I was thinking about this a little while back, as in school I was taught that the Germans and Belgians invented these ethnic groups, but I later realized that you can pretty clearly see that Hutus look more Bantu and Tutsis look more similar to someone you might see in Ethiopia. There is detailed raw data from Demographic and Health Surveys available for Rwanda and many other countries (https://dhsprogram.com/methodology/survey-search.cfm?pgtype=main&SrvyTp=country), but unfortunately with the shuttering of USAID, they are no longer responding to account creation requests. People with accounts can still access data, though, so perhaps you can find a way to get it. It obviously wouldn't include genetic data or address the causality of any differences, but it would likely be a way to examine the magnitude of phenotypic differences in SES, education, height, and possibly many other interesting traits. The write-ups are still available, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the 1992 report mentions Hutus, Tutsis, and Twas, but those words are absent from the 2000 report.
Interesting article. I agree with the overall conclusions, but I do not think it is accurate to say that the Bantu (I.e. Hutu) were hunters gatherers until recently. The reason for the Bantu migrations was likely their agriculture (and iron-making). It was the previous Khoisan people who were hunters gatherers. The Khoisan were largely pushed out by the Bantu because of their superior technology and larger populations.
Thankfully, for as much damage as leftoid pozloading can do to institutions, they can't do anything to stop the natural experiments of the world. The truth reveals itself there in countless different ways if you know where to look, like in the demographics of videogame speedrunners.
Speedrunners are a subculture; their demographics are going to be overwhelmingly driven by that. You're basically making Chanda Chisala's Scrabble argument. It's not any more persuasive here than it was there.
Why on Earth is it not? Most videogames are way more g-loaded than Scrabble, which is primarily about memorization. Videogames are at least as g-loaded as chess, and we have every reason to believe the average IQ of the top speedrunners is comparable to the average IQ of a chess grandmaster.
Speedrunning is among the most competitive of human endeavors today. In a post-streaming world, runners put themselves out there for the entire world to see, in real time, whether they have what it takes to set a record or they don't. Games that are bought, played, and enjoyed by millions, sometimes tens of millions worldwide. A successful runner has to be better than every single one of these millions for long enough to set a record. You can't just get a record out of stubborn persistence. You have to figure out a way to play the game that nobody before you has figured out. Just copying somebody else's strategy will never get you close, as by the time you figure out how to copy an established, reliable strategy, whatever record you get with it will already be obsolete in the game's competitive scene.
This is delusional. You measure the amount of competition by the number of people who are trying to compete. For speedrunning, this number is very low. The pool of competitors is also very demographically skewed, making it difficult to draw demographic conclusions by looking at it.
You might also look at the rewards of succeeding. These are high for chess (historically) and basketball (today), and nonexistent for speedrunning, which should tell you something.
The number of people who compete in a speedrun is everybody who plays, or has played, whatever the game is! Super Mario 64 alone has sold almost twelve-million copies, and you can bet has been played by many more people than just that. Whoever the best speedrunner is has to be better than every single one of those millions, just as how even the worst player in the NBA has to be better than all but a few hundred of the hundreds of millions of people worldwide who play basketball.* Their competition is just much less 'g' loaded than speedrunning.
And every competition in the entire world is dominated by demographically-skewed groups! Including chess. That's why in 1989 when Keene and Davinsky ranked the sixty-four greatest chess players who ever lived, half the list was made up of Jewish players:
No. To be good enough to be a speedrunner in any game requires far too much mental exertion even if you're just copying strategies for it to not be heavily g-loaded. And it's even more g-loaded for top speedrunners, who have to come up with strategies of their own rather than copy someone else's.
Even the games themselves attract playerbases with different average I.Q.s:
Tutsis were also considered by the Belgians to be more intelligent, and more fit for state administration, whatever that counts for. They're a really cool group of people.
This problem exists in a similar way with the Kurds and Persians, The Kurds have lived a nomadic life for thousands of years, while the Persians have always been urban dwellers.
There are a lot of Persians in academia, while the Kurdish presence in academia is weak.
In the diaspora where you can find many wealthy Persians, this is not the case for Kurds.
I don't know if anyone has ever done a comprehensive study on the cognitive differences between Kurds and Persians, but I found a recent study from Iraq Kurdistan(2017) that Kurdish children were about 9 to 13 points lower than Iranian (possibly Persian?) and Turkish children on the Bender Gestalt test.
As the author herself wrote:
"A comparison made between the performance of the sample of this research and their Iranian counterparts in
Shiraz and Tehran, as well as Turkish children shows that the normal children participating in the present study
scored lower on the test."
However, I do not know whether this cognitive difference between these two genetically and culturally close ethnic groups is due to worse environmental factors for the Kurds(like war) or stronger selection for intelligence in the Persians due to their urban life.
Do you think genetic stratification in Iran is likely? Also, a gap of 9+ points would make the existence of a Kurdish Fields Medalist quite surprising: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucher_Birkar
They cluster far apart in a PCA, with the Hutu being closer to other Bantu groups and the Tutsi being closer to the Nilotic Masai. This would imply that the "Hamitic" (ie Afroasiatic) origin theory of the Tutsi is incorrect and that they are instead a Nilotic conquering group that assimilated linguistically to the conquered population. A bit like the bahima of northeaster Congo and the Ankole region of Uganda: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankole).
Most Cushitic and Nilotic groups in that part of the world have DNA from both of these mentioned groups, including the Maasai. "Original" Cushitics were Natufian/Caucasoid, so Tutsi have more Eurasian DNA than Hutu.
>HGs are less bright than farmers and postoralists
Seems like hunter-gathering would actually require greater intelligence, due to the greater heterogeneity of challenges in obtaining food from a diverse range of sources. Is it possible that all 3 lifestyles select for intelligence, and greater intelligence is observed in farmers/pastoralists just because their larger populations allow for faster evolution?
I think the general view is that an increasing degree of social complexity in pastoralists societies leads to a greater development in intelligence. There certainly seems to be an intelligence advantage in agrarian societies, linked to greater social complexity - development of towns, cities, nuances of social class etc. I am not sure how this plays out in pastoralists though.
Probably not, studies show schizophrenia has been selected against in the past 5,000 years in higher-organization societies, while autism has actually increased.
Tutsis and Hutus certainly look different in the photos, assuming these photos are representative of the broader populations. Is there any data out there on IQ differences between the two groups?
I was thinking about this a little while back, as in school I was taught that the Germans and Belgians invented these ethnic groups, but I later realized that you can pretty clearly see that Hutus look more Bantu and Tutsis look more similar to someone you might see in Ethiopia. There is detailed raw data from Demographic and Health Surveys available for Rwanda and many other countries (https://dhsprogram.com/methodology/survey-search.cfm?pgtype=main&SrvyTp=country), but unfortunately with the shuttering of USAID, they are no longer responding to account creation requests. People with accounts can still access data, though, so perhaps you can find a way to get it. It obviously wouldn't include genetic data or address the causality of any differences, but it would likely be a way to examine the magnitude of phenotypic differences in SES, education, height, and possibly many other interesting traits. The write-ups are still available, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the 1992 report mentions Hutus, Tutsis, and Twas, but those words are absent from the 2000 report.
I hear Trump admin insiders are working on getting funding reinstated for this project, but yes, great idea!
Interesting article. I agree with the overall conclusions, but I do not think it is accurate to say that the Bantu (I.e. Hutu) were hunters gatherers until recently. The reason for the Bantu migrations was likely their agriculture (and iron-making). It was the previous Khoisan people who were hunters gatherers. The Khoisan were largely pushed out by the Bantu because of their superior technology and larger populations.
Actually, it looks like Razib Khan as done some analysis of whole genome sequences of Tutsis and a Bantu. As is unsurprising for anyone with eyes and a basic knowledge of African populations, Hutus seem more related to Bantu groups and Tutsis seem more related to Cushitic groups. https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2020/01/18/the-belgians-did-not-invent-the-hutu-and-tutsi-ethnic-groups-who-have-different-origins/
Thankfully, for as much damage as leftoid pozloading can do to institutions, they can't do anything to stop the natural experiments of the world. The truth reveals itself there in countless different ways if you know where to look, like in the demographics of videogame speedrunners.
Speedrunners are a subculture; their demographics are going to be overwhelmingly driven by that. You're basically making Chanda Chisala's Scrabble argument. It's not any more persuasive here than it was there.
Why on Earth is it not? Most videogames are way more g-loaded than Scrabble, which is primarily about memorization. Videogames are at least as g-loaded as chess, and we have every reason to believe the average IQ of the top speedrunners is comparable to the average IQ of a chess grandmaster.
It's not a competitive field; the results aren't informative as to anything.
Speedrunning is among the most competitive of human endeavors today. In a post-streaming world, runners put themselves out there for the entire world to see, in real time, whether they have what it takes to set a record or they don't. Games that are bought, played, and enjoyed by millions, sometimes tens of millions worldwide. A successful runner has to be better than every single one of these millions for long enough to set a record. You can't just get a record out of stubborn persistence. You have to figure out a way to play the game that nobody before you has figured out. Just copying somebody else's strategy will never get you close, as by the time you figure out how to copy an established, reliable strategy, whatever record you get with it will already be obsolete in the game's competitive scene.
This is delusional. You measure the amount of competition by the number of people who are trying to compete. For speedrunning, this number is very low. The pool of competitors is also very demographically skewed, making it difficult to draw demographic conclusions by looking at it.
You might also look at the rewards of succeeding. These are high for chess (historically) and basketball (today), and nonexistent for speedrunning, which should tell you something.
The number of people who compete in a speedrun is everybody who plays, or has played, whatever the game is! Super Mario 64 alone has sold almost twelve-million copies, and you can bet has been played by many more people than just that. Whoever the best speedrunner is has to be better than every single one of those millions, just as how even the worst player in the NBA has to be better than all but a few hundred of the hundreds of millions of people worldwide who play basketball.* Their competition is just much less 'g' loaded than speedrunning.
And every competition in the entire world is dominated by demographically-skewed groups! Including chess. That's why in 1989 when Keene and Davinsky ranked the sixty-four greatest chess players who ever lived, half the list was made up of Jewish players:
https://jinfo.org/Chess_Warriors_List.html
* Aside from LeBron James Jr., but he's a special case.
Speedrunning is more a measure of dexterity than intelligence, no?
No. To be good enough to be a speedrunner in any game requires far too much mental exertion even if you're just copying strategies for it to not be heavily g-loaded. And it's even more g-loaded for top speedrunners, who have to come up with strategies of their own rather than copy someone else's.
Even the games themselves attract playerbases with different average I.Q.s:
https://metro.co.uk/2024/10/10/study-shows-gamers-highest-iq-not-ea-sports-fc-fans-21772913/
Tutsis were also considered by the Belgians to be more intelligent, and more fit for state administration, whatever that counts for. They're a really cool group of people.
This problem exists in a similar way with the Kurds and Persians, The Kurds have lived a nomadic life for thousands of years, while the Persians have always been urban dwellers.
There are a lot of Persians in academia, while the Kurdish presence in academia is weak.
In the diaspora where you can find many wealthy Persians, this is not the case for Kurds.
I don't know if anyone has ever done a comprehensive study on the cognitive differences between Kurds and Persians, but I found a recent study from Iraq Kurdistan(2017) that Kurdish children were about 9 to 13 points lower than Iranian (possibly Persian?) and Turkish children on the Bender Gestalt test.
As the author herself wrote:
"A comparison made between the performance of the sample of this research and their Iranian counterparts in
Shiraz and Tehran, as well as Turkish children shows that the normal children participating in the present study
scored lower on the test."
However, I do not know whether this cognitive difference between these two genetically and culturally close ethnic groups is due to worse environmental factors for the Kurds(like war) or stronger selection for intelligence in the Persians due to their urban life.
Study Link:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Pegah-Seidi-2/publication/323525957_BENDER-GESTALT_TEST_NORMALIZING_THE_BENDER_VISUAL-MOTOR_TEST_AMONG_5-7_YEAR-OLD_KURDISH_CHILDREN/links/5a99b4780f7e9be37963fadd/BENDER-GESTALT-TEST-NORMALIZING-THE-BENDER-VISUAL-MOTOR-TEST-AMONG-5-7-YEAR-OLD-KURDISH-CHILDREN.pdf
Comparing Persians to Kurds is like comparing Rome to an Italian Hill Tribe, they exist on vastly different scales
Do you think genetic stratification in Iran is likely? Also, a gap of 9+ points would make the existence of a Kurdish Fields Medalist quite surprising: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucher_Birkar
Razib, in his old blog, analyzed the DNA of a very small sample of diasporic Hutus and Tutsis:
https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2019/09/23/tutsis-are-less-nilotic-than-the-maasai/
They cluster far apart in a PCA, with the Hutu being closer to other Bantu groups and the Tutsi being closer to the Nilotic Masai. This would imply that the "Hamitic" (ie Afroasiatic) origin theory of the Tutsi is incorrect and that they are instead a Nilotic conquering group that assimilated linguistically to the conquered population. A bit like the bahima of northeaster Congo and the Ankole region of Uganda: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankole).
Most Cushitic and Nilotic groups in that part of the world have DNA from both of these mentioned groups, including the Maasai. "Original" Cushitics were Natufian/Caucasoid, so Tutsi have more Eurasian DNA than Hutu.
>HGs are less bright than farmers and postoralists
Seems like hunter-gathering would actually require greater intelligence, due to the greater heterogeneity of challenges in obtaining food from a diverse range of sources. Is it possible that all 3 lifestyles select for intelligence, and greater intelligence is observed in farmers/pastoralists just because their larger populations allow for faster evolution?
I think the general view is that an increasing degree of social complexity in pastoralists societies leads to a greater development in intelligence. There certainly seems to be an intelligence advantage in agrarian societies, linked to greater social complexity - development of towns, cities, nuances of social class etc. I am not sure how this plays out in pastoralists though.
So are hunter-gatherers more likely to be autistic then? That would appear to be a prediction of this theory.
Probably not, studies show schizophrenia has been selected against in the past 5,000 years in higher-organization societies, while autism has actually increased.
Sorry Ebenezer I’m not aware of any such research, nor familiar enough with autism to make such a prediction.
So interesting.
I am scared there is a typo: "Tutsis, being (more) postoralists [*pastoralists] (lactose tolerant)"
I thought the Bantu expansion was driven by agriculture? (Horticulture?) They were the farmers expanding at the expense of the foragers.
The Bantus have been mostly farmers since 1000BC. It wasn't just recently that they adopted agriculture
Tutsis were a tall and inferior race which got placed at top by white colonists as puppet rulers.
This is similar to how bankers and media have put women at top in the West.
Now that colonists have been driven away, the natural alpha - short Hutus are reclaiming their God give right to rule.
Tutsis and Hutus certainly look different in the photos, assuming these photos are representative of the broader populations. Is there any data out there on IQ differences between the two groups?