Suppose there is some deep-rooted difference between the present-day descendants of the stay-at-home crowd of circa 68,000 BCE and the progeny that spread Haplogroup L3 around the world? I feel extraordinarily uncomfortable even entertaining the idea, but is Africa such an utter shithole solely on account of the legacy of European colonialism? The division of the island of Hispaniola between the Dominican Republic and Haiti can be seen from space. Both nations endured centuries of colonial boot; each attained independence (Haiti first) almost two centuries ago. Two of these island portions are not like the other. Can this be utterly unrelated to their respective populations?

My gut tells me that something that happened ~ 70,000 years ago is unlikely to have much of an effect on the things we call "society" and "intelligence" and "culture" and the like compared to things like education, adequate diet, leaders that value and respect the population, etc.

Haiti has a reputation for being made an "example" by the powers of the time for slaves daring to throw off their colonial rulers.

Part of the problem in studying the past is that we can only study stuff that survived to our time. We know about the civilization in Egypt at least partially because it existed on the edge of a desert. We know little about the Nubians and other ancient African civilizations. That can't help but color our picture of the "civilizations" of Africa (and "lack thereof").

http://www.scs.illinois.edu/~mcdonald/WorldHaplogroupsMaps.pdf has some fascinating maps. The mtDNA stuff is on page 5.

L3 is still prevalent in Africa - if that were determinative, one wouldn't expect Africa to be a "shithole", would we? ;-)

What would Africa be like today if Carthage had defeated Rome?

What would Africa be like today if China had had substantial trade with them?

I don't remember enough about Guns, Germs, and Steel but Diamond addresses, as we know, lots of reasons why civilizations rise and fall. I don't think he talked about genetic arguments.

Issues and arguments about race, and later genetics, are as old as humanity. We had several Black home health aids for several years when J's parents were with us. Several were from Mali, one was from Nigeria (and knew Ken Saro-Wiwa), and one was from Ethiopia. The latter made some remark once about "...those Africans...". It struck me. ;-) And, of course, there was well-known racism involved in Imperial Japan's conquest of Manchuria and Korea.

War is tremendously disruptive. Destruction of the environment is tremendously disruptive. Inadequate food is tremendously disruptive.

The Dutch changed from shrimps to giants only in the last 150 years or so.

Finally, the victors write the history. Of course we think L3 is great since it gave rise to us. Someone looking at the problems in Detroit or eastern Ukraine or North Korea and comparing it to Botswana, or even looking at WWI and WWII, might come to a different conclusion. ;-)

My $0.02.

Cheers,
Scott.

Luck and small twists of fate could have resulted in a very different distribution of power and "civilization" and all the other things we hold dear. L3 leaving Africa compared to L2 or L1 might have been one of those twists of fate. Instead of indicating some proof of better fitness (or whatever), it may simply be a variation on the Anthropic Principle - to wit: We're here, and we're powerful, and we're related to L3, therefore L3 is an essential part of the process...

But maybe L3 was somehow associated with the development of language or something. It seems unlikely that it was directly related though - mitochondrial DNA is involved in energy conversion, not encoding things like language centers in the brain.

I'm obviously no expert on this stuff. But, like you, I am most uncomfortable thinking that there's some genetic basis in the distribution of power in the world...

I'm reminded of a US News story I saw in the late '80s that was about changes in body sizes in Olympic sprinters. Future sprinters were going to look like Ben Johnson because, well, that's what champion sprinters looked like then.



Of course, the fact that he got to be so muscle-bound through taking steroids didn't come out until a little later...

I'm rambling. I'll quit now.

Thanks.

Cheers,
Scott.