth to be very great, when you enter it. You go into a great broad street, not paved, which seemeth to be seven or eight times broader than the Warmoes Street in Amsterdam. ...The Houses in this Towne stand in good order, one close and even with the other, as the Houses in Holland stand."


The inhabitants of the Guinea Coast were described by one traveler around 1680 as "very civil and good-natured people, easy to be dealt with, condescending to what Europeans require of them in a civil way, and very ready to return double the presents we make them."

http://www.worldfreeinternet.net/archive/arc9.htm

Why was Africa cut up and colonized? It had nothing to do with Civilization advancement but rather military technology, why do you think the advanced Civilizations of Mexico were conqured? In fact for most of it's history Africa has been more stable and yes advanced than Europe, except for Rome and Greece. Interestingly Rome and Greece had great respect for Africa but saw the primitivness of their more pale skinned brothers to the north as innately stupid and savage and would never ammount to anything

Here is some good websites that talk about that (note Greeks and Romans have an olive complexion and they didn't think of themselves as white)

http://www.geocities.com/ru00ru00/racismhistory/earlyhistory.html

http://endingstereotypesforamerica.org/black_and_white_intelligence.html

Ok I don't want to get into contreversy, we'll stay away from the ethnicity of the Egyptions

The Nubians (who were black) were Civilized before stupid whitey or Greece or Rome

Later Taharqa (the greatest Nubian Pharoh who ruled Egypt in the 25th dynasty) was written by the Greek geographer Starbo as one of the great military geniuses of the world

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H81eBWMYgtk

While Herodotus said the Ethiopians (Nubians) were the tallest and most handsome of all men and Nubia was one of the cultural centers 2nd to Egypt

This is what the cultural histians said about whitey

"Barbarians can neither think nor act rationally, theological controversies are Greek to them... Under the assault of their horrible songs the classic meter of the ancient poet goes to pieces...Barbarians are driven by evil spirits; "possessed by demons", who force them to commit the most terrible acts...incapable of living according to written laws and only reluctantly tolerating kings...Their lust for gold is immense, their love of drink boundless. Barbarians are without restraint...Although generally they are considered good-looking, they are given to gross personal hygiene...They run dirty and barefoot, even in the winter...They grease their blond hair with butter and care not that it smells rancid...Their reproductive energy is inexhaustible; the Northern climate of their native land, with its long winter nights favors their fantastic urge to procreate...If a barbarian people is driven back or destroyed, another already emerges from the marshes and forests of Germany...Indeed, there are no new barbarian peoples--descendents of the same tribes keep appearing."

Ok I'll end the rant with this, when explorers landed on western Africa their own accounts (and those of Arabs to) are that of respect for the cities and virtues of the native Africans

"The Emperor (Mansa Musa) also brought Arabs scholars to Timbuktu. To his great surprise, the Emperor has found that these scholars are underqualified compared to the black scholars of Timbuktu. Abd Arahman Atimmi had such a low level that he was obliged to migrate to Marrakech to complete his prerequisites so he can sit in the classes as a student."

http://www.timbuktufoundation.org/history.html

"The museum plans to highlight a little-known connection between its host state and the manuscripts of Timbuktu: the story of Ibrahima Abd ar-Rahman, an 18th-century prince from what is now Guinea who studied at Timbuktu before being sold into slavery in Natchez, Miss. The prince's saga contradicts another widely held Western belief -- that Africans sold in the slave trade were uncivilized. In fact, many were doctors, dentists, lawyers, professors, musicians and members of royal families. And a large number were Muslim."
http://www.toubab.com/Contents/The_Niger_Trip/Timbuktu/tm13/tm14/w_post.html

The point is history goes in cycles, the problems in Africa have only happened since the Euro-Barbarien invasions, and yes I'm white :p

P.S. Before some ignoramous says it was built by Arabs like I've heared people say before (Christianity in Europe can from Jews did Jews build the churches) here is a video with some pagan kingdoms in it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M0xTgJWwW4

Sorry for the rant its just that I think it's horrible when people put down Africa after all the horrible things done to it

Throughout history cultures and civilisations seldom survived due to being enlightened and peaceful. The barbaric neighbours somewhat tend to take over.

I think thats true Songhay was probably the most advanced black African empire, I've even heared they knew the planets revolved around the sun before anyone else (but I can't confirm this) but it didn't stop them from falling to the guns and cannons of the Morocans.

Zulus put up a better fight against post Napoleonic era Britan

One last link I thats facinating

"Universal preference of whiteness over blackness?"
http://www.colorq.org/Articles/article.aspx?d=1999&x=blackwhite#encounters

Roman army defeats all nations encountered except the Ethiopians

The only nation which successfully resisted Roman domination was the Ethiopians. After conquering nations all the way from Italy to Egypt, the Roman legions were finally stopped by the Ethiopian military. Three times, Augustus sent his armies into Nubia, but he never conquered the Nubians.

Poe describes in Black Spark, White Fire:

"From the moment Augustus occupied Egypt in 30 B.C, the Romans had nothing but trouble from their southern frontier... the Ethiopians ... attacked the Thebais... took Syene and Elephantine and Philae, and enslaved the inhabitants, and also pulled down the statues of Caesar...The Emperor Diocletian was obliged, at the end of the third century A.D, to pay tribute to two Ethiopian tribes called the Nobatae and the Blemyes in order to stop their raids. These tribes continued collecting Roman tribute for the next two hundred years."20

[/quoute]

sorry this is a touchy topic with me, but I think I did give good information

I trust the other links I provided, I don't know how accurate this book is but I'll just post it here, at least some of it is accurate ;)

Note: I don't want to get into a whole thing about the ethnicity of the Egyptions so ignore the first few parts on Egypt

http://www.whenweruled.com/articles.php?lng=en&pg=40
.
1. The human race is of African origin. The oldest known skeletal remains of anatomically modern humans (or homo sapiens) were excavated at sites in East Africa. Human remains were discovered at Omo in Ethiopia that were dated at 195,000 years old, the oldest known in the world.

2. Skeletons of pre-humans have been found in Africa that date back between 4 and 5 million years. The oldest known ancestral type of humanity is thought to have been the australopithecus ramidus, who lived at least 4.4 million years ago.

3. Africans were the first to organise fishing expeditions 90,000 years ago. At Katanda, a region in northeastern Zaïre (now Congo), was recovered a finely wrought series of harpoon points, all elaborately polished and barbed. Also uncovered was a tool, equally well crafted, believed to be a dagger. The discoveries suggested the existence of an early aquatic or fishing based culture.

4. Africans were the first to engage in mining 43,000 years ago. In 1964 a hematite mine was found in Swaziland at Bomvu Ridge in the Ngwenya mountain range. Ultimately 300,000 artefacts were recovered including thousands of stone-made mining tools. Adrian Boshier, one of the archaeologists on the site, dated the mine to a staggering 43,200 years old.

5. Africans pioneered basic arithmetic 25,000 years ago. The Ishango bone is a tool handle with notches carved into it found in the Ishango region of Zaïre (now called Congo) near Lake Edward. The bone tool was originally thought to have been over 8,000 years old, but a more sensitive recent dating has given dates of 25,000 years old. On the tool are 3 rows of notches. Row 1 shows three notches carved next to six, four carved next to eight, ten carved next to two fives and finally a seven. The 3 and 6, 4 and 8, and 10 and 5, represent the process of doubling. Row 2 shows eleven notches carved next to twenty-one notches, and nineteen notches carved next to nine notches. This represents 10 + 1, 20 + 1, 20 - 1 and 10 - 1. Finally, Row 3 shows eleven notches, thirteen notches, seventeen notches and nineteen notches. 11, 13, 17 and 19 are the prime numbers between 10 and 20.

6. Africans cultivated crops 12,000 years ago, the first known advances in agriculture. Professor Fred Wendorf discovered that people in Egypt’s Western Desert cultivated crops of barley, capers, chick-peas, dates, legumes, lentils and wheat. Their ancient tools were also recovered. There were grindstones, milling stones, cutting blades, hide scrapers, engraving burins, and mortars and pestles.

7. Africans mummified their dead 9,000 years ago. A mummified infant was found under the Uan Muhuggiag rock shelter in south western Libya. The infant was buried in the foetal position and was mummified using a very sophisticated technique that must have taken hundreds of years to evolve. The technique predates the earliest mummies known in Ancient Egypt by at least 1,000 years. Carbon dating is controversial but the mummy may date from 7438 (±220) BC.

8. Africans carved the world’s first colossal sculpture 7,000 or more years ago. The Great Sphinx of Giza was fashioned with the head of a man combined with the body of a lion. A key and important question raised by this monument was: How old is it? In October 1991 Professor Robert Schoch, a geologist from Boston University, demonstrated that the Sphinx was sculpted between 5000 BC and 7000 BC, dates that he considered conservative.

9. On the 1 March 1979, the New York Times carried an article on its front page also page sixteen that was entitled Nubian Monarchy called Oldest. In this article we were assured that: “Evidence of the oldest recognizable monarchy in human history, preceding the rise of the earliest Egyptian kings by several generations, has been discovered in artifacts from ancient Nubia” (i.e. the territory of the northern Sudan and the southern portion of modern Egypt.)

10. The ancient Egyptians had the same type of tropically adapted skeletal proportions as modern Black Africans. A 2003 paper appeared in American Journal of Physical Anthropology by Dr Sonia Zakrzewski entitled Variation in Ancient Egyptian Stature and Body Proportions where she states that: “The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the ‘super-Negroid’ body plan described by Robins (1983). The values for the brachial and crural indices show that the distal segments of each limb are longer relative to the proximal segments than in many ‘African’ populations.”

11. The ancient Egyptians had Afro combs. One writer tells us that the Egyptians “manufactured a very striking range of combs in ivory: the shape of these is distinctly African and is like the combs used even today by Africans and those of African descent.”

12. The Funerary Complex in the ancient Egyptian city of Saqqara is the oldest building that tourists regularly visit today. An outer wall, now mostly in ruins, surrounded the whole structure. Through the entrance are a series of columns, the first stone-built columns known to historians. The North House also has ornamental columns built into the walls that have papyrus-like capitals. Also inside the complex is the Ceremonial Court, made of limestone blocks that have been quarried and then shaped. In the centre of the complex is the Step Pyramid, the first of 90 Egyptian pyramids.

13. The first Great Pyramid of Giza, the most extraordinary building in history, was a staggering 481 feet tall - the equivalent of a 40-storey building. It was made of 2.3 million blocks of limestone and granite, some weighing 100 tons.

14. The ancient Egyptian city of Kahun was the world’s first planned city. Rectangular and walled, the city was divided into two parts. One part housed the wealthier inhabitants – the scribes, officials and foremen. The other part housed the ordinary people. The streets of the western section in particular, were straight, laid out on a grid, and crossed each other at right angles. A stone gutter, over half a metre wide, ran down the centre of every street.

15. Egyptian mansions were discovered in Kahun - each boasting 70 rooms, divided into four sections or quarters. There was a master’s quarter, quarters for women and servants, quarters for offices and finally, quarters for granaries, each facing a central courtyard. The master’s quarters had an open court with a stone water tank for bathing. Surrounding this was a colonnade.

16 The Labyrinth in the Egyptian city of Hawara with its massive layout, multiple courtyards, chambers and halls, was the very largest building in antiquity. Boasting three thousand rooms, 1,500 of them were above ground and the other 1,500 were underground.

17. Toilets and sewerage systems existed in ancient Egypt. One of the pharaohs built a city now known as Amarna. An American urban planner noted that: “Great importance was attached to cleanliness in Amarna as in other Egyptian cities. Toilets and sewers were in use to dispose waste. Soap was made for washing the body. Perfumes and essences were popular against body odour. A solution of natron was used to keep insects from houses . . . Amarna may have been the first planned ‘garden city’.”

18. Sudan has more pyramids than any other country on earth - even more than Egypt. There are at least 223 pyramids in the Sudanese cities of Al Kurru, Nuri, Gebel Barkal and Meroë. They are generally 20 to 30 metres high and steep sided.

19. The Sudanese city of Meroë is rich in surviving monuments. Becoming the capital of the Kushite Empire between 590 BC until AD 350, there are 84 pyramids in this city alone, many built with their own miniature temple. In addition, there are ruins of a bath house sharing affinities with those of the Romans. Its central feature is a large pool approached by a flight of steps with waterspouts decorated with lion heads.

20. Bling culture has a long and interesting history. Gold was used to decorate ancient Sudanese temples. One writer reported that: “Recent excavations at Meroe and Mussawwarat es-Sufra revealed temples with walls and statues covered with gold leaf”.

21. In around 300 BC, the Sudanese invented a writing script that had twenty-three letters of which four were vowels and there was also a word divider. Hundreds of ancient texts have survived that were in this script. Some are on display in the British Museum.

22. In central Nigeria, West Africa’s oldest civilisation flourished between 1000 BC and 300 BC. Discovered in 1928, the ancient culture was called the Nok Civilisation, named after the village in which the early artefacts were discovered. Two modern scholars, declare that “[a]fter calibration, the period of Nok art spans from 1000 BC until 300 BC”. The site itself is much older going back as early as 4580 or 4290 BC.

23. West Africans built in stone by 1100 BC. In the Tichitt-Walata region of Mauritania, archaeologists have found “large stone masonry villages” that date back to 1100 BC. The villages consisted of roughly circular compounds connected by “well-defined streets”.

24. By 250 BC, the foundations of West Africa’s oldest cities were established such as Old Djenné in Mali.

25. Kumbi Saleh, the capital of Ancient Ghana, flourished from 300 to 1240 AD. Located in modern day Mauritania, archaeological excavations have revealed houses, almost habitable today, for want of renovation and several storeys high. They had underground rooms, staircases and connecting halls. Some had nine rooms. One part of the city alone is estimated to have housed 30,000 people.

26. West Africa had walled towns and cities in the pre-colonial period. Winwood Reade, an English historian visited West Africa in the nineteenth century and commented that: “There are . . . thousands of large walled cities resembling those of Europe in the Middle Ages, or of ancient Greece.”

27. Lord Lugard, an English official, estimated in 1904 that there were 170 walled towns still in existence in the whole of just the Kano province of northern Nigeria.

28. Cheques are not quite as new an invention as we were led to believe. In the tenth century, an Arab geographer, Ibn Haukal, visited a fringe region of Ancient Ghana. Writing in 951 AD, he told of a cheque for 42,000 golden dinars written to a merchant in the city of Audoghast by his partner in Sidjilmessa.

29. Ibn Haukal, writing in 951 AD, informs us that the King of Ghana was “the richest king on the face of the earth” whose pre-eminence was due to the quantity of gold nuggets that had been amassed by the himself and by his predecessors.

30. The Nigerian city of Ile-Ife was paved in 1000 AD on the orders of a female ruler with decorations that originated in Ancient America. Naturally, no-one wants to explain how this took place approximately 500 years before the time of Christopher Columbus!

31. West Africa had bling culture in 1067 AD. One source mentions that when the Emperor of Ghana gives audience to his people: “he sits in a pavilion around which stand his horses caparisoned in cloth of gold: behind him stand ten pages holding shields and gold-mounted swords: and on his right hand are the sons of the princes of his empire, splendidly clad and with gold plaited into their hair . . . The gate of the chamber is guarded by dogs of an excellent breed . . . they wear collars of gold and silver.”

32. Glass windows existed at that time. The residence of the Ghanaian Emperor in 1116 AD was: “A well-built castle, thoroughly fortified, decorated inside with sculptures and pictures, and having glass windows.”

33. The Grand Mosque in the Malian city of Djenné, described as “the largest adobe [clay] building in the world”, was first raised in 1204 AD. It was built on a square plan where each side is 56 metres in length. It has three large towers on one side, each with projecting wooden buttresses.

34. One of the great achievements of the Yoruba was their urban culture. “By the year A.D. 1300,” says a modern scholar, “the Yoruba people built numerous walled cities surrounded by farms”. The cities were Owu, Oyo, Ijebu, Ijesa, Ketu, Popo, Egba, Sabe, Dassa, Egbado, Igbomina, the sixteen Ekiti principalities, Owo and Ondo.

35. Yoruba metal art of the mediaeval period was of world class. One scholar wrote that Yoruba art “would stand comparison with anything which Ancient Egypt, Classical Greece and Rome, or Renaissance Europe had to offer.”

36. In the Malian city of Gao stands the Mausoleum of Askia the Great, a weird sixteenth century edifice that resembles a step pyramid.

37. Thousands of mediaeval tumuli have been found across West Africa. Nearly 7,000 were discovered in north-west Senegal alone spread over nearly 1,500 sites. They were probably built between 1000 and 1300 AD.

38. Excavations at the Malian city of Gao carried out by Cambridge University revealed glass windows. One of the finds was entitled: “Fragments of alabaster window surrounds and a piece of pink window glass, Gao 10th – 14th century.”

39. In 1999 the BBC produced a television series entitled Millennium. The programme devoted to the fourteenth century opens with the following disclosure: “In the fourteenth century, the century of the scythe, natural disasters threatened civilisations with extinction. The Black Death kills more people in Europe, Asia and North Africa than any catastrophe has before. Civilisations which avoid the plague thrive. In West Africa the Empire of Mali becomes the richest in the world.”

40. Malian sailors got to America in 1311 AD, 181 years before Columbus. An Egyptian scholar, Ibn Fadl Al-Umari, published on this sometime around 1342. In the tenth chapter of his book, there is an account of two large maritime voyages ordered by the predecessor of Mansa Musa, a king who inherited the Malian throne in 1312. This mariner king is not named by Al-Umari, but modern writers identify him as Mansa Abubakari II.

41. On a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 AD, a Malian ruler, Mansa Musa, brought so much money with him that his visit resulted in the collapse of gold prices in Egypt and Arabia. It took twelve years for the economies of the region to normalise.

42. West African gold mining took place on a vast scale. One modern writer said that: “It is estimated that the total amount of gold mined in West Africa up to 1500 was 3,500 tons, worth more than $****30 billion in today’s market.”

43. The old Malian capital of Niani had a 14th century building called the Hall of Audience. It was an surmounted by a dome, adorned with arabesques of striking colours. The windows of an upper floor were plated with wood and framed in silver; those of a lower floor were plated with wood, framed in gold.

44. Mali in the 14th century was highly urbanised. Sergio Domian, an Italian art and architecture scholar, wrote the following about this period: “Thus was laid the foundation of an urban civilisation. At the height of its power, Mali had at least 400 cities, and the interior of the Niger Delta was very densely populated”.

45. The Malian city of Timbuktu had a 14th century population of 115,000 - 5 times larger than mediaeval London. Mansa Musa, built the Djinguerebere Mosque in the fourteenth century. There was the University Mosque in which 25,000 students studied and the Oratory of Sidi Yayia. There were over 150 Koran schools in which 20,000 children were instructed. London, by contrast, had a total 14th century population of 20,000 people.

46. National Geographic recently described Timbuktu as the Paris of the mediaeval world, on account of its intellectual culture. According to Professor Henry Louis Gates, 25,000 university students studied there.

47. Many old West African families have private library collections that go back hundreds of years. The Mauritanian cities of Chinguetti and Oudane have a total of 3,450 hand written mediaeval books. There may be another 6,000 books still surviving in the other city of Walata. Some date back to the 8th century AD. There are 11,000 books in private collections in Niger. Finally, in Timbuktu, Mali, there are about 700,000 surviving books.

48. A collection of one thousand six hundred books was considered a small library for a West African scholar of the 16th century. Professor Ahmed Baba of Timbuktu is recorded as saying that he had the smallest library of any of his friends - he had only 1600 volumes.

49. Concerning these old manuscripts, Michael Palin, in his TV series Sahara, said the imam of Timbuktu “has a collection of scientific texts that clearly show the planets circling the sun. They date back hundreds of years . . . Its convincing evidence that the scholars of Timbuktu knew a lot more than their counterparts in Europe. In the fifteenth century in Timbuktu the mathematicians knew about the rotation of the planets, knew about the details of the eclipse, they knew things which we had to wait for 150 almost 200 years to know in Europe when Galileo and Copernicus came up with these same calculations and were given a very hard time for it.”

50. The Songhai Empire of 16th century West Africa had a government position called Minister for Etiquette and Protocol.

51. The mediaeval Nigerian city of Benin was built to “a scale comparable with the Great Wall of China”. There was a vast system of defensive walling totalling 10,000 miles in all. Even before the full extent of the city walling had become apparent the Guinness Book of Records carried an entry in the 1974 edition that described the city as: “The largest earthworks in the world carried out prior to the mechanical era.”

52. Benin art of the Middle Ages was of the highest quality. An official of the Berlin Museum für Völkerkunde once stated that: “These works from Benin are equal to the very finest examples of European casting technique. Benvenuto Cellini could not have cast them better, nor could anyone else before or after him . . . Technically, these bronzes represent the very highest possible achievement.”

53. Winwood Reade described his visit to the Ashanti Royal Palace of Kumasi in 1874: “We went to the king’s palace, which consists of many courtyards, each surrounded with alcoves and verandahs, and having two gates or doors, so that each yard was a thoroughfare . . . But the part of the palace fronting the street was a stone house, Moorish in its style . . . with a flat roof and a parapet, and suites of apartments on the first floor. It was built by Fanti masons many years ago. The rooms upstairs remind me of Wardour Street. Each was a perfect Old Curiosity Shop. Books in many languages, Bohemian glass, clocks, silver plate, old furniture, Persian rugs, Kidderminster carpets, pictures and engravings, numberless chests and coffers. A sword bearing the inscription From Queen Victoria to the King of Ashantee. A copy of the Times, 17 October 1843. With these were many specimens of Moorish and Ashanti handicraft.”

54. In the mid-nineteenth century, William Clarke, an English visitor to Nigeria, remarked that: “As good an article of cloth can be woven by the Yoruba weavers as by any people . . . in durability, their cloths far excel the prints and home-spuns of Manchester.”

55. The recently discovered 9th century Nigerian city of Eredo was found to be surrounded by a wall that was 100 miles long and seventy feet high in places. The internal area was a staggering 400 square miles.

56. On the subject of cloth, Kongolese textiles were also distinguished. Various European writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries wrote of the delicate crafts of the peoples living in eastern Kongo and adjacent regions who manufactured damasks, sarcenets, satins, taffeta, cloth of tissue and velvet. Professor DeGraft-Johnson made the curious observation that: “Their brocades, both high and low, were far more valuable than the Italian.”

57. On Kongolese metallurgy of the Middle Ages, one modern scholar wrote that: “There is no doubting . . . the existence of an expert metallurgical art in the ancient Kongo . . . The Bakongo were aware of the toxicity of lead vapours. They devised preventative and curative methods, both pharmacological (massive doses of pawpaw and palm oil) and mechanical (exerting of pressure to free the digestive tract), for combating lead poisoning.”

58. In Nigeria, the royal palace in the city of Kano dates back to the fifteenth century. Begun by Muhammad Rumfa (ruled 1463-99) it has gradually evolved over generations into a very imposing complex. A colonial report of the city from 1902, described it as “a network of buildings covering an area of 33 acres and surrounded by a wall 20 to 30 feet high outside and 15 feet inside . . . in itself no mean citadel”.

59. A sixteenth century traveller visited the central African civilisation of Kanem-Borno and commented that the emperor’s cavalry had golden “stirrups, spurs, bits and buckles.” Even the ruler’s dogs had “chains of the finest gold”.

60. One of the government positions in mediaeval Kanem-Borno was Astronomer Royal.

61. Ngazargamu, the capital city of Kanem-Borno, became one of the largest cities in the seventeenth century world. By 1658 AD, the metropolis, according to an architectural scholar housed “about quarter of a million people”. It had 660 streets. Many were wide and unbending, reflective of town planning.

62. The Nigerian city of Surame flourished in the sixteenth century. Even in ruin it was an impressive sight, built on a horizontal vertical grid. A modern scholar describes it thus: “The walls of Surame are about 10 miles in circumference and include many large bastions or walled suburbs running out at right angles to the main wall. The large compound at Kanta is still visible in the centre, with ruins of many buildings, one of which is said to have been two-storied. The striking feature of the walls and whole ruins is the extensive use of stone and tsokuwa (laterite gravel) or very hard red building mud, evidently brought from a distance. There is a big mound of this near the north gate about 8 feet in height. The walls show regular courses of masonry to a height of 20 feet and more in several places. The best preserved portion is that known as sirati (the bridge) a little north of the eastern gate . . . The main city walls here appear to have provided a very strongly guarded entrance about 30 feet wide.”

63. The Nigerian city of Kano in 1851 produced an estimated 10 million pairs of sandals and 5 million hides each year for export.

64. In 1246 AD Dunama II of Kanem-Borno exchanged embassies with Al-Mustansir, the king of Tunis. He sent the North African court a costly present, which apparently included a giraffe. An old chronicle noted that the rare animal “created a sensation in Tunis”.

65. By the third century BC the city of Carthage on the coast of Tunisia was opulent and impressive. It had a population of 700,000 and may even have approached a million. Lining both sides of three streets were rows of tall houses six storeys high.

66. The Ethiopian city of Axum has a series of 7 giant obelisks that date from perhaps 300 BC to 300 AD. They have details carved into them that represent windows and doorways of several storeys. The largest obelisk, now fallen, is in fact “the largest monolith ever made anywhere in the world”. It is 108 feet long, weighs a staggering 500 tons, and represents a thirteen-storey building.

67. Ethiopia minted its own coins over 1,500 years ago. One scholar wrote that: “Almost no other contemporary state anywhere in the world could issue in gold, a statement of sovereignty achieved only by Rome, Persia, and the Kushan kingdom in northern India at the time.”

68. The Ethiopian script of the 4th century AD influenced the writing script of Armenia. A Russian historian noted that: “Soon after its creation, the Ethiopic vocalised script began to influence the scripts of Armenia and Georgia. D. A. Olderogge suggested that Mesrop Mashtotz used the vocalised Ethiopic script when he invented the Armenian alphabet.”

69. “In the first half of the first millennium CE,” says a modern scholar, Ethiopia “was ranked as one of the world’s greatest empires”. A Persian cleric of the third century AD identified it as the third most important state in the world after Persia and Rome.

70. Ethiopia has 11 underground mediaeval churches built by being carved out of the ground. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries AD, Roha became the new capital of the Ethiopians. Conceived as a New Jerusalem by its founder, Emperor Lalibela (c.1150-1230), it contains 11 churches, all carved out of the rock of the mountains by hammer and chisel. All of the temples were carved to a depth of 11 metres or so below ground level. The largest is the House of the Redeemer, a staggering 33.7 metres long, 23.7 metres wide and 11.5 metres deep.

71. Lalibela is not the only place in Ethiopia to have such wonders. A cotemporary archaeologist reports research that was conducted in the region in the early 1970’s when: “startling numbers of churches built in caves or partially or completely cut from the living rock were revealed not only in Tigre and Lalibela but as far south as Addis Ababa. Soon at least 1,500 were known. At least as many more probably await revelation.”

72. In 1209 AD Emperor Lalibela of Ethiopia sent an embassy to Cairo bringing the sultan unusual gifts including an elephant, a hyena, a zebra, and a giraffe.

73. In Southern Africa, there are at least 600 stone built ruins in the regions of Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa. These ruins are called Mazimbabwe in Shona, the Bantu language of the builders, and means great revered house and “signifies court”.

74. The Great Zimbabwe was the largest of these ruins. It consists of 12 clusters of buildings, spread over 3 square miles. Its outer walls were made from 100,000 tons of granite bricks. In the fourteenth century, the city housed 18,000 people, comparable in size to that of London of the same period.

75. Bling culture existed in this region. At the time of our last visit, the Horniman Museum in London had exhibits of headrests with the caption: “Headrests have been used in Africa since the time of the Egyptian pharaohs. Remains of some headrests, once covered in gold foil, have been found in the ruins of Great Zimbabwe and burial sites like Mapungubwe dating to the twelfth century after Christ.”

76. Dr Albert Churchward, author of Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man, pointed out that writing was found in one of the stone built ruins: “Lt.-Col. E. L. de Cordes . . . who was in South Africa for three years, informed the writer that in one of the ‘Ruins’ there is a ‘stone-chamber,’ with a vast quantity of Papyri, covered with old Egyptian hieroglyphics. A Boer hunter discovered this, and a large quantity was used to light a fire with, and yet still a larger quantity remained there now.”

77. On bling culture, one seventeenth century visitor to southern African empire of Monomotapa, that ruled over this vast region, wrote that: “The people dress in various ways: at court of the Kings their grandees wear cloths of rich silk, damask, satin, gold and silk cloth; these are three widths of satin, each width four covados [2.64m], each sewn to the next, sometimes with gold lace in between, trimmed on two sides, like a carpet, with a gold and silk fringe, sewn in place with a two fingers’ wide ribbon, woven with gold roses on silk.”

78. Southern Africans mined gold on an epic scale. One modern writer tells us that: “The estimated amount of gold ore mined from the entire region by the ancients was staggering, exceeding 43 million tons. The ore yielded nearly 700 tons of pure gold which today would be valued at over $******7.5 billion.”

79. Apparently the Monomotapan royal palace at Mount Fura had chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. An eighteenth century geography book provided the following data: “The inside consists of a great variety of sumptuous apartments, spacious and lofty halls, all adorned with a magnificent cotton tapestry, the manufacture of the country. The floors, cielings [sic], beams and rafters are all either gilt or plated with gold curiously wrought, as are also the chairs of state, tables, benches &c. The candle-sticks and branches are made of ivory inlaid with gold, and hang from the cieling by chains of the same metal, or of silver gilt.”

80. Monomotapa had a social welfare system. Antonio Bocarro, a Portuguese contemporary, informs us that the Emperor: “shows great charity to the blind and maimed, for these are called the king’s poor, and have land and revenues for their subsistence, and when they wish to pass through the kingdoms, wherever they come food and drinks are given to them at the public cost as long as they remain there, and when they leave that place to go to another they are provided with what is necessary for their journey, and a guide, and some one to carry their wallet to the next village. In every place where they come there is the same obligation.”

81. Many southern Africans have indigenous and pre-colonial words for ‘gun’. Scholars have generally been reluctant to investigate or explain this fact.

82. Evidence discovered in 1978 showed that East Africans were making steel for more than 1,500 years: “Assistant Professor of Anthropology Peter Schmidt and Professor of Engineering Donald H. Avery have found as long as 2,000 years ago Africans living on the western shores of Lake Victoria had produced carbon steel in preheated forced draft furnaces, a method that was technologically more sophisticated than any developed in Europe until the mid-nineteenth century.”

83. Ruins of a 300 BC astronomical observatory was found at Namoratunga in Kenya. Africans were mapping the movements of stars such as Triangulum, Aldebaran, Bellatrix, Central Orion, etcetera, as well as the moon, in order to create a lunar calendar of 354 days.

84. Autopsies and caesarean operations were routinely and effectively carried out by surgeons in pre-colonial Uganda. The surgeons routinely used antiseptics, anaesthetics and cautery iron. Commenting on a Ugandan caesarean operation that appeared in the Edinburgh Medical Journal in 1884, one author wrote: “The whole conduct of the operation . . . suggests a skilled long-practiced surgical team at work conducting a well-tried and familiar operation with smooth efficiency.”

85. Sudan in the mediaeval period had churches, cathedrals, monasteries and castles. Their ruins still exist today.

86. The mediaeval Nubian Kingdoms kept archives. From the site of Qasr Ibrim legal texts, documents and correspondence were discovered. An archaeologist informs us that: “On the site are preserved thousands of documents in Meroitic, Latin, Greek, Coptic, Old Nubian, Arabic and Turkish.”

87. Glass windows existed in mediaeval Sudan. Archaeologists found evidence of window glass at the Sudanese cities of Old Dongola and Hambukol.

88. Bling culture existed in the mediaeval Sudan. Archaeologists found an individual buried at the Monastery of the Holy Trinity in the city of Old Dongola. He was clad in an extremely elaborate garb consisting of costly textiles of various fabrics including gold thread. At the city of Soba East, there were individuals buried in fine clothing, including items with golden thread.

89. Style and fashion existed in mediaeval Sudan. A dignitary at Jebel Adda in the late thirteenth century AD was interned with a long coat of red and yellow patterned damask folded over his body. Underneath, he wore plain cotton trousers of long and baggy cut. A pair of red leather slippers with turned up toes lay at the foot of the coffin. The body was wrapped in enormous pieces of gold brocaded striped silk.

90. Sudan in the ninth century AD had housing complexes with bath rooms and piped water. An archaeologist wrote that Old Dongola, the capital of Makuria, had: “a[n] . . . eighth to . . . ninth century housing complex. The houses discovered here differ in their hitherto unencountered spatial layout as well as their functional programme (water supply installation, bathroom with heating system) and interiors decorated with murals.”

91. In 619 AD, the Nubians sent a gift of a giraffe to the Persians.

92. The East Coast, from Somalia to Mozambique, has ruins of well over 50 towns and cities. They flourished from the ninth to the sixteenth centuries AD.

93. Chinese records of the fifteenth century AD note that Mogadishu had houses of “four or five storeys high”.

94. Gedi, near the coast of Kenya, is one of the East African ghost towns. Its ruins, dating from the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, include the city walls, the palace, private houses, the Great Mosque, seven smaller mosques, and three pillar tombs.

95. The ruined mosque in the Kenyan city of Gedi had a water purifier made of limestone for recycling water.

96. The palace in the Kenyan city of Gedi contains evidence of piped water controlled by taps. In addition it had bathrooms and indoor toilets.

97. A visitor in 1331 AD considered the Tanzanian city of Kilwa to be of world class. He wrote that it was the “principal city on the coast the greater part of whose inhabitants are Zanj of very black complexion.” Later on he says that: “Kilwa is one of the most beautiful and well-constructed cities in the world. The whole of it is elegantly built.”

98. Bling culture existed in early Tanzania. A Portuguese chronicler of the sixteenth century wrote that: “[T]hey are finely clad in many rich garments of gold and silk and cotton, and the women as well; also with much gold and silver chains and bracelets, which they wear on their legs and arms, and many jewelled earrings in their ears”.

99. In 1961 a British archaeologist, found the ruins of Husuni Kubwa, the royal palace of the Tanzanian city of Kilwa. It had over a hundred rooms, including a reception hall, galleries, courtyards, terraces and an octagonal swimming pool.

100. In 1414 the Kenyan city of Malindi sent ambassadors to China carrying a gift that created a sensation at the Imperial Court. It was, of course, a giraffe.

Are you a Rastafarian?

And why does http://www.whenweruled.com/articles.php?lng=en&pg=40 feature Tiy's head?
Anyways, I'll read that and that: http://endingstereotypesforamerica.org/african_history.html and add it to my links collection.

Are you a Rastafarian?

what's that?

Lets ignore Egypt I don't want to get into that

I have to go now I'll talk to you later :)

Lets ignore Egypt I don't want to get into that

I have to go now I'll talk to you later :)Send me a PM, I'll reply. ;)
Just today I have received a request for some dates of Kushitic history, maybe you can help me out.

Yes, for the average westerner that may be the case. I know I could survive but that is because I grew up hunting and spent a lot of time out in the wild as a kid and teenager. But I believe we are not talking about the basic survival smarts here. I also would suggest that most westerners would eventually do alright out in the wild if they were forced into the situation.

That's also why I said town/city. I'm not just referring to the "wild" here. Simply put, most westerners just don't have the understanding of how the cultures and societies of Africa work in order to even attempt to effectively utilize resources available(Both in the natural environment and in society). As well, if placed into a "band society" situation, we run into the problem of Westerners view of individual property. We tend to hoard shit like crazy, which is pretty much the straightest possible path to self-destruction you can get in such a situation. As well, without intimate knowledge of the resources available(As all bands have), you will starve to death when it comes time to move(Bands move deliberately, a random person placed in a situation would more than likely be wandering about with said thumb up their ass).

Quite simply, western views of "primitive" systems no where near does these extraordinary complex institutions any justice whatsoever.

That depends on what you call success. Cultural and social stagnation is not what I call success.
And I honestly doubt the environment argument.



Huh, and for all of our "achievements", it can be seen time and time again that western and "advanced" societies crumble very quickly. I'm not sure about you, but I wouldn't exactly call societal collapse(A repeating theme in practically all historic societies of the west) after only a few(And only a few select societies lasted this long) centuries to be what I call "success".

That depends on what you call success. Cultural and social stagnation is not what I call success.
And I honestly doubt the environment argument.

And??

Such as?

Hey, why don't instead of you whining about not "seeing" certain things in Africa - and, not uncoincidentally, about not having certain books that would answer your questions - you just tells us what "argument" you DO believe in.

Tell us, in your own words, why you believe Africa a primitive barbarian hell-hole. Obviously you can't blame the "Jew-ish" god and worship thereof. So what will you blame?

Obviously you can't blame the "Jew-ish" god and worship thereof.

oh ye of little faith

One would have to be a complete idiot to overlook the great African cultures of the past. However today it is in sad shape for the most part. Do we blame the Europeans or do we blame the Africans themselves?

Blame both westerners and africans alike.
Westerners (that is, Europe + America), and we could include the Arabs also, for exploiting Africa for centuries.
Africans for not grabbing the chances they had with independence and supporting shameless dictators who used all the international aid to buy weapons instead of building states, and allowed the western corporation to continue exploiting the local resources even more than before.
There are precious few countries in Africa, anyway, who are faring a little better: Senegal, for instance.

A sidestep:

I am coincidentally watching a short tv report on unilevers "fair and lovely" campaign in India - which basicly tells people: "our products can make your skin whiter. Whiter people are more succesful and happier".

Example link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/business/media/30adco.html

Thoughts ?

Blacks are stupid, sure...

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hV0rzEDq7TWnlm7tMmr2zeQmiRig

Niggers are plain dumb.

Niggers are plain dumb.


Wow. That is just spectacularly racist. Well done. You've just proved that despite the combined struggles of millions of people, be they black, white, asian etc, despite the billions spent by governments to eradicate racism, there are still knuckle-dragging, mouth breathing, window-licking morons like you holding the world back.

Well done, you jackass. :upyours:

Wow. That is just spectacularly racist. Well done. You've just proved that despite the combined struggles of millions of people, be they black, white, asian etc, despite the billions spent by governments to eradicate racism, there are still knuckle-dragging, mouth breathing, window-licking morons like you holding the world back.

Well done, you jackass.
It's a troll. You don't feed it lest it gets obese. ;)

Send me a PM, I'll reply. ;)
Mabye I don't want to know


Just today I have received a request for some dates of Kushitic history, maybe you can help me out.

My old 89 encyclepedia says it goes back to 2000 B.C. /shrug

Tell us, in your own words, why you believe Africa a primitive barbarian hell-hole. Obviously you can't blame the "Jew-ish" god and worship thereof. So what will you blame?

The Jews themselves!

A sidestep:

I am coincidentally watching a short tv report on unilevers "fair and lovely" campaign in India - which basicly tells people: "our products can make your skin whiter. Whiter people are more succesful and happier".

Example link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/business/media/30adco.html

Thoughts ?

Not very different from:
Japanese having the shape of their eyes changed into something more "western"
Chinese getting their legs broken and rejoined so they can become taller
Italians getting their hair dyed blonde so they can look more "nordic"

...

Yes, being a white-skinned, blue-eyed and blonde-haired european has been viewed as the "looks of success" for the whole last century. Guess why.

btw, iirc in India dark skin is traditionally (dating back to Vedic times) associated with belonging to lower classes, while the upper classes, being the descendants of the Arya (indo-european tribes), are usually paler.

btw, iirc in India dark skin is traditionally (dating back to Vedic times) associated with belonging to lower classes, while the upper classes, being the descendants of the Arya (indo-european tribes), are usually paler.

This is true. Of course it's now believed by a lot of Indian scholars and historians that the theory of Indo-Aryan expansion pushing the darker natives into the southern portion of India is incorrect, or at the least inaccurate.