Customer Reviews

Understanding Human History

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Here is a remarkable achievement. History books which answer the questions as to "when" and "where" are a dime a dozen. Some wars and some inventions, I guess you know them well. What Michael Hart has done in this masterpiece of a grand history lesson is to explain to his readers the great "whys" of history and pre-history.

Why did men start speaking with each other at a certain time and place? And why is it that agriculture first appeared where and when it did? Similarly, why did men develop the ability to write in the period and area they did? Dr. Hart's transgressive answers to these questions will not please the faint of heart and the politically correct. Not only are the plants, animals and climate of each population's habitat examined, but their cognitive abilities are taken into full account as well.

Understanding Human History is for readers who must know the truth, no matter where it will lead them. If a superior IQ was as powerful a prerequisite for the development of the Industrial Revolution as any other factor, then so be it. Few men would be up to the monumental task of making the case presented in these pages because it requires such a vast knowledge of history and science as well as the courage to break the most oppressive taboo of our time. In a sane world, this would be a required text for college students of world history.

Michael Hart has written a powerful new book which provides an erudite biological explanation of human history. His data-filled book pulls together diverse events using a gene-based evolutionary theory that takes IQ differences into account. He frames his ideas boldly and provocatively and he explains why cold-selected northern peoples made most of the major advances in civilization. Hart's writing is beautifully concise and to the point, and he makes excellent use of tables and bulleted lists.

Hart also explains why invasions are much more frequent southwards than northwards He describes how the northern Mongols invaded China (twice) and how the Austronesian expansion out of China some 5,000 years ago led to the modern populations of the Philippines and Polynesia. He also describes the Indo-European invasion of the Indian sub-continent about 1500 BC and the beginning of the caste system there, as well as the Indo-European invasion of Greece and Italy and their founding of magnificent civilizations. Of interest, too, is the backwardness of the Arab world, relative to Europe, and the sparseness of its achievements, in part due to the low average Arab IQ of 88 compared to the average European IQ of 100. By contrast, Arabs were easily able to colonize and enlighten the East Coast of Africa with its average IQ of 70. IQ and Global Inequality

There are occasional quirks such as the use of statistical symbols to characterize population groups of varying IQs, and no mention is made of the failure of the upper classes to have children helping cause the fall of Rome. But Hart's scholarship is engaging and he defines a new direction forward that future scholars can follow to embellish. History may yet become a theoretically structured discipline.

I have met Dr. Hart and know him to be a free thinker and an excellent scholar. He will of course be pilloried for mentioning the unmentionable -- racial differences -- but so what. In "Understanding Human History," Dr. Hart makes a strong case that differences in IQ are responsible for the different levels of development we see in the world. But the book is more than that. It gives a concise though accurate summary of human history.

I read this book as sort of an antidote to Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel," which used pretzel logic to determine that race has nothing to do with intellect or civilizational achievement.

Buy the book. Even if you disagree with some parts, it will force you to think about subjects not often publicly discussed in the academy or the media.

A Real Diamond: Michael Hart's Understanding Human History

By Steve Sailer

The ambitious History of Everything book has been an important genre at least since Sir Walter Raleigh's The Historie of the World.

The most popular example of recent years: Jared Diamond's 1997 bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel. Diamond attempted to explain the always-interesting question of who conquered whom over the last 13,000 years without mentioning differences in average intelligence among human groups--a factor that he ruled out, a priori, as too "racist" and "loathsome" even to think about.

Now, there's another entry in this genre: Michael H. Hart's Understanding Human History: An analysis including the effects of geography and differential evolution.

Hart's book serves as a comprehensive refutation of Guns, Germs, and Steel. It's an impressive and insightful attempt to provide a more careful and powerful answer to Diamond's question about why some peoples came to rule other peoples.

Unlike Diamond, Hart is also interested in a second, less bloodthirsty question: who gave what to the entire human race in terms of science, technology, and the arts.

This is a fascinating topic--but one that the Diamonds of the world shy away from, since measuring contributions rather than conquests don't present an opportunity for the competitive moralism, the public white-guilt breast-beating afforded by the European expansion of 1400-1900.

Hart sums up:

"The central hypothesis of this book is that genetic differences between human groups (in particular, differences in average native intelligence) have been an important factor in human history."

Hart is a polymath: a rocket scientist with a Ph.D. in astronomy who worked at NASA and was a physics professor at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Along the way, he picked up a law degree.

Every decade or two, Hart publishes a book for a general audience. His best-known: 1978's The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History.

Now, in Understanding Human History, Hart changes his focus from individuals to racial groups. He begins with a quick (130 pages) but close to state-of-the-art overview of the human sciences relevant to history--physical anthropology, linguistics, population genetics and psychometrics. This section alone would be worth the price of the book. Hart has mastered the scientific literature through at least 2005.
After reviewing the human sciences, Hart moves on to perhaps the most concise history of the world from the Stone Age to the late 20th Century imaginable.

Hart's judgment, while laconic, is generally quite sound.

In Guns, Germs, & Steel, Diamond purported to explain why Europeans were able to conquer the New World so easily by emphasizing differences between the New and Old Worlds. Thus, Diamond pointed out that Europeans benefited from more exposure (and thus more immunity) to disease; from metal-working technology; from having more species of domesticable animals; and from the broad East-West orientation of Eurasia, allowing Old World crops like Turkey's wheat to spread faster than New World crops like Mexico's corn, which had only been finally adapted to the much shorter growing season of Massachusetts shortly before the Pilgrims arrived.

Unfortunately, Diamond's reasoning, while clever, was ad hoc. It was clearly whipped up to explain away a politically incorrect reality. A real contribution to our comprehension of history could only come from a set of insights that would apply more globally than Diamond's. And that's exactly what Hart attempts.

Refuting Diamond, Hart points out that sub-Saharan Africans, being part of the Old World, were more privileged than New World Indians in terms of the factors that Diamond emphasizes.

In contrast to Mesoamerican Indians, Sub-Saharan Africans had more disease-resistance than Europeans (for example, they had genetic adaptations for surviving malaria). Plus they could make iron; possessed domestic cattle, sheep, and goats; had been exposed to literacy on their northern edge in places like Timbuktu; and possessed a continent that is 4,500 miles wide from Senegal to Somalia--not that much narrower than Eurasia's 6,200 miles.

And yet, Africans didn't build anything close to comparable to the hidden city of Machu Picchu (Incan) or the pyramids of Chichen Itza (Mayan) and Teotihuacán (Central Mexican).

Hart writes: "This book does not contain any suggestions as to what policies should be adopted--with the sole exception that we should attempt to ascertain the facts before deciding on questions of policy."

One important fact that Hart has ascertained:

"Throughout history, most of the instances of people from one region attacking and conquering substantial portions of another region have involved 'northerners' invading more southerly lands."

(The biggest exception: the Arabs of the 7th Century A.D. And the Romans conquered in all directions.)

This overall pattern of north conquering south has long been apparent from the historical record--even though northern lands are generally less populous, due to shorter growing seasons.

Likewise, the man who left the largest footprint yet found on the Y-chromosomes of humanity was Genghis Khan from cold Mongolia. He left roughly 800,000 times more descendants in the direct male line than the average man alive at the time.

Hart offers a simple, deliberately reductionist model for explaining this (and much else): Foresight is needed to survive cold winters. So harsher, more northerly climates select for higher average intelligence. And intelligence is useful in war.

Indeed, there is a positive correlation between latitude and the average intelligence of modern countries, as summarized in Richard Lynn's and Tatu Vanhanen's IQ and the Wealth of Nations. (Here's my table listing their data.) In 2006, Lynn found a substantial r = 0.67 correlation between national average IQ and the absolute value of latitude. Similarly, the correlation between IQ and average temperature is r = -0.63.

Understanding Human History brings new clarity to the vast sweep of human history.

I predict, therefore, that it will make only a tiny fraction as much money as Guns, Germs, and Steel.

But in the long run, it will likely matter more.

Do IQ averages tend to follow racial lines? No! Cry the multi-culturalists, who label any suggestion of such a thing "racist" and "bogus science." But author Michael H. Hart begs to disagree.

Going back to the beginning of traceable human history, Hart offers a convincing hypothesis backed up by copious chapter notes. His theory: While mankind originated in Africa, the segments of the human race that gradually traveled out of that continent to other, colder and harsher climes, over time developed higher mental capacities than those of the people who remained in the tropics of the Dark Continent.

Listing the advances made by races other than those in Africa -- especially Indo-Europeans and East Asians -- Hart demonstrates that the great literature was written, the great buildings designed, the great scientific advances achieved, by people other than Africans. He never implies that this makes members of the black race any less worthy, morally or in human terms, than Caucasians or Asians. But his conclusions, buttressed by his citing of average IQ results from many parts of the globe, would be hard to disprove, in my humble opinion as a non-scientist.

Are Hart's conclusions disquieting and even horrifying to many people? Obviously, given the reactions of many to books like this. But facts are facts. Hart does not appear to have any racial or ethnic ax to grind; he seems to have simply gone where the evidence took him.

Edward Gibbon`s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire took three volumes, and Arnold Toynbee's Study of History of the world required ten. Michael Hart's Understanding Human History is a mere 440 pages. Furthermore, his discussion includes hominids before they were human, early human migrations, and does not discuss the ancient Middle East until p. 197. Clearly, Hart's history is more of an outline; however, Hart's is a most important outline.

Hart is courageous enough to include a topic that is deemed too offensive to be discussed in polite, politically-correct circles (though the p.c. crowd is anything but polite if anyone dares broach the subject. Indeed, just note some of the nastiness of a few Amazon reviewers toward Hart: "brilliant,...although morally disgusting," "morally repugnant," and "crackpot."

True, another scholar broached the topic in the introductory chapter to his work, Guns, Germs, and Steel. The chapter is titled "Yali's Question" after an a native of New Guinea, who asked Jared Diamond, "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?"(p. 14) At the time, Diamond could not answer the question. "He (Yali) and I knew perfectly well that New Guineans are on the average at least as smart as Europeans."(p. 14) Diamond broadens the question as to why darker people are militarily, industrially, and in so many other ways less advanced than whites? The rest of Diamond's 460-page book is an attempt to answer Yali's question. For Diamond, if whites have been more creative and productive than Blacks, it has nothing to do with group differences in intelligence; rather it has everything to do with the different areas of the globe which their ancestors populated, with the differences in flora and fauna, with possible edible crops and possible domesticable animals. Diamond raised the taboo question at his book's opening, but answers it in a most reassuring, politically-correct manner. The differences in economic progress are simply the consequence of diseases, geography, domesticable animals - environment - where their ancestors had begun hunting, farming, fishing, mining. For Diamond, there are simply no differences in intelligence among the races.

In mainstream academia, those who opened his book, and stiffened when reading Yali's question, could relax with a "Whew" by book's end. Suddenly they recognized the import of Diamond's message: it is NOT differences in intelligence among races that has caused much of the Third World to stumble so far behind the West and a few Asian areas, it is disease, agriculture, animals, and other environmental factors. Guns, germs, steel, and luck. This explains it! Finally, the taboo question can be raised, and ANSWERED, in a proper politically-correct, footnoted reply. Writing what the academedia complex wanted to read, Diamond's star shone brightly. His work would be included on the reading lists of countless university classes.

But did Diamond's answer really answer the question? Are there other answers? Better answers?
About a decade ago I attended an Organization of American Historians convention in Chicago, and one of the sessions was a panel of historians discussing Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel. This was no small session in a hide-away seminar; this was a session with panelists on a dais and possibly hundreds in attendance.

I listened keenly to the commentators - all three of whom prefaced their remarks by concurring in general agreement with Diamond's thesis. There were quibbles about small issues, the most significant of which was whether the axis in Africa should run north-south or east west. Overall, the panelists did not challenge any point pertinent to Diamond's general thesis.

During the question period, I rose to complain that the OAH had invited only panelists sympathetic to Diamond; it had not invited someone like Prof. Michael Levin who opposed Diamond's view. Further, I asked the audience to withhold judgment on Diamond's thesis until another side could be presented. Dr. Diamond, who was present, holding the microphone, and taking the questions, must have been stunned by my comment. From the dais Diamond sneered into the mike that any who opposed his thesis were racist, and furthermore racists were present at this meeting. This he said dramatically as he glared directly at me. A woman seated beside me suddenly rose and moved several seats away so as not to be tainted. Academics are aware that their jobs can be jeopardized if there is a hint that they are racists.

Diamond has provided a very scholarly explanation of why many nations of dark-skinned people lag far behind America, Europe, and a few Asian lands. The next question is, is Diamond's the only answer? Is it the best answer?

Hart provides a different answer to Yali's question. According to Hart, there are differences in intelligence among the races of mankind, and these differences explain why so many scientific, economic, and military breakthroughs have occurred in Europe and northern Asia, and so few if any in Sub-Saharan Africa, New Guinea, or Australia

First, I stress the similarities between Diamond and Hart. Both emphasize the importance of environmental and geographic factors in the progress of mankind. Diamond's entire volume is devoted to various environmental structures and how they helped or hindered the population residing in those areas to stagnate or progress.

Hart also stresses the environment - but at an earlier stage of human development. Simply, those humans residing in colder climes had a more difficult time and developed a higher intelligence in order to feed and clothe themselves and families in a hostile environment. Nurture thus changed the nature of man in those environments. In some ways Hart's view is reminiscent of the theory of Prof. Leonard Jeffries who decades ago distinguished between the cruel, malevolent, violent "ice people" (whites) whose heritage in cold climes had warped them away from the more human "sun people" (coloreds, especially Blacks) who exemplified warm, peaceful, and compassionate values. Hart views the past experience of cold winters differently; the cold forced whites and northern Asians to expand their minds eventually making their offspring more intelligent than those who could lounge about in the easy life of warmer atmospheres. Being more intelligent, the northern peoples usually conquered the less intelligent occupants of the south. By 1900 northern people, mainly Europeans had basically conquered the entire globe.

Amazon-hostile reviewer S. Ferguson asks a pertinent question at the conclusion of his attack: Why did early man leave Africa to begin with? If life in the sun was so delightful, with plentiful food growing near or roving the forests, why leave Africa for somewhere else? I ask, did they leave, or were they kicked out? If so, then the ancestors of what would become the high-IQ people, were driven out of Africa because they were weaker. Indeed, if they lost the battle for Africa, not only were they weaker, but they may have had a lower IQ.

But this speculative scene raises another major issue. Hart presupposes that more intelligent groups and races will defeat and conquer the less intelligent ones. So the Aryans conquered India; the Germans conquered Rome; and Europe conquered the world by 1900.

For a moment, recall your high-school days. Imagine two teams that would do battle. Whom do you think would win, Team Jocks or Team Nerds? (Though many athletes are quite intelligent, I suspect the stereotype is accurate; nerds as a group are probably more intelligent that the jocks.) Hart assumes that intelligence is wedded to fighting skills. I think that is a false assumption.

If surviving harsh winters for generations produced higher intelligence, that allowed the cold group to conquer, then where is the great empire of the Eskimos? If high group intelligence results in military victories, by 1800 where was the large empire of the Jews?

Hart does admit anomalies to his world-view - Rome conquered northern folks of France and England; Arabs conquered Iraq, Syria, Spain, and nearly France. I ask, were the Mongols who conquered a southern neighbor really more intelligent than the Chinese?

Let me make my point clearer: military victory does not necessarily go to the most intelligent groups. Nike can be worn by dummies. Just as on the individual level, fighters are not equated with intellectuals, so to on the group level, conquerors even have been deemed barbarians, vandals, buggers, apes, because they are strong, powerful, not because they are intelligent. If you reject the correlation of conquest and intelligence, then much of Hart's argument shatters. BUT NOT ALL.

When one considers scientific advances, these are connected to intelligence. And in scientific advance, some areas predominate while other areas are absent. Here Hart is on solid ground, ground unexplored by Diamond. When reflecting on scientific advances and inventions it is clear that Europe and Northern Asia has made many more contributions than some areas of the world. Some races are overrepresented; some are underrepresented or absent altogether. If there is a correlation between intelligence and scientific advance, then some races may well be more intelligent; other races less so.

Speculations about human migrations and the earth's climate tens of thousands of years ago, and building a case of differences in intelligence among the races on such speculation, I find unconvincing. Prehistory is often more guesswork than fact. Would you build your theory on Piltdown Man? What about Atlantic seafarers who may have built a Stonehenge, stone culture on both sides of the Atlantic. What about the oldest skeleton found in North America, in the Pacific Ocean state of Washington, Kennewick Man, one that a sheriff and others assumed was the remains of a white man?

Resting the case for racial differences in intelligence upon such flimsy evidence is interesting as speculation. However, resting the case on the scientific advances we know, and being aware of those who created or invented them, that is powerful ammunition in the debate. Looking at the lists of contributions assembled by Hart, one sees a pattern in which some races invent much and other races do not. It is a pattern, once viewed as in Hart's book, that anyone can see and draw the natural conclusions (except those blinded by egalitarian ideology). One hopes that many will read Hart's History. For a more detailed and academic discussion of racial differences, one can also consult John Baker's Race from Oxford University Press. A few decades old and politically incorrect, I doubt if OUP pushes Baker's volume. In tedious language Baker stressed the racial differences that Diamond seeks to deny. Hart's book is an easier read than Baker's and it should provoke interest in opening a topic that the academedia elite seek to close.

Length:: 7:05 Mins

Understanding Human History: Interview of Dr. Michael Hart Part One

The premise of this book is as simple as it is morally repugnant: smart people dominate the world.

You see, Mr. Hart is going to posit the politically incorrect. Not because he is a racist, not because he is reviving social darwinism, but because he thinks it is true.

There are seperate genetic clusters (or races) of humans. Three of the main clusters are mongoloid, caucasoid, and negroid, respectively. the average IQ of these groups differ and this has led to northerners dominating southerners throughout history. Hart's is a strong rebuttal to Jared Diamond's environmentalist Guns, Germs and Steal. It is macro history that EXPLAINS. I don't know if Hart's explanation of genetical differences as the basis of inequalities in the global system througout history will hold up. I do, however, know that Mr. Hart is no racist. He used this theory because he honestly thinks it can explain world history-plain and simple. Read it and try to destroy the arguments. It is a challenge that any equalitarian will have to rise to. Good luck.

Dr. Hart wrote this book in order to explain why history progressed in the way it did. His explanation is, of necessity, conjectural. I think, in general, it is more plausible than any other explanation or combination of explanations.
However, I recommend this book for a different reason. Whether differences in intelligence among intra-breeding populations explain relative rates and levels of progress or not; Dr. Hart provides a remarkably clear, concise, and accurate description of human biological and cultural development.
I can speak with some authority on this subject. For many years, I was a professor of Classics: ancient Greek, Latin, and ancient history. In my retirement, I have been writing a history of human progress from the point of view of the emergence and expansion of capitalism.

Michael H. Hart has done a superb job explaining WHY history happened as it did. I've read most everything in this genre and Understanding Human History does the best job explaining the whos, wheres, whens and whys of human evolution and the rise of civilization. He is able to make the most astonishing connections, for example. The same hormone that makes Asian and European Whites better fathers and husbands than Africans also makes them more docile, less hostile and therefore makes them behave in a more civilized fashion. Michael Hart is the first to make the connection between these traits and Testosterone. Africans (whether in the USA or Mozambique) have higher testosterone levels than Asians or Whites. This makes them more violent, more philanderous, and more uncaring of the women in their lives than the other two groups. Evolution drove the reduction of testosterone levels through sexual selection, and this explains nearly every ailment of blacks living within white cultures.
Comparing this book with Jared Diamond's Germs, Guns and Steel, or William Calvin's A Brain for All Seasons this book wins hands down. Michael Hart shoots down Jared Diamond's hypothesis regarding East-West versus North-South continental alignments by pointing out that South America's achievements far outweigh Africa's despite the fact that Africa is wider E-W than is South America, which as I remember, Diamond didn't seem to address very well. IQ gains due to living in higher latitudes that came about through evolution explains it all, and South American's evolved in higher latitudes gaining an advantage over Africans or Australians.
This book should be a textbook for a nationwide high school history course, but that will never happen, unfortunately.