At Our Wits' End, page 24
In a more recently published monograph, a team of psychologists tested this empirically using 400 years of temperature means, an index of group selection strength (which was comprised of converging measures of per capita war fatalities, the frequency of altruism words across texts, and the proportion of Anglo-derived people to the rest of the world’s population), and the utilisation frequencies of the four high-difficulty WORDSUM words tracked using Google Ngram Viewer, graphed in Figure 7. It was found, consistent with predictions, that the increase in global temperature negatively predicted the intensity of group selection, which in turn positively predicted the level of g. So as the climate warmed, group selection declines, which in turn reduces the level of g.[44]
Basically, we can understand the rise and fall of civilisation in terms of a number of interrelated models which are ultimately underpinned by g. In the next chapter we will look at how this social cycle model applies to what is surely the greatest civilisation before our own: Rome.
1 See: Mortimer, I. (2013) A Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England, London: Vantage, Ch. 2.
2 For discussion of the way in which Rousseau and researchers influenced by him have portrayed tribes, see: Sandall, R. (2001) The Culture Cult: On Designer Tribalism and Other Essays, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
3 Rousseau, J.J. (1762/2008) The Social Contract or Principles of Political Right, New York: Cosimo Books.
4 Von Herder, J.G. (1795) Ideas of a Philosophy of the History of Mankind, New York: Bergman.
5 Wilson, W. (1976) Folklore and Nationalism in Modern Finland, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
6 Hegel, G.W.F. (1974) Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
7 Ellis, F. (2004) Political Correctness and the Theoretical Struggle: From Lenin and Mao to Marcus and Foucault, Auckland: Maxim Institute.
8 Eriksen, T.H. (2001) A History of Anthropology, London: Pluto Press.
9 Vinge, V. (1993) The coming technological singularity: How to survive in the post-human era, Whole Earth Review, 81, pp. 88–95.
10 Kurzweil, R. (2006) The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, London: Penguin.
11 Teilhard de Chardin, P. (2004) The Future of Man, New York: Doubleday.
12 See: Levering, M. (2013) The Theology of St. Augustine, Ada, MI: Baker Books.
13 For an introduction to Hinduism, see: Flood, G. (1996) An Introduction to Hinduism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
14 See: de Benoist, A. (2004) On Being a Pagan, Augusta, GA: Ultra.
15 See, McGing, B. (2010) Polybius’s Histories, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
16 Turchin, P. (2007) War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires, New York: Plume, pp. 346–347.
17 See: Fromherz, A. (2010) Ibn Khaldun, Life and Times, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
18 Turchin, P. (2007) War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires, New York: Plume, p. 92.
19 See: Rossides, D. (1998) Social Theory: Its Origins, History and Contemporary Relevance, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. See also: Packwood Adams, H. (1970) The Life and Writings of Giambattista Vico, New York: Russell & Russell.
20 One translation is: Spengler, O. (1991) The Decline of the West, Atkinson, C.F. (trans.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
21 Spengler, O. (1934) The Hour of Decision, New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
22 For a full biography see: Hughes, H.S. (1992) Oswald Spengler, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
23 For a biography of Julian the Apostate, see: Bowersock, G.W. (1978) Julian the Apostate, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
24 Spengler, O. (1991) The Decline of the West, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
25 See Burke, P. (2005) History and Social Theory, Cambridge: Polity Press, p. 158.
26 Malthus, T. (1992) An Essay on the Principle of Population, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
27 Nefedov, S. (2003) A Theory of Demographic Cycles and the Social Evolution of Ancient and Medieval Oriental Societies (translation), [Online], http:// escholarship.org/uc/item/8qf580j5.
28 Dodds, B. (2008) Patterns of decline: Arable production in England, France and Castile, 1370–1450, in Dodds, B. & Britnell, R. (eds.) Agriculture and Rural Society After the Black Death: Common Themes and Regional Variations, Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press.
29 James, W. (1907) Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
30 Kay, A.C., Shepherd, S., Blatz, C.W., et al. (2010) For God (or) country: The hydraulic relation between government instability and belief in religious sources of control, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, pp. 725–739.
31 Dutton, E. (2014) Religion and Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis, London: Ulster Institute for Social Research.
32 Shinhert, G. & Ford, C. (1958) The relation of ethnocentric attitudes to intensity of religious practice, Journal of Educational Sociology, 32, pp. 157–162.
33 Hammond, R. & Axelrod, R. (2006) The evolution of ethnocentric behaviour, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 50, pp. 1–11.
34 Hills, P., Francis, L.J., Argyle, M. & Jackson, C. (2004) Primary personality trait correlates of religious practice and orientation, Personality & Individual Differences, 36, pp. 61–73.
35 Koenig, H., McGue, M., Krueger, R.F. & Bouchard, T.J. (2005) Genetic and environmental influences on religiousness: Findings for retrospective and current religiousness ratings, Journal of Personality, 73, pp. 471–478.
36 Weiss, V. (2007) The population cycle drives human history—from a eugenic phase into a dysgenic phase and eventual collapse, Journal for Social, Political & Economic Studies, 32, pp. 327–358.
37 Weiss, V. (2007) The population cycle drives human history—from a eugenic phase into a dysgenic phase and eventual collapse, Journal for Social, Political & Economic Studies, 32, pp. 327–358.
38 Simmel, G. (1957) Fashion, American Journal of Sociology, 62, pp. 541–558.
39 Picketty, T. (2013) Capital in the Twenty First Century, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
40 Woodley, M.A. & Figueredo, A.J. (2013) Historical Variability in Heritable General Intelligence: It’s Evolutionary Origins and Socio-Cultural Consequences, Buckingham: University of Buckingham Press.
41 Zhang, D.D., Lee, H.F., Wang, C., Li, B., Pei, Q., Zhang, J. & An, Y. (2011) The causality analysis of climate change and large-scale human crises, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108, pp. 17296–17301.
42 For discussion, see: Morris, J. (2010) Pax Brittanica, London: Faber & Faber.
43 See: Jensen, H. (2002) The Welfare State: Past, Present and Future, Pisa University: Edizioni Plus.
44 Woodley of Menie, M.A., Figueredo, A.J., Sarraf, M.A., Hertler, S.C., Fernandes, H.B.F. & Peñaherrera-Aguirre, M. (2017) The rhythm of the west: A biohistory of the modern era, AD 1600 to the present, Journal of Social Political and Economic Studies, monograph series, no. 37, Washington, DC: Scott Townsend Press
Eleven
Did Other Civilisations Show a Rise and Fall in General Intelligence?
We have already met the Roman historian Polybius (200–118 BC). He wrote The Histories, many centuries before the Fall of Rome, which is conventionally put at the year 410, when the city was invaded by Germanic hoards. When Isaac Newton (1643–1727) attended school in the mid-17th century, Roman culture was considered to be so important and unsurpassable that his school taught Latin and pretty much nothing else. This is no longer the case in English schools. Though most pupils are taught about the Roman Empire at school, history classes are far more likely to focus on ‘modern history’ and, in particular, the history of the 20th century. So, before we look into the quite uncanny parallels between Roman civilisation and its successor, it would be handy to quickly recap the history of Rome.[1]
Rome was established in the 9th century BC and was originally ruled by hereditary kings. It developed a polytheistic religion, in many ways comparable to modern day Hinduism. The emphasis was on blood bonds and ritual rather than belief, and religious practices varied substantially by Italian region. The Republic of Rome was set up in 509 BC and by the 3rd century BC Rome dominated the entire Italian peninsula. By this time around 310,000 people lived in Rome itself. The nature of Roman government, from around 509 BC, was of a senate composed of members of the Roman nobility—the ‘patricians’. In addition, there were elected popular assemblies and annually elected magistrates, which meant there was civic participation from the city’s freeborn non-noble men: the ‘plebeians’. Beneath these were the slaves. They were, however, granted various freedoms, could be highly educated and influential, and could sometimes earn enough to buy their freedom.
By the last century BC, however, Rome had developed into an empire and was bereft by conflicts. Non-Roman freemen within Italy fought for the same rights as Romans. There were wars between Rome and its allies, who had fought for Rome and were angry that they were not sufficiently rewarded. There were also a series of slave revolts, motivated by the slaves not being treated properly or being impoverished. Italy was seriously threatened by bands of escaped slaves, led by Spartacus (c.111–71 BC), between 73–71 BC, who looted the countryside. The semi-democratic Republic was simply unable to solve these problems and it collapsed into military dictatorship under Julius Caesar (100–44 BC). With his assassination, Rome moved towards autocracy and by 44 BC it was now an imperium, under the Emperor Augustus. However, it was not a strictly hereditary imperium, in the sense of the crown passing to the eldest son. New emperors would be declared by the senate or installed by the Praetorian Guard; the emperor’s body-guards. This dictatorship was, therefore, highly unstable and was characterised by civil war, autocratic leaders, rebellions, coups, and a number of emperors being assassinated, such as Caligula and Commodus. From 235, when an emperor was again assassinated, there were 26 emperors over a 50-year period.
Eventually, the Empire began to become Christian with the conversion of the Emperor Constantine (sole ruler 324–337). Further rebellion meant it was split in two, with the centre of power moving to Byzantium. By this time, Rome’s population was well down from its peak of around a million. By 410, the city—corrupt and plagued by internal strife—was sacked by Germanic tribes from within the Empire. In 480, the last Roman Emperor (in Rome) was murdered and replaced by a barbarian general. The population of Rome decreased to about 100,000. Rome’s population simply pillaged or recycled its cultural artefacts, a process of vandalism that continued until the Renaissance.
Rome and General Intelligence
The above is undoubtedly a simplified summary of the rise and fall of Rome. But even such a brief summary strongly hints at the place of g in the process of Rome’s rise and fall. Of course, there are numerous theorists who have attempted to explain the decline of the Empire. However, many of these are simply descriptions. The British historian Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) famously wrote:
‘The victorious legions, who, in distant wars, acquired the vices of strangers and mercenaries, first oppressed the freedom of the republic, and afterwards violated the majesty of the purple. The emperors, anxious for their personal safety and the public peace, were reduced to the base expedient of corrupting the discipline which rendered them alike formidable to their sovereign and to the enemy; the vigour of the military government was relaxed, and finally dissolved, by the partial institutions of Constantine; and the Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of Barbarians.’[2]
This in no way explains why these processes occurred and leads us to ask why Rome degenerated into dictatorship, particularly when democracy is predicted by high g. More recently, the historian Ramsey MacMullen has argued that rising corruption was the reason for the collapse of Rome.[3] But why was there rising corruption? As we have seen, corruption is predicted by low g. Yet another idea is that lead poisoning was behind the process.[4] The upper class were more likely to have drunk water from (lead) pipes and been poisoned by it. This, of course, seems to imply that g may have been relevant to the fall of Rome. However, critics have shown that the level of lead in the pipes simply wouldn’t have been sufficient to poison people.[5] We would suggest that the simplest explanation, which accounts for the descriptions we have looked at above, was declining g and specifically in relation to low fertility among those with higher g in the Roman Empire. Let us explore this explanation.
In the beginning, as Rome began to develop, it was a monarchy and we wouldn’t expect its average g to be particularly high. But Rome would have been under the same conditions of pre-industrial selection that we observed were the case in Early Modern Europe. So, we can reasonably expect that there would be selection for g, with the result that this would be increasing every generation. By around 400 BC, we see evidence that average g is likely to be relatively high. We have already seen that g is associated with certain forms of behaviour and attitudes; in particular cooperation, civic participation, support for democracy, high levels of trust, and the ability to solve social problems. All of these characteristics would appear to be reflected in the form of government maintained by the Roman Republic by this time. General intelligence is also associated with, really, any ability to deal with complexity, so we also see increasingly complex buildings and forms of art. Living standards would be much higher, in general, than they had been in the past, especially among the Roman elite.
As the process of increasing g and consequent increasing living standards continues, we start to see a rather interesting development, which has been set out by Gerhard Meisenberg in his book In God’s Image.[6] Those who are part of the elite, and whom we would therefore expect, on average, to be among those with the highest g, seem to begin to limit their fertility. This could be seen in Greece, then part of the Roman Empire, during the time of Polybius—that is, the 2nd century BC. Polybius famously wrote that:
‘In our own time, the whole of Greece has been subject to a low birth rate and a general decrease of population, owing to which cities have become deserted and land has ceased to yield fruit although there have neither been continuous wars or epidemics... For men have fallen into such a state of pretentiousness, avarice, and indolence that they did not wish to marry, or if they married to rear the children born to them or at most, as a rule, have one or two of them.’
Now, obviously, this is highly impressionistic—Polybius doesn’t present us with hard data—and he is merely a source with his own motivations and should be treated as such. The above quote is likely to be mainly referring to the kinds of Greeks with which Polybius was intimately acquainted—members of the elite, rather than Greeks in general—or the population collapse would have been incredibly rapid. But, even with those reservations, the implication is that members of the Greek upper class, who are experiencing a very high standard of living, are choosing to have only small numbers of children and, in some cases, no children at all. This observation would quite precisely parallel what has been observed in modern times. Among elite Greeks g had risen to the point that they were able to rationalise whether or not to have children. In that they were wealthy, their child mortality rate would have been relatively low, so it would have made sense to have only a small number of children, confident that they’d probably survive into adulthood. And these children could then enjoy a high standard of living, each with a larger share of the family money invested in them than they’d otherwise receive. The Ancient Greeks used various forms of contraception, those with higher g would have been more efficient users of contraception, and so we would be left in a situation where, in the 2nd century BC in Greece and very probably in Rome also, there was relatively low fertility among those with the highest g.
Certainly, two centuries later this was recorded as being the case in Rome itself. Two centuries after Polybius was writing, during the reign of the Emperor Augustus, it was commonly understood that members of the Roman aristocracy simply weren’t having many children. The poet Ovid recorded this change at the time in his poem Nux:
‘But since more plenteous honour has come to planes that yield a sterile shade, than to any tree, we fruit-bearers also (if as a nut tree I am counted among them) have begun to luxuriate in spreading foliage. Now apples grow not every year, and injured grapes and injured berries are brought home: now she that would seem beautiful harms her womb, and rare in these days is she who would be a parent.’[7]
