Category Archives: Inuit

Peter Frost Discusses My Work


Peter Frost is an excellent race realist anthropologist. I think he is a working academic. He is as smart as the Devil. Brilliant man.

This is my post that he critiques.

Lindsay, R. (2010). The Head Size/IQ/Race Trainwreck, March 11

He sort of handwaves it away, but I think I am onto something.

I noticed certain things. First of all, Amerindian IQ is generally set at 87 all up and down the Americas. Yet their head sizes are all over the place, from large to small. OK, their heads range from large to small, but their IQ’s are all the same? Something wrong with the theory.

Here is his quote. My work is in italics below:

There has not been much comment on the Beals, Smith, and Dodd (1984) article. The most substantive one seems to be a blog post by Robert Lindsay (2010) who calls their map a “train wreck” for claims that cranial capacity correlates with IQ:


Methinks that Lindsay takes the fine details on that map a bit too seriously. Many of the details are simply creative extrapolation and infilling; otherwise, the map roughly corresponds with world distribution of mean IQ. Furthermore, no one is claiming that cranial capacity is the only determinant of IQ. There are undoubtedly many others: cortical surface area, myelinization of nerve fibers, relative importance of domain-general thinking, etc.

But he does make a good point about the Amerindian data.


Agreed. No one can, for now. But a hypothesis is not false because no one has bothered to test it.


But there are quite a few other holes in this theory. South Indians and Vietnamese have the same sized heads. South Indian IQ = 82, and Vietnamese IQ = 99. How does that work? Heads the same size and one SD difference in IQ? What?

Ugandans/ Kenyans and Italians have the same sized heads. Ugandans and Kenyans have the largest heads in Africa. Now that I think about it, Masai heads do look quite large. Ugandan/Kenyan IQ = 68, and Italian IQ = 103. OK, now we have heads of the same size and a 35 point or over 2 SD difference in IQ? Huh? I suppose you can argue that Ugandans have huge heads but there’s not a lot inside of them except maybe air. Or you can argue that the Ugandan brains are not very specialized, and Italians have much more specialized brains. I suspect this may be the case with Vietnamese too.

After all, you can have a huge car that is junk and a smaller car that is one of the finest on Earth. It’s all down to the specialization and micro-detail. And I suspect it’s not just head size alone. We know full well that certain more modern parts of the brain are correlated much more with advanced thinking than other parts of the brain are. The prefrontal cortex is one of those – it hardly exists in apes, but it’s full blown in man. And there are structures within the PFC than are even more specialized than the PFC itself. Maybe it’s not the size of the brain but the type and quality of the machinery inside of it?

This becomes quite clear when we notice that Eskimos have the biggest heads of all, yet their IQ is only 91, just above the world average of 89. 91 is not a bad IQ, but one would expect more from the people with the biggest heads on Earth, no? Usually the explanation is that a huge portion of the Eskimo brain has gone over to visuospatial, which is actually proven in experiments that show how Eskimos can find their way even in the most confusing wind, snow and ice-filled landscapes.

Aborigines also have superb visuospatial skills, some of the finest of all mankind. They got this from having evolved in the trackless desert that in terms of familiar objects and markers is probably not a whole lot different from the Arctic. So if you have a huge brain but a lot of that larger size is gone over to something like visuospatial, then that won’t do a lot for your IQ.

On the other hand, there goes your theory! We are already finding exceptions and handwaving them away.

Nevertheless, I think that the theory is good in sort of a broad and general way, possibly with a number of exceptions. The exceptions may be down to some large brains having huge areas gone over to certain specialized things that don’t do much for IQ and some small brains possibly being as good as large ones in that perhaps they are very specialized or have a lot of micro-machinery of very good quality in their heads.

All in all, not a bad theory, but beware of the exceptions minefield.


Filed under Aborigines, Americas, Amerindians, Anthropology, Asians, Blacks, East Indians, Europeans, Intelligence, Inuit, Italians, Masai, Neuroscience, Physical, Psychology, Race/Ethnicity, Racism, Regional, Science, SE Asians, South Asians, Vanity, Vietnamese, White Racism

The Australoid-Mongoloid Transition in Asia and the Americas

The first Amerindians from 9-14,000 YBP were Australoids. All of Asia was Australoid until 9,000 YBP. North Asia transitioned away from Australoid at that time, but the transition out of Australoid happened much later in south.

For instance, the full transition did not occur until 2,200 YBP in Vietnam, and in all probability, Filipinos, Malays, Indonesians, Nicobar Islanders, Taiwanese aborigines, Montagnards, some Thai hill tribes, Nagas and probably others never fully transitioned over and hence are referred to as Paleomongoloids. The lack of full transition in the south is due to the Australoid-Mongoloid transition occurring so much later down there.

Whether Amerindians are a Paleo or Neo Mongoloids has never been completely answered. The Na Dene people in the Far North may be more Neo. There were still a few Australoid tribes at contact, and an Australoid tribe called the Pericua lasted for some time in Baja California. Whatever is left of the Yaghan and other Patagonian tribes may well be Australoids also.

However, the Eskimo or Inuit people are full Neomongoloids as are the peoples of Siberia.


Filed under Amerindians, Anthropology, Asia, Asians, Filipinos, Indonesians, Inuit, Malays, NE Asia, Physical, Race/Ethnicity, Regional, SE Asia, SE Asians, Siberia, Taiwanese Aborigines, Thai, Vietnam, Vietnamese

What Is the Difference Between a Neomongoloid and a Paleomongoloid?

Steven writes:

What’s the difference between Paleomongoloid and Neomongoloid? You got a post on this?

Paleomongoloids are more archaic Mongoloids. Amerindians, Filipinos, Nagas, most SE Asians, Ryukuyans, Indonesians, and Taiwanese aborigines are all probably Paleomongoloids.

The base Asian type is Australoid. 2,000-9.000 YBP, Asian base Australoid types began transitioning to Mongoloids.

The Australoid is the archaic Asian type, and the Mongoloid is the fully transitioned more progressive type.

Koreans, Nivkhis, Eskimos, Mongolians, many Siberians, Japanese, and Northern Chinese are all Northern Neomongoloids. The transition began 9,000 YBP in the north. The Ainu represent the base type that transitioned to Neomongoloid in the north.

In the South, Southern Chinese, most of the ethnics in Southern China especially Yunnan, Hmong, Mien, and Vietnamese at least are Southern Neomongoloids. The transition happened much later in the South, 2,000-5,000 YBP.

Because it happened so much later, a lot of people in the south are not fully transitioned, hence they are considered to be Paleomongoloids or Australoid-Mongoloid transitionals. In the South, the Paleos are Taiwanese aborigines, most SE Asians, Filipinos, Indonesians and Naga at the very least. Polynesians and Micronesians are also probably Paleomongoloids.

Paleomongoloids to the north include the Ryukuyans and the Ainu.

Amerinds are often considered to be Paleos because they seem to represent a more archaic Mongoloid type than say the Japanese, Koreans, Chinese or even the Eskimos.


Filed under Ainu, Amerindians, Anthropology, Asians, Chinese (Ethnic), Filipinos, Indonesians, Inuit, Japanese, Koreans, Micronesians, Mongolians, Northeast Asians, Oceanians, Physical, Polynesians, Race/Ethnicity, SE Asians, Taiwanese Aborigines

Transitional Mongoloid Races

Mike815 writes:

















NE Asians and SE Asians

As you can see, NE Asians and SE Asians are completely different races. Under SE Asians, what I mean are the Oceanians, Indonesians, Filipinos, Malay, Thai, Lao, Khmer, Vietnamese and Southern Chinese. Amerindians and Eskimos are much closer to NE Asians than the SE Asians are.

SE Asians were the third major split in man.

1st split – Africans

2nd split – Australians and Papuans

3rd split – SE Asians

4th split – to NE Asians and Caucasians

The chart indicates a huge split between NE and SE Asians.


Filed under Amerindians, Anthropology, Asians, Inuit, Northeast Asians, Physical, Race/Ethnicity, SE Asians

Early Homo Sapiens Sapiens in Africa

















Neuroanatomical Correlates of IQ

The reality is more nuanced than that, as intelligence is indeed linked to grey matter volume, cortical thickness & myelination integrity (Nature Reviews Neuroscience 5:1-13, June 2004).

Leigh Van Allen, in a 1981 book, showed via meta-analysis that head size was modestly correlated with IQ. More recent work with MRI analysis gives us a correlation of .42 with head size and IQ. However, there are problems with this correlation. Eskimos have the largest heads of all, yet their IQ is only 91. Vietnamese have some of the smallest heads of all, yet their IQ is 99.5. Ugandans have huge heads, larger than Southern Europeans. The Ugandan IQ is ~67 and the Southern European IQ is ~95.

It’s hard to make sense of these findings, but the imperfect correlation remains. Within races, surely smarter people simply have bigger heads. One theory is that much of the large Eskimo brain is devoted to visuospatial analysis, something that they are exceedingly good at. This confounds the large head and IQ correlation.

So maybe it’s not so much how big or small your head is, but what might be more important what sort of stuff you have in that small or large head of yours. The small Vietnamese brain may be highly developed in important ways. The large Ugandan brain may have a lot of areas that are not so important. But all of this is exceedingly conjectural and controversial and tends to lead to one conundrum after another.

Race realists love to throw these findings around as if they prove that IQ is completely genetically based. However, environment seems to play a large role in brain development and it seems to give larger brain. Head size has been increasing in the West for a century now, along with improved nutrition and rising IQ’s. Better nutrition is probably giving us bigger heads and making us smarter to boot. But there’s clearly a ceiling on this effect.

One of the the theories suggested to account for the Flynn Effect has been the increased complexity of mathematics education in the West in the past 100 years or so. This math education is thought to cause increased development of frontal parts of the brain. So you see environment can grow your brain too.

One thing that is clear from all of this is that intelligence is biological and not some construct created out of thin air.


Filed under Amerindians, Asians, Biology, Blacks, Education, Europeans, Flynn Effect, Health, Intelligence, Inuit, Neuroscience, Nutrition, Psychology, Race Realism, Race/Ethnicity, Science, SE Asians, Vietnamese

Dual Pronouns

Repost from the old site.

We do not have dual pronouns in English anymore, and they have dropped out of my most other European languages too, but they are still found in some languages, including American Indian languages. In these languages there is a contrast in number between singular, dual and plural pronouns:


3rd singular ia    (he/she)
3rd dual     rāua  (they two)
3rd plural   rātou (they 3 or more)

A California Amerindian language I worked on, Chukchansi Yokuts, had four different dual pronouns.

Yokuts has four – 1st person singular inclusive (you and I), 1st person singular exclusive (he and I – but not you), 2nd person singular (you two), and third person singular (them two).

1 dual inc "you and I" includes hearer
1 dual exc "he and I"  excludes hearer
2 dual     "you two"
3 dual     "those two/they two"

1sg inclusive includes the hearer, and 1sg exclusive excludes the hearer. We can also look at this through a schematic. In the chart below, S stands for Speaker, H stands for Hearer and O stands for Other.

1 dual inc "you and I"          S + H
1 dual exc "he and I (not you)" S + O
2 dual     "you two"            H
3 dual     "those two"          O

Only a few languages have 2nd person inclusive and exclusive pronouns:

2pl inc "you guys I'm talking to"
2pl exc "you and your buddies not here"

Schematically, this looks like this:

2pl inc H + H
2pl exc H + O

English sort of has inclusive and exclusive 1st person, but it is not marked grammatically. Compare:

1pl inclusive: “Remember when we all went to the beach?” This sentence, through the use of “we all”, often includes the hearer.

1pl exclusive: “I went to Rob’s house and we went to the beach.” This sentence, configured the way it is, tends to exclude the hearer. This is because you would hardly be telling a hearer a story as if they had never heard it, if they had actually been a part of the action.

There are a few languages in which you can almost have 2 S’s, or two speakers, but not really. In a few cases, the “respectful” form in inclusive-exclusive languages can be a “inclusive singular”. It’s almost as if the speaker were trying to worm his way into the hearer’s skin.

1sg inc         "you and I" includes hearer
1sg exc         "he and I"  excludes hearer
1sg inc respect "you and I as one"

But in general, there cannot be an S + S in any human language. This is because in general there can be only one S, one speaker. Except at the Presidential Debates when everyone is interrupting everyone else.

Although we can picture a case where you and I are speaking to a crowd, or maybe to an individual. Say you and I show up to give a heart to heart talk with an errant person we know. It’s almost as if we are speaking as one, but it can never truly be an S + S. This is because even though we are dressing them down almost as one entity, we are still discrete individuals, both of independent minds.

The only way there could really be an S + S relationship is if you and I went to dress down the errant person, but I had you under mind control at the time. This would be the only case in which you can actually have “two speakers acting as one”. The Bush Administration, where there are no discrete individuals with independent minds, just different manifestations of a single Borg, may be the first known case.

As a stretch, you and I could tell the errant person in chorus that we hate them. Possibly then we would have an S + S relationship, but that would be a stretch.

Nice little discussion of dual pronouns here. They are found in Austronesian languages in Polynesia, Micronesia, the Philippines and New Guinea; in Saami, Khanty, Mansi, Nenets in Finno-Ugric, the language family that includes Finnish; in Inuktitut, an Eskimo language; and in Arabic and Amerindian languages.

They used to be present in many older versions of Indo-European languages – Old German, Old English, Avestan, Old Irish, Middle Welsh, Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Old Norse, Gothic and Old Church Slavonic – but they have mostly gone out.

The dual only exists in Slovene and Upper and Lower Sorbian anymore. A Slovene commented on a blog, “Yes, we are the only European language left with a dual, but it doesn’t do us any good, and we are tired of hearing about it.” It’s almost gone from Lithuanian, Icelandic and Russian, where it has an archaic or humorous flavor. There are still a few relict forms in Bavarian.

The dual seems like it is one of the first forms to go out as a language modernizes. It stays on in lesser spoken languages where people have a lot of time on their hands and use language as a source of creativity and mental exercise. As a society modernizes and urbanizes, people want to say things in the quickest way possible, so languages become less and less complicated.

Contrary to White Nationalists who insist that primitive folks have primitive languages, the languages spoken by more primitive peoples are not necessarily primitive at all, and the most civilized folks have the most broken-down languages.

The most complicated languages of all are spoken by often “low-IQ” types like Aborigines, Papuans, Africans, Amerindians, Inuit, and also in tribes high up in the Caucasus. Surely IQ correlates with all sorts of stuff, but complexity of language is not one of them.

They aren’t rushed for time and they live simple, agricultural or hunter-gatherer lives, so these “low IQ” people play with language and its complexity as a form of fun and mental challenge, sort of like the way we play chess or Scrabble.

As you can see from the discussion and examples above, Linguistics is an interesting field, going beyond mere language into the philosophy of the human mind itself. That is why Noam Chomsky is Chair of something called the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy and MIT.

This particular post was in the sub-discipline of Semantics, which is one of my favorite subfields. The famed S.I. Hayakawa, California politician, was a professor of Semantics.

Others are Phonology (study of important sounds), Phonetics (study of speech sounds), Morphology (study of parts of words), Syntax (study of the rules of language and parts of speech at the sentence level), Sociolinguistics (sociology and linguistics), Anthropological Linguistics (anthropology and linguistics) and Historical Linguistics (reconstruction and analysis of the evolution of languages).

Others include Semantics (study of the meaning of words), Pragmatics (study of the intersection between social rules and behavior and language), Discourse Analysis (analysis of human discourse at the narrative level), Computational Linguistics (intersection of computing and linguistics) and Bilingualism (subfield of sociolinguistics – has to do with acquisition of and use of more than one language).

There are also subfields called Applied Linguistics (linguistics in a work-type format, such as teaching second language, work with hearing-impaired or people with language disorders) and Field (or Descriptive) Linguistics (language fieldwork, especially with small and endangered languages – how to record, take notes, transcribe, make dictionaries, alphabets, phrase books, language programs)

We also have Neurolinguistics (the study of language and the brain), Psycholinguistics (the study of language and psychological processes), Developmental Linguistics (mostly the study of language acquisition by children), Evolutionary Linguistics (the study of how language developed in man), Clinical Linguistics (the study of language and speech pathology) and Biolinguistics (study of language use in animals).

Others are Ethnolinguistics (the intersection of culture, thought and language), Linguistic Anthropology (study of man through the languages he uses), Cognitive Linguistics (the study of language as a cognitive process), Etymology (the evolution of words) and Stylistics (the study of language in context).

My favorites are Historical Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Field Linguistics, Semantics , Sociolinguistics, Bilingualism, Morphology and to some extent Phonology (though it is starting to leave me behind). Syntax is perfectly horrible.


Brichoux, Robert. 1977.Semantic components of pronoun systems: Subanon and Samoan.‭ Studies in Philippine Linguistics 1(1): 163-65.


Filed under Aborigines, Amerindians, Anthropology, Applied, Austro-Tai, Austronesian, Blacks, Descriptive, Indo-European, Indo-Hittite, Inuit, Language Families, Language Learning, Language Samples, Linguistics, Multilingualism, Papuans, Philosophy, Race/Ethnicity, Reposts From The Old Site, Semantics, Sociolinguistics

Journeys in Asian Prehistory

Repost from the old site.


















































































































Yes, that wonderful religion called Buddhism has its downside.
















Southeast Asian IQ Scores

Repost from the old site.



World average 88
Laos          89
Cambodia      90 (est.)
Thailand      91
Vietnam       95
Hmong         --










But, getting back to the Vietnam score.










So I did some digging around.























Hmong         82.15
World average 88?
Laos          89
Cambodia      90 (est.)
Thailand      90
Vietnam       99.5

















Filed under Africa, Ainu, Amerindians, Anthropology, Asia, Asians, China, Chinese (Ethnic), Europeans, Hmong, Immigration, Intelligence, Inuit, Khmer, Lao, Melanesians, NE Asia, Negritos, Northeast Asians, Oceanians, Physical, Polynesians, Psychology, Race/Ethnicity, Racism, Regional, Reposts From The Old Site, Samoans, SE Asia, SE Asians, Taiwan, Thai, Vietnam, Vietnamese, White Racism