Ancient Eugenics

I've often heard it argued that the reason why African Americans are overrepresented in the sporting field in the USA is because they are descended from a stock of slaves that for hundreds of years were selectively bred. And that slave-descended Africans in the New World and beyond are generally fitter and stronger than the Africans who live now, and always have, lived in Africa (though no doubt, diet and healthcare play a role in this).

That's absolutely ridiculous. Most blacks in America have ancestors who come from Western Africa. The reason that African-Americans do well in sports is because West Africans on average have a higher percentage of fast-twitch muscle fibers allowing them to be good sprinters etc.

On the other hand, East Africans, like Kenyans, have on average a higher percentage of slow-twitch muscles allowing them to be good long distance runners. This is why American blacks tend to do well in short events, but also explains why there are not very many successful American black marathoners.

It has nothing to do with eugenics, and everything to do with the different phenotypes of populations living in two different areas.

Lastly, blacks are only over-represented in a few sports such as football and basketball. Most sports have a dearth of black faces. Hockey, Swimming, and Tennis come to mind.
 

Susano

Banned
Susano, you should read a little philosophy, and learn to be more tolerant about other people's ideas. I am sure you must be a great fan of Habermas and Levi-Strauss...
Tolerant? Of course Im tolerant - I wouldnt advocate your opinion to be forbidden, after all. However, engaging it... that is something else. What I said is that I consider the position you presented to by mysticism with little base in reality, as after all a "force of perfection" hasnt been observed. Surely, that is a valid criticism of your point, no?

Truth is more interesting than good feelings.
Yes, yes, indeed. Which is just my point. Mysticism (and in that term Id include some of the more... esoteric philosophic models out there) may feel good and look elegant, but if not based on reality its pretty useless.
 
That is your point of view, Susano, and I respect that. However, I just think you are being prosaic, and I would like you to engage in greater levels of abstraction.

You should also be aware that what I said about 'AI' was in keeping with Spielberg's work, not mine. You just said that you thought Spielberg's film was 'philosophical mysticism', that is all.

Tolerant? Of course Im tolerant - I wouldnt advocate your opinion to be forbidden, after all. However, engaging it... that is something else. What I said is that I consider the position you presented to by mysticism with little base in reality, as after all a "force of perfection" hasnt been observed. Surely, that is a valid criticism of your point, no?

You must admit that the argument about perfection is debatable. That is why I referred to Levi-Strauss. I believe that some civilizations have reached greater levels of refinement than others, and I believe in progress. There are of course people for whom those notions are, well, admittedly, er, bullshit...

That is a question of point of view, I guess.

About perfection, I know this sounds ridiculous but I think that human beings, from a spiritual point of view, are a greater achievement of nature, than, say, dinosaurs, or amoeba. But please be mindful of the fact that I am conscious of the whole anthropocentric bias of my standpoint...
 

ninebucks

Banned
That's absolutely ridiculous. Most blacks in America have ancestors who come from Western Africa. The reason that African-Americans do well in sports is because West Africans on average have a higher percentage of fast-twitch muscle fibers allowing them to be good sprinters etc.

Then how come West Africans don't dominate international sport?

On the other hand, East Africans, like Kenyans, have on average a higher percentage of slow-twitch muscles allowing them to be good long distance runners. This is why American blacks tend to do well in short events, but also explains why there are not very many successful American black marathoners.

The prominence of Kenyans in distance running is rather more to due to the high altitude of Kenya, and the fact that they are used to exerting themselves in thin air - giving them an advantage nearer sea level. The same reason why the Bolivian fútbol team does so well at home.

It has nothing to do with eugenics, and everything to do with the different phenotypes of populations living in two different areas.

I'm not saying eugenics is the sole reason, or even perhaps the major reason. But it could certainly be one reason.

Lastly, blacks are only over-represented in a few sports such as football and basketball. Most sports have a dearth of black faces. Hockey, Swimming, and Tennis come to mind.

I think that can mostly be tied up to cultural issues.
 
Becasue in Sparta, everybody in the citizen class was considered more or less equal and everybody in the Helot class was consider equal. Eugenics requires that the best within a class should be given a chance to outbreed others in their class rather than mere caste-based endogamy.

All the Spartiates were considered to be politically equal (except for the exclusive religio/social privleges of the kings). However, while all citizens were obliged to marry and produce offspring, the unfit infants were exposed. Alone in Greek society Spartan women and girls were expected to exercise and compete in physical activity and this was done to ensure the best would breed.

Infant boys were separated early and put through a rigorous training that could lead to death. This was designed to ensure only the best survived to later breed.

How is this not eugenics?
 
The real hurdle to having a true early eugenic society is that once you reach a certain scale culling those that don’t exhibit the traits that your trying to breed becomes almost a necessity. Not only because simply micromanaging the breeding of a large society is not even possible today “look at china.” But also because to truly know that your on the right track not simply having gotten lucky you really need to have a high number of births in order to give recessive traits a chance to express themselves. For instance I have 2 brothers and a sister only my sister the youngest has blond hair with both my parents and both sets of grandparents all having had dark hair with one less sibling it could have been assumed that the blond gene was not present in our line. Said high rate of birth in turn creates the problem of running over the amount of population that you can reasonably support which is further compounded by the fact that the breeding is likely going in the direction of creating more physically fit individuals which creates an even greater burden by increasing consumption of food per capita.
 
Invent vasectomies much earlier. You have a lot less resistance from men about the whole 'not breeding' thing when it does not involve 'no sex'. In fact, you could probably get a large section of the male population to volunteer for vasectomies if it was before birth control because they would be the only 'safe' men for women to have relationships with.
Maybe you would exempt 5% of the men for artificial insemination and give vasectomies to all the rest of the men? That also keeps your population down, gives you access to more protein, and insures that your population is mostly physically large enough to wear armor and swing big swords, or to pull a long bow with a decent range.
A Greek colony on Madeira? Far enough away from the rest of the world that they could get some serious genetic drift going, but close enough to get some new blood stock in slave markets for stud purposes?
 
All the Spartiates were considered to be politically equal (except for the exclusive religio/social privleges of the kings). However, while all citizens were obliged to marry and produce offspring, the unfit infants were exposed. Alone in Greek society Spartan women and girls were expected to exercise and compete in physical activity and this was done to ensure the best would breed.

Infant boys were separated early and put through a rigorous training that could lead to death. This was designed to ensure only the best survived to later breed.

How is this not eugenics?

The Spartans also "declared war" to the Hilotes from time to time (that is how they called it), which meant that they ravaged the countryside and killed some of them to reduce their numbers. That was a very early and very literal version of 'class warfare'.

Therefore, I share your opinion: that was decidedly plain eugenics. The elite considered themselves as the fittest, and they practised not only birth control, but also population control, making use of the sadly notorious counterpart of eugenics ('good birth' in Greek), euthanasia ('good death')...
 
Invent vasectomies much earlier. You have a lot less resistance from men about the whole 'not breeding' thing when it does not involve 'no sex'. In fact, you could probably get a large section of the male population to volunteer for vasectomies if it was before birth control because they would be the only 'safe' men for women to have relationships with.

Yeah, that sounds like a good solution to the problems that Draco pointed out. I'm sure the classical physicians can invent an early form of vasectomy

As for the Spartans, they were pretty Eugenic in their ideology and structure. But their method is different from the modern concept of Eugenics as well as the concept of animal breedeing. The problem that I see is the problem that exists in class based societies everywhere-- that they didn't see anything beyond the aristocratic/free class of best humans, because it didn't exist yet and were concerned more with survival and preservation than enhancement, unlike the Draka and many modern Transhumanists/Posthumanists who believe that we can breed a "new man"

I'm not saying that Spartans couldn't have gotten results with what they had.The Spartan approach could have produced results if the practice had continued into modern time and maybe over time, they have something approaching modern eugenics and full-blown selective breeding. Has anyone done a survivng Sparta timeline? where they impose their peculiar culture on other cities through out Greece?
 

bard32

Banned
Is there a way to have ancient societies have some sort of a Eugenics progam? A Program that not only seperates people for the sake of social segregation but for actually creating seperate "humans"?

While the Idea sounds too modern, I am sure that ancient people had awareness of things like height and strength... so what if they arranged marriages in such way to get the tallest and strongest people. (Of course, it will require a thinker that recognizes that tall breeds tall and short breeds short, but that is a fairly straightforward thing to think of) Can there be a an ancient way to gauge intelligence that is somewhat accurate? Children being tested with problems in classical mathematics as a primitive IQ-test ? A Class of thinkers produced by breeding the best thinkers.

I think that there are proto-Eugenic ideas in all caste based societies. Could one of them had taken it a lot further. If Ancient Sparta is anything to judge by, ancient community are capable of imposing a version of "Ideological Totalitarianism" on their subjects... we just need to have something like that survive longer and carry things out farther, with Eugenics as a part of their Ideology. Maybe a "great person" (in the form of a leader or a thinker) that will butterfly things in favor of such a society?

One prerequisite, though, would be a level of gender equality in TTL ancient societies that recognizes that women also have an influence on the progeny and women too, need to get out of their houses and compete to prove that they are fit to breed. Other one is that the society needs to keep a detailed geneology to make sure somebody is a "thoroughbred"

Sparta practiced eugenics. If a baby was healthy, it would be raised by the
state. If it was weak, it would be put on the side of a mountain to die.
 
Sparta practiced eugenics. If a baby was healthy, it would be raised by the
state. If it was weak, it would be put on the side of a mountain to die.

Yes, I know that... but all I am saying is that it is a different thing from actual selective breeding, a.k.a Human Stud Farms and the like, or the Genius Sperm Bank (there actually is one).

I want an ancient version of those practices. But I am not ruling out Sparta.
 
The problem with ancient eugenics is that you have to avoid complex ideologies, and you cannot rely on a distorted use of science, since science was too primitive.

Two solutions:

1/ Politics, as with Plato, and the paradigm of cattle-breeding which was easily understable by everyone.

2/ Another way is to use the basest human instincts: have the most successful Spartan citizens get several wives and become polygamous (perhaps including beautiful slaves taken from far away), have them spread their seed only with the most beautiful of those women (they would not sleep with the ugly ones, would they?), and add to this the Spartan technique of killing some percentage of the hilotes periodically.

You get the worst society ever, and very early in time.
 
The problem with ancient eugenics is that you have to avoid complex ideologies, and you cannot rely on a distorted use of science, since science was too primitive.

Two solutions:

1/ Politics, as with Plato, and the paradigm of cattle-breeding which was easily understable by everyone.

2/ Another way is to use the basest human instincts: have the most successful Spartan citizens get several wives and become polygamous (perhaps including beautiful slaves taken from far away), have them spread their seed only with the most beautiful of those women (they would not sleep with the ugly ones, would they?), and add to this the Spartan technique of killing some percentage of the hilotes periodically.

You get the worst society ever, and very early in time.

Maybe I can imagine a scenario where Plato's ideology is simplified, and more pragmatic and even more eugenic than OTL. As for "base human instincts", we can be have a form of "libertinism" actually a part of Platonic ideology. Making Plato somewhat of a "materialist" might work here...

Is a scenario where Plato, after being disillusioned with Athens due to the execution of Socrates ends up in Sparta and creates a philosophy that will allow "cattle breeding" on a more literal level.

But the trick is to have the Spatan model proliferate...
 

bard32

Banned
Yes, I know that... but all I am saying is that it is a different thing from actual selective breeding, a.k.a Human Stud Farms and the like, or the Genius Sperm Bank (there actually is one).

I want an ancient version of those practices. But I am not ruling out Sparta.

I see. Sparta was the only example I could think of.
 
Maybe I can imagine a scenario where Plato's ideology is simplified, and more pragmatic and even more eugenic than OTL. As for "base human instincts", we can be have a form of "libertinism" actually a part of Platonic ideology. Making Plato somewhat of a "materialist" might work here...

Is a scenario where Plato, after being disillusioned with Athens due to the execution of Socrates ends up in Sparta and creates a philosophy that will allow "cattle breeding" on a more literal level.

But the trick is to have the Spatan model proliferate...

If I remember correctly, the Republic broaches the subject of education and how to raise children. In its earliest stage this consists in raising the children of the upper caste (I use the word 'caste' because he speaks of different 'races': golden race, bronze race, etc...) using lower caste women to breastfeed them, and also take care of their upbringing whilst they are still infants.

In short, the only value of lower caste women resides in their ability to provide milk for the children of upper caste women. Of course, one feels the influence of cattle-breeding behind this...

Greek society was much less liberal than Rome when it comes to the social status of women. I think this might have encouraged polygamy (which was completely out of the question in Roman society). Possibly in Greek cities such as Sparta...

It would take some time, though, and of course we would need some serious political and ideological changes...

Contrary to what one might think, homosexuality was very much Spartan, and elite soldiers tended to be lovers when they belonged to the same military units. This also explains their cohesion and their quality as combatants. Imagine a heterosexual guy who has to defend his wife who is a fellow combatant...

Plato fleeing to Sparta: that is a very good idea.

The big, huge problem with Plato is that he was in fact the father of idealism (the realm of ideas has a separate existence in his works, and our world is an imperfect replica of this world). Materialism is therefore difficult to incorporate into his philosophy, but then why not? This is only a question of ideas...

A libertine Plato with a stronger sexual drive: interesting.

But, as you said, how could Sparta prevail? We need an expert in Greek history...
 
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If we're going to go with Sparta, perhaps polygamy is permitted for those who have done well in war, to encourage them to have more children and thus improve the warrior class gene pool.

To avoid draining the wife pool at home (as polygamy tends to do), wife #2, 3, etc. must be foreign (the whole "beautiful slaves from far away" thing).

Of course, I think Hendryk said the Spartans tended to be xenophobic, so there might be some issues with the half-Lydian, half-Scythian, half whatever members of the warrior elite.
 
Isn't this kind of just.. OTL for the vast proportion of human history?
Successful warriors (or kings with successful warriors etc) secure multiple wives.. check. In truth wives is meaningless, sexual partners is probably more accurate.
The weak are left to die, not quite check I guess but the weak will tend to die anyway, or atleast fail to breed.

Untill you get a proper working knowledge of genetics I don't see how it will work. Being a successful warrior involves more than mere genes and which genes are beneficial will vary to enviroment. If females are considered on beauty then such is subjective and cultural. The breeding of such will be essentially random rather than directed. What you have there is just evolution rather than eugenics.

The flaw with eugenics seems the timespan. You effectively need a class of overseers and a class of breeders operating to pursue only certain physical markers for centuries. Humans it would seem have far more pressing concerns, whether for the cattle class or for the overseer class.
 
Isn't this kind of just.. OTL for the vast proportion of human history?
Successful warriors (or kings with successful warriors etc) secure multiple wives.. check. In truth wives is meaningless, sexual partners is probably more accurate.
The weak are left to die, not quite check I guess but the weak will tend to die anyway, or atleast fail to breed.

The point to eugenics is that it's done deliberately. Natural selection just happens, and it can take interesting turns and twists whereas a eugenic approach is entirely deliberate. It was practised to a degree in many ancient societies (Sparta is just the most extreme example of institutionalising it), but as you write, a systematic programme would require long-term commitment beyond the means of any of them.

Sparta, ironically, may be the ancient society least likely to consider polygyny desireable. You could see the Roman Empire being into something like systematic population breeding, but its government machinery was entirely inadequate to realising it. Maybe a small-scale affair with a slae population (in which case the Hellenistic world would be a better bet because the Roman slave population was pretty fluid).

As to effectiveness, I doubt it would do anything much. Look at the huge effort in what can be termed intellectual dysgenics known as celibacy. Catholic Europe spent several centuries trying to systematically convince its best brains to take monastic vows and eschew progeny while it encouraged thugs to marry and breed. What did it get as a result? The Renaissance. I'm not convinced.
 
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