Hayim Ben-Sasson, A History of the Jewish People (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976).
Bernard D. Weinryb, The Jews of Poland: A Social and Economic History of the Jewish Community in Poland from 1100 to 1800 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1973); Ben-Sasson, A History of the Jewish People; Zvi Ankori, "Origins and History of Ashkenazi Jewry (8th to 18th Century)," in Genetic Diseases among Ashkenazi Jews, edited by Richard M. Goodman and Arno G. Motulsky (New York: Raven Press, 1979); Eli Barnavi and Miriam Eliav-Feldon, A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People: From the Time of the Patriarchs to the Present (New York: Knopf, 1992).
Botticini and Eckstein, "From Farmers to Merchants."
Nachum Gross, Economic History of the Jews (New York: Schocken Books, 1975), 147,150.
Marcus Arkin, Aspects of Jewish Economic History (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1975); Ben-Sasson, A History of the Jewish People.
Arkin, Aspects of Jewish Economic History, 58.
Ben-Sasson, A History of the Jewish People, 401.
Norman Roth, Medieval Jewish Civilization: An Encyclopedia. Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages, vol. 7 (London: Routledge).
Weinryb, The Jews of Poland, 313.
Ibid.
Ibid., 115.
Ibid., 313.
Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984).
Jewish Encyclopedia, http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/. The Jewish Encyclopedia was an encyclopedia originally published between 1901 and 1906 by Funk and Wagnalls. It contained over 15,000 articles in twelve volumes on the history and the state ofJudaism and the Jews as of 1901. It is now a public domain resource.
Eric Hobsbawm, "Benefits of Diaspora," London Review of Books, October 20, 2005, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n20/hobs01_.html.
Raphael Patai and Jennifer Patai, The Myth of the Jewish Race (New York: Scribner, 1975).
Tian et al., "Analysis and Application of European Genetic Substructure Using 300K SNP Information," PLoS Genetics 4, no. 1 (2008): e4. An SNP is a single nucleotide polymorphism. If we take two human chromosomes from a population and scan them side by side, there will be a single base pair difference approximately every 1,000 positions, on average. A site on the chromosome where two different bases are present in a population is called an SNP.
Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind (New York: Basic Books, 1993); Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ (New York: Bantam Books, 1995).
Arthur R.Jensen, Bias in Mental Testing (New York: Free Press, 1980).
Margaret E. Backman, "Patterns of Mental Abilities: Ethnic, Socioeconomic, and Sex Differences," American Educational Research Journal 9 (1972): 1-12; Boris Levinson, "A Comparison of the Performance of Monolingual and Bilingual Native-Born, Jewish Preschool Children of Traditional Parentage on Four Intelligence Tests," Journal of ClinicalPsychology 15 (1959): 74-76; Julius S. Romanoff, "Birth Order, Family Size, and Sibling Spacing as Influences on Intelligence and Academic Abilities of Jewish Adolescents," Department of Psychology, Temple University, 1976.
Richard Lynn, "The Intelligence of American Jews," Personality and Individual Differences 26 (2004): 201—206.
James F. Crow, "Unequal by Nature: A Geneticist's Perspective on Human Differences," Daedalus, Winter 2002, 81-88.
Cyril Russell and Harry S. Lewis, The Jew in London (London: Harper Collins, 1900).
A. Hughes, "Jew and Gentiles: Their Intellectual and Temperamental Differences," Eugenics Review 18 (July 1928): 1-6.
Leon Kamin, The Science and Politics ofIQ (Potomac, Md.: Erl- baum, 1974); H. Goddard, "Mental Tests and the Immigrant," Journal of Delinquency 2 (1917): 243-277.
Daniel Seligman, A Question of Intelligence: The IQ Debate in America (New York: Birch Lane Press, 1992).
Hanna David and Richard Lynn, "Intelligence Differences between European and Oriental Jews in Israel," Journal ofBiosocial Science 39, no. 3 (2007): 465-473.
Yinon Cohen et al., "Ethnicity and Mixed Ethnicity: Educational Gaps among Israeli-Born Jews," Ethnic and Racial Studies 30, no. 5 (2007): 896-917.
Gregory Cochran et al., "Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence," Journal ofBiosocial Science 38, no. 5 (2005): 659-693; A. B. Olshen et al., "Analysis of Genetic Variation in Ashkenazi Jews by High Density SNP Genotyping," BMC Genetics 9, no. 1 (2008): 14.
Dana S. Mosher et al., "A Mutation in the Myostatin Gene Increases Muscle Mass and Enhances Racing Performance in Heterozygote Dogs," PLoS Genetics 3, no. 5 (2007): e79.
Steven U. Walkley, "Neurobiology and Cellular Pathogenesis of Glycolipid Storage Diseases," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society London B 358 (2003): 893-904; Steven U. Walkley et al., "Gangliosides as Modulators of Dendritogenesis in Normal and Storage Disease-Affected Pyramidal Neurons," Cerebral Cortex 10 (2000): 1028-1037.
Cochran et al., "Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence."
Roswell Eldridge, "Edward Flatau, Wladyslaw Sterling, Torsion Spasm in Jewish Children, and the Early History of Human Genetics," Advances in Neurology 14 (1976): 105-114.
Roswell Eldridge, "Torsion Dystonias: Genetic and Clinical Studies," Neurology 11 (1970): 1-78; Eldridge, "Edward Flatau, Wladys- law Sterling, Torsion Spasm."
Maria I. New and R. C. Wilson, "Steroid Disorders in Children: Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia and Apparent Mineralocorticoid Excess," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 96 (1999): 12790-12797.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century in Europe the old relationship between wealth and number of offspring began to reverse, and it remains reversed today in industrial societies. This accompanied a reduction in death rates and, somewhat later, birth rates among all wealth classes, called the "demographic transition."
Linda S. Gottfredson, "Why g Matters: The Complexity of Everyday Life," Intelligence 24 (1997): 79-132.
GLOSSARY
Adaptive: An adjective that is widely used in evolutionary biology but that is nowhere precisely defined. In general, a trait is called adaptive if it increases the fitness of its bearers: Thus, white skin may be adaptive in cold, northern climates where there is limited opportunity for exposure to sunlight and hence vitamin D synthesis.
Akkadian Empire: A polity that was prominent in Iraq two thousand years before the Common Era. The empire had a system of roads and a regular postal service, and there was intense use of clay seals as postage stamps.
Alans: Horse nomads, a subgroup of Sarmatians, who accompanied the Vandals in their invasion of the Roman Empire and later wanderings in later Roman times and during the dark ages. See also Sarmatians; Vandals.
Allele: An alternate form of a gene; also, a particular sequence of nucleo- tides occupying a given position on a chromosome. The position on a chromosome is called a locus (pl. loci). Different sequences that occur at the same locus in the population are called allelic to each other or simply alleles. Thus, A, B, and O are alleles at the ABO blood- group locus.
Amino acid: The basic building blocks of proteins. There are twenty standard amino acids—twenty-one if you count selenocysteine.
Anatomically modern humans (AMH): Creatures who looked much like people today, who appeared in northeastern Africa up to 200,000 years ago. From then until about 45,000 years ago, there are occasional traces of innovation in the archaeological record—beads, ochre, or an occasional new high-quality tool, but little happens until about 45,000 years ago when our human ancestors left Africa to colonize Europe and Asia north of the Himalayas, in one branch, and Australia, parts of Indonesia, and near Pacific islands in another branch. Some would say that the 200,000-year-old Africans were the first anatomically modern humans; others would say that the colonizers of 45,000 years ago were.
Archaic humans: Precursors of anatomically modern humans in Africa, Europe, and Asia, including the Neanderthals of Europe. Homoerectus is the name usually given to the human ancestor of 1.8 million years ago until about 300,000 years ago.
After that, H. erectus began to exhibit several important changes: The first prepared-core toolmak- ing traditions appeared, along with hearths for fire, and the brain became larger, until it was essentially the same size as or slightly larger than that of humans today. It is these apparently larger-brained versions of Homo erectus that are called "archaic humans."
Assyrian Empire: A Bronze Age empire centered in northern Mesopotamia, north of Babylon. The Assyrians spoke a Semitic language.
Atlatl: A spear-throwing device with a handle on one end along with a spur or cup that the spear rests against. An atlatl can cast a dart more than 100 yards. The Australian version is known as a woomera.
Aurignacian: The earliest of several cultural traditions in Europe associated with the anatomically modern human invaders from Africa. Au- rignacian culture had early cave art, sculpture, and fine stone and bone tools.
Autosome: A chromosome other than the sex chromosomes. Twenty- two of the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes in human DNA are autosomal; two copies of each autosomal chromosome are found in both sexes. The chromosomes of the other pair, which can be either type X or Y, are called sex chromosomes.
Axon: A long fiber or projection of a nerve cell that carries nerve impulses away from the cell body.
Behavioral modernity: The set of practices and cultural elaborations characterizing modern humans, as opposed to archaic humans.There is an ongoing effort in some disciplines to draw a line between archaic and modern humans, but different theorists place that line at different points in the history of our species. Some would draw it several hundred thousand years ago in Africa when creatures who look like us appeared on the scene; others would draw the line around 45,000 years ago, when a lot of art, decoration, clothing, sculpture, and new technology appeared rather suddenly, especially among populations that left Africa.
Berbers: Aboriginal inhabitants of Africa north of the Sahara. The Berbers look much more like Europeans than sub-Saharan Africans do.
Blade: A stone tool made from a flake that is more than twice as long as it is wide. The toolkit of the anatomically modern invaders of Europe about 40,000 years ago had many more blades than the Neanderthals' toolkit did.
Bottleneck: A severe restriction in population size that leads to a reduction in genetic diversity. The effect of a bottleneck depends on the size of the population when it was small and the length of time thatit was small. In general, in human history a reduction to a total population size in the hundreds would leave a genetic trace; a reduction to a population size in the thousands would not be a significant bottleneck unless it persisted for tens of thousands of years.
Carbon-14 dating: A method of dating paleontological and archaeological specimens by measuring the ratio of stable to unstable carbon isotopes present in the specimen. Carbon in the atmosphere contains an unstable isotope that breaks down at a constant rate and is generated by solar activity. When a living organism dies, there is no longer carbon exchange with the atmosphere, and the fraction of the unstable isotope decreases with time. By measuring the ratio of stable to unstable carbon, one can estimate the time of death. The method is considered accurate for events from several centuries to about 45,000 years in the past. See also Isotope.
Carrying capacity: The maximum population that can be sustained over the long run. With humans, this depends upon which skills and tools are known. The same piece of land would have a lower carrying capacity for foragers than for farmers.
Centromere: A central region in the chromosome involved in cell division. It consists of largely repetitive DNA and has few genes.
Chatelperronian: A stone-tool tradition found in Europe after the invasion of anatomically modern humans from Africa. It shows some similarities to technologies of the Neanderthals and has been associated with Neanderthal remains. Many believe that it represents a Neanderthal imitation of the technology of the invaders.
Chromosome: A very long DNA molecule, along with associated protective proteins. Humans have forty-six chromosomes in twenty-three pairs, one of each pair from the mother, one from the father. The last pair, the sex chromosomes, would be a pair of two X's in females or an X and a Y chromosome in males.
Codon: A sequence of three nucleotides. These three-base sequences designate particular amino acids (most of them—sixty out of sixty- four) or initiation or cessation of protein assembly.
Dendrite: Short, highly branched extensions of a neuron. Dendrites form synaptic contacts with other neurons.
Diploid: Organisms whose cells carry two copies of the genetic blueprint, ordinarily one from the mother and one from the father. Diploidy is associated with sexual reproduction.
DNA: Deoxyribonucleic acid, a nucleic acid molecule that contains the genetic recipe used in the growth and function of living organisms.
Dominant: The phenotypic effect of an allele at a locus when there is only a single copy. For example, people with blood group A have either two
A alleles, or else an A and an O; in the latter case, A is called dominant to O.
Eemian interglacial: The interglacial era before the current one (Holocene). It began about 131,000 years ago, and temperatures had returned by 114,000 years ago. At its peak, temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were 1—2°C warmer than today.
Etruscans: An ancient people of Italy, concentrated in the area north of Rome now known as Tuscany. They had, at minimum, an important influence on the development of Rome, and they may have founded the city. They spoke an undeciphered non-Indo-European language, and historical and genetic evidence suggests that they originated in Anatolia.
Exponential growth: Growth that is proportional to the amount present, like compound interest. Interest that is continuously compounded yields an exponential growth of money. Under exponential growth, the doubling time is constant. So, for example, it takes the same amount of time to go from 100 to 200 as it takes to go from 1,000 to 2,000.
Fitness: The rate of reproduction of an entity. The fitness of an individual is the genetic contribution of that individual to the next generation. The fitness of a gene, or a chunk of DNA, is the rate of reproduction of that gene.
Fixation: The state in which all copies of a given gene in a population are identical.
Gaucher's disease: A lysosomal storage disease that is unusually common (100 times the norm) in Ashkenazi Jews. Homozygotes experience an illness of varying severity, mostly due to the accumulation of the fatty substance glucosylceramide in tissues.
Gene: A string of nucleic acids that does something biologically useful. Often the useful product is messenger RNA that codes for a protein, but some genes produce structural RNA or regulate expression of other genes.
Genotype: An individual's genetic pattern, as opposed to his phenotype, which is his visible characteristic. For example, someone with the phenotype of blood group A could have either the AA or the AO genotype.
Group selection: Selection favoring well-adapted groups rather than well-adapted individuals.The classic formulation is this: Group A is full of altruists, and group B is full of selfish individuals. Group A grows faster, but since the groups belong to the same species, selfish individuals from group B always infiltrate group A and take advantage of the altruism there. In the end, selfish individuals predominate. There is a broad consensus that group selection is not an important
force in evolution. This means that evolution does not lead to individuals who are altruistic or who do things "for the good of the species."
Haploid: An organism that carries a single copy of the genetic code, that is, its blueprint. Most complex animals and plants are instead diploid. See also Diploid.
Haplotype: A set of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) near each other on a chromosome that are statistically associated. See also SNP.
HapMap: A genetic dataset that records the common single-nucleotide variants in a number of individuals drawn from Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and East Asia.
Heritability: The proportion of variation of a trait tha
t is caused by genetic variation. Note that this is not fixed for any trait, since it depends on the amount of genetic variation and the diversity of environmental or other effects. Skin color is more heritable in New York than it is in Stockholm because the genetic variation is greater in New York.
Heterozygote: An individual with two different alleles of a given gene at a locus.
Holocene: The interglacial period we are currently in. It started about 11,500 years ago.
Homo erectus: A human ancestor that left Africa over 1.5 million years ago to occupy much of the temperate and tropical Old World. Below the neck they resembled extremely rugged modern humans. Their brains were approximately two-thirds the size of ours and their skulls were thick and heavy, with prominent bony architecture around the eyes and heavy jaws and teeth.
Homo heidelbergensis: An early European version of Homo erectus. Whether or not to give the European forms this separate name is a matter of taste and convenience.
Homo neanderthalensis: See Neanderthal.
Homo sapiens: The proper name of our species, anatomically modern humans.
Homozygote: An individual with two identical copies of a given gene at a locus.
Indo-European: A family of related languages. Most European languages are Indo-European, as are Persian and the languages of northern India. The Indo-European range once extended into western China. There are several plausible theories of Indo-European origins, the favorite being that the original Indo-European speakers (called Proto-Indo-Europeans) were mounted agro-pastoralist invaders from the steppes of the Ukraine.
Indus civilization: An ancient civilization that flourished in Pakistan and western India from 2600 to 1900 bc. Cuneiform records and
archaeological finds indicate extensive maritime trade between this civilization and ancient Mesopotamia.
Introgression: The movement of a gene or genes from one species to another.
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