The Decline and Fall of Civilisations

by Kerry Bolton

  “As Boas hypothesized, our results show that children born in the U.S. environment are markedly less similar to their parents in terms of head form than foreign-born children are to theirs. This finding thus corroborates Boas’s overarching conclusion that the cephalic index is sensitive to environmental influences and, therefore, does not serve as a valid marker of racial phylogeny.”92

  Gravlee et al state that their use of analytic methods not available to Boas, “provide stronger support for Boas’s conclusion”. Boas and generations of anthropologists that were influenced by him, were Leftists who had an ideological stake in repudiating the role of genetics on human behaviour and race formation. Boas is often regarded in tandem with the 18th century French biologist Lamarck, and the Soviet agronomist Lysenko. The latter, alluded to above, attempted to show that inheritance in plants can bypass the laws of genetics, by what he called “vernalization”, to convert winter wheat to spring wheat. The experiments did not work.93 While Lysenko was trying to disprove Mendelian genetic laws, Boas did not discount their significance. The extent of changes caused by environment are limited.94 However, the significance is summarised by Gravlee et al:

  “As we argue in our earlier article, the significance of the immigrant study must be understood in historical context. At the time Boas conceived the study, the prevailing view among physical anthropologists was that humankind consisted of a few, unchanging races or types—‘permanent forms which have lasted without variation from the beginning of our modern geological period up to the present time’.95 Boas’s immigrant study is significant because it treated this assumption as an empirical matter. The most important result was that the cephalic index, which had ‘always been considered one of the most stable and permanent characteristics of human races’,96 was sensitive to the environment. Given the prevailing faith in the absolute permanence of cranial form, Boas’s demonstration of change—any change—in the cephalic index within a single generation was nothing short of revolutionary”. 97

  Boas was not dogmatic in his assertions, and did not claim to have reached conclusions as to the reasons why skull form changes among migrant children, other than to suggest that skull form is not as fixed as supposed. Professor William Ridgeway went further than Boas was willing to go in suggesting that changes in skull and body form among different migrant races towards a mean average might give rise to an “American type”. The adaptability of “various races” coming to America within the first generation indicated that “widely varying nationalities and races” might form “what may well be called an American type”.98 It is this “American type” that Jung believed he observed as a consequence of the impress of the American soil, and psychologically under the impress of the genius loci.

  Recent studies of face shapes among the Turkman from central Asia and the native Fars in northern Iran indicate that geography impacts on phenotype within a relatively short time; less than a century. The dominate face shape of native Fars and Turkman females is euriprosopic (broad); of males of both races mesoprosopic (round). It has been concluded from studies in various parts of Iran of different racial and ethnic groups that “the geographical factor similar to the ethnical factor can affect the form of the face”.99

  In studies of ear length (EL) and health, geographic clusters transcend race. There are differences in ear length between Chinese according to geographic origins: Taiwanese and Singaporean Chinese babies have longer ears than Hong Kong Chinese babies. “Even within the same ethnic group, EL appears to be impacted by country of origin”.100

  A more definitive study of change of bodily form by geography was undertaken by anthropologists H. L. Schapiro and Frederick Hulse whose subjects were Japanese immigrants to Hawaii, Japanese born in Hawaii and Japanese in the villages in Japan from whence the immigrants came. Twenty-one indices were measured on thousands of subjects. Japanese born in Hawaii differed from Japanese immigrants to Hawaii and both differed from those in Japan. The cephalic index differed between those born in Hawaii and the immigrants by 2.6 points; a significant six times the standard deviation. The differences emerged within a short time; the longer an immigrant lived in Hawaii the greater the divergence.101

  In 1943 Marcus Goldstein, a founder of the science of dental anthropology, undertook studies in regard to the differences of head-form between Mexicans, immigrant Mexicans in Texas, and their Texas born offspring, and like Boas found significant differences in head-form.102

  The Left have always used Boas’ studies to show that races are too fluid to matter, and the “Right” has condemned him on the same basis. However, Boas unequivocally stated, “against the characterisation of ‘Boas’ theory as environmental-economic’, I protest as based on a hopeless muddle of two distinct problems that have no relation whatever, namely that of a selection of immigrants according to economic conditions, and that of the changes in bodily form of the descendants of immigrants”.103 This is a repudiation of the communistic dogma of economic determinism.

  Phenotype is not as fixed by genetic inheritance as was once thought. A re-examination of Boas’ data has shown that skull formation has a plasticity according to environmental factors. Phenotypic plasticity describes the change of bodily form even at the molecular level, including the “remodelling” of the brain by external stimuli. 104 Having assumed that the physiology of the human body was genetically determined, scientists did not fully appreciate the significance of phenotypic plasticity until the late 1960s, when seeing how physical performance could be improved by physical training.

  “Exercised muscles responded to the stimulation, and remodelled to improve performance. In the intervening years, scientists have characterised many physiological aspects of this phenomenon across a range of tissues, and with the advent of modern molecular tools, it has proved possible to uncover some of the mechanisms that underpin the phenomenon.105

  “Although the effects of phenotypic plasticity in muscle can be physically dramatic, the effects in the brain, although less visible, are no less spectacular. Brains constantly remodel in response to a relentless barrage of physiological and environmental factors, allowing us to encode information by remodelling synaptic interactions”.106

  Such changes in phenotype caused by outside stimuli, such as stress and diet can then become an inherited trait passed to subsequent generations to become part of a genotype.107 The eminent British geneticist and embryologist C. H. Waddington discussed this question at an early period, suggesting how an adaptation to a temporary environmental stimulant as an “acquired characteristic” might become an inherited trait of subsequent generations, even when that environmental stimulus is no longer present.108

  The hypothesis here is that a race or ethnos might be formed and maintain what Spengler called “the duration of character,” not through a fixed zoological genotype but through a myriad of factors including the stresses of conflict and challenges of environment. It is suggested here that history, or shared experiences, form “race”. How a group responds to challenges enables the “inheritance of acquired characteristics”. We shall now examine how such acquired changes in both physiology and psychology through shared experience – culture and history - might be passed on to subsequent generations, thereby forming a race or ethnos.

  Epigenetics

  C. H. Waddington coined the word “epigenetics”. He showed how acquired characteristics can be inherited, with the example of the Drosophila fly that does not possess a crossvein on the wings. The trait of crossveins emerges when the fly is treated with heat. After several generations the trait occurs without heat treatment, having becoming an inherited acquired characteristic. Waddington stated that the characteristic had become “genetically assimilated”, and is regarded as an example of the plasticity of phenotype. Epigenetics, from the Greek epi (over, outside of), refers to changes in phenotype that might be caused by switching genes on and off through environmental factors, without changing the DNA sequence. Although Waddington coined the word in 1942 epigenet
ics has had considerable interest particularly since the 1990s. As explained by Professor Loren Graham, both advocates and critics often confuse epigenetics as a form of Lysenkoism. The comparison is erroneous as epigenetics, unlike Lysenkoism, does not repudiate genetic laws, but shows how outside stimuli might influence genes. Professor Chris Faulk describes “epigenetics”:

  “Not all heritability is genetic, and humans, like all animals, have the ability to adapt to the environment. One of the main mechanisms for altering gene expression is through epigenetics, literally ‘above the genome’. Epigenetics has been in the news lately for its potential impacts on human health, and has even been touted as requiring a complete overhaul of the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory. The basic premise of epigenetics is that chemical marks (DNA methylation, histone modifications, and bound non-coding RNAs) can result in gene expression changes and can be passed down through cell division without changes in a cell’s DNA. If these changes are passed down through the generations, they are considered non-Mendelian, since they do not follow the law of genetic segregation. Practically, epigenetics means that the environment can impact your physical characteristics, your phenotype, and potentially even be passed on to your offspring”.109

  In attempting to explain cardiovascular and other health disparities between Blacks and Whites in the USA, C. W. Kuzawa, Professor of Anthropology at Northwestern University, and E. Sweet, describe the mechanism of epigenetics and the expression of genes:

  “The durability of the effects of early environments on multiple biological systems raises the question of what biological mechanisms underlie them: if early environments influence adult biology and health, where in the body are the ‘memories’ of these early experiences stored and maintained? The contributions of several developmental processes have been documented, each corresponding to axes of biological variation independent of one’s genotype. …

  “In addition to such modifications in the number of cells present, there is growing evidence that epigenetic changes in the pattern of cellular gene expression are also key to the long-term impacts of early environments. Although ascribed with numerous meanings since Waddington coined the phrase in 1942, epigenetics is increasingly being reserved to refer to the study of processes that modify patterns of gene expression without changing the nucleotide sequences of the DNA. The genome is inherited at conception and, other than somatic mutations acquired during cell division, remains unchanged in most body cells across the lifecycle. The ‘epigenome’, in contrast, is the product of a gradual commitment of cell lineages to more constrained patterns of gene expression. The epigenome is a result, in part, of the genome interacting with the environment, and can be viewed as the molecular basis for cellular differentiation and development over the life-course”.

  “Unlike the nucleotide bases that form the genetic code, the ‘epigenetic code’ predominantly involves chemical modifications to the structure of the chromatin that scaffolds the DNA within the chromosome. If fully stretched, the chromosomes in a single human cell would be roughly 6 feet in length; thus, a complex process of folding is required to package the complete genome into each cell nucleus where the genes reside and are expressed. In the nucleus, chromosomes must be unwound locally to allow transcription factors to gain access to a gene. How the DNA is packaged within the chromatin influences how easy or difficult a gene is to access and thus, whether and how much it may be expressed in that cell. Epigenetic markings have thus been likened to volume controls for genes, and they play an integral role in the normal process of cellular differentiation. As cells divide, epigenetic markings present in the parent cell are maintained through mitosis and thus heritable to both daughter cells. Through a complex series of bifurcations at which patterns of gene silencing and amplification are progressively acquired, the single totipotent ‘stem cell’110 formed at conception is capable of creating a body with roughly 200 cell types that vary in structure and function, despite the endowment of each of these daughter cells with an identical genome”.

  “An important class of mechanisms of epigenetic gene silencing involves localized chemical modifications to the chromatin and its protein constituents, which alter how tightly the DNA is packaged in the region of specific genes. The attachment of an extra methyl group (methylation) to ‘CpG islands’ (regions of DNA rich in cytosine and guanine linked by a phosphodiester bond) within the promoter region of a gene typically impedes expression of that gene in that cell. The histone proteins that the DNA fibers are wrapped around can also be modified to alter the tightness of DNA packing, and thus the accessibility of that stretch of DNA to enzymes and transcription factors. Methylation of the histone generally impedes gene expression, whereas acetylation loosens the chromatin and promotes gene expression”. …111

  Kuzawa and Sweet state that epigenetics as an explanation of how phenotypes can be altered is a “revolution in biology that is gathering momentum”. “By demonstrating one important way that the impact of a gene on the phenotype can be modified by the environment, this new understanding of epigenetic processes is helping shed light on this issue”.112 Epigenetic inheritance of health problems can be caused by stressors including “psychosocial stress” during pregnancy, and “can perpetuate changed biological settings to offspring”.113

  Applying this epigenetics “inheritance of acquired characteristics” to how races and ethnoi are formed, we might hypothesise that epigenetic changes to the phenotype could impress on the shared experiences of groups, and that “psychosocial” stressors can have both positive and negative impacts that encompass not only individual experiences, but collective experiences. Hence, such hitherto unexplained concepts as “race memory”, “race soul”, “national soul”, etc., dismissed by rationalists as superstition, might be explained by epigenetic experiences that become collectively acquired characteristics. Such “race traits” might be reinforced through the continuation of those shared experiences, such as continuity of landscape, climate, nutrition, wars, challenges and achievements.

  Kuzawa and Sweet contend that epigenetics challenges the inflexibility of race and explains the mechanism for Boas’ data on the flexibility of racial phenotypes:

  “As emphasized by Boas (1912) a century ago, the contingency of the adult phenotype on environmental conditions experienced during growth and development poses a fundamental challenge to essentialist concepts of race. Current research on developmental and epigenetic contributions to adult health disparities is updating Boas’ argument. Not only are traditional racial categories poor predictors of gene frequencies, a fact that has been appreciated for decades, but developmental and epigenetic processes help to clarify why genes do not determine biological fates in any simple fashion. Genes rarely ‘determine’ phenotypes but instead set the range of outcomes that a biological system may create as it interacts with and responds to the developmental environment. Humans inhabit highly variable and socially stratified ecologies; it follows that systems that coordinate adaptation to these realities should come equipped with a capacity to organize in response to local patterns of stress and opportunity”.114 [Emphasis added].

  The relation of epigenetics to race and “ethnicity”, has proceeded apace among scientists because of the importance it has on identifying health risks to ethnicities. Hence, the significance of the formation of ethnoi cannot be avoided. One detailed study by a multidiscipline team from the medical and biological sciences, begins by stating that:

  “Race and ethnicity are social constructs; that is, they are not necessarily defined biologically. However, shared ancestry will produce genetic links between members of a group. In addition, members of an ethnic group often share a culture or environment that may influence their risk of disease. For example, the ‘Mediterranean diet’ inspired by the dietary habits of Southern Italians has been shown to reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes and cancer”.115

  In considering the epigenetic and environmental factors impacting on ethnicity and disease the study p
osits that,

  “…racial and ethnic categories also reflect the shared experiences and exposures to known risk factors for disease, such as air pollution and tobacco smoke, poverty, and inadequate access to medical services, which have all contributed to worse disease outcomes in certain populations. Thus, it is unclear whether defining groups through genetic ancestry can capture these shared exposures. In this work we seek to explore the contributions of genetically defined ancestry and social, cultural and environmental factors to understanding differential methylation between ethnic groups”.116 [Emphasis added].

  Where such researchers refer to environmental pollutants etc. as having epigenetic influences on “certain populations”, our interest is in the epigenetic influence of “shared experiences” (i.e. history) and a multiplicity of other factors in shaping a “race” however one calls a “certain population” clustered with common traits. The primary point is that “racial and ethnic categories also reflect the shared experiences…”

  “The discovery of methylation quantitative trait loci (meQTL’s) across populations … established the influence of genetic factors on methylation levels in a variety of tissue types, with meQTL’s explaining between 22% and 63% of the variance in methylation levels. Multiple environmental factors have also been shown to affect methylation levels, including endocrine disruptors, tobacco smoke, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, infectious pathogens, particulate matter, diesel exhaust particles, allergens, heavy metals, and other indoor and outdoor pollutants. Psychosocial factors, including measures of traumatic experiences, socioeconomic status, and general perceived stress also affect methylation levels”.117