The thing that I've personally noticed is that intelligence appears to be very much rooted in the environment in which the child is brought up. The post by itchibawa kasigaru above (2nd spoiler) about his Australian Aborigine friend show exactly this.

Case 1 - Malaysian-Indians vs. UK & US Indians
I don't mean to be racist, and I hope I don't offend anybody, but a good case study would be the Indian community in Malaysia vs. the Indian communities of the United Kingdom and United States.

A majority (not all) of Malaysian-Indians today are descendants of Indians from lower socio-economic classes in India and were brought to Malaysia by the British as labourers during the years of British occupation in Malaysia. These people were given limited education beyond tapping rubber and managing estates and for the most part were allowed to dwell in their own laid-back estate lifestyle.

On the other hand, a majority of Indians living in the UK and US today are highly educated migrants who migrated to those nations armed with degrees, masters and PhDs. So when this group sets up a community in the UK and US, obviously their lifestyles differ drastically from that of the first generation Malaysian-Indians brought to Malaysia by the British.

Whereas the majority of the early generations of Malaysian-Indians brought by the British would place little importance on education and would instead focus more on paying off their debt to the British for bringing them here and surviving in a new world, the latter group (i.e. the educated migrants to UK & US) would bring up their children with a lot of emphasis on education and mental development.

So then if we do an IQ test in between the two groups, it'll hardly be surprising if the Indians in the UK and US perform much better than the Indians (again - not all!) here in Malaysia.

Case 2 - African Africans vs. British Africans
The same can be said about African-natives living in Africa (i.e. Africans) vs. Africans living in the UK (i.e. British). In the UK, the Blacks have integrated very well into the society and are pretty much indistinguishable from the Whites in terms of socio-economics. There are plenty of very wealthy Black and White Brits and there are also a fair number of poor Black and White Brits.

When we compare the African-native communities in Africa with the British black communities in the UK, it's again very obvious that the Blacks in the UK will outperform the African-natives of Africa. Again the difference between these communities is environment and emphasis on education and mental development as well as the drive to be higher up in the socio-economic ladder.

And so...
So even if genes did affect IQ in a way through some behavioural traits, the effect it has in modern days is very limited. Also we must acknowledge that the kinds of things that IQ tests test for is of little importance for the Bushmen in Africa. The only thing that an IQ test done on a Bushmen proves is that by Western standards, an African Bushmen will not fare well in a Western world order.

But at the same time, if you let the Bushmen set the questions for an IQ test of their own, all of us would fail miserably because to Bushmen, slight variations in the sand can be a sign of animal tracks a few days old, and to us it'll just seem like... well sand! So when that question pops up in the IQ test, obviously we're all going to fail, and the Bushmen will classify us as being "intellectually inadequate".





This post has been edited by DeniseLau: Nov 28 2009, 11:59 AM